[ PERLF: Management Speaks ]
Scott,
I took the liberty of forwarding your concerns to the CFO of Perle Systems. Here is my e-mail to him:
Dear Doug,
Thank you for taking the time to answer some concerns raised about Perle's products. The following is from a response from Scott Davis, who is helping me further assess the viability of Perle's products in the marketplace. He is responding to a link I provided him from the Perle Home Page, in particular, the article from Brooks Talley of InfoWorld, on May 19, 1997. Here is the link:
infoworld.com
I gave him a lot of links, but I had him focus on the negatives. Here it is:
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"...Reviewed the link, and again, my general impression is good. There are two deficiencies the reviewer adressed that I find material. Since it was a May '97 article, I'd recommend checking with PERLF to see if they have addressed [Brooks Talley's concerns]:
1) "...Like most communication servers, though, the Perle 833 doesn't integrate at all with existing security structures. It doesn't support Novell Directory Services (NDS), Windows NT's security, or even remote access dial-in user service. Support for NDS and NT security are in the works, but Perle officials declined to specify when they would arrive..."
The security issue would have the potential to cause an IS department to reject it (network administrators are generally VERY security conscious).
2) "...My only other complaint with the unit was the lack of 100Base-T support. On a fully configured unit, with all eight ports going full blast, the Perle 833 really needs its own 10Base-T segment..."
The bandwidth issue is also material, especially for dial up web use. A trend that I find unfortunate is for sites to add a lot of visual slicks, imbedded JAVA aps, etc. into web pages. Unfortunately, that also results in moving a lot of data over the lines.
And if you are connecting to a client/server application running a large or complex SQL database but are not in "thin client mode" ala Citrix, a dial up connection needs a LOT of bandwidth to be viable. For examle, we had to abandon use of a dial in connection running 28.8 modems to a home health system running Sybase SQL on a Win NT server because the sheer amount of data the application was sending over the line resulted in incredibly bad response time, to where it became a productivity loss.
So I would check to see if they've addressed those issues, because they are very relevant to a purchase decision..." -- Scott
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Overall, the impression Scott was left with was positive, except for the above, possibly unaddressed issues. When time becomes available, please let me know how Perle has addressed, or plans to address, the above issues.
End of e-mail.
Management's Response
Dear Rainier:
I have the following comments with respect to the issues you raised in your
most recent E mail. I have dealt with them in the same order that you gave
them to me.
1) Security issues:
The reviewer has raised three security issues, those of Novell Directory
Services (NDS), Windows NT security and remote access dial-in user security
(RADIUS) all of which have been addressed with the Perle 833. RADIUS and
NDS support were released into the Perle 833 in April 1997. Windows NT
security was released to our customers in January 1998. All Perle 833
customers can receive the new software functionality free of charge during
the warranty period which is the first 12 month of ownership.
2) Bandwidth
The issue here is the Perle 833 capability in connecting to the local area
network. The concern raised is that when transmitting a large amount of
data from a local area network across a wide area network using a Perle 833
with a 10Base-T ethernet connection to the local area network, that this
will be a problem with respect to productivity. Theoretically this could be
true however it is most likely that the amount of traffic ie users on the
local area network, the speed of the wide area network and the speed at
which the remote device accesses that network would have a greater impact
on the productivity or throughput.
In the marketplace for fixed port RAS, such as the Perle 833, the usual
remote device connecting to the RAS is a remote PC using normal telephone
lines. This communication usually takes place at speeds below 38K. At this
speed a Perle 833 8 port device connected to the LAN at 10Base -T ethernet
is capable of handling all the data traffic without productivity losses.
If however, remote users are transmitting large amounts of data a faster
network connection may be required, such as a T1 or E1 or ISDN. In these
cases rather than using a fixed port remote access server a concentrator
may be required. The Perle 833AS to be released this month, February, is
capable of connecting to both 10Base -T and 100Base-T ethernet local area
networks. This feature is auto-sensing with no additional configuration is
required.
I hope this addresses the issue of concern, as always please feel free to
either contact me via E mail or telephone directly.
Doug Langford |
