HANK@BARILVM.BITNET (Hank Nussbacher) (03/10/88)
The Pc/Ip Scorecard
revision 3: 03/10/88
---------------------
We are the process of trying to decide which Pc/Ip
implementation would be the best. After asking around the
overwhelming reply I have received has been, "If you ever find a
comparison study, I would love to see it too". That is why I have
decided to create the Pc/Ip Scorecard.
This scorecard will be like a PC Magazine analysis of of hard
disks or printers. But I need help in filling in the boxes. So,
here is what the scorecard looks like. Please send me your replies
and I will integrate all answers and comments and publish the
finalized scorecard in the weeks to come.
All Pc/Ip implementations support IP, TCP, FTP and Telnet. The
question then is to divide other IP protocols into categories of
"must have" to "nice to have but not necessary".
|Revision 3: Any implementation that has not had any sort of comment
| made about it over the past 3 weeks has been removed.
| There are still plenty of gaps in the ScoreCard. Please
| help out.
This first table is called "Must Have".
Vendor TFTP POP ICMP SMTP VT- 3270 FTP ARP UDP max cost
100 FTP ($)
-----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
Beame | Yes| No | Yes| No | | No | | Yes| Yes| | |
CMU | Yes| No | Yes| No | | No | No | Yes| Yes| | 0|
Excelan | No | No | Yes| No | Yes| No | Yes| Yes| Yes| 42k| 250|
FTP | Yes| No | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes|160k| 400|
IBM | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| | Yes| | Yes| Yes| | |
KA9Q | No | No | Yes| Yes| No | No | Yes| Yes| Yes| | 0|
MIT | Yes| | Yes| | | | No | Yes| Yes| | 50|
NCSA | No | No | Yes| No | | No | | No | No | 30k| 0|
Stanford | No | Yes| Yes| Yes| | No | | Yes| Yes| 50k| 100|
SUN | No | Yes| Yes| Yes| | Yes| | Yes| Yes| | 300|
UB | | | Yes| | | | | Yes| Yes| | |
Wollongong | Yes| No | | | | | | | | 25k| 395|
The "max FTP" column is for the fastest FTP to a Pc (*not* from)
seen by a user (in Kb/sec). It makes no difference in this table
which machine was at the other end (obviously the faster the machine
at the other end - the better).
The following table lists the most popular Ethernet cards
available and whether the Pc/Ip implementation works with the stated
card.
Vendor 3com Excelan Interlan UB WD 3Com UB NIC
3C501 EXOS205 NI5010 2273A 8003 3C523 PS/2
-----------+-----+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+------+
Beame | Yes | No | No | No | | | |
CMU | Yes | No | Yes | No | | | |
Excelan | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
FTP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
IBM | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
KA9Q | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
MIT | Yes | No | Yes | No | | | |
NCSA | Yes | No | No | No | | | |
Stanford | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
Sun | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | | | |
UB | | | | | | | |
Wollongong | Yes | | | | | | |
This table is called the "Nice to Have" table. The functions
listed here are not mandatory but are useful in a Tcp/Ip
environment:
Vendor name time fing whoi NFS gate srce Net ping SLIP
srvr way code BIOS
-----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
Beame | Yes| Yes| Yes| No | | | | | Yes| No | | |
CMU | Yes| Yes| Yes| No | No | No | Yes| | Yes| Yes| | |
Excelan | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes| No | No | | |
FTP | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| No | Yes| No | No | Yes| Yes| | |
IBM | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| No | Yes| | | Yes| No | | |
KA9Q | | | | | | | Yes| | No | Yes| | |
MIT | No | | Yes| | | | Yes| | Yes| | | |
NCSA | Yes| No | No | No | | | Yes| | Yes| No | | |
Stanford | No | Yes| Yes| Yes| No | No | No | | Yes| No | | |
Sun | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| | | | Yes| Yes| | |
UB | | | | | | | | | Yes| | | |
Wollongong | | | | | | | | | | | | |
FTP Software is OEMed to BICC ISOLAN, Fibronics, Proteon, cisco, Scope,
Spider Systems and Micom-Interlan.clements@lf-server-2.BBN.COM (Bob Clements) (03/11/88)
In article <8803100323.aa24343@Louie.UDEL.EDU> HANK@BARILVM.BITNET (Hank Nussbacher) writes:
< The Pc/Ip Scorecard
< revision 3: 03/10/88
...
<Vendor name time fing whoi NFS gate srce Net ping SLIP
< srvr way code BIOS
<-----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
<KA9Q | | | | | | | Yes| | No | Yes| | |
^^^
Yes
This was added a couple months ago. I sent Hank a msg to this effect, but
I guess it didn't reach him.
/Rcc
clements@bbn.comjerry@oliveb.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (03/12/88)
Many of the fields such as "ftp", "ping", etc. can have four possible answers, NO, CLIENT, SERVER, and YES. For example, many of the packages support FTP as a client but don't support a server. This can be an important distinction. The alternative is to assume a yes means a client and have separate fields for the various servers.
ROMKEY@xx.lcs.mit.EDU (John Romkey) (03/13/88)
Here are some comments on the PC/IP scorecard revision 3.0. I think this is a very useful thing to finally have done, and I would've sent in some comments before this but I've been pretty busy lately so I haven't had time till now. When the scorecard is fairly complete you might want to try getting it in ConneXions, the TCP/IP Interoperability Newