dlee@sri-spam.istc.sri.com (Danny Lee) (05/03/88)
I would like to find out what long-haul PTP networking software/hardware products are available for HP 9000/300 series workstations. The product should interface to the internetwork layer (4.2 BSD) in the kernel. Specifically, I am looking for products supporting industry-standard synchronous protocols such as HDLC, XNS, or X.25 with the appropriate address resolution and transparency mechanisms to support ARPA services. HP sells X.25 PAD's, but that is something which I'm not really interested in. What we have in mind is to be able to connect HP workstations in a point-to-point fashion without intervening DCE equipment other than modems. Embedding X.25 DCE or DTE software in the HP may also acceptable; although we prefer this to be an option rather than the standard operating mode. As for the hardware issue, any sync, with async capability (USART), serial processor capable of working within the HP-DIO bus or through a VME bus would be fine. I realize HP sells serial hardware, but I'm looking for alternative third-party vendor products. Ideally, I would like to have public domain software that I can modify for my own purpose. However, realizing that HP's are basically closed systems when compared to Sun's, there probably is not much available. I welcome invitations from other vendors. (You never know; there might be a lucrative government contract behind this query :-) If such a product is not available, it looks like I will have to roll my own software -- a task which appears will cause more pain than pleasure. UNIX dialup serial ports and the like are inappropriate for our needs, unless someone has intelligently worked out a demand-driven scheme of circuit switched IP on top of the dialup ports. In addition, has anyone written device drivers for these machines? Examples would be very helpful. While I am somewhat familiar with tty and network device drivers on 4.2 based machines, HP 9000/300's appear to be almost unencroachable without source. The documentation also leaves much to be desired. Any pointers to documentation detailing the workstation bus and device driver architecture is also appreciated. Thanks in advance for any information you can provide. Sincerely, Danny Lee SRI International Internet: dlee@spam.istc.sri.com or dlee@sri-lewis.arpa Telephone: (415) 859-5350