I wrote just a little while ago:

> That has been our experience, too. HP3000 to PC (or vice versa) transfers
are
>  at least 10 times faster than Reflection's, and HP3000 to HP3000 transfers
>  are even quicker yet (perhaps 20 times), even when discounting that only
one
>  transfer has to be made rather than two (3000 to PC and then PC to the
> second
>  3000).
>
>  I'm quite impressed with the quality of the implementation of FTP on the
>  HP3000.

Let me elaborate on that last statement a bit, if you don't mind. I have been
impressed enough with HP3000-to-HP3000 FTP transfers that we're in the
process of buying another 918 simply to use it as a backup device. Rather
than transfer our HP3000 files to tape as we have in the past (we're
currently using DDS-2 devices and they've seemed reliable enough), I now
believe that we're going to change our backup procedures and primarily
transfer our HP3000 files to a second HP3000, using a CI-script and FTP.

For those of you that have been here, you know that AICS Las Cruces is really
just an eclectic collection of three houses and one garage, taking up half a
block, all LAN'ed together to form a "Network Neighborhood". There are (or
will be) HP3000's in all of the buildings. Because the houses are relatively
independent buildings, and because they are all fully alarmed, I feel that
they are essentially safe enough so that day-to-day backups can be
transferred from one machine to another without placing the backup at the
same risk level as the primary (i.e., a fire, which is by far and away the
most likely threat, would in all likelihood be confined to just one building,
even if it were catastrophic). Nonetheless, weekly backups to tape will still
be taken off-site.

In my few trials with this procedure so far, I'm quite impressed with the
possibilities. Backups are accomplished, even over a 10Mbps LAN, at about the
same speed as they are to DDS tape when hardware compression is used, but
more importantly, the procedure seems to be significantly more flexible.
Specific groups and accounts can be transferred/backupped only when
necessary, in a delta fashion, rather than constantly perform either nightly
full or partial backups, and yet have the information on the backup act as if
it were a fully loaded, full backup, loaded and ready for instant query.
Because of the inherent nature of the backup device -- which is now a second
computer, synchronized to the first -- restoration or switchover should be
nearly instantaneous.

Moreover, the "backup" HP3000 doesn't need to be large to make this work. In
fact, it needs only the very smallest CPU and user license. All it really
needs to have is sufficient disc space to backup all of the other HP3000s.

Wirt Atmar