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Little Big LAN

Sales Information

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Features Sumary:

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Description

"Little Big LAN" (LBL) was designed for networking needs in a wide variety of hardware configurations for one low $75 software price. Other network vendors typically supply their software on a per/node basis which can add up fairly quickly. We sell LBL on a "per network" basis. One copy supports up to 250 nodes.

LBL is "peer to peer." There is no need for a dedicated server. All computers have equal access to each other, each being both server and workstation. Like all peer to peer networks, LBL multitasks. You can be using your computer while someone else is accessing your hard drive, no need for you to stop what you are doing to allow someone in. And LBL supports standard DOS file and record locking for your multiuser software.

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What does LBL get you?

LBL gives you new freedom to use the equipment and software you already own, regardless of where it is. Your "local" drive letters, A: thru D: for example, remain unchanged. But you can now use drives called F:, G:, H:, or any other drive letter, to access a drive which resides on another computer. The fact that drive C: may refer to your own hard drive, and drive W: may refer to a hard drive in another room, is completely transparent to you (other than the letter designations). Printers are handled in much the same way. LPT1 may be your local printer, while LPT2, and LPT3 may be your remote printers. You can also use remote CDROMs and COM ports. And you can use remote modems as long as you have INT14 redirectable telecommunications software.

LBL is Windows compatible. You can access and remap drives and printers from within Windows 3.x and Win95/98, and it will run in an OS/2 DOS box.

LBL requires little memory, typically about 50k. It can be optimized for speed or memory usage. If you have enough upper memory, part or all can be loaded high.

LBL is fast. On equal equipment, it easily ranks with the fastest peer to peer LANs, beating most.

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How can computers be connected?

Just about any way you want. LBL supports Ethernet, Arcnet, parallel or serial connections. It even supports modem connections for a simple Wide Area Network (WAN). (It is possible for your home computer to use your office computer's drives. LBL will dial the WAN connection automatically, and will hangup when not used.) All nodes on the network -- even those connected via modems -- appear like any other.

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Is LBL hard to use?

Not at all. You already know just about everything you need to know to use our LAN. Virtually every command and every program you use will work exactly as it did before. DOS, Windows, and your user programs are tricked into thinking remote drives and printers are local resources.

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More about hardware.

Little Big LAN is extremely flexible and can satisfy a wide variety of networking needs.

You can start small with a two computer network linked through serial ports. This will cost you $75 in software and maybe $15 in cabling. If next month you buy a new computer, just link it to your other machines via another serial port and cable. If you decide serial is too slow, switch to parallel. These are about 2.5 to 10 times faster than serial, but you must keep cables to less than 15 feet. Note that serial and parallel are point to point interconnection methods. So if you wish to link three computers with serial, you will have to put two serial ports in a middle computer which link to the other two. All three can "see" each other, but the middle node acts like a relaying node for the two outside nodes. Normally you should not link more than 4 or 5 computers with serial or parallel.

If you want speed, you can upgrade to Ethernet or Arcnet cards. Arcnet offers up to ten times performance over serial, Ethernet even more. Ethernet cards are very inexpensive now. We directly support generic NE2000 type Ethernet cards (the most common cards available at the lowest cost). We have our own driver for these cards and work more efficiently with them. But we do support other cards via the packet driver interface supplied by the manufacturer, or NDIS. Via these methods we have gotten many cards to work, including: Intel EtherExpress, Western Digital WD8003, SMC, 3COM 3c501, 3c503, 3c509 (Etherlink III), NE2100, Interlan, Isolan, DEPCA, many pocket adapters, and more. We also support the NDIS interface if no packet driver is available.

Again, no matter which interconnection scheme you choose, Little Big LAN supports it at the same $75 software cost. There is no additional upgrade fee. You don't have to come to us to buy a new driver, or a higher performance version. One size fits all.

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Wide Area Networking

As was mentioned earlier, LBL also supports modem connections. From the user's point of view, the only difference between a modem and Ethernet connection is speed. A 28k modem cannot hope to compete with a 10 megabaud ethernet card! But anything that can be done over the ethernet can be done over the modem. It is just as transparent. LBL will automatically dial the remote site whenever it needs to connect, and will hangup when finished.

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Built-in Routing

With LBL you can even mix interconnection methods on the same network. For instance, some of your machines can be linked through Ethernet cards, and others can be linked into the network via parallel ports, and still another may be connected over phone lines and a modem to your home. This kind of flexibility is offered by few other LAN products, and, if offered, is usually a high priced option. It is standard on ours.

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Can I prevent unauthorized access?

LBL can prevent unauthorized users from modifying or looking at certain files or subdirectories. This protection is not needed by most of our customers so our philosophy is to permit full access to unprotected files. This means there is no mandatory logon procedure. The network is fully functional every time your computer is turned on without your having to do anything. But to access protected resources, the user must logon with a password.

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Ordering Information


Little Big LAN sold for $75.
We no longer sale it.

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