TUCJRR@TUCC.TUCC.EDU (Joe Ragland) (12/23/87)
Someone was asking about the Fibronics TCP/IP for IBM MVS systems. We have no experience with this product but we have been using the ACC ACS-9310 and ACC's ACCES/MVS software for about a year now. At the time we needed TCP/IP for an MVS system we could not locate a supplier other than ACC. Investigation of the ACC product revealed that the software was actually the UCLA ACP (Arpanet Control Program) which was developed over many years under the direction of Bob Braden when he was at UCLA. ACC had at that time just added Ethernet code to replace the communications interface code in ACP. I believe that I am correct to state that the ACS-9310 is basically a hardware derivative of an earlier controller built for the DDN by ACC (mil-spec construction) which replaced a communications interface with an Ethernet interface. What all this meant to us at the time was that both the hardware and software had a 'track record' and some non-trivial user experience. The 9310 and ACCES has worked out rather well at TUCC. We are certainly pleased with ACC support. We installed the hardware with telephone consults from ACC and since have had one minor hardware problem for which ACC quickly supplied a replacement. ACC supports this product through their Columbia, Md. offices where they have a group actively working on ACCES support. Our major complaint with ACCES/MVS is that it is table driven and lacks a name resolver. Along with some other users I believe we have convinced ACC to up the priority for providing a name resolver to about the early April timeframe. ACCES/MVS provides line mode and 3270 telnet and suffers like all IBM implementations with telnet sessions between 3270s and other vendor support for full-screen ASCII software. Problems here are with IBM TCAM and VTAM. Getting transparent screen control through this IBM software from a remote ASCII host is impossible. 3270 to remote 3270 works great. TCAM line mode to remote ASCII line mode works well too and VTAM support as a 3270 application program to remote ASCII line mode support is fine. Also provided is FTP (no complaints) and SMTP. We use a mail program called UCLA MAIL and have integrated ACCES/MVS SMTP to the UCLA mailer. The mailer handles mail to/from ACCES SMTP, Bitnet, ARPAnet, etc. Conclusion: we're generally pleased with what the 9310 and ACCES/MVS provides for our IBM MVS users and are pleased with the support efforts of ACC. This list contribution is submitted via UCLA MAIL, ACCES/MVS, ACS-9310 and the ARPANET.