@make[report]
@device[x2700]
@majorheading[Communications Group]
@heading[Termly Report - October 1985]
@section[Personnel]
Eddie Corns and Mark McIntosh have joined the Communications Group, replacing
Duncan Walker and Ruth Holland.
@section[Ednet]
@paragraph[CPSEs]
The reliability of the CPSEs have increased, partly because of the decreased load
during the summer and partly due to a new release of the software, Type 2
Release 5, which has cleared most of the known faults which were causing
system crashes.

Although there are a number of spare lines on the Appleton Tower CPSE, both
the K.B. CPSEs have the maximum number of lines on the present hardware.
A Camtec Switch PAD was due to be delivered in September and in its absence,
a standard PAD is being used to switch a few lines.

The hardware is now present to increase the spread of the link between K.B.
and Appleton Tower to 48 kb/s but will not be implemented until it is proved
that GEC can run at this speed without errors.
@paragraph[PADs]
The reliability of the PADs has been reasonable except for the loss of a number
of channel boards first due to a lightning strike and now for unknown reasons.
The total number of PADs installed is now 34.  There does appear to be
a number of instances when the link between
a PAD and a daisy-chained PAD goes down very briefly.  These incidents are
extremely difficult to see on INFO and we rely on users to report them.  There
is a need to be able to monitor this situation more closely.
@paragraph[2900 FEPs]
Performance has been reasonable.  An extra X.25 FEP for both EMAS and BUSH
will be brought into service this term.
@paragraph[Amdahl FEPs]
The first Anscomm FEP has been put into service and the DX11 based one has
been taken out.  Work is continuing to bring the FTP up to a full service
state.
@paragraph[XCALL]
Xcall has been working well with loads in excess of 25 simultaneous users.
A bug is being looked into that forces a reload every 150 hours or so.
@paragraph[PSSE]
PSSE has been very stable over the summer.  Although some work on it is still
necessary, this should become a part time activity for Mark McIntosh.
@section[Ethernet Protocols]
George Howat is working on X.25 (1984) for use with the Gould to drive the
community protocols over Ethernet.
@section[INFO]
Some work was done on INFO to ensure that it could still handle the increasing
size of the network.  Mark McIntosh has now started work (part time) on the
production of a Mark II INFO.
@section[Oslan Project]
This project is now in its final phase and the effort being used has now reduced
to two people.
@section[CPSE Survey for the JNT]
This survey is progressing although it was held up for a time by the 
loss of Duncan Walker.
@paragraph[Black Box Converters]
Some 9 units have now been constructed and delivered.  A further low level of
demand exists and the physical problem of constructing the boxes will need to
be addressed.

@flushright[Brian Gilmore
11th October 1985]