morrison@cs.uiuc.edu (Vance Morrison) (02/08/91)
Call for Beta-Testers for PCBridge
I have just completed the next version (2.2) of PCRoute and now need
beta testers to help exercise the new features.
For those who don't know PCroute is a simple but very useful piece of
software that can convert a IBM-PC with networking cards into an IP
router. Thus it is possible to assemble for under $1000 a router that
has performance like commercial routers costing $5000 or more.
Since Version 2.0, I have not had the equipment or time to do very
much with PCroute. Nevertheless, I was able to add some things
that were needed and relatively easy to do. In particular
Support for the WD8003EBT and WD8013EBT cards.
These cards have more buffer memory, so they will not
exhibit the problem with NFS that can be a problem with
the WD8003E card. Also the WD8013 is a 16 bit card and
should speed up packet forwarding 2-4 times over the
WD8003E card.
Packet Driver Support
Packet drivers allow PCroute to use a variety of ethernet
boards besides the WD800X family. Performance is not as
good, but if you are on a tight budget and have old ethernet
cards handy, it is likely you can make PCroute run with
what you have.
New serial code.
Although the code has changed significantly, the outside
effects are minimal at his point. Basically the only new
features is the ability to handle > 2 serial interfaces
and the ability to do CTS-RTS hardware flow control (useful
if you are using smart modems that do compression). This
new code also is designed to make adding PPP, compression
or synchronous support easy.
The beta-test software is available on accuvax.nwu.edu (129.105.49.1)
in the directory pub/pcroute/exp. The files are called
pcroute2.2b.tar.Z and pcroute2.2b.src.tar.Z and are compressed TAR
archives. Please remember this is BETA test code. It should work,
but may not. If you are inexperienced in networking or PCroute,
you may want to use the old version or wait a couple of weeks until
we have more confidence that everything works as it should.
If you are going to beta-test this software please let me know. Also
I am interested in any feedback on the software as well as the documentation.
So don't be shy. Please send your feedback to morrison@accuvax.nwu.edu.
I wanted to add support for a 56K synchronous board, but I have neither
the hardware or the information needed to write the code. If anyone
out there wants this capability badly enough to invest a small amount
of hardware/money I could probably write it in about 1 month.
Vance Morrison