Suitable "IP packet pusher" for FEI-3 on a Y-MP

[Jeff Bauer]

FSU is installing a 4 CPU Cray Y-MP in early spring, with
UNICOS.  We want to purchase a suitable front end to connect 
to an FEI-3 that is part of the Cray configuration.  I would like to
get any opinions from Cray-xperts out there as to just what
sort of front end we should get.

Naturally, we expect this front end to be an IP gateway into
the Cray, along with a VAX 8700 running the VMSLINK package.
We don't want the FE connected to the FEI-3 to be a bottleneck,
or at least we want it to be a wide-necked bottle.

The crowd favorite seems to be a Sun; preferably a Sun-4 server with
at least 2 unused VMEbus slots for the Cray boards, with at least
16MB of memory, and the special Sun-provided device driver.
Anybody have have any opinions on what might be a better cost
performer, given the IP gateway software requirements and 
10 Mbit <---> 6 Mbyte buffering?  What about SunOS version and
device driver mismatches?  What's the "gotcha's" with using any of
the FEI-3-pluggable machines besides Suns?

Please e-mail and I'll gladly post a summary, if appropriate.

Thanks!
Jeff Bauer					bauer at loligo.cc.fsu.edu
Florida State University			(904) 644-2591 ext. 113