brad@gcc-milo.UUCP (Brad Parker) (10/13/86)
I know that Bill Croft at Stanford is working on this also, but I couldn't wait for another release (I was spoiled as a child) and did it myself. I have mods to the KFPS UDP code to support RTMP, NBP and ZIP and do not require any modifications to the "masterbridge" code (atis) running on the vax. Everything is implemented in the bridge and it seems to work ok. Routing on the appletalk is accomplished via the RTMP tables in the bridge and should not interfere with the existing ethernet routing code. This allows me to connect my KFPS to my existing Hayes Interbridge network and use the laserwrite from the VAX (yea!) as well as bring up several mac/unix servers. Intersting to note, I had some small hacks running in the atis code originally, but they all lacked routing. Placing everything in the bridge and following apple's specs makes all the bridges happy. If anyone would like the files/diffs, please mail to me. The only file which changes is gw.c. I added a file art.c which contains the routing/maintainance code. -- J Bradford Parker General Computer (HyperDrive Beach, 3rd Cabana) harvard!gcc-milo!brad Good Sex is easier than a good slow roll. ("Left Stick! Right Rudder!...")
croft@SAFE.STANFORD.EDU (Bill Croft) (10/14/86)
The new Stanford code not only supports NBP, ZIP, and RTMP; it has the following new features: An improved scheme for address management of MacIP-family programs (telnet, ftp, tftp, etc.) This scheme eliminates the need for private hand taylored 'custom' files on the Mac disks and avoids assigning separate IP net or subnet numbers for the appletalk cable segments. Elimination of the need for a 'masterbridge'. Instead of the gateways having to ask a masterbridge for every new route, each gateway carries a full appletalk routing table that is updated dynamically amongst all the kboxes in your net. A subset of these boxes (typically one or two) are declared 'core' gateways so that each kbox does not have to exchange routes with every other kbox in the net (an N**2 problem). The kboxes get their initial routing tables (containing the location of other kboxes) and other configuration information from an 'AppleTalk Administrator' host, running on one (or more) UNIX host. After this time, the kboxes make each other aware of other bridges (such as the Hayes) dynamically, as they are plugged into AppleTalk segments. The ATIS code is considerably simplfied so that each appletalk- on-ethernet host does not have to carry a private 'masterbridge' routing table. Instead, the ether hosts send their appletalk packets to 'ABRIDGE', the nearest kbox. The ATIS package caches the most recently used AppleTalk to ethernet address translation so that subsequent packets are sent directly to the applicable ether host or kbox. A number of other reorganization mods have been applied to the gateway code to make it faster and more generalized. We anticipate releasing this new gateway code via FTP and Kinetics users group within the month. Another group on campus will at the same time release the new C-based version of MacIP. --Bill Croft, Stanford