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to result from IBM's takeover of Lotus. Either one could dramatically change our daily work habits. VoiceView is a less drastic step that is likely to open new doors for integrating data into our phone habits.

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"This is about social change, not just technology change," observes Michalski of Release 1.0. "CTI isn't about plugging a computer into a telephone. CTI is about making life easier for people who want to communicate." ■

John P. Mello Jr. is a freelance writer living in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. You can reach him on the Internet as JPMjr61750@aol.com or on BIX c/o "editors. "

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THE BYTE NETWORK PROJECT

Web Search

JON UDELL

Think the Web is too vast to search? I did, but in-dex-and-search engines such as Carnegie Mellon University's Lycos (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/) and the University of Washington's WebCrawler (http://webcrawler.com/) proved me wrong. These robotic indexers ceaselessly read and catalog Web pages, and they have so far kept up remarkably well with the Web's explosive growth.

They take simple queries—a single term or several ANDed together—and return lists of URLs that could oth-

WAIS,(Wld

tion Servers) predates the Web craze; since 1991, people have . Z39.50 protocol to search a variety of d ?son

the internet. id VAIS clients bypass BYTE's Web server and search the col-lection directly? I found a pair of them (VVinWais at ftp://ftp.einet.com and WaisMan3atftp://ftp .cnidr.org), started the ; WAIS service on my NT server, and pointed the clients at It They worked. But so what? Hardly anybody uses WAIS clients because most WAIS databases have gateways that export Web-style access.

Still, a client/server protocol for searching remote databases ought to be useful. John Duhring, a WAIS Inc. vice president, showed

me that it is. With WAK tools, he says, Web providers can uniformly sent Information drawn from remote Web sites. Consider The McGra Hill Companies, BYTE parent; Many of its con nies are building Web sites. With conventional Web technology, the corporate Web site can refer visitors to divisional sites— but they might never come back. If, on the other hand, BYTE and others run both Web and WAIS servers, and corporate runs both a Web server and a WAIS gateway (see the figure "Web/WAIS interaction" below), the divisions can appear as players in corpo-■ rate's, virtual theater. Meanwhile, divisional Web sites accessed directly can retain their own flavor.

erwise take you months of point-and-click navigation to assemble. They typically don't do proximity searches (word 1 within so many words of word 2). But InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com), a commercial service, does. And the WAIS Inc. server (http://www .wais.com) that powers a number of Web sites can even handle natural-language queries like What is the capital of Peru? For an example, see Encyclopedia Britannica at http://www.eb.com.

As good as Web search tools are, when you ask a specific question—How do I walk a directory tree in Perl? or What's the cheapest laser printer with network support for IP, IPX, and Ap-pleTalk?—you likely won't find an answer in a hurry, and you may not find one at all. Brute-force searching, even at its best, yields hordes of false positives—docu-

It's easy to index: a Web document collection so visitors can search your site. Here are a couple of ways to do it.

Web/WAIS Interaction

Corporate Web site

Divisional Web sites

With a WAIS gateway, a central Web site can consolidate many remote sites into a single presentation.

ments that contain the keywords,

even perhaps in close proximity, but have nothing to do

with the question.

Information providers can help by categorizing documents, so users can look for how-to articles on Perl or reviews of network-ready laser printers. As we move BYTE's content into electronic media, we'll try to provide such clues. But will our categories match those used by other computer magazines? By book publishers? By people who post to Internet newsgroups? As the Web absorbs and extends the world's libraries, authors and editors will find that proper classification of their contributions to the Web will make those documents easier to find and, hence, more valuable. My advice to major Web contributors (and to creators of Web authoring tools) is to hire a library scientist.

Basic Indexing

While you're waiting for a Web equivalent of the Dewey decimal system, you might as well go ahead and add basic indexing to your Web site. Because we're running Windows NT, the EMWAC (European Microsoft Windows NT Academic Consortium) WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) server and toolkit were the logical place to start. These tools are NT ports of freeWAIS; you can get

Intel, Mips, and Alpha versions of them from various places including Microsoft (the Windows NT Resource Kit CD), EMWAC (http://emwac.ed.ac.uk or its mirror sites), and Process Software (http://www.process.com). Versions of freeWAIS for many Unixes are available from CNIDR (the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval) at ftp://ftp.cnidr.org.

The tools come in two packages: wsXXX.zip for the WAIS server and wtXXX.zip for the WAIS toolkit. (Replace XXX with your CPU: i386, Mips, or Alpha.) I grabbed both programs from Process Software's site, thinking that I'd need the toolkit to create indexes and the server to access them. As it turned out, I really needed only the toolkit. It contains both the indexer and a query tool that searches an index and returns an HTML-formatted report listing URLs for documents matching the search. What's the WAIS server for? It enables WAIS clients to bypass your Web server and access your indexed document collection directly, using the WAIS Z39.50 protocol (see the text box "What About WAIS?" on page 223).

You'll need long filenames to use waisindex, the tool that does the indexing. Prior to NT 3.5, that meant you had to run it on an NTFS volume, but now that NT 3.5's FAT (file allocation table) supports long names that's no longer a problem. Here's the command I used to index the January 1994 issue of BYTE:

Brain Damage

waisindex -d index art\9401\*.htm

•r -a -T html

where - d names the index, - r tells the indexer to recursively index subdirectories, and - a appends to an existing index. First time through I skipped the -T html option. When I searched the resulting index, what came back were filenames, not document titles. That meant the search results were cryptic references like "art\ 9401\sec9\art7.htm" instead of more helpful ones like "January 1994 / Reviews / Low-Cost Laser Printers."

Since the translator that creates our HTML files writes the latter style of reference in the <title> field of every article's HTML header, adding -T html was the quick fix. However, it prompted me to reconsider my sequentially generated URLs (see the text box "8.3 Brain Damage" above).

Once you've got the index built, it's a snap to connect Web clients to it. If you

f you're generating HTML mechanically, . why not simply create long filenames, so that URLs themselves carry the information stashed in the HTML header (e.g., "JanuaryjL994/ Reviews/Low-Cosf. Laser_Printers. htm!")? That I didn't think of this at first shows the brain damage caused by years in the mental prison of the DOS 8.3 filename. It's nice for URLs to be descriptive, but it's not necessary. What is

TOOLWATCH

essential is that they're unique and immutable. My scheme,%hich just enumerates sections and articles, guarantees uniqueness-^there will be only one art\9401\ sec9\art7.htm in the collection. But will that URL immutably refer to the January:'94 review of laser printers? Not if we find that we've forgotten to include another January '94 article and then decide to regenerate the collection. Uh oh. Everything gets renumbered.

This isn't a problem for Web site users because the navigation and search functions adjust to the new structure. But if you've saved a bookmark to art\9401\ sec9\art7.htm, you'd be upset If 1 renumber tl collection.

I'm. not aware of g; in the 1994 collection that's on the Web now, and I don't expect we'll need to renumber it. But I do want to try using descriptive URLs for 1995 and future content.

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created an index named "index," you can create a form enabling users to search it by simply writing the keyword <isindex> in an HTML document called INDEX.HTM. When viewed in a browser, this document displays the familiar search form "This is a searchable index. Enter search keywords." When the user enters a search term, the Web server passes it to wais-look, a program that searches the index and returns HTML-formatted results. On a pair of NT boxes running

EMWAC-derived Web servers—a 486 with Folio's Infobase Web Server, and an Alpha with Process Software's Purveyor—these procedures yielded the searchable archive that I'm currently testing. It works, but since multiple search terms combine with OR rather than AND, and there's no phrase search ("SQL catalog") or proximity search ("SQL within/5 catalog"), you depend on the selective power of a single term. An unusual one, like "PnP" or "Z39.50," will often net just the right bunch of articles; that's what makes even this bare-bones indexing system incredibly useful. But it's really just a minimal solution.

WebSite and SWISH

To improve matters on the 486 server, I turned to Weblndex, the tool that comes with O'Reilly & Associates' WebSite server for NT and Win 95. You launch Weblndex from WebSite's GUI administration tool, and it prompts you graphically for URLs to include in the index and begins indexing with a mouse click. Unlike waislook, WebSite's WebFind can at least join terms together with AND so that when you use multiple terms, the result set will shrink rather than grow. For small collections, it's just what it claims to be: a one-button indexer for non-nerds. But when I fed it several thousand documents, hours of disk thrashing ensued until I killed it.

What remained, from a previous run on fewer documents, was a file called in-dex.swish. Swish? That's just the sort of oddball search term that gets great results on the Internet. A WebCrawler search led me to Enterprise Integration Technologies and the Simple Web Indexing

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THE BYTE NE1W0RK PROJECT

The Road Traveled

j|y r s column we introduced a Web server on a dial-up PPP link, while awaiting installation of a 56-Kbps leased line, in August, we went iive on the leased line, but the names www.byte.com and ftp.byte. com weren't hooked up yet. You could get to the server only if you knew its IP address. Now the names map to IP addresses, and we're officially open for business.

How did we register our name? We registered byte.com with the Inter-NIC (Internet Network In-; : formation Center) years ago and used it for UUCP (dial-up) mail routing. Once we got a real !P link to the Internet, there were three ways:to create; the names www.byte.com and ftp.byte.com and define their IP mappings: o n.„ Leave naming authority for byte.com in the hands of InterNIC and ask InterNIC to acid our; names to its database. (You do this by mailing a form to hostmaster@ih-ternic.net; the forms are available at ftp://rs.inter-nic.net/templates.)

2. Delegate naming authority to our service provider MV Communications (again by mailing a form to hostmaster@in-ternic.net) and ask MVto add the names to its database.

3. Take over naming authority ourselves.

The problem with 1 is that there's a big administrative backlog at InterNIC, so we opted for 2. We'll likely want additional names, and we won't want to wait two weeks for InterNIC to handle each request—MV's far more accessible to us. Why not 3? In that case, we'd have to run our own name server. We aren't

the mass market '"The optical industry in the past, except

ability to shoot itself in the foot. [PD] may be the way to bictML <

The PD laser mechanism

image (15 Kbytes)

Ths PD ktser mechanism is similar to that of a standard CL

whi

The PD laser mechanism

Micro Optical Head

r- Photo ctetector

The PD laser mechanism is similar to that of a standard C&ROMdm ■r.,v .,*?,,.,-, .j- .,,. ■>■■,■■■-,,? ;■■;.. ■„;■..,'■■ ..,,,■«?.. ■

In the BYTE collection, a link to an illustration reports the size of the image (aL but to a

copydght notice around the image (b).

ready to do that yet

"The wait is about a week for change requests," said MV's Mark Mallet, "and two weeks for new records." He requested the transfer of byte.com's name service from InterNIC to MV. A week later it was done. The command whois byte.com listed MV's name servers, ping www.byte.com worked, and www.byte.com was open for business.

