News post about Pipeline and RT328 ISDN routers

Here's a News post that I wrote about Ascend Pipeline and Netgear RT328 routes. Other folks are welcome to copy it freely but I'd be glad if it was attributed to me. Naturally, the information is provided as-is and without any warranty.

Paul E. Jacoby added some useful information, which I have appended to it. Please ask him before reproducing his writing.

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Path: news.mondoinfo.com!matt From: matt@mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles) Newsgroups: visi.general Subject: Ascend Pipeline and Netgear RT328 comparison [long] [and tedious!] Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 17:38:58 -0600 Organization: Mondo Info Lines: 250 Message-ID: <matt-2203991738580001@scotch.mondoinfo.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: scotch.mondoinfo.com X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Xref: news.mondoinfo.com visi.general:13543 Since I occasionally pretend to know something about using ISDN but have never used anything but Ascend hardware for ISDN connections, Mike offered to lend me one of Visi's Netgear RT328s to play with if I'd write up my thoughts for other folks' amusement. I asked to borrow another router at the same time but since it turned out that I couldn't manage to carry a fully loaded Cisco 7500, 5,000 pages of documentation, and Doug McIntyre down the stairs from Visi's sysadmins' lair, I only got to borrow the RT328. It's much lighter.

So anyway, here are my thoughts on the two routers.

Matt

SUMMARY

The Netgear RT328 ISDN router is much simpler to configure and much cheaper than the Ascend Pipeline 75 but configuring it from a Macintosh is likely to be a problem. The Pipeline has a bunch more features than the RT328 but I'd be surprised if most folks needed those features.

INTRO

This isn't meant to be a complete evaluation of either router. I haven't used all the features of either one and I've only used the RT328 for a week. I have, however, made both of them do what most folks here probably need: route IP packets and do NAT.

Obviously, many of the things I have to say here are my own opinions and my own experiences. I'd be delighted to hear from folks who have different opinions or have had difference experiences. It's also quite possible that I've made an error or two of fact. I would naturally be very glad to have them corrected.

The Pipeline that I'll use for examples is a 75 running software version 6.1.7. The RT328 I got to play with is running 1.42(C.00). If you're running different software versions, YMMV.

Both the RT328 and the Pipeline come with GUI configuration utilities. The RT328's runs only under Windows. The Pipeline's runs under Java, so it might run or fail to do so on a wider variety of hardware. I haven't used either one. I've only configured the routers using their built in character-based menus.

PRICE

One of the most significant differences between the Pipeline and the RT328 is the price. A recent look at buy.com gave:

RT328       $243 RH348       $274 (same thing with a built in 4-port hub)
Pipeline 75 $481 Pipeline 85 $537 (same thing with a built in 4-port hub)

FEATURES

Both routers have the features that most folks will need to connect a computer or a small LAN to Visi or any other ISP.

The Pipeline has a fair number of features that the RT328 doesn't. I imagine that some of them will be important to some folks and some might be nice to have for other folks. Among the features that the Pipeline has and the RT328 lacks are the ability to bridge, an SNMP MIB, pretty finely-grained console security settings, and the ability to route IPX packets. The Pipeline also has pretty sophisticated firewall software that can be turned on in addition to simple packet filtering. The RT328 can do packet filtering and, if it's doing NAT, it can route all incoming TCP/IP connections to a particular local IP but that's it. Again, I think that what the RT328 does will be sufficient for most folks' purposes.

The only real complaint I have with the RT328's features is that I found it hard to back up the configuration. You can only do it through the serial port and the router sends a file using xmodem. My terminal-emulation software (which does work with Visi's sx) didn't work with it. The Pipeline on the other hand will send a readable text file over a telnet connection or a serial connection and will parse the text file to restore the configuration if you send it back. That's much nicer if you ask me. It's true that since the RT328 is considerably easier to configure, there's correspondingly less need to back up the configuration but I still wouldn't want to have to recreate a complex set of filters that had been working well. Of course, you could always save screen shots.

CONFIGURATION

I never did get the RT328 to talk to a Mac through its serial port. It would show the first couple of boot messages and then stop sending data before it got to asking for a password.

I tried two different Macs, two different Mac serial cables, and three different 9 to 25 pin adapters. Both Macs happily talked to Pipelines using precisely the arrangement that didn't work with the RT328. I expect that the standard way of connecting a Mac's 9-pin serial port to a DB25 connector and then through an adapter to a DB9 port fails to provide some signal on some pin that the RT328 demands before it will continue to send data. I'm sure that it's possible to get the RT328 to talk to a Mac through its serial port but I just didn't feel like dusting off an RS-232 breakout box for a little game of Guess My Flow Control.

Of course, apart from backing up the configuration you only need to connect using the serial port to set the RT328's IP address. Then you can do the rest of the configuration using telnet. So if you only have a Mac and don't have a collection of serial-port troubleshooting hardware, you'd only need to connect the RT328 to a different machine for a minute or two. I bet that the folks at Visi would set the IP for you when they weren't busy if you asked nicely.

Connecting through the serial port using PC hardware and using a Sparc 5 both worked fine.

I have configured half a dozen Pipelines but I got the RT328 configured faster than I have ever gotten a Pipeline configured.

The Pipeline's configuration menu structure seems to me to be pretty badly organized. Here's a small piece of it:

Configure . . . System Sys Config . . . Ethernet Connections Visi . . . SNMP Traps . . . Mod Config SNMP Options . . . . . .

I'm sure that it made sense to someone at some time that Sys Config should be a sub-menu under System, but I don't think they're doing much to help people find things by having a menu item Configure, another menu item System, and a third one Sys Config. I don't know any good way of guessing what you're likely to find under one of those rather than another. I mean, what are we doing here other than configuring the system?

