[comp.protocols.appletalk] System 7, Telnet, GatorBox

chris@CAYMAN.COM (Chris North) (06/14/91)

>>     Cayman says they'll fix this "by the end of the summer".  I'm sorry,
>>I need the fix yesterday, not in a few months.  Hmmm, that FastPath 5 is
>>looking pretty good.
>>     Cayman had a good lead over Shiva in the technical support department.
>>But if Cayman won't fix this soon, they're going to fall behind, and people
>>like me who buy GatorBoxes because of their good support won't have a reason
>>to buy a GatorBox any more.
>>     Come on, Cayman; get with with the program.

Hi Brian,

  I just wanted to respond to your message to clear up what I
think was just a misunderstanding. This telnet/Sys7 problem *is* 
a serious problem because obviously it prevents our customers 
from using the software that we ship with the GatorBox. 
Also, even though it is most likely an Apple bug, we realize
that we (Cayman) can respond faster than Apple.  
  The nature of this problem was determined only yesterday.  
Since we're waiting for a response from Apple and
since our engineering group hasn't completely evaluated the 
problem (as well as a potential fix), it would have been misleading 
to offer you a more definite time frame for a fix. 

  Again I want to stress to you that this is a serious issue and
that we will address it as soon as we can. I appreciate your patience 
and please feel free to contact me with any further questions or
problems that you may have.

  Anyone else on this mailing list who has encountered this problem
should send their email address to me so that I can notify you 
when we resolve the problem.


-chris

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
  Chris North                      Internet:chris@cayman.com  
  Cayman Systems                   Phone: 617-494-1999   FAX:   617-494-5167
  26 Landsdowne Street  Cambridge MA  02139    AppleLink:  CAYMAN.TECH     

a2mp@PSUORADM.CC.PDX.EDU (Michael Perrone) (06/14/91)

While I applaud cayman for their dedication to customer service, I must
wonder why, brian, you must use NCSA Telnet 2.3? It's easy enough to
order a copy of MacTCP (and though MacTCP needs to be rev'd for system
7, it will work with system 7 if you have VM turned off, and keep
it in the root level of system folder with an alias in the control
panels folder) and telnet 2.4b11 has many bug fixes from the 2.3 version.
Not only that, but MacTCP has much greater throughput than the
'builtin' TCP/IP protocol stack implementation in 2.3.

