Modem recommendations

Rich Adamson (adar0@routers.com)
Mon, 25 Nov 96 15:45:37 CST

One of the companies that I work for received approval from senior
management to install approximately 300 ports of switched services.
The majority of their locations are relatively small cities that do
not support ISDN as yet. The company has a 220 node frame relay
network that is centrally managed from the Midwest, has thirty-five
or so PM2's installed around the country with several hundred unused
serial ports, Cisco routers, HP Openview, etc, etc.

The 300 remote sites will essentially be sales representatives
using an internally developed application running on IBM Cash
Registers (PC with OS/2). The Cash Register does support and has
been fully tested with tcp/ip, ppp, and async modems. The
application essentially pulls IBM mainframe customer data via
TN3270 sessions, reformates the data into windows, and handles
the customer's transactions. The Sales Reps are very non-technical,
and typically leave a dial in connection up throughout the day.
The application is poorly written in that if the ppp session is
dropped for any reason, essentially it takes the rep about five
minutes to kill and restart Comm Mgr and the host TN3270 Sessions,
etc.

The folks in this group probably have more experience with
switched services than anywhere, and have a substantial amount of
knowledge relative to stable manageable modems. This company would
like to purchase stable modems that may have features that would
support remote management (all the way to the remote Cash Register).
Their network management within the WAN is based solely on SNMP.
If anyone has a recommendation they feel would meet their
requirements, please email me directly at adar0@routers.com.
Really don't need a list of what NOT to purchase as that's be
hashed over fairly well recently.

Thanks,
Rich Adamson
adar0@routers.com