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  • Seeking opinions

    Hi Mark, I can throw in a high level response with the terminology that I recall. It's all a blur of flashing lights and cabling now, but I took a BPCS/MAPICS manufacturing site from one location to three a couple of years ago (with a commensurate change from single warehouse MAPICS to multi-warehouse MAPICS), with remote Intermec RF handheld transactions as well as PC's and printers processed centrally. Although the site was on a WAN to corporate, as well as one of the three locations involved being accessed via the WAN, if the WAN hadn't been involved we still had a situation similar to yours, a new airport distribution center that we extended from our LAN via a "pipeline" router across a T1. As I recall, the network segment numbers were the same on both sides. The traffic was pretty light, just a few PC's, some RF's, a Zebra printer, an AS/400 170, and a laser printer or two. I don't recall the make and model of the pipeline router (I had network technical support from corporate, and they came and installed it). The network was TCP/IP with Novell, NT, and OS/2 servers (Novell was IPX with TCP/IP tunnelling over the WAN for the most part, but was upgraded to 5.0 and reconfigured for TCP/IP - there was also some NetBios traffic between NT and OS/2 - and some fun AnyNet stuff with both a Pearle controller and OS/2). The pipeline went out a few times, which was a problem as it needed to be up 24/7, but I determined it was being screwed up by power glitches. Powering it through a UPS and keeping it up through any power glitches solved that problem. But I haven't looked at a patch panel in a couple of years now, though... Ralph

  • #2
    Seeking opinions

    Is there any network currently running in your company or are you connected through twinax. This makes a big difference.

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    • #3
      Seeking opinions

      John, both companies are running with twinax. In our current company we do have our 170 connected to our PC LAN through TCP/IP but really dont use it for anything.

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      • #4
        Seeking opinions

        The easy way is to use a 5250 emulation package on a PC, IBM Client Access/Express allows native TCP/IP connections across a routed WAN. The other way is to use the BOS etwin@x controller which allows the connection of twin ax devices via TCP/IP. With the emulation package beware the dreaded printing.

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        • #5
          Seeking opinions

          What are these remote controllers I see advertised in catalogs? Like the I/O or Perle brands? Is this an option?

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          • #6
            Seeking opinions

            Mark wrote: "What are these remote controllers I see advertised in catalogs? Like the I/O or Perle brands? Is this an option?" We (at a previous company) used Perle a couple of years ago to emulate a remote 5494 controller and remote Anynet support from the production AS/400 at corporate (where I drove from, it was about 60 miles away). It supported the twinax connections of PC's, line printers, and workstation printers. Of course, it communicated to the AS/400 with TCP/IP. The other suggestion of BOS twinax via TCP/IP sounded better to me. But probably all solutions need TCP/IP to your new location, and the pipeline routers on each end of the T1 line will extend your network to your new location as a continuation of your local network, and extends TCP/IP to your new location (to a patch panel which may or may not currently exist there.) The PC's there could connect to your AS/400 in TN5250 emulator mode, which would require the virtual controllers, etc. on the AS/400. But so would a Perle controller, in fact, I think a bit more complexly configured virtual controller. Our Perle lost it occasionally (taking production down, pandemonium, etc.) and we developed a procedure to go through to restore communications, which usually required as a last step to bring both the Perle hardware controller and the AS/400 virtual controller down and back up in a certain sequence. Our PC's were all TN5250 except for some twinax related job processes that we hadn't converted to TCP/IP equivalents yet. So the Perle was required to support the twinax, including a line printer, but we also had remote laser printers, etc. I am not a systems guy by any means, but I think it's safe to say that for any solution you'll establish a TCP/IP link between the locations and then can introduce TN5250 PC emulators to replace twinax as you go along, if not do that immediately with PC's running TN5250 emulators instead of purchasing a remote twinax controller. I don't know of non-networked remote twinax solutions that would maybe tie a phone line into the AS/400 as if the controller were local (because I haven't looked for it . Heck, it seems to me that I recall not even being able to get a twinax port a couple of years ago and that I/O had quit making them, or something like that. The solution I used was in the process of being converted to TCP/IP so I didn't look into it any further. It just seems to me that all solutions are TCP/IP connected now, but the TCP/IP to the new location wouldn't necessarily have to involve your network. We had two networks, one local and one WAN, which I bridged with a patch cord between two routers or isolated by pulling the patch cord. We did Y2K testing on the isolated network as it was against company policy to do it connected to the WAN. So there was no problem at all bringing different lines from different AS/400's and having the traffic physically isolated from each other (required, isolation with router by address was also verboten), but of course I'm sure you would prefer to link your two locations together on one network. Having gone through all this, now I remember why I'm not a systems guy! Ralph

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            • #7
              Seeking opinions

              We currently only have one business location. Soon we will have two. I have 10 years programming experience on the AS/400 but basically no networking experience as far as AS/400's go. What we want to do is have our current AS/400 serve both locations, possibly over a leased line. We currently have an AS/400 e-series model 170, v4r5m0, p05, etc. What hardware/software do I need to accomplish this? How is something like this done? And what rookie mistakes should I avoid? Thanks in advance for any and all responses.

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              • #8
                Seeking opinions

                Another option would be Client Access across the internet. You would need a network on both ends. DSL works great. The option with the controller (Perle/IO) would be using a point-to-point line and it gets a little pricey.

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