Aurora Technologies Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts has introduced a series of Point-to-Point Protocol accelerators said to provide up to 32 remote links. The company claims the products boost the speed of Sparc-based Internet links over standard dial-up telephone lines to 115.2Kbps full duplex over all line simultan eously. This, it says, is three times the speed of any Sparc system’s native serial communication ports. The accelerators are optimised for Internet and remote communications using the integral Point-to-Point of Solaris 2.3 and 2.4. On-board RISC communication controllers and data buffers enable ‘dozens’ of network users to send electronic mail around the world, access remote files with the File Transfer Protocol, browse libraries with Gopher, and gather information from Usenet newsgroups without affecting the performance of other network applications. The accelerators connect to the host system via any available SBus slot, says Aurora. For users of SunOS and Solaris 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2 – where Point-to-Point is not bundled with the operating system – the company says it also offers standard Point-to-Point Protocol software. Plug-and-play options include RS-232, RS-422 and RS-485 support, asynchronous and synchronous communications programmable at the individual port level, and DB-25 or RJ-45 physical interfaces. The four-port ACCelerator lists for $800, with the eight-port model at $1,100, and the 32-port at $5,000. All are shipping now.
