mshiels@watmath.waterloo.EDU ("Michael A. Shiels") (04/04/88)
Is anyone interested in trying to work on a standard to provide TELNET/FTP connections use NETBIOS to provide the link. Ie the TCP/IP runs on a dedicated server/gateway and the client programs just use NETBIOS to talk to the server??
jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (04/04/88)
This has been done by a couple of people, but I believe what was done was to encapsulate IP in NETBIOS packets. You still run the IP & TCP on the PC, and this buys you the freedom to use any IP-based protocol. A second approach is to run something else (not TCP/IP) from the PC to a translating gateway which converts it to TCP/IP (the 'something else' has to be pretty elaborate if it is going to provide full Telnet & FTP). MICOM-Interlan's Novell server product works like this, but I don't know if it uses NETBIOS calls, or Novell-private calls. I presume you like this because the LAN program that provides the NETBIOS is a TSR, and you can always redirect LPT, regardless of foreground programs. A third approach (the one I like best) is to let a PC-based TCP/IP share the network card with other LAN software. The work required is relatively simple, and it functions on any LAN that has an IP encapsulation defined, and routers or bridges available. This doesn't solve your LPT redirection problem unless the TCP/IP has been moved into a DOS TSR (like our v2.0). Stanford said they were working on this, too, but I haven't heard anything in a couple of months. Speaking of this, I have been working on a revised draft of our Packet Driver specification (I posted a version last fall). The new draft is compatible, with a few more error codes defined. Most of the work has gone into improving the explanations and specifying more detail. Should I re-post it when we're finished, or is anonymous FTP enough? James VanBokkelen FTP Software Inc.
sutantha@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Suphachai Sutanthavibul) (04/09/88)
I am working on an IP-router for PC LAN and using NEBIOS datagram as a communication channel between the router and client-PCs. Now we have IP-Gateway up and BETA running. Within the IP-gateway module itself we integrate SMTP-server which acts as a central post office for the entrie PC user community. PC users can read/send their messages from a front Unix-alike SMTP-client program. Also we have CMU-Telnet program up and running incorporate with the IP-gateway. There is, theoretically, no limited number of sessions that IP-gateway can support. I expect any 286-PC should be able to support at least 20-sessions. (Actually the IP-gateway itself doesn't have to know any about 'session' at all, what it does is to forward ip-packets as fast as it can. And my ip-gateway does that.). Certainly you need a dedicated PC to be an ip-gateway, but it seems to be quite wastefull. So in an IBM PC LAN environment there is a need for some file-servers, as one of the design goal our ip-gateway can run concurrently with an IBM PC file-server. Next we may develop LPR-user and certainly FTP-user. Modifing CMU-based LPR is seemed to be relative simple and that is what I am doing now. I am looking forward to hear any comments from you.