For another example, you specify the details of the ISDN connection to a remote network in the entries under the Connections menu item (Visi in the example above, it's the one menu item you get to name). That's fine, but the Connections menu item is found under the Ethernet menu item. So you specify a number to dial in a menu under Ethernet. Why they arranged their menus that way, I couldn't guess. And why you configure SNMP Traps in one place and SNMP Options in a completely different one is also obscure to me.

Here's another example that I just discovered in my own Pipeline:

Configure -> Bridge = No Ethernet -> Mod Config -> Bridging = Yes

What does that mean? Why should the software allow what appears to be two contradictory parameters to be set?

It turns out that there's a reason, just not a very good one. The Bridge item that's under Configure is (like many of the items there) a duplicate of the corresponding item under the first entry under Connections (Visi in the example above). The item under Mod Config can switch bridging off globally or allow it to be turned on for individual connections and the one under Configure happens to be one of the connections. For myself, I don't know just why you'd need to be able to disable bridging globally, especially given the confusion that having two seemingly contradictory parameters is likely to cause.

That's not at all a complete list of the Pipeline's menus' peculiarities. I don't mean to suggest that the Pipeline's configuration menus are unusable. But they are a lot harder to use than they need to be.

Here's the RT328's main menu screen:

NETGEAR

RT328 Main Menu

Getting Started Advanced Management 1. General Setup 21. Filter Set Configuration 2. ISDN Setup 3. Ethernet Setup 23. System Security 4. Internet Access Setup 24. System Maintenance

Advanced Applications 11. Remote Node Setup 12. Static Routing Setup 13. Default Dial-in Setup 14. Dial-in User Setup 99. Exit

It's a lot easier to find things in this menu arrangement than in the Pipeline's and the menus under these are just about equally clear.

I do find it odd that in the RT328 the option to turn NAT on and off is labeled "Single User Account" (they're not shy about calling it NAT on the outside of the box) but at least they put it under Internet Access Setup.

DOCUMENTATION

The RT328 comes with two slim manuals, one about the GUI configuration utility and one about the built in configuration menus. There are a few small things that the RT328's manuals might have described in greater detail but the information that's important is there and it's explained clearly. The manuals are certainly sufficient for most folks' purposes.

There's considerably more information in the Pipeline's three manuals but I find it considerably harder to find the information I want quickly in them. As an example, the Pipeline's Reference Guide claims to explain of all the router's configuration menu items. It has come in handy for me any number of times. But it doesn't mention the Bridge item under the Configure menu. It does explain the corresponding item under the Connections menu but as far as I can tell, it doesn't mention that those are two instances of the same value.

IN USE

I didn't have any problems with the RT328 in use. A little less than a week of moderate use isn't a thorough test, but I was still pleased. The only problem I've had with the Pipeline software that I'm running now is that if I turn compression on, the connection will rarely but repeatably freeze when talking to Visi's PortMasters.

SUPPORT

I didn't have any reason to call Bay for support on the RT328 so I can't say anything about their support. When I have called Ascend about the Pipeline, their helpfulness has been about average for the industry, which is to say pretty stinky. On the other hand, Ascend replaced a Pipeline for me under warranty that was fried by lightning. I told them that it was a lightning strike that had burnt out the ISDN port, but the person at Ascend said that that didn't matter; since it was under warranty, they'd replace it.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PRACTICE, MATT?

I'd be comfortable suggesting that someone with a clue but relatively little networking experience go out and get an RT328 as long as he or she had a way of working around the Macintosh serial port problem. I'd expect that someone with relatively little networking experience might like some hand-holding with a Pipeline.

In addition, I'd be surprised if most folks doing dialup ISDN needed the features that the Pipeline has and the RT328 doesn't. If you do, well, that's that. But if you don't, save the $240 and buy me a bottle of gin.

Path: news.mondoinfo.com!ptah.visi.com!pej From: pej@visi.com (Paul Jacoby) Newsgroups: visi.general Distribution: local Subject: Re: Ascend Pipeline and Netgear RT328 comparison [long] [and tedious!] Message-ID: <pej-2203991823540001@192.168.0.12> References: <matt-2203991738580001@scotch.mondoinfo.com> X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Lines: 18 Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 18:23:54 -0600 NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.98.173.144 X-Complaints-To: abuse@visi.com X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 922148584 209.98.173.144 (Mon, 22 Mar 1999 18:23:04 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 18:23:04 CDT Xref: news.mondoinfo.com visi.general:13546

In article <matt-2203991738580001@scotch.mondoinfo.com>, matt@mondoinfo.com (Matthew Dixon Cowles) wrote:

> I never did get the RT328 to talk to a Mac through its serial port. It > would show the first couple of boot messages and then stop sending data > before it got to asking for a password.

The RT328 serial port is incredibly stupid...you need a cable with almost NO flow control of any sort. I finally got mine working using a DIN-8 to DB-9 adapter from a Minolta D600L digital camera! (You don't want to know how many iterations I tried before I got lucky on that one!)

Drop me an e-mail and remind me to mail/post the pinouts I discovered. Don't have them handy right now.

My RT328 has been working great -- I did most of the config via the Telnet client, and had mixed luck with FirstGear running under Virtual PC (cable issues again). Now that I've got a PC too, I never use FirstGear :-)

This also from Paul:

The pinouts:

Din 8 DB-9 | | 6 -- NC 7 -- 5 8 -- 5 3 -- 3 4 -- 5 5 -- 2 1 -- NC 2 -- 5

I haven't had a chance to rig up my own cable like this (I have a DIN-8 to DB-9 that I've hacked the ends off :-), but the above is what an ohmeter told me about the Minolta D-600L stub cable.