As a bonus, you can use a number of other programs, many PD or shareware
that require MacTCP, and you can use them concurrently. You can even
run 2 copies of telnet at the same time (try that with 2.3 and you crash).


````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Michael Perrone                      PSU Computing Services
a2mp@psuoradm.cc.pdx.edu             (503) 725-3112

-- 

gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/14/91)

In article <9106131900.AA06617@midway.cayman.com> 
           chris@CAYMAN.COM (Chris North) writes:
>   [discussion of Telnet 2.3 having problems with GatorBoxes
>    under system 7 due to whatever the cause was...]
> 
>   Again I want to stress to you that this is a serious issue and
> that we will address it as soon as we can. I appreciate your patience 
> and please feel free to contact me with any further questions or
> problems that you may have.
> 
>   Anyone else on this mailing list who has encountered this problem
> should send their email address to me so that I can notify you 
> when we resolve the problem.

In a sense we've encountered this problem here, but we solve it by simply  
switching to the newer version of NCSA Telnet which works with MacTCP.  While  
the licensing for MacTCP is always an interesting discussion (every time I ask  
for "the facts" I get ten different answers), I believe one thing you (Cayman)  
could do is just license MacTCP from Apple so you can distribute it with your  
products.  Then people who need NCSA Telnet could just use the most recent  
version instead of an older, bugger, dumber version of that program.

There are so many products using MacTCP that it's really nice to have it around  
anyway.
 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Garance Alistair Drosehn   = gad@rpi.edu  or  gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer                       (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;  Troy NY  USA

brian@natinst.com (Brian H. Powell) (06/14/91)

chris@CAYMAN.COM (Chris North) writes:
>   I just wanted to respond to your message to clear up what I
> think was just a misunderstanding. This telnet/Sys7 problem *is* 
> a serious problem because obviously it prevents our customers 
> from using the software that we ship with the GatorBox. 
> Also, even though it is most likely an Apple bug, we realize
> that we (Cayman) can respond faster than Apple.  

     Thank you, Chris.  I apologize for getting upset with Cayman; it's just
that the initial report from Cayman seemed to say that I wouldn't be able
to get this fixed anytime soon.  Now, it appears that Cayman is really
hopping on this one.  (Evidence that Cayman's support really is good.)

Brian

brian@natinst.com (Brian H. Powell) (06/14/91)

a2mp@PSUORADM.CC.PDX.EDU (Michael Perrone) writes:
> I must
> wonder why, brian, you must use NCSA Telnet 2.3? It's easy enough to
> order a copy of MacTCP (and though MacTCP needs to be rev'd for system
> 7, it will work with system 7 if you have VM turned off, and keep
> it in the root level of system folder with an alias in the control
> panels folder) and telnet 2.4b11 has many bug fixes from the 2.3 version.
> Not only that, but MacTCP has much greater throughput than the
> 'builtin' TCP/IP protocol stack implementation in 2.3.

     Well, it's not a matter of $100 for a single copy of MacTCP.  It's a
matter of $2500 for a site license for MacTCP.  As someone else has pointed
out on this list, Cayman has a license to distribute MacTCP, and the license
seems to cover anyone sitting behind a GatorBox.  (I.e., almost a site
license, for free.)
     Granted, MacTCP is pretty nifty; we've got a few single-user licenses
already.  And if our only choice was to use MacTCP, we'd have spent the
$2500.  But I didn't think that was our only choice.  Still don't.

gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/15/91)

In article <24495@natinst.natinst.com> 
           brian@natinst.com (Brian H. Powell) writes:
> a2mp@PSUORADM.CC.PDX.EDU (Michael Perrone) writes:
> > I must
> > wonder why, brian, you must use NCSA Telnet 2.3? It's easy enough to
> > order a copy of MacTCP (and though MacTCP needs to be rev'd for system
> > 7, it will work with system 7 if you have VM turned off, and keep
> > it in the root level of system folder with an alias in the control
> > panels folder) and telnet 2.4b11 has many bug fixes from the 2.3 version.
> > Not only that, but MacTCP has much greater throughput than the
> > 'builtin' TCP/IP protocol stack implementation in 2.3.
> 
>      Well, it's not a matter of $100 for a single copy of MacTCP.  It's a
> matter of $2500 for a site license for MacTCP.  As someone else has pointed
> out on this list, Cayman has a license to distribute MacTCP, and the license
> seems to cover anyone sitting behind a GatorBox.  (I.e., almost a site
> license, for free.)

Um, I suspect that the "someone else" you are refering to was me, because I  
haven't seen articles from anyone else talking about Cayman and a license for  
distributing MacTCP.

If you are refering to me, you misunderstood what I said.  I did not say that  
Cayman *has* a license to distribute MacTCP (I don't know if they have one or  
not), but that I believe they could get one.  By doing that they could  
effectively solve the problem in very short order by distributing MacTCP to  
their customers.  It requires that they spend some $$$ for the license, but  
IMHO their customers would be much better off with MacTCP and the newest  
version of NCSA Telnet than they would be with a Gatorbox fix and the much  
older version of NCSA Telnet.

Another thing you might want to check out is getting a site license for  
Versaterm.  I have no idea how much that would cost, but you'd end up with  
MacTCP for everyone as well as the capabilities of Versaterm.  Presumably there  
are other products where you could get a site license and get MacTCP as part of  
the other product.
 -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Garance Alistair Drosehn   = gad@rpi.edu  or  gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer                       (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;  Troy NY  USA

chris@CAYMAN.COM (Chris North) (06/18/91)

>>If you are refering to me,you misunderstood what I said. I did not say that  
>>Cayman *has* a license to distribute MacTCP(I don't know if they have one or
>>not), but that I believe they could get one.  By doing that they could  
>>effectively solve the problem in very short order by distributing MacTCP to  
>>their customers.  It requires that they spend some $$$ for the license, but  
>>IMHO their customers would be much better off with MacTCP and the newest  
>>version of NCSA Telnet than they would be with a Gatorbox fix and the much  
>>older version of NCSA Telnet.


For the record, Cayman does license MacTCP and we have offered this as
an alternative for any of our customers experiencing this problem.

-chris

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
  Chris North                      Internet:chris@cayman.com  
  Cayman Systems                   Phone: 617-494-1999   FAX:   617-494-5167
  26 Landsdowne Street  Cambridge MA  02139    AppleLink:  CAYMAN.TECH     

JRowe@exua.exeter.ac.uk (John Rowe) (06/20/91)

In article <r!9ktz=@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) 
writes:

>    While the licensing for MacTCP is always an interesting discussion
> (every time I ask for "the facts" I get ten different answers), I
> believe one thing you (Cayman) could do is just license MacTCP from
> Apple so you can distribute it with your products. There are so many
> products using MacTCP that it's really nice to have it around anyway.

 Apple's handling of MacTCP seems to me to be a real **** up. If I ask
my local AppleCentre about it I can't get it. If I ring Apple UK they
don't know anything about it and someone digs up a US phone number.
Meanwhile it's legally available on anonymous ftp from
zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu (you read it here folks) together with a notice
saying you can only use it with one (free) product. 

 These must be the same people who decided athena could put crypt() on
ftp provided there was a notice asking us not to use it as it would
violate US national security :-)

John