The Washington State Department of Ecology employs 54 people in environmental data collection and analysis. The department conducts environmental investigations, provides laboratory services, GIS analysis, and environmental field work.
The Department of Ecology runs two NetWare 3.11 LANs, including a centralized LAN for Internetwork services, and a de-centralized LAN for specific applications. "We use IEF by Texas Instruments for case tool generation" said John Maxwell, MIS manager at the department. "Our goal is to move towards a full data warehouse with Internet access to GIS and X-Windows services." The Department evaluated several products to provide LAN access to the TCP/IP-based services available on the Internet. The Department determined that its LAN to UNIX solution must meet four criteria. "Our solution must be NetWare-native, meet our business needs, improve performance, and reduce workstation management," said Maxwell.
The Department selected NOV*IX from Firefox. NOV*IX is a server-based IPX to TCP/IP connectivity solution. As a server-based solution, NOV*IX eliminates the need to install and manage TCP/IP stacks and addresses on each workstation. "NOV*IX was the only product we looked at that met all of our requirements," said Maxwell. "NOV*IX resides on our NetWare server, provides simple Internet access to all users on both networks, and requires very little management."
The Department provides users with Internet access through NOV*IX as an application available from the Windows desktop. Users on both the department's centralized and de-centralized LANs have equal access to TCP/IP services. NOV*IX assigns temporary IP addresses to each TCP/IP session running through the server. When a session terminates, NOV*IX returns the temporary address to the IP address pool, making it available to the next user.
"When we decided to re-structure the network to provide TCP/IP access, NOV*IX fit right into our plans," Maxwell said. "I didn't have to buy new hardware, or even spend much time on installation. Firefox's technical support people are really helpful. They not only know their product inside and out, but they also understand how NOV*IX works with everything else on my network. With their help, I quickly got NOV*IX up and running on both the centralized and de-centralized LANs."
Maxwell reports significant time and cost savings due to NOV*IX. Installation takes only eight minutes per workstation. He estimates the total cost of TCP/IP connectivity through NOV*IX to be just $50 per workstation. In addition to quick and easy installation, NOV*IX eliminates the need to manage individual TCP/IP stacks and IP addresses on workstations.
"NOV*IX does it all for me," said Maxwell. "It provides simple Internet access for all my users, requires virtually no management, and is very stable. I don't have to manage IP at the workstation level but still am able to assign permanent addresses to users if necessary. I love the ease of administration - whether it's our centralized or de-centralized LAN, it's the same."
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