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$B3 $L1UC
EDINBURGH REGIONAL COMPUTING CENTRE
$B4 $L1U
For the attention of the Edinburgh Computer Users' Committee
$B5 $L1UM
Report on Communications
$B2 %CONVERSION$ TO$ X25
$P1 The conversion to X25 has gone very smoothly with only a few
minor problems.  The real test, however, will only come after the student
load increases later in the term.
$B2 %TCPs
$P1 The current release of X25 TCP software has now been running for over a 
month, a new release is ready to be released in the next
few days so that the X25 INFO is picked up by default instead of being manually
changed when a TCP is loaded.
$B2 %FEPs
$P1 The curent 2976 FEP software running on two of the FEPs has also
been running for about a month with occasional problems,  mostly with
the synchronous lines.  The situation with the 2988 is not nearly
so satisfactory, there is, at present, only one X25 FEP as neither Glasgow
nor Strathclyde are ready to switch to X25.  Within the last two weeks
there has been an intermittent hardware problem with the X25 FEP and
as there is no backup this has been very noticeable to the users.
Steps are being taken to bring a second FEP across to X25 in the next two-three
weeks.
$B2 %CPSEs$ (Campus$ Packate$ Switched$ Exchanges)
$P1 The CPSE at George Square has been out of service  for a total of three
hours for software changes  since it was brought into service in July, unfortunately
the record of the King's Buildings CPSE was marred by a power supply problem
that caused a spate of crashes (all out of prime shift) over a period
of a week.  Apart from that incident and a planned change
to the hardware the switch has been out of service for only 2 1-2 p.m., reloads in the past 6 weeks.
$N
$B4 %INFO
$P1 The transfer of INFO to X25 has caused a number of problems, not
helped by the complete change in the method of operation due to
differences between X25 and NSI, however it is not more stable and it should be able to extend its current operation to the Ring
TCPs, XGate, Filestore and PSSE in the next couple of weeks.  Users of the 
Ring TCPs will be ablke to call it directly when the next release
of the TCP software is installed.  When all this is actually working the old
INFO will be removed from service.
$B2 %Terminal$ Speeds
$P1 One of the design aims of the new, Intel based, TCPs is to provide
a standard speed of 9.6Kb.  It is possible now to run certain terminals
at a speed of 2.4Kb but on all of the more heavily loaded TCPs this will 
only produce a more 'jerky' result as the limitation is the
9.6Kb connection to the network.
$B7 $R0 B$ A$ C$ Gilmore
$B0 $R0 %October$ 1984
$E