Magic Hot Links

When Netscape's news reader finds a string like http://www.somewhere .com in the text of a posting, it automatically converts that string into an active hypertext link. I've added this to BYTE's Web site with my Epsilon

Extension Language translator/It's one regular-expression search-and-replace statement: string_replace( "((httplftplgopher):/, < A tab><space><nl>\ ..more non-URL chars.. "<a href=#0>#0</a: REGEX);

A similar trick activates E-mail addresses that appear in the text.

Well-Mannered GIFs

I hate downloading bit maps I didn't ask for. BYTE's server has plenty of pictures to offer, but it won't shove images down your throat. The translator now suppresses illustrations, photos, and screen shots behind links that announce the size of each GIF (see the screen above).

System for Humans, which is an alternative to freeWAIS. O'Reilly's Weblndex derives from version 1.0 of EIT's SWISH. I downloaded SWISH 1.1 from ftp:// ftp.eit.com, compiled it on our BSDI 2.0 machine, and tried it. SWISH is tuned for HTML—e.g., it can index just fields tagged as titles or comments. It can also segment a large indexing job into many small ones, then merge the segments.

Since low memory was the likely cause of disk thrashing, I thought I'd try the merge option described in the SWISH J. 1 docs. No luck. Weblndex is a pure GUI tool that doesn't expose that feature.

O'Reilly put me in touch with EIT's director of Web publishing, Jay Weber. I f tp'd the archive to EIT, where Weber successfully indexed it with Weblndex on several test systems. EIT also added a progress meter to Weblndex that revealed speedy progress through 10 of 14 BYTE issues, then suddenly—molasses. Weber sent me a new, memory-optimized update (available at http://website.ora.com or ftp://ftp.eit.com/pub/website). It did work with my data.

The Folio Alternative

Folio's Infobase Web Server is a completely different way to serve an indexed collection to the Web. It's an EMWAC-based Web server mated to the Folio Views search engine. That means it does everything that normal Web servers do, and it can also convert existing Views in-fobases to HTML on the fly. If you have infobases on hand, this is just the ticket. Even if you don't, this approach has a lot going for it. Views has a lightning-fast indexer, handles huge data sets, deals with hierarchical documents, and does phrase and proximity searches.

If you're a Views user, you can judge for yourself how well this Web converter reproduces Folio's Windows user interface. And while a series of retrieved Web pages clearly can't be as richly interactive or as responsive as a native application, this technique does inject client/server capability into Folio Views.

Visitors to the BYTE Web site have been trying all three search mechanisms. Folio and Weblndex are more popular than the less-capable freeWAIS, but freeWAIS is faster for single-term queries. Because effective use of the Web requires searching, I'll continue to explore these types of tools. ■

Jon Udell (jitdell@bix.com) is BYTE's executive editor for new media.

226 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1995

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REVIEWS

Gateways to the Internet

America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy offer Web browsers, FTP, and more, but these services aren't for everyone

GEORGE BOND

Access to the World Wide Web may seem an obvious component of any major on-line service, but the Big Three—America Online (or AOL), CompuServe, and Prodigy— are just now scrambling aboard the bandwagon. All three offer something you don't get from an ISP (Internet service provider): a single point of access for Web surfing, commercial database browsing, and online conference discussions. They also deliver single-source access to technical support and training.

The ISP Advantage

All these service providers—with the possible exception of Prodigy—tend to be more expensive than ISPs (see the text box "Convenience, but at What Price?" below). And the speed of phone connections to the Big Three is still mostly limited to 14.4 Kbps, a drawback when working with the on-line graphics of the Web.

Also, the three providers promise to upgrade their networks, but at the time of this writing only a few 28.8-Kbps connections were available. In contrast, many ISPs offer 28.8 Kbps routinely. But these shortcomings may be offset by the large number of POPs (points of presence, or local phone numbers) offered by the Big Three, as well as by the convenience of one-stop access to

CompuServe's What's

New page links users

to popular new sites on

the Internet.

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j EgJUiMi

dldc oa th* topic below to -view: Ovbl <k lrtCTtro

services and support.

Prodigy is the only major information provider currently with an | actual Web service. At this writing, CompuServe and AOL were still in beta testing with their Web browsers (graphical front ends for navigating the Internet and viewing Web pages) and Web services. However, users of these providers' services can walk the Web now by downloading the necessary software. Internet mail, FTP (the Internet's file transfer protocol), and Usenet news groups are already in place.

Web-Crawling with CompuServe

CompuServe uses the Spry Mosaic browser, TCP/IP stack, and dialer (the company purchased Spry to obtain the technology, as AOL did with Internetworks and its browser). There are so many free sign-up

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America Online's Explorer page provides links to other Internet sites.

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Prodigy's Welcome screen is the first thing you see when you jump to the World Wide Web.

deals floating around that this initial expense will be nil, or close to it.

Once you're logged on to CompuServe, you use the command go ppp to get to the browser-downloading area. Then you either walk through menus to download the Windows version of the software or read instructions on how to connect via third-party Macintosh and OS/2 software. If you are using CompuServe's WinCim or

Convenience, but at What Price?

Using the Big Three commercial information

providers can be expensive. Here's what it

would cost to surf the Internet for 30 hours per

month with each of them.

AOL (America Online). The first 5 hours are included in the $9.95 monthly fee. You're then charged $2.95 for each of the remaining 25 hours. Total: $83.70.

CompuServe,. An initial change of $9.95 includes unlimited use ©f basic services and 3 hours of Internet services (i.e., World Wide Web, FTP, telnet, and the Usenet-news reader). An additional charge of $15

gets you an Internet Club membership with 17 more hours of connect time; each of the remaining 10 hours costs $1.95. Total: $44.90.

Prodigy. Youget 30 hours of connect time under the 30/30 Plan. Total: $29.95.

To be fair, these comparisons aren't strictly parallel; CompuServe also has a mail surcharge (10 cents for the first 7500 words and 2 cents for each additional 7500 words per message) if you exceed approximately 90 three-page, full-text messages a month. But time spent in mail is not counted toward connect

charges. The other services don't have a mail surcharge; they account for mail in their regular con-nect-time charges.

By comparison, ISPs (Internet service providers), companies that offer gateways to the Internet but rarely any local databases, have charges ranging from about $20 to $30 for 20 to 40 hours of access via 28.8-Kbps or slower modems, plus a dollar or two per hour for additional time.

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTE 229

Turning an Ugly Duckling into a Hollywood Swan

To seamlessly integrate the World Wide Web into its existing service, CompuServe faced two technical challenges: supporting the Internet protocols and getting the software front ends (i.e., the CompuServe access software and the Web browser] to talk to each other. Last spring, CompuServe delivered a downloadable Web browser, called NetLauncher, that could work from within a PPP (i.e., standard Internet) session established by the dialer built into the WinCim 1.4 interface. But if you'd already used WinCim to dial into CompuServe, you had to disconnect before dialing the PPP session.

The latest upgrade to CompuServe's Windows shell, WinCim 2.0, lets you dial a single phone number and toggle between any Web browser and the CompuServe interface in the same session. The improved integration is principally due to the Windows Sockets, or Winsock, DLL. Winsock presents a network-independent interface between Winsock-com-pliant applications. This interface sits on top of a network-dependent component that supports the specific networking protocol stack (usually, TCP/IP).

For the new version of WinCim, CompuServe programmers wrote a Winsock networking layer for both NetLauncher and

access is its lack of integration. To browse the Web, you must call a specific phone number and use the Spry software. To peruse news groups, or to use FTP to download a file or use telnet (a remote terminal program), you must resort to a terminal emulator or one of CompuServe's custom software packages. CompuServe is working to address these issues; see the Technology Focus box at left.

WinCim. Both the Web browser and the CompuServe front end now hook into the Winsock API. This result is point-and-click access to both NetLauncher (or any other Winsock-compliant Web browser) and CompuServe.

CompuServe has also met the challenge of different software commands by adding translation algorithms to the mix. NetLauncher and WinCim can now talk each other's lingo. For instance, when a user types gopoliticsin NetLauncher, it recognizes the command as being intended for a CompuServe Go page and passes the command in a message to WinCim.

Navigator software, you simply point and click to download the browser.

You run a single executable to install the software. If you already have a TCP/IP stack installed, CompuServe's stack will rename your stack and install its own. Your existing Internet client software probably will work with the new stack.

If you've seen Spry's Mosaic browser elsewhere (in the Internet-in-a-Box package, for example), you'll immediately recognize CompuServe's: It has the familiar menu bar and line-of-control buttons along the top of the screen, two long boxes in which you enter URLs (uniform resource locators, which are simply Internet addresses), and the familiar Spry globe for indicating when data is being transferred.

The browser defaults to the CompuServe home page on connection. You have three choices for navigating the Web: Clicking

Where Winsock Fits In

Any

Winsock -compliant

application

Protocol stack (independent layer)

- -WiRdews-Soekete -DLLr -

Protocol stack (dependent layer)

Protocol stack

TCP/IP dialer

Hardware drivers

Hardware serial port and modem, etc.)

Due out this month,

WinCim 2.0

integrates formerly

separate interfaces

for accessing

CompuServe and

World Wide Web services using WinCim and NetLauncher, respectively.

Both will also now be able to access the same live PPP connection

established by CompuServe's dialing software and exchange commands

intended for each other's domains.

on one of the hot links on the screen, selecting a location from a hot list that you create, or typing in the URL of the site that you want to visit afteryou use the open URL command (by typing Ctrl-0 or selecting Open URL... from the File menu).

The Spry stack and dialer are among the more robust that we've used, and CompuServe's version performed without a problem. During several weeks of use, our CompuServe setup behaved reliably on a Gateway P5-60 and an IBM ThinkPad 360C. The Spry browser also performed well, including properly handling home pages built with the Netscape extensions. Because these extensions aren't part of the current HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) standard, they can cause problems with the way in which some browsers display images.

The downside of CompuServe's Internet

On Target with AOL

Like CompuServe, AOL was still beta-testing its Web software during our review period. However, unlike CompuServe's software, AOL's is nicely integrated into the regular AOL package, as are the clients for FTP, news groups, and gopher (a database search engine).

You will need special software to browse the Web from AOL. The current distribution disk is version 2.0. You must load this version of the software to get AOL in the first place. To use the Web browser, you need the version 2.5 preview edition, available for downloading from AOL. If you're working from a LAN that is linked to a T1 connection to the Internet, you'll find a pleasant surprise: One of the setup items in the network-selection pulldown menu is TCP/IP. It worked for us with no fuss on NetWare networks. We were able to connect virtually instantly and run AOL at T1 speeds. AOL is rapidly adding 28.8-Kbps connections for highspeed modem access, but so far they are concentrated in major metropolitan areas. The browser itself looks a bit different from most of its competitors; it's much more boxy and industrial looking. The usual menu bar and collection of buttons span the top of the screen, but the buttons are long, horizontal rectangles instead of the more common squarish ones (see the screen on page 229).

