krauskpf@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (08/26/88)
I can speak for NCSA - Greg is correct. Here is the text of a note posted some months ago when we were planning the use of zones in NCSA Telnet v2.2: > > Once we get a zone,network,node address for the FastPath, NCSA Telnet can > use any interconnection to get to a FastPath. The problem comes when we > try to find a FastPath to use. > > How can NCSA Telnet find the FastPath? > > 1. A local-zone NBP query. This can cross bridges, but not zones. NBP is > the best way to do this lookup. Currently supported for the KIP > gateway only. Kinetics "combined" gateway does not support NBP. > Kinetics has suggested that NBP may be a part of future gateway > software but they have not announced that it will be so. > > 2. An all-zone NBP query. Do you really want this type of broadcast query > to go to all zones? We currently do not support this. > > 3. A DDP broadcast on the local network with an encapsulated ARP packet > (this being an ARPANET type of ARP). Currently supported for Kinetics' > gateway software. DDP broadcasts do not cross bridges, so this cannot > find a FastPath across a bridge. We would rather use NBP. > > I hope this explains what does and doesn't work. Since then, we have compromised. The zone= parameter specifies that the NBP query should be targeted at a SPECIFIC zone name. An earlier note on this list confirmed that this works four zones away. As noted above, this cannot help users of the old Kinetics combined gateway code. NBP is required for zone traversal, so KIP or later releases of Kinetics software have to be used in the FastPath. Tim Krauskopf timk@ncsa.uiuc.edu (ARPA) National Center for Supercomputing Applications 14013@ncsavmsa (BITNET)
kenw@noah.arc.CDN (Ken Wallewein) (08/26/88)
>... >> gateway only. Kinetics "combined" gateway does not support NBP. >> Kinetics has suggested that NBP may be a part of future gateway >> software but they have not announced that it will be so. >... >Since then, we have compromised. The zone= parameter specifies that the >NBP query should be targeted at a SPECIFIC zone name. An earlier note >on this list confirmed that this works four zones away. As noted >above, this cannot help users of the old Kinetics combined gateway code. >... _Old_ combined gateway code? You mean there's _new_ combined gateway code? Which brings up a good point. I am constantly frustrated by messages about KIP and CAP doing this or that or the other, and the occasional reference to what they support that Kinetics stuff doesn't, or vice versa. Would some kind knowledgeable person please post a summary of relative capabilities? We have two Kinetics Fastpaths; one currently has KIP (atgw.srec, I think), the other Kinetics' combgw.srec. As far as I can see, the KIP stuff has to go away - it just can't do the job. Am I mistaken? The person who set up the KIP stuff, before I got here, said it was 'way better than the Kinetics stuff... but as far as I can see, the rest was hand-waving, at least for our purposes. As far as I know, KIP/CAP doesn't support Ethertalk or AFP, just TCP/IP- encapsulated Appletalk. So how am I going to use my VAX/VMS system as a Pacer-based Appletalk file and print server using KIP/CAP? Sure, it's got TCP/IP. We talk to it with NCSA Telnet all the time. And sure, we have Unix boxes here, but we're not planning to use them for Macintosh file service - yet. Surely I'm not the only one burdened with this puzzlement...? /kenw A L B E R T A Ken Wallewein R E S E A R C H kenw@noah.arc.cdn C O U N C I L