[comp.mail.misc] How does BITNET do it?

dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) (11/10/89)

As is well recorded, UUCP systems swap mail and news (and other files)
using (among others) the g protocol. I somehow suspect that when two
bitnet sites talk to each other with modems they use something else.
Is there any documentation that explains the workings of this protocol.

BTW, by it's very nature, this is going to reaching the wrong audience
since I'm posting it to a Usenet newsgroup. If there is a bitnet
equivalent of comp.mail.misc (maybe handled by a LISTSERV somewhere)
where this would be appropriate, I'd be grateful if someone could
crosspost.

			Thanks in advance,
-- 
	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
						IHS	| +-+-+
	....... !harvard!xait!lakart!dg			+-+-+ |
AKA:	dg%lakart.uucp@xait.xerox.com			  +---+

dboyes@rice.edu (David Boyes) (11/13/89)

In article <745@lakart.UUCP> dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes:
>As is well recorded, UUCP systems swap mail and news (and other files)
>using (among others) the g protocol. I somehow suspect that when two
>bitnet sites talk to each other with modems they use something else.
>Is there any documentation that explains the workings of this protocol.

Due to the origins of BITNET in IBM-to-IBM connectivity
solutions, the predominant protocol on BITNET is IBM's
proprietary NJE protocol. MVS has native support for this
protocol, while sites running the various incarnations of VM use
a piece of software called RSCS (remote spooling communications
subsystem) to implement the protocol over synchronous leased
lines and (via some really nifty software done by Princeton) TCP
based networks.

3rd party companies such as Joiner Associates have licensed the
protocol from IBM and implemented it for VMS systems. Penn State
University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have done
low-cost implementations of the protocol for VMS and Unix
systems.

If you want to read the specifications of the protocol, IBM
publishes it as something like "Network Job Entry Protocol
Specifications and Data Streams" (I don't have the manual handy).
Like all IBM publications, it's available from your local IBM
sales representative or IBM office.

It's a fairly sophisticated protocol, given the hardware
restrictions it was designed to deal with. Implementing it is no
picnic. 

>	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
>AKA:	dg%lakart.uucp@xait.xerox.com			  +---+


-- 
David Boyes      "... no love was left; All Earth was but one thought - and
dboyes@rice.edu   that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang of
                  of famine fed upon all entrails - men Died and their bones
                  were tombless as their flesh ..."  - Lord Byron