Walking the Web with AOL is a breeze. You simply click on hot-linked icons or text links to jump to another page, or you type in a URL just as you would with any

230 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1995

Gateways to the Internet

REVIEWS

MSN: Desktop Internet

With a vision of extending the Windows 95 desktop out to the world, Microsoft is busy building seamless World Wide Web access for the Microsoft Network, or MSN. Microsoft licensed the NCSA (National Center for Super-computing Applications) Mosaic Web Browser from Spry International and, more significant, bought minority interest in UUNet, the world's largest ISP (Internet service provider).

Microsoft is now extending both, enhancing Mosaic to support the Windows desktop (e.g., drag and drop, right mouse-clicks, and so on) and branching UUNet into more sites worldwide. Currently, the Internet access points are limited—we had to call in to New York from New Hampshire— but Microsoft intends to open many additional lines shortly.

The enhanced browser, a component of the Microsoft Plus Windows 95 Companion Pack, accesses the Web through your own service provider, across the LAN (if you have a

LAN-based connection), or via MSN. The Plus Pack sticks an Internet icon on the Windows 95 desktop.

You click on this icon to launch the browser, starting off in a Microsoft Web page that serves as an opening menu. From there, you can take a tutorial, go surfing on your own, or search for specific subjects using the Lycos Internet catalog. Once you're out of Microsoft's page, you're navigating the Web just as you would expect, jumping across various sites by clicking on hyperlinks

or hopping directly to specific addresses.

From the menu bar, you can create a desktop shortcut to any

site, build a list of favorite sites, or pull up a history window of

recently accessed pages. You can drag and ^^m

droptextorimagestothedesktoportoother I Microsoft Corp.

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you simply point at the image, click the right HJ fax: (206) 936-7329 mouse button, and select Save As. ^M www.microsoft.com

browser on a standard ISP. Using other Internet clients is just as easy. They are well integrated, also appearing as launchable icons. A news-group reader, a gopher/ WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) client, and an FTP client are available.

Prodigy Plovys Ahead

Prodigy, after a long, uphill battle against skepticism, has gained an edge on its competition. Its Internet access is easily the best integrated of the three services.

To be sure, most of Prodigy still looks like—well, Prodigy. Its screens have a decided look of NAPLPS (North American Presentation-Level Protocol Syntax), an older standard that features big characters,

crude graphics, and generally an old-days-in-cyberspace appearance. However, its Web browser propels Prodigy into the mid-1990s. With its high-resolution display of non-Prodigy pages, it provides a sharp contrast to the rest of Prodigy.

The browser itself is efficiently laid out: It has the usual menu bar at the very top, and buttons and URL boxes under the bar, with an activity indicator next to them. There's no special installation needed for the browser because it's part of the normal Prodigy installation.

Prodigy's browser is easy and intuitive to use. Just click on what you want, and you're there. How fast you get there is limited by the connection speed of your modem—in Prodigy's case, it's 14.4 Kbps, although 10 major cities were expected to get 22.8 Kbps by late July. That's better than 9600 bps, but it can lead to slow transfer times when you're dealing with graphics-intensive home pages. The Prodigy home page itself is skillfully designed to load fast: It has a modest-size graphic at the top and then, like the Com-

puServe home page, drops into a heavily text-oriented page.

Do We Have a Winner?

For general prowling around the Internet, we'd select AOL because of its good integration and high-speed modem (and Tl) connections. Prodigy would run a close second, falling somewhat short because of its slower modem links and lack of a Tl connection. CompuServe brings up the rear. Without the upcoming improvements in WinCim, it's simply too much work having to switch back and forth from the main system to the Web browser.

The wild card is Microsoft Network, or MSN, Microsoft's fledgling network (see the text box "MSN: Desktop Internet" above). Built with Internet integration in mind, it should compete as an Internet gateway right out of the starting block. ■

George Bond is publisher of Sams.net, the Internet imprint of Macmillan Computer Publishing USA, and publisher of such titles as Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week and Internet Unleashed. In an earlier life, he cofounded BIX. You can contact him on the Internet at gbond@sams .mcp.com or on BIX as "gbond. "

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTE 231

From the Editors of BYTE Magazine .

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Hardware

REVIEWS

Presentation Quality

Snap-on, snap-off: IBM's slick new screen technology turns

the ThinkPad 755CV into a remote-control color presentation pan*

EDMUND X. DEJESUS

You've never seen anything like IBM's ThinkPad 755CV notebook computer—guaranteed. A superb blend of at least three interesting technologies, the base machine includes a 100-MHz 486DX4 processor (upgradable to a Pentium); a 10.4-inch, 65,536-color active-matrix display; a TrackPoint III pointer; and PC Card, or PCMCIA, slots for one Type III or two Type I or II cards. The ThinkPad 755CDV, a 755CV with an integrated CD-ROM drive, was released in June.

Double Your Pleasure

Ted Selker got tired of hearing people say

that it couldn't be done. So, to prove a point, the IBM research scientist performed surgery on the back of a ThinkPad that he bought at retail. That was the prototype of the 755CV's presentation panel.

Color active-matrix TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD screens are difficult enough. Between the protective surfaces are polarizing filters and one plane of liquid-crystal gel for each of three colors (red, green, and blue); each plane is coated with transistors that control each pixel. When a tiny transistor is turned on, the liquid crystal at that point twists, losing transparency.

In the 755CV's design, the LCD display is held in a rigid die-cast aluminum frame whose top holds a CCFT (cold cathode fluorescent tube) light source, a backing reflective Mylar foil, and the power supply for the light. When the back casing is in place, a switch in the display base activates the light source. This interlock prevents safety risks while the back is off.

The 755CV's screen opens flat (see the inset above). Special straps attached to the notebook fasten the entire machine onto an overhead projector, with the screen suspended about 2 inches above the projector's surface. This space dissipates the heat from the projector. The final result is a marvel of engineering—and a practical product to boot.

That's pretty good for

starters. But in addition to

all that, when you undo a

latch on either side of the

screen, the reinforced casing

lifts off the back of the

screen, transforming the

now-transparent screen into

a presentation panel that

opens flat for simple attachment onto any standard

overhead projector.

Thus, your presentation

can be show-fl/?d-tell, with

the integrated Mwave DSP (digital signal processor) chip delivering audio narration, music clips, and sound effects. This DSP chip also supports recording and playback, MIDI and Sound Blaster support, and a full-duplex speakeiphone in conjunction with the internal 14.4-Kbps fax modem.

And, to enable you to magically control your presentation from across the room, front and rear infrared ports accept commands from the wireless MindPath Technologies infrared remote control. MindPath's Presentation F/X software lets you control mouse-cursormovements, click and double-click, and invoke any of over 20 special effects. The infrared ports also allow the exchange of data with IRDA-standard (Infrared Device Association) printers and other computers at rates as high as 115.2 Kbps.

The Competition

There are other presentation panels that offer remote control; there are even other notebooks that can turn into presentation panels, including Aquiline's Cruiser, Boxlight's Multi-book, IntelliView'sDPS-1 andDPS-3, and Revered Technology's Power Cruiser. But there's nothing else that offers the flexibility and gee-whiz appeal of the 755CV. And, for approximately the same price that you would pay for the LCD color active-matrix projection panels that

are currently on the market ($4000 to $12,000), you can purchase a projection panel and a full-featured ThinkPad in one box.

The Class B 755C V weighs 6.6 pounds with battery pack, and you can swap out the front-mounted 3/4-inch floppy drive for another PC Card slot or a wireless modem. On BYTE's Thumper 2 battery-life test, the Energy Star-approved 755CV scored 3 hours, 38 minutes, which is in line with the claimed 3.3 to 10 hours (4.1 to 12 hours with the optional lithium-ion battery).

Two minor complaints are that the system has no handle, and setup for the infrared remote control is not intuitive. But if you're weary of making and carrying overhead foils—or if you just want to impress other technophiles—you'll find your machine in the 755CV. ■

Edmund X. DeJesus is a BYTE senior editor. He has a Ph.D. in physics and has been a professional programmer for over 15 years. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at edejesus @ bix. com.

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Software

REVIEWS

Networking at Warp Speed

Easy LAN installation and peer services make IBM's OS/2 Warp Connect a serious network contender

BARRY NANCE

To stem the tide of Windows 95, IBM has sweetened the OS/2 pot. IBM reasons that if OS/2's technical strengths don't overwhelm you, the boatload of networking and application software in the Warp Connect upgrade will be more persuasive,

OS/2 Warp Connect bundles LAN requesters, peer-to-peer networking, group-ware and E-mail, Internet access, a full-featured word processor, a spreadsheet, a personal information manager, a fax utility, remote access, communications programs, and other goodies. Curiously missing from Warp Connect is an NFS client for connecting to Unix servers; you have to buy NFS separately.

Thenew Warp is robust, reliable, and responsive. That's not surprising, since the underlying OS/2 technology has had years to mature.

Warp Connect ($299) costs significantly more than the $89 basic Warp product, and it requires roughly twice as much disk space and RAM.

Warp Connect takes from 25 to 90 MB of disk space and at least 12 MB of RAM, depending on which features you install. IBM recommends at least 8 MB, but we found performance is much better with 12 MB.

Almost all of Warp Connect's features,

including the requesters, LAN Distance, CID (Configuration, Installation, and Distribution), and the Bonus Pack of applications, have been around for a while; Warp Connect brings them together in one box. However, the peer-to-peer networking is new, as is the installation program for network options.

We installed Warp Connect on a dozen PCs (mostly 486s and Pentiums). The peer-to-peer networking services worked well and offered better security and reliability than Windows for Workgroups. The peer networking and LAN Server requester features let Warp Connect access files, printers, and CD-ROM drives on computers running Warp Connect itself; IBM's LAN Server and PC LAN Program; Microsoft's Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT, and LAN Manager; and Artisoft's LANtastic. Warp Connect peers and LAN Server clients can even use the same modems via shared serial port access to PCs running OS/2-based communications software. These Peer Services are, in fact, a superset of the LAN Requester in all ways except one: To run the LAN Server graph-

Sh'rftlnio high gear!

The Networking Difference

Warp Connect augments basic OS/2 Warp with IBM and third-party network client technologies such as NetWare Requester 2.11, LAN Server 4.0 Requester, OS/2 Peer to Peer, LAN Distance Remote 1.1, Lotus Notes Express (an entry-level Notes client), and support for TCP/IP, IPX, and NetBIOS/NetBEUI. There's also a comprehensive TCP/IP LAN and SLIP/PPP dial-up client that can replace the Bonus Pack's TCP/IP client. IBM TCP/IP version 3, which can maintain a dial-up Internet connection and a network card connection at the same time, includes FTP and Telnet server software. Curiously missing from Warp Connect is an NFS client for connecting to Unix servers; you have to buy NFS separately.

