ercm20@castle.ed.ac.uk (Sam Wilson) (08/13/90)
Having seen all the talk about CAP and KIP and such recently (and having
received such a wonderful response to my last question!) I'm prompted
to ask the following (first some background):
We want to unify Macs with the rest of our computing kit, a mixture
of things including, particularly, DOS and Unix machines. We have an
extensive and expanding Ethernet. We also have a few LocalTalks
which are currently mostly isolated and for reasons of cost we don't
want to have to put Pluses on the Ethernet.
We would like to give Mac users (on both Ethernet and LocalTalk)
access to: mail facilities (subject of my last enquiry - we're
digesting the responses); file servers (AFP preferably - we can do
this with Apples, PC-types running 3+Open either on LocalTalk or on
Ethernet, or Unix boxes, probably Suns, running IPT's uShare); file
transfer (probably via NCSA Telnet's ftp listener); and terminal
access (NCSA Telnet again).
Questions:
1) (Almost rhetorical) Am I right in thinking that almost any of the
available LocalTalk to Ethernet boxes (Shiva EtherGate,
Shiva/Novell/Kinetics FP4, Webster Multigate, Cayman GatorBox) will
do the EtherTalk to LocalTalk bridging function? (Without wrapping
AppleTalk packets up in IP or whatever a la KIP/CAP or GatorShare.)
2) (The important one) Do any of these boxes support IP-over-Local-Talk
(however NCSA Telnet does it, with or without MacTCP) to pure IP on
the Ethernet (i.e. the way any standard ethernetted IP host would do
it) *simultaneously* with the AppleTalk bridging.
The sort of scenario I have in mind is a LocalTalk connected with an
Ethernet. On the LocalTalk is plain Mac Plus which has an AppleShare
volume mounted. This volume is served from a 3Com 3+Open fileserver
talking AppleTalk/EtherTalk on the ethernet. The Mac Plus has a Telnet
session open to a Unix host on the Ethernet which has called back with
an FTP transfer to the volume mounted on the 3Com server... err, does
that make sense? The layout would be something like:
------ ------
| 3Com | | Unix |
------ ------
| |
============================= Ethernet
|
--------
|'bridge'|
--------
|
/ \
...-- ------ --... LocalTalk
\ /
|
------
| Mac+ |
------
I'll say that I've read a FastPath 4 manual (Revision A, July 21 1988,
Initial release) and whilst it seems to say that it can do (both) the
things I want I'm not exactly confident that I've read it aright, nor
that it will do them at the same time.
All information, including corrections to misconceptions, gratefully
received!
Sam Wilson
Network Services, Edinburgh University Computing Service, Scotland, UK