crum@fcom.utah.edu (Gary Crum) (01/05/91)
Have you all heard about Liaison 3.0 (by Farallon, a.k.a. "PhoneNET Liaison 3.0 Software Router)? It does AppleTalk routing "in the background" on Macintosh computers. It seems like Liaison offers a natural functionality -- something I was hoping would be implemented in Macintosh system software, or at least in A/UX. Routing in the background on any Macintosh adds a lot of flexibility, possibly at the expense of reliability. Has anyone used it? I called Farallon and was told that a hardware router, such as a FastPath-4 or Gatorbox (probably not Ether*Route or EtherGate or Cisco -- comments?), is still required in order for MacTCP applications (like NCSA Telnet) for IP communication between Macs on LocalTalk and UNIX systems on ethernet. I wonder if this needed function could be done by a UNIX system by a process using something like the BSD ethernet driver or NIT of SunOS or DLI of Ultrix. This topic is somewhat related to the recent discussion of MacTCP on LocalTalk systems. Gary