enger%gburg.DECnet@BLUTO.SCC.COM ("GBURG::ENGER") (12/16/87)
Andy: Unfortunately we don't have the equipment to "get down" and muck around at the x.25 levels. Your questions will have to be answered by the implementers of the x.25 code that we run, Messrs. Melohn and Nowicki of Sun. It occurs to me that somehow, BBN must learn to work more closely with the researchers and vendors that use the facilities that the government is paying for. Somehow, BBN should provide more information on how its interfaces function, and what to expect from them. Two recent examples of misunderstanding come to mind. One is Bill Melohn's comment that he is now receiving x.25 control messages from the PSN that have never been seen before, and that his code is unprepared for. The other example is the comment made by Mike Karels that BSD unix makes use of the PSN going down time messages sent to him on 1822 (??). The BBN spokesperson with whom he was speaking indicated that the time values are not to be trusted, and probably shouldn't be used for anything usefull. I cannot claim to be knowledgable on these subjects, but they do seem to indicate that the (very) responsible people involved in interfacing a large portion of all machines used to connect to the DDN have not been provided with all the information that BBN could make available. If the government (and ultimately us, the taxpayers) are going to get our moneys worth out of all of this investment in equipment, trunking, and labor, it would seem that we must start to provide avenues of meaningfull technical exchange between the parties on each end of the PSN access circuits. It seems rediculous to waste engineering time "guessing" at how to engineer ones interface to the PSN. Best wishes, Bob Enger