IBM says it will ship a Warp Connect Extend Pack later this year that will add features designed specifically to appeal to larger enterprises, such as Communications Manager/2 desktop-to-mainframe software and IBM's multiprotocol connectivity software, AnyNet/2. IBM also says it's collaborating with Novell to produce a 32-bit NetWare Requester for OS/2.

IBM's Person to Person software can now be run with Warp's new Peer Services to provide peer-to-peer videoconferencing.

ical administration tools, you must use the LAN Requester instead of Peer Services.

When we added the NetWare Requester, the resulting dual-protocol stack consumed extra extended memory, but it still left nearly 640 KB of conventional memory for each DOS and Windows session. Trying to use multiple protocols in a DOS or a DOS-plus-Windows machine, however, left us with insufficient memory to run applications. The only problem the NetWare Requester exhibited was slow access to NetWare drives assigned through the Network folder. Drive mappings that were established through the NetWare Tools utility behaved normally.

For smaller networks (typically 10 or fewer PCs), or for a decentralized campus environment, Warp Connect's Peer Services are useful and productive. Beyond eight or 10 clients, you'll need a separate file server running a product such as NetWare or LAN Server.

The networking utilities in OS/2 Warp Connect include Network SignOn Coordinator, a help database, and LAN Distance Remote. Network SignOn holds logon names and passwords and sends them out to the various services. The help database lets you perform keyword searches for frequently asked questions, setup guides, and descriptions of known problems. LAN Distance Remote is a client for a LAN Distance Server that lets your PC

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTE 235

REVIEWS

Networking at Warp Speed

use a modem to access server files, just as if your modem were a LAN adapter.

Warp Connect's Peer Services also deliver auditing, logging, and an interface to REXX, the OS/2 scripting language. You can monitor access to shared peer resources and write REXX scripts to automate routine tasks. The Network Clipboard/DDE lets you cut and paste clipboard data across the LAN or—if you use NetBIOS over TCP/IP—across the Internet. Peer Services also includes an OS/2 program for playing chess across a network. And the Person to Person application lets you do workgroup and videoconferencing (see the screen on page 235).

The Installation Ceremony

IBM has really improved OS/2's much-criticized installation procedure. The system's tool for detecting LAN adapters (see "Sniffing Out LAN Hardware" at right) correctly identified most network cards we tested, failing only with the diff icult-to-identify Eagle NE2000 card: An NE2000 adapter (or clone) doesn't offer software a clear-cut ROM address or I/O port signature for identification purposes. The installation program easily recognized (and configured Warp for) cards from such manufacturers as Thomas-Conrad, Madge, IBM, Intel, and SMC.

You are offered three ways to install Warp Connect: easy, tailored, and hands-off. The hands-off installation method (called CID) is appropriate for large organizations that want to seed Warp onto many LAN-connected PCs quickly and painlessly. CID is an IBM-designed, over-the-wire software distribution mechanism that creates a redirected installation environment.

To quickly install a CID-enabled product such as Warp Connect across a LAN, you modify a template script supplied with Warp Connect and run the LAN CID utility. A component called the Service Installable File System (SRVIFS) handles file redirection between the code server and the client workstation. We found the CID scripts easy to set up and run.

A server-based LAN CID REXX program identifies the products that you want to install. Individual product-response files contain the menu selections and choices of features that you otherwise would have to pro-vide interactively. A SRVIFS configuration file sets up the code server. The bottom line is that you can install Warp Connect (or an-

Sniff ing Out LAN Hardware

When you want to know what kind of LAN adapter your computer uses, you remove the cover and inspect the adapter. But installation software that wants to identify your LAN adapter has to use machine instructions to detect and identify such hardware. Micro Channel and EISA adapters are relatively easy to detect; both architectures supply configuration data to programs. ISA-based PCs, on the other hand, present installation software with a minefield of problems.

Warp Connects installation program invokes functions within a DLL to sniff out LAN hardware. This DLL contains code that identifies 250 to 300 different network adapters; two-thirds of this code is for ISA adapters. IBM programmers regularly add new entries to the list. Each addition goes through regression tests to make sure the new code doesn't crash in the presence of the other listed adapters.

The DLL steps carefully through a series of adapter-signature tests to find out what LAN adapter you have. The tests first look through adapter ROM for patterns of bytes. Sometimes the software uses adapter-specific sequences of IN and OUT machine instructions to make the query. Because the same adapter can often use different I/O addresses and IRQs, the detection software often must make several attempts at identifying it.

The order of the tests is important. The same sequence of IN/OUT instructions that detects one kind of adapter might cause a different kind to freeze the computer. And the possibility of troublesome interactions between the detection software and adapters sensitive to certain machine instructions makes it important to figure out which adapters are examined first.

To run the detection code outside the installation procedure, open a Warp Connect OS/2 command-line session and run the 0S2SNIFF program in the GRPWARE directory. 0S2SNIFF will invoke the detection routines in NCD.DLL and display the results on-screen.

iter and Protocol Support

LAPS Confirpation

Select a network adapter and then select ptotociAs to go with It -Hetwork Adapters

jhwaTiFnniFffigi8i'iMi'<-iii'iii''iiJ

)lQm 3C503 EtherUi* II Adaptor lJ3Cwn 3C523 EtherLlnk/MC Adapter 3Com EtrwUrtklinFwnlty OS/2

| Add j ;Char^«j [ Other a dapters... j

Current Conl ijuration—

] Select OK when complete.

The installation program sniffs out network adapters, then gives you confirmation of those that are installed.

other CID-enabled product) on about 300 PCs in a single day.

Wrapping It Up

We can't go without faulting the single input message queue, which makes it possible for one badly behaved Presentation Manager application to prevent other applications from receiving event-queue messages. Also, Warp Connect needs an intelligent maintenance utility for CONFIG.SYS statements, especially since network software can increase the number of such statements to more than 100. The lack of an NFS client is a glaring omission. And the installation program gets confused if there's more than one LAN adapter in your

OS/2 Warp Connect 3.0 . . .$299

(CD-ROM only; includes Windows)

IBM

Armonk, NY 10504

(800) 342-6672

(914) 765-1900

fax: (313) 225-4020

Circle 1144 on Inquiry Card.

PC (though you can fix such problems by editing the CONFIG.SYS, NET.CFG, and PROTOCOL.INI files by hand).

Overall, though, OS/2 Warp Connect has a lot to offer. The combination of in-the-box networking with a mature 32-bit operating system that runs Windows, Win32s, DOS, and OS/2 software makes this a productive, useful environment. Warp Connect offers all the essential features of both Windows 95 and Windows NT while adding features (such as the Bonus Pack and Notes Express) that the competition lacks. ■

Contributing editor Barry Nance has been a programmer for 25 years. He is the author o/Using OS/2 Warp 3.0, Introduction to Networking, and Client/Server LAN Programming. You can reach him via the Internet at banyn@bix.com.

236 BYXE SEPTEMBER 1995

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Hardware

REVIEWS

To Print a Rainbow

Next-generation color lasers from Apple and Tektronix set high standards for print quality, connectivity, and convenience

TOM THOMPSON

The first generation of sub-$ 10,000 color lasers, introduced last year, suffered from complicated setup and lackluster out-of-the-box network capabilities. In short, they didn't work as advertised.

Enter Tektronix, the color printer kingpin, and Apple, creator of the desktop publishing market. Both companies know the color market well, and it shows in their latest color lasers: Apple's Color Laser 12/600 and Tektronix's Phaser 540. (The Phaser 540 Plus became available just after this review; it's a 540 with legal-size printing capability and a somewhat faster printing speed for the same $8995 price.) Both of these printers readily manage true 600-dpi output; are easy to set up, thanks to a monocomponent print technology that dispenses with the developer cartridges; and are platform-agnostic, coming with drivers for Macintosh, PC, and Unix systems.

Apple's Color Laser 12/600

Big and heavy, the Apple Color Laser 12/ 600 occupies a 21- by 23-inch area and weighs in at 110 pounds. A 25-MHz AMD 29030 RISC processor manages the printer's smarts, and 8 MB of ROM houses an Adobe PostScript Level 2 interpreter, 39 Type 1 fonts, and code that handles Ap-pleTalk, NetWare IPX, and TCP/IP protocol stacks. Custom ASICs manage data compression and decompression and accelerate Apple's image-enhancement software.

Because the printer receives compressed image data, it needs less RAM than most color printers—only 12 MB (which comes in the base $6989 configuration). The board holds up to 40 MB of RAM in two industry-standard 72-pin SIMM sockets.

The controller board sports a medley of I/O ports: Ethernet (Apple AUI [attachment unit interface] connector), LocalTalk, and IEEE P1284 bidirectional parallel, plus an HDI-30 SCSI port for adding font-caching hard drives. The controller scans all ports for data and can field incoming jobs of different network protocols. The Canon HX LBP print engine generates up

Sub-$10,000 color lasers: the Tektronix Phaser 540 (left) and the Apple Color Laser 12/600.

to 3 pages per minute for color output and up to 12 ppm for monochrome.

Phaser 540

With a 19.5- by 27.4-inch footprint and weighing 117 pounds, the Phaser 540 is also a bruiser. It uses an AMD 29030 controller (running at 32 MHz instead of 25 MHz). The ROMs provide Adobe PostScript Level 2 with 39 Type 1 fonts and include a PCL5 (Printer Control Language) interpreter. Standard RAM is 20 MB, expandable to 52 MB. A P1284 bidirectional parallel port and a SCSI-2 port are both standard.

You can attach the $1695 Phaser Copy-Station option to add color-copying capability. An optional Phaser Share board ($595) provides either an Ethernet or a Token Ring network interface; both support Ap-pleTalk, IPX, and TCP/IP (which is an extra $295). The controller switches between network protocols and emulations automatically. The Phaser 540's KME print engine can produce 3Yi ppm for color and 14 ppm for monochrome at 600 dpi.

Blazing Colors

Setup for both printers is as easy as it gets: Basically, it takes around 15 minutes to insert the photoconductor drum/belt and the four toner cartridges. Overall, the Phaser 540 handled print jobs faster than the Color Laser 12/600 because of its faster processor. The overhead of data decompression may also slow down the Apple printer. The Color Laser 12/600 processed the BYTE color PostScript test (which measures the speed of the PostScript interpreter) in 129 seconds, while the Phaser 540 fielded it in just 59 seconds.

The Color Laser 12/600's operation was initially marred by its acute sensitivity to a bad cable on BYTE's network. The printer lost data packets and had them resent until it finally timed out. After we removed the faulty cable, the printer operated flawlessly. However, the Phaser 540, a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet HID, and an Apple LaserWriter Pro 630— all located within several feet of the Color Laser 12/ 600 and connected to the same network—experienced no network difficulties from the bad wire.

continued

Color Laser 12/600 . . $6989

Apple Computer, Inc.

Cupertino, CA

(800) 538-9696

(408) 996-1010

Circle 1030 on Inquiry Card.

Phaser 540 $8995

Tektronix, Inc.

Wilsonville, OR

(800) 835-6100

(503) 682-7377

Circle 1031 on Inquiry Card.

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYXK 239

REVIEWS

To Print a Rainbow

Squeezing Colors from Pixels

Printing black text is fairly straightforward: Any given spot on the paper either has black pigment on it or does not. To get smoother edges or higher resolution, many laser printers adjust the size and even the position of the black dots on the image grid by modulating the laser beam.

Producing photographic images is more complicated because the printer must create the illusion of gray shades by tiling varied groups of black dots called dithering patterns. The gray shades come at the expense of resolution, but, again, laser modulation can help, either by making dithering patterns less obvious or by squeezing more gray shades from a smaller pattern. The production of dithering patterns is even more complicated with color images, because clusters of the four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) must imitate various hues.

Both Tektronix and Apple have developed methods to effectively coerce more colors from smaller dithering patterns. By modifying i the laser beam's pulse duration to give some pixels more or less energy than others, the printer's electronics affect how many uttrafine v -toner particles adhere to a each pixel. The result: several intensity levels for each color instead of all or none.

;yan, magenta, yellow, and

€>

Laser modulation equals smoother color gradations.

Apple is aware of the problem.

Both printers handled Mac and Windows print jobs without a hitch. Plain-paper output from these printers is simply outstanding, and output with photographic images is good enough to threaten sales of dye-sublimation printers. There is little overall quality difference between the two printers, although the Apple unit appeared to do better on more types of images than the Tektronix unit did.

If you're running lots of Windows applications that speak PCL5, consider the Phaser 540. If you're dealing with PostScript, either printer is suitable. While the Phaser 540 is substantially faster, it also carries a higher price tag. An Ethernet-equipped Phaser 540 with TCP/IP support costs $9885, while the Color Laser 12/600 comes with Ethernet standard (including TCP/IP support) for $6989. ■

Tom Thompson is a BYTE senior technical editor at large with a B.S.E.E. from the University of Memphis. He is an Associate Apple Developer. You can contact him on AppleLink as "T.THOMPSON" or on the Internet or BIX at tom_thompson@bix.com.

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Hardware

REVIEWS

3-D Graphics Go Zoom

Intergraph and Omnicomp offer different routes to speedy 3-D

GREG LOVERIA

ost of us would love to navi-| gate through complex virtual 3-D scenes on our desktop PCs. But functions such as real-time 3-D animation and Gouraud shading are tough jobs for even the swiftest CPU. Most desktop PCs have enough floating-point capability for the initial geometry calculations required by 3-D modeling, but you need specialized 3-D rendering hardware to quickly turn those internal geometric representations into realistic-looking images on the 2-D surface of your monitor.

The combination of lower-cost 3-D hardware and 3-D APIs—such as Silicon Graphics' OpenGL—is making that reality more affordable. OpenGL is particularly important because it's built into Windows NT and will eventually be part of Windows 95. Cards that support OpenGL will run lots of 3-D applications.

Here we evaluate two promising approaches to 3-D acceleration: a $2385 PCI card from Omnicomp that works with several currently popular 3-D APIs, including OpenGL; and a $23,850 Intel-based workstation from Intergraph.

Omnicomp's 3Demon cards are the first graphics adapters to use 3DLabs' new Glint 3-D accelerator, which promises good 3-D performance at a low price. (Glint-based cards from Elsa, Fujitsu, and others should be available by now.)

Viewperf OpenGL Results

F117

Sphere

Skull

Viewperf measures shaded-model rotation rates

in frames per second using three multicolored,

multitextured 3-D models: a Stealth F117 jet

fighter (a mesh consisting of 172 primitives and

708 vertices per frame), a human skull (3778

primitives and 14,172 vertices), and a simple

sphere (2448 primitives and 9792 vertices). A single Viewperf frame consists

of the model moving or rotating from one rendered x,y,z axes position to the

next interpolated, rendered position in a 360-degree rotation about any axis.

Intergraph's new TDZ-40 system belongs to a family that delivers workstation-level 3-D performance on the Intel x86 platform. The TDZ-40 also proves that a good 3-D chip is not enough in itself for great 3-D performance (see the text box "A Whole Lotta Buffers" on page 244).

The dual-Pentium TDZ-40 is a turnkey acceleration system for MicroStation, a CAD package from Intergraph subsidiary Bentley Systems. It uses Intergraph's two-card GLZ2, an OpenGL accelerator that works in conjunction with Intergraph's MOGLE (MicroStation OpenGL Extensions) 3-D API. Omnicomp's 3Demon adapters, while aimed at improving speeds of existing 3-D and CAD applications using various 3-D APIs, can also accelerate Micro-Station performance speeds using MOGLE.

3-D Demon

Omnicomp's 3Demon adapters all use the Glint 300SX 3-D graphics chip. Board models in the 3Demon series range from the $ 1995 SX44 (4 MB each of VRAM and DRAM) to the $3535 SX816 (8 MB of VRAM, 16 MB of DRAM). We tested a $2385 SX48, which has 4 MB of VRAM and 8 MB of DRAM. (Omnicomp plans an October release for its 3Demon TX series, which uses the new Glint 400TX processor to accelerate texture mapping.) The SX44 and SX48 use the 64-bit IBM525 RAM-DAC for color conversions, while the SX816 has a wider 128-bit IBM528 RAMDAC. The three-quarter-size

I | GLZ in 24-bit color mode 3Demon in 24-bit color mode

I 13Demon in 12-bit color mode All results in frames per second. Higher numbers indicate better performance.

Intergraph's Pentium-powered TDZ-40 system combines workstation-level 3-D performance with Intel x86 software compatibility. The Omnicomp 3Demon SX48 board (perched atop the monitor) provides good 3-D performance for tighter budgets.

3Demon cards use DRAM for 32-bit Z-buffering.

Jumperless and self-configuring, the SX48 installs easily alongside any existing VGA card, which is required for boot-up purposes. The SX48 supports display resolutions of 640 by 480 pixels with 24-bit color up to 1280 by 1024 pixels with 8-bit color. It also supports 24-bit-color, double-buffered, 3-D model acceleration at display resolutions of 640 by 480 pixels up to 800 by 600 pixels.

GLZ Sizzler

Available only in its TDZ line of workstations, Intergraph's PCI-based GLZ series of OpenGL graphics accelerators supports 24-bit color depth only. The GLZ1 adapter, which has 12 MB of VRAM, supports resolutions as high as 1152 by 864 pixels. The two-slot GLZ2 tested here supports resolutions of up to 1600 by 1280 pixels; it has 24 MB of onboard VRAM. Housed in an external cabinet, and packed with 34 MB of VRAM and 32 MB of DRAM, the truly scary GLZ6 supports real-time, fully texture-mapped, photo-realistic model walk-throughs. Other 3-D accelerators in this series include the GLZ3 through GLZ6. All GLZ boards are fully

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTK 243

REVIEWS

3-D Graphics Go Zoom

TDZ^40 ....$23,850

(with two 100-MHz Pentiums, (34 /W&af RAM, 2-GB hard drive, 21-inch monitor) Intergraph Computer Sys'tems Huntsville, AL (800) 763-0242 (205) 730-5441 http://www.intergraph.com Circle 1150 on Inquiry Card.

compliant with OpenGL and MOGLE and have built-in VGA support.

Prices for TDZ workstations, all with GLZ 3-D acceleration, start at $9900 for a single-Pentium TDZ-30 system (less monitor) and climb to $136,800 for the six-Pentium TDZ-60DS with GLZ6 accelerator, a 3- by 2-GB RAID system, 256 MB of system RAM, and 27-inch InterVue display monitor. Our test system—a 100-MHz dual-Pentium TDZ-40, configured with the GLZ2 accelerator, 64 MB of RAM, 2-GB hard drive, and superb InterVue 21-inch monitor—costs $23,850. TDZ workstations ship with a quad-speed CD-ROM drive and a keyboard with built-in microphone and Altec Lansing speakers.

3-D Performance

Several factors affect 3-D graphics performance: the host CPU and system bus, operating system, 3-D API, and an application's ability to perform multithreaded and multiprocessing operations. As a PCI-based system, Intergraph's TDZ-40 made a good base for testing the 3Demon card; it eliminated many of these variables. We compared the 3Demon to the TDZ-40's own GLZ2 adapter, also a PCI card, under Windows NT Workstation 3.5, with both MOGLE- and OpenGL-based benchmarks.

We also compared the 3Demon with a Matrox Millennium card, both running in the same Micron 120-MHz Pentium system. Though the Millennium accelerates 3-D, it didn't yet have OpenGL drivers and thus represents a very fast 2-D graphics accelerator for comparison purposes.

To test OpenGL 3-D performance, we used the Viewpeif benchmark, developed by the OpenGL Performance Characterization Committee. It gauges 3-D performance with lines, solids, shaded solids, and textures. We tested both cards at resolutions of 640 by 480 pixels and then 1024 by 768 pixels with 24-bit color. We also tested static model rendering with MOGLE using MicroStation v5.00.95 and two 3-D DGN files ("bearing cutaway" and "pool architectural" drawings). The MicroStation command functions tested on both adapters consisted of wire mesh, hidden line, filled hidden line, and con-

3DemonSX48 .$2385

(4 MB of VRAM, 8 MB of DRAM) Omnicomp Graphics Corp. Houston, TX (713) 464-2990 fax: (713) 827-7540 omnicmp@phoenix.phoenix.com http://phoenix.phoenix.net:80/~omnicmp Circle 1151 on Inquiry Card.

stant and smooth shading renders.

To put the 3-D performance of these products in perspective, the 3Demon board in its 12-bit color mode ran the Viewperf tests three to four times faster than the Matrox Millennium in its 8-bit mode at both 640 by 480 pixels and 1024 by 768 pixels. With both cards using 24-bit color, the 3Demon was only one-third to two times faster at a resolution of 640 by 480. At 1024 by 768, the 3Demon's 4 MB of VRAM wasn't enough to double buffer, and the two cards produced almost identical Viewperf results. For rotating and animating shaded models at a resolution of 1024 by 768 (or higher) with 24-bit color, you should consider the 3DemonSX88orSX816, which have more VRAM.

Just as the 3Demon beat the Millennium, the Intergraph GLZ2 beat the 3De-mon with both boards run-ning Viewperf in the TDZ-40—at least during most tests. In 12-bit color mode, the3Demon speeded up and averaged roughly the same as the GLZ2 (always in 24-bit mode), but that' s a n unfair comparison.

The size and complexity of the MOGLE pool model made real-time Gouraud-shaded walk-throughs impossible on the SX48, though wireframe-mode pans and zooms were fluid. The GLZ2 was only 20 per-cent to 50 percent faster than the SX48 when first running the MOGLE tests. However, on second runs, with display-list caching in its spacious RAM, the GLZ2 ran an amazing three to ten times faster than the SX48 with the MOGLE pool model.

During model-ro-

tation and walk-through tests, the GLZ2, like the SX48, showed motion lags in the more complex pool model when doing Gouraud-shaded pans and zooms. But in wireframe and flat shaded modes, motion was fluid. Rotations of the MOGLE bearing-cutaway model at both resolutions and using Gouraud shading were less jerky with the GLZ2 than with the SX48. With the GLZ2, rotations were as smooth as glass in wireframe and flat shaded modes. Though a bit pricey, an Intergraph TDZ workstation with GLZ acceleration technology is the top professional 3-D solution if you want the software compatibility provided by an Intel-based system. For budget-conscious people running existing 3-D applications on a PCI-based system, Omnicomp's 3Demon add-in boards are an excellent low-cost solution. ■

Greg Loverici writes and consults on animation and 3-D graphics from Binghamton, New York. You can reach him on the Internet at gloveria@spectra.net or loveria@bix.com.

A Whole Lotta Buffers

While a single smart processor like the Glint 300SX can speed up 3-D rendering substantially, there's no substitute for lots of buffer space. Like other Intergraph GLZ adapters, the 24-MB GLZ2 employs a 220-bit-wide memory bus to service 92 video planes consisting of two 24-bit RGB buffers (double buffering for smooth animation) and one 24-bit Z-buffer that caches depth information. Masking, overlay, and image window-control bits account for the remaining 20 video planes.

The GLZ2 uses four custom proprietary Intergraph ASIC subsystems for 2-D and 3-D graphics acceleration. The DMA Engine is the main graphics acceleration processor; according to Intergraph, it touts 3-D speeds of up to 450,000 Gouraud-shaded triangles per second. The PCI/DMA ASIC controls vertex data flow (the vertices of surface polygons) up to burst speeds of 4 MBps to and from the PCI bus and the GLZ2's 24 MB of VRAM to the FIFO chip subsystem. The four-ASIC Resolver subsystem controls RGBA (RGB and Alpha channel) pixel and Z-data I/O to the frame buffer. A 256-bit-wide Analog Devices ADV7160DAC handles color conversion.

Omnicomp's

mon SX48 provides

iat acceleration with

ii OpenGL, but the

TDZ-40's GLZ2 subsystem (pictured) is faster still.

The SX48 keeps up only in its 12-bit color mode,

which isn't a fair comparison.

244 BYTE SEPTEMBER 1995

Increase the processing speed of your SPARC S workstations or servers and you get more work done in the course of the day — simple, right?

Unfortunately, the decision about how to increase your workstation's or server's processing speed usually complicates matters. Until now, that is. ROSS Technology proudly announces the 125 MHz hyperSPARC™ Upgrade, available in single, dual and quad processor configurations. These Upgrades improve the performance and add multiprocessing capability to SPARCstation'" 10, SPARCstation 20 and SPARCserver'" 630/670/690 machines.

Not only are ROSS SPARC Upgrade processors the fastest on the market, they are a risk-free way to upgrade your workstation and server performance. ROSS is the original source of Sun's multiprocessors, and we are currently powering Sun's highest-performance desktop workstations.

How Fast? Way Fast. At ROSS we say, "When in doubt, check the data." Compare ROSS' numbers with the performance of major high-end SPARC microprocessors, as reported by Dataquest:

Think about what this means for your business. You can extend the useful life of your machines for minimal cost. You'll see performance increases in the range of two to five times current processing speed, while leaving the chassis, memory, disk and peripherals intact. Our hyperSPARC Upgrades feature compact multi-die packaging, which

allows each MBus slot to contain up to two processors; they take less than 30 minutes to install.

Most importantly, ROSS will continue to produce Upgrades that keep your SPARC workstations and servers on the blazing edge. Call your ROSS representative today to get more details on hyperSPARC multiprocessing, or send e-mail to ross_infoa)ross.com.

1-800-774-ROSS http://www.ross.com

ROSS Technology, Inc.

5316 Hwy.290 W., Austin, TX 78735

1-800-774-ROSS in U.S. • 512-919-5207 Global

512-919-5200 Fax

SPARCstation and SPARCserver are licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, [nc

All other product or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

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HANDS-ON TESTING

Fast, Reliable RAID Subsystems

If network server downtime has you singing the blues, the disk array subsystems tested here will keep you and

your organization up and running

MICHELE GUY

Your organization's network file server dies. Day-to-day operations are paralyzed. What do you do? This scenario occurs more and more frequently in today's office environments. However, the trends in computer use (e.g., centralizing data and applications on file servers and downsizing from mainframes to PC-size servers) mean that more companies are no longer tolerating server downtime—they want a solution. We tested 16 fast and reliable disk array subsystems that deliver multi-gigabyte storage and ensure that the data on your file server is always available. The price for this kind of insurance starts at about $10,000.

The disk arrays we tested employ a data storage technology called RAID (redundant array of independent disks). RAID addresses three key aspects of disk storage: (1) capacity, (2) speed, and (3) reliability. A disk array connects multiple smaller-capacity drives into a device that can appear to an OS as a large, sin-

gle logical drive. The overall speed is better on these drives than on a large single drive because the heads on the smaller-capacity drives travel a shorter distance to perform read/write operations, and multiple drives support multiple simultaneous read/writes. RAID controller hardware provides data redundancy to improve reliability, either with a second mirrored copy of the original data or through various parity schemes; this allows a RAID array to continue to operate if one drive fails. (Unlike most other components in a computer, fixed drives contain moving

How to use this guide

We selected the best disk array subsystems by evaluating speed, features, and usability.

I 1JII.\ I ]1M II Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 i nif ii l t f i in subsystem

The Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem was Ute this category. Its tost performance and wide range of features, including redundant and hol-swappable drives, power supplies, fans, a sixth drive for a hot spare, and a write cache with battery backup, placed It well above the other subsystems. Its Online Management Utility lor Windows NT provides enact and readable status during a drive failure and rebullrJoperstion.

The Overall Score combines a product's weighted scores for performance (i.e., speed), features, and usability. Performance counted for half of the overall score; features and usability each was one-fourth of the overall score.

We evaluated the disk arrays on their features (e.g., warranty length and coverage), numberof redundant and hot-swappable components, support for a hot spare drive, and alarm types.

DEC Slora3eWoiksRAIDAiray230 S12.183

Mega Drive EnterpnseE-8 PCI

Sfcxase Selirtws RacaRay CM2- S13.595

Cor\nerCR!2.RAID

Winchester Systems FlastiDsk SCSI

Usability was judged on the quality of documentation, ease of

configuration, and the ease with which the array was able to recover from a single drive failure.

Relative speed on a scale of 1 to 10 in a single-thread and a multithread environment.

Relative overall speed on a scale of 1 to 10.

248 BYTE/NSTL LAB REPORT SEPTEMBER 1995

A Pillar of Reliability

E2D

BEST

REDUNDANT POWER SUPPLIES Self-contained units that supply power to the array. If one fails, the other will keep the array going.

REDUNDANT FANS Self-contained units that cool the array. If one fails, the other will keep operating.

INTERFACE CONNECTION TO THE HOST On most of the units, this is a SCSI-2 Fast/Wide 68-pin female connection on the back of the RAID enclosure.

SCSI BACKPLANE Each drive connects to this when installed in the RAID enclosure.

ENCLOSURE KEYLOCK Depending on the design, the RAID cabinet keylock prevents entry either to just the drives or to the drives and other components (e.g., power supplies and fans).

FRONT-PANEL DISPLAY AND KEYPAD Depending on the manufacturer, a keypad with LEDs can give the current status of the array and let you configure the array and perform maintenance (e.g., a rebuild).

DRIVES IN INDIVIDUAL DRIVE SHUTTLES We tested arrays with five half-height (3%-inch form factor) SCSI drives of 2-GB capacity each. Arrays are designed to let you easily install and remove drives.

INDIVIDUAL DRIVE KEYLOCKS Some models prevent unintended drive removal with a keylock for each drive; typically, the keylock must be in the locked position for the drive to operate.

BEST OVERALL

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

The Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem has it ati— superior speed and features at a reasonable price. Its sieek enclosure houses redundant and hot-swappable disks, power supplies and fans, and a battery-secured write cache. It also supports a hot spare drive. PAGE 250

BEST FOR DATABASE SERVERS

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

The StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem outperformed the competition in handling transactions typical in a database server environment. PAGE 252

BEST FOR AUDIO/ VIDEOSERVERS

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

When it came to our audio/video benchmarks, the StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem was only the third-fastest subsystem, but its features and usability put it over the top once again. PAGE 256

parts that make them more susceptible to failure).

RAID was originally defined as having five different levels. Each level addresses the issue of data redundancy in a different way. RAID level 1, which mirrors data, and RAID 3 and 5, which store parity information (also known as ECCs, or error-correction codes), are the most commonly used RAID implementations (for more on RAID level definitions, see the text box "On the Levels" on page 259).

We configured the arrays in our test to use RAID 5, which gives you a reasonable trade-off between cost and performance. RAID 5 distributes data and ECCs across the entire array (see the text box "How Error Correction Works" on page 250). RAID 1 offers faster performance but at a higher per-megabyte price, because half of the total storage space is sacrificed to the mirrored data. On a typical five-drive RAID 5 array, parity information takes up only about 20 percent of total storage space. However, some performance is sacrificed because writes to disk must also include an addi-

tional operation to update parity information.

When RAID was first conceived at the University of California at Berkeley in 1987, the I in RAID stood for inexpensive. One of the original motivating forces for the RAID developers was to create the most storage for the lowest cost. They found it was cheaper to string several small-capacity drives together than it was to use a single, large expensive drive. Today, companies are more likely to use disk arrays for their redundancy features than to achieve cost savings. Large-capacity drives are no longer necessarily more expensive than an array made up of smaller-capacity drives. As the price-per-megabyte of disk storage continues to fall due to ever-cheaper drives, more users may find a RAID 1 mirrored drive configuration as economical as a RAID 3 or a RAID 5 solution. Another trend may make the focus on RAID levels less crucial. So-called adaptive RAID controllers that dynamically select the best RAID level, using whichever level is optimal for a given set of data, may soon be available.

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTE/NSTL EAB REPORT 249

BEST OVERALL

DISK ARRAYS

ach of the 16 disk arrays we tested, with a I few minor exceptions, I consisted of a case enclosing an array of five half-height 2-GB drives, an array controller board or comparable hardware, a power supply and fan, and a configuration utility and LCD panel that lets you select the RAID level and make other array configuration selections. Most products provided some additional level of hardware redundancy, such as a sixth drive to be used as a hot

From left: Winchester Systems' Flash Disk, Mega Drive's Enterprise, Conner's CR12-RAID, Storage Solutions' Raca-Ray, and Digital's StorageWorks.

spare, a second power supply, fan, controller, or some combination of these. All these arrays were designed to survive a single-drive failure.

For RAID 5 testing, we connected each array to a file server running Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 and formatted the array as one large drive (the formatted capacity of these arrays averaged about 8 GB). We ran a series of automated low-level disk tests that were designed to simulate the real-world conditions found on a typical disk subsystem connected to a PC file server.

The Best Overall winneris Digital Equipment's StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem. The Storage-Works h a d t h e fastest perf or-mance and the widest range of features, including redundant and hot-swappable drives, power supplies, fans, a drive for a hot spare, and a write cache with battery backup. The three-channel controller is designed to install in a PCI-based file server and can support two additional enclosures for up to 90.3 GB

of storage. The Storage Works' Online Management Utility for NT does a good job of giving you an exact and readable status during a drive failure and rebuild operation. The StorageWorks is also one of the least-expensive units we tested.

The second- and third-ranked products from Mega Drive and Storage Solutions, respectively, had virtually identical overall scores. Of the two, the Storage Solutions' Raca-Ray CM2+ was faster and had the best multithread performance score of any array we tested. The Raca-Ray's speed comes in a not-so-glamorous package; its drives sit in open, trackless

HOW ERROR CORRECTION WORKS

RAID 5 uses a technique that (1) writes a block of data across several disks (i.e., striping), (2) calculates a code from this data and stores the code on another disk (i.e., parity), and (3) in the event of a single-disk failure, uses the data on the working drives and the calculated code to "interpolate" what the missing data should be (i.e., rebuilding). A RAID 5 array "rotates" data and parity among all the drives on the array, in contrast with RAID 3, which stores all calculated parity values on one particular drive. The following is a simplified explanation of how RAID 5 calculates ECCs (error-correction codes), Say, for example, that you have a five-drive array on which you intend to store four values: The numbers 172, 106, 240, and 156. For the purpose of this example, the RAID controller stores the value 172 as the binary number 10101100 on disk 1 of the array, the value 106 as the binary number 01101010 on disk 2, and so on as shown in the table "Error Detection: Bit by Bit" at right. When our four values have been written to disks 1 through 4, the RAID controller examines the sum of each bit position. If the sum of the numbers of bit position x on disks 1 through 4 is an odd number, then the value of that bit position on disk 5 is assigned a 1; if the sum is an

even number, the bit position on disk 5 is assigned a 0.

Now assume that disk 2 fails. The RAID controller can no longer seethe value 0 at bit 7 on disk 2. However, the controller knows that its value can be only a 0 or a 1. And as disks 1,3, 4, and 5 are still operating, the controller can perform the following calculation: 1 + ? + 1 + 1 = an odd number. Since 1 + (0) + 1 + 1 = an odd number (3), the missing value on disk 2 must be 0. The RAID controller then performs the same calculation for the remaining bit positions. In this way, data miss-

250 BYTE/NSTL

.AB REPORT SEPTEMBER 1995

bays, making them somewhat awkward to put in and pull out. The Raca-Ray does not support a spare drive, but it does have a user-friendly monitoring utility called Raca-Lert for Windows (see "Honorable Mentions" on page 259). You can also expand this product to a three-rank unit for a total of 15 drives.

The Enterprise E-8 PCI from Mega Drive Systems is an attractively priced unit with good performance, features, and usability. The Enterprise is designed to let you mix and match different types of storage media, including half- and full-height drives, half-height optical drives, and half-height DAT (digital audiotape) modules. (Mega Drive reports that a popular configuration with its customers is an array with two mirrored full-height 9-GB drives.) The Enterprise has a dual-channel Mylex PCI controller with an HRI (Hardware RAID Controller Interface), which reports fan and power-supply failures to the file server. Our one complaint was due to the flimsiness of the door on the Enterprise's drive bays. Because the door doubles as drive tracks when you push the drives into the enclosure, its design sometimes made it difficult for us to seat drives properly. According to a company representative, Mega Drive has already retooled to correct this glitch.

Placing fourth and fifth, with nearly identical overall scores, were the CR12-RAID by Conner Storage Systems and the FlashDisk SCSI by Winchester Systems. The CR12-RAID uses a dual-channel controller, supports redundant hot-swap-pable drives, power supplies, and fans, and can be configured with up to 12 drives. It also has graphical monitoring utilities for NT and NetWare and a five-year warranty on both its drives and subsystem.

BYTE BEST

DISK ARRAYS

In a class all its own ...

BEST OVERALL

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

^_*3 The Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem was the clear winner in e§§S~^TiA this category. Its fast performance and wide range o f features, including \*ju£j^ redundant and hot-swappable drives, power supplies, fans, a sixth drive for ^PSS^R a hot spare, and a write cache with battery backup, placed it well above the *^* other subsystems. Its Online Management Utility for Windows NT provides

an exact and readable status during a drive failure and rebuild operation.

OVERALL

PERFORMANCE INDEX

BEST DEC StorageWorks RAID Array 230

RUNNER-UP Mega Drive Enterprise E-8 PCI

RUNNER-UP Storage Solutions Raca-Ray CM2+

RUNNER-UP Conner CR12-RAID

RUNNER-UP Winchester Systems FlashDisk SCSI $19,737

Riding high on vaiwMG

LOW-COST

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

With its test-configuration price of $12,183, the Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem is an excellent value. For this price, you get five drives and a sixth spare drive, a second power supply and fan, battery-protected write cache, monitoring utilities for Windows NT and NetWare, a one-year on-site warranty and a five-year warranty on the disk drives. Offering many of the same features is the $11,900 Mega Drive Enterprise E-8 PCI. The Enterprise has a standard two-year warranty and comes shipped with a DAT (digital audiotape) drive module in addition to its five-drive array and one spare drive.

BEST DEC StorageWorks RAID Array 230

RUNNER-UP Mega Drive Enterprise E-8 PCI

RUNNER-UP Procom LANForce-5

RUNNER-UP Raidtec FlexArray FX

RUNNER-UP DPT SmartRAID Subsystem

The Winchester FlashDisk SCSI offered better overall performance than the CR12-RAID but is priced considerably higher than the other top five subsystems. The FlashDisk is sold in configurations with up to 128 GB of storage capacity. If you're on a budget, two of our previously mentioned winners—the Digital Storage-Works and the Mega Drive Enterprise—are priced a I under $13,000. At $10,255, Procom Technology's LANForce-5 was the lowest-priced unit tested here. The LANForce-5 offers full redundancy and hot-swapping components—drives, power supplies, fans, and controllers, as well as a sixth drive for a hot spare—but its perfor-

mance was below average. The company reports that a new high-performance controller will be available for this product this summer.

In analyzing the performance of these subsystems, it's apparent that RAID controllers play a major role. Three of the top-ranked arrays— Digital, Mega Drive, and Conner—use various models of controller from Mylex. It's interesting to note that write-caching didn't determine who made our top-five list. As neither the Raca-Ray nor the CR12-RAID had battery backups, their performance scores were based on their "write-cache off results, and both still made the grade. As for reliability, participating

KEY

Ratings from lto 4: A is the lowest; AAAA is the highest.

vendors quoted the MTBF (mean time between failures) of the individual drives in these arrays as ranging from 500,000 to 1,000,000 hours. All the arrays we tested successfully withstood a simulated single-drive failure. Our tests did not measure the relative drop in performance that these arrays would experience while in rebuild mode (also known as degraded mode). On many arrays, when configuring the array, you can determine the rate of rebuild; the faster the rebuild, the more current server performance is slowed.

SEPTEMBER 1995 BYTE/NSTL LAB REPORT 251

Best for Database Servers

Database servers are the computer workhorses of many organizations. Whether you're running an order-entry application in a manufacturing facility or trying to do inventory control for a supermarket, you need disk storage that's big, fast, and reliable.

We analyzed our benchmark scores to determine which of the 16 products tested perform best when connected to a database server. Our benchmark recorded the minimum, maximum, and average time it took to perform random and sequential reads and writes at various points in the array. Using the average times, we calculated scores that reflect how fast the disk arrays performed relative to one another. Our tests simulate two types of environments: single-thread and multithread, which approximate single- and multiuser workloads. When calculating scores,

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

TOP

DIGITAL STORAGEWORKS RAID ARRAY 230 SUBSYSTEM

The Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem was fastest in tests that simulate a database environment. The StorageWorks' performance was the best of the arrays in our single-task tests and second-best in our multitasking tests. The Raca-Ray CM2+ from Storage Solutions was the fastest array at handling multiple processes, but it ranked fifth in single-task speed.

DEC StorageWorks RAID Array 230

Storage Solutions Raca-Ray CM2+

Mega Drive Enterprise E-8 PCI

StorageTek Nordique Open Storage Facility

Winchester Systems Flash Disk SCSI

Key: Ratings from 1 to 4: A is the lowest; ▲▲▲▲ is the highest.

we gave more weight to sequential operations than to random ones to reflect the

importance of such tasks as reading in a

large data file or loading an executable file. Digital Equipment's StorageWorks

RAID Array 230 Subsystem had the best

overall performance and the best single-thread performance in this category. Storage

Solutions' Raca-Ray and the Mega Drive

Enterprise came in second and third,

respectively. On nearly every multithread

task, the Raca-Ray's score was the fastest.

As in its overall score, the Enterprise handled single-thread

tasks much better than multithread ones.

In fourth place was the Nordique Open Storage Facility by StorageTek Distributed Systems. The Nordique is sold as a stand-alone or as a component of the Nordique 9100, a modular RAID 5 system for users downsizing from a mainframe to a Unix or PC network. The Nordique was the slowest and most expensive subsystem of the top five, but its features and usability allowed it to edge out the faster Winchester FlaskDisk SCSI. Data is protected by redundant and hot-swappable drives, power supplies, fans, and controllers. The Nordique also offers battery backup and support for a hot spare.

FILE SERVERS WITH RAID

K you're in the market for a new file server and a disk array, you might consider a file server with a built-in array. We looked at two: the AST Manhattan P Series 5090 and the Compaq ProLiant 2000 M4200A.

The AST Research ((714) 727-4141) Manhattan is a 90-MHz Pentium EISA/PCI (peripheral component interconnect) bus server that uses the DPT SmartRAID PM3224 PCI controller. The DPT controller has a graphical configuration utility called Storage Manager, which also handles event logging and user notification of error conditions. The AST Manhattan ships with Percepta, a server manager and monitoring utility for Windows NT or NetWare. The status of the disk array can be monitored from Percepta, which uses SNMP traps to hook DPT's Storage Manager. SmartRAID supports RAID 0,1, and 5, a maximum cache of 64 MB, and hot swapping of drives. The AST Manhattan we tested was shipped with five 2-GB Quantum Empire Series 2100S hard drives and a CD-ROM drive. The price of the tested unit is $15,396.

The Compaq Computer ((713) 374-0484) ProLiant has dual Pentium 90-MHz CPUs and an EISA/PCI bus, and it uses the Compaq Smart SCSI Array Controller. Our test unit had five 2.1-GB Conner C2490A drives, which can be accessed from the server's front door, and a CD-ROM drive. The front door has an internal temperature monitor and a keylock for security. Drives are hot-pluggable, and the system supports seven half-height drives for a total of 14.7

GB. The array is configured via SmartStart, Compaq's CD-ROM-based configuration utility. The price of the unit we tested is $24,880 (the Compaq 1024 monitor is priced separately at $369).

We configured the disk system in each file server as a RAID 5 array of three 2-GB drives and installed Windows NT 3.5 on one of the remaining 2-GB drives as a boot drive. We ran our performance benchmarks on the file servers to determine how they performed relative to one another.

In the configuration tested, the Compaq ProLiant was consistently faster than the AST Manhattan. Had the ProLiant been tested with the subsystems, it would have ranked approximately sixth in overall performance and about fourth in database performance, but it was composed of three instead of five drives.

File Server Performance

Audio/Video score

Database score

Overall score

0 12 3 4 5 6 7

□ Compaq ProLiant 2000 (T~] AST Manhattan

We ran our performance tests on the file servers to determine how they performed relative to one another.

252 BYTE/NSTL I^AB REPORT SEPTEMBER 1995

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All other brand and company/product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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How We Tested

We invited each vendor to supply a disk array subsystem with five drives that have a total capacity of 10 to 12 GB, configured as a RAID 5 array. Although it wasn't required of them, some vendors also supplied a sixth drive to act as a hot spare. We specified that the subsystem's interface to the host be SCSI-2 Fast/Wide. Of the 16 products tested, 10 had RAID controllers built into their enclosures; eight of these products supported a SCSI-2 Fast/Wide single-ended termination and the other two supported differential termination. To connect the single-ended subsystems, we installed an Adaptec AHA-2940W PCI-to-Wide SCSI adapter in our test file server. To connect the differential products, we installed an NCR 825ID PCI SCSI adapter. The remaining six arrays shipped with their own RAID controller boards, which doubled as host adapters for these products.

We used a Dell PowerEdge SP590-2 system as our file server. The PowerEdge is a Pentium 90-MHz-based EISA server with two PCI (peripheral component interconnect) slots. Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 Workstation was installed on the boot drive of the Dell. We evaluated each product's performance, usability, and features, and the test results were weighted as follows: 50 percent, 25 percent, and 25 percent, respectively.

PERFORMANCE

We connected each disk array we were testing to the file server using the appropriate host adapter. We then formatted the array under NT as a single drive using the NTFS (NT File System) format. We ran a suite of performance tests under NT with the array's writeback cache off and then on (if both states were supported and could be toggled by the end user).

The performance suite simulates tasks that a disk array subsystem would perform in a real-world environment. Random and sequential reads and writes of 4-, 16-, and 64-KB blocks were performed at different locations on the array in a single-thread and a multithread environment. Except for the tests that read or wrote over the disk array, we set the number of blocks per segment so that the total size of the region under test was 128MB.

PERFORMANCE SCORING

We recorded test results as the average, minimum, and maximum time (in seconds) required to complete each test. The average and maximum times gave performance scores; minimum times were for reference only. A product's score is relative to how it performed compared to the other products. Each product's Best for Database Servers score is a weighted average of the single-thread and multithread "average" recorded times. The Best for Audio/Video score is a weighted average of the single-thread and multithread "maximum" recorded times. The Best Overall score is an average of the database and audio/video scores. We used a product's "cache-on" times if the product was supplied with a battery-secured write cache; otherwise, we used the "cache-off times.

FEATURES

We evaluated each product on its cost per MB of storage, warranty length and

coverage, redundant and hot-swappabJe components, as well as alarms, security features, and maximum storage capacity.

USABILITY

We evaluated each product's ease of setup and configuration and the completeness and clarity of the user's manuals. We simulated a single-drive failure, verified that the file server could continue to operate normally, and evaluated the ease of performing a rebuild of the array.

Contributors

Michele Guy, Project Manager/NSTL, has been

testing hardware and software products for NSTL for the past four years.

Kathleen Bishop, R&D/NSTL, has eight years of

fi&D experience in the computer industry. Bruce Levy, Ph.D., Manager, R&D/NSTL.

The Lab Report is an ongoing collaborative project between BYTE magazine and National Software Testing Laboratories (NSTL). BYTE magazine and NSTL are both operating units of McGraw-Hill. Inc. Contact the NSTL staff on the Internet at editors@nstl.com or by phone at (6 JO) 941-9600. Contact BYTE on the Internet or BIX at editors@bix.com or at (603) 924-2624.

RAID ADVISORY BOARD

The RAID Advisory Board is an organization dedicated to advancing the use and awareness of RAID and associated storage technologies. Started in 1992, RAB states its main goals as education, standardization, and certification.

As a forum for discussion on developments in the storage-technology industries, RAB recently sponsored RAID '95, a conference held in San Jose, California. During the four-day event, attendees could take a course on RAID basics, learn about the latest business and technical issues, and hear discussions about predicted future trends. Among the conference speakers was Garth Gibson, one of the three original researchers responsible for proposing RAID technology.

Joe Molina, chainnan of RAB, reported that one of this year's hot topics was adaptive RAID, a technology in which there is no predefined RAID; instead, the RAID subsystem makes this decision for the user, based on patterns of data use. Another hot topic was integration—that is, RAID subsystems that incorporate other types of storage media, such as tape and CD-ROM, and that utilize hierarchical storage management (e.g., automatically migrating older data off a hard drive and onto a tape jukebox).

Molina predicted that by the year 2000, almost all systems will have RAID, except notebooks and low-end stand-alones. PCMCIA RAID will become a reality, as will support for interfaces other than SCSI, such as fiber channel and arbitrated loop. (Currently, about 90 percent of RAID products are SCSI-based.) Also by the year 2000, today's cost of about $2 per megabyte with RAID should decrease to about 25 cents per megabyte. Molina agreed that while vendors may find it difficult to make money in this kind of market, users will benefit, and there will be plenty of RAID products to choose from.

RAB

For more information on the RAID Advisory Board, contact:

Joe Molina, Chairman RAID Advisory Board 13 Marie Lane St Peter, MN 56082 (507) 931-0967 fax:(507)931-0976 0004706032@mcimail.com

Make sure your data L\-i

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You might not know how valuable your data is until it is no longer

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This is why you should invest in a data secure, high availability system,

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SOLIDdisk RAID offers a fully redundant fault-tolerant solution, as well

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Circle 109 on Inquiry Card (RESELLERS: 110).

Best for Audio/Video

The sound and video files used in multimedia applications tend to be large, gobbling up disk storage and placing heavy demands on disk I/O. RAID subsystems can provide the disk capacity and performance required for these applications. To determine which RAID array would perform best in an audio/video environment, we looked at the maximum recorded times of each subsystem for each test in our performance benchmark. We used the maximum recorded

Array placed first. Although it was only the third-fastest, the StorageWorks' features and usability made the difference. The speed demon of this group was MicroNet Technology's RAIDbank Plus for PCI. The RAIDbank, which uses a dual-channel Mylex controller, had the best performance overall and fast speeds in the multithread tests. The RAIDbank features redundant and hot-swappable drives, power supplies, and a hot spare. When configuring this subsystem, we took advantage of MicroNet's walkthrough service, available to all new RAIDbank users (see "Honorable Mentions" on page 259). The RAIDbank's

NT Adapter Monitor utility needs work; it did not issue an alert during our single-drive failure test. However, the Administration utility correctly detected the RAID's status as "critical," and an automatic rebuild took place as expected. The Conner CR12-RAID and Mega Drive Systems' Enterprise E-8 PCI arrays were tied for third. The CR12-RAID performed multithread tasks faster than it did single-thread tasks, and the Enterprise handled single processes better. The Storage Solutions' Raca-Ray CM2+ was ranked fourth. It performed single-thread and multithread tasks at about the same speed.

Digital StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem

times, because when looking for disk storage for audio/video applications, you want a system with the least amount of slow I/O. For example, a disk array that was relatively fast, on average, but had several slow results on read tests might, in a real-world environment, result in video clips that would run correctly and then "freeze" at certain points before resuming. The result would be similar to pressing the pause button on your VCR every 10 seconds or so while trying to watch a movie.

Once again, the Digital StorageWorks

^^| DIGITAL STORAGEWORKS RAID ARRAY 230 SUBSYSTEM

Vy^5 Even though the StorageWorks RAID Array 230 Subsystem only ranked third in our audio/video bench-^^^gft marks, it was still the best overall product in features and usability compared to the other products we tested. Except for Storage Solutions' Raca-Ray CM2+, the other top-five products were either very fast in our multitasking tests—such as the RAIDbank Plus for PCI from MicroNet Technology— or fast h our single-task tests, but not both.

DEC StorageWorks RAID Array 230 MicroNet RAIDbank Plus for PCI Conner CR12-RAID Mega Drive Enterprise E-8 PCI Storage Solutions Raca-Ray CM2+

Key: Ratings from 1 to 4: A is the lowest; AAAA is the highest.

SOFTWARE RAID SOLUTIONS

Although the focus of our tests was hardware-based RAID (i.e., subsystems that use a dedicated RAID controller), if you've already invested in storage and don't have $10,000 or so to spend on a RAID subsystem, there are many software applications on the market that let you configure your existing disk storage as a RAID array. These software programs perform RAID calculations with the help of your server's CPU rather than relying on a dedicated RAID controller.

For a NetWare environment: Corel ((613) 728-8200; fax (613) 728-9790) offers Corel SCSI Network Manager with CorelRAID 2.0 for $595. CorelRAID uses either RAID 4 or 5, can support a maximum of 16 drives, and supports the hot swapping of drives and a hot spare. Under NetWare, you can define users and groups to receive messages if a drive failure occurs. To use CorelRAID, you need a PC-compatible 386 server running NetWare 3.1x or higher, 4 MB of RAM, three SCSI hard drives, and a SCSI host adapter with ASPI (advanced SCSI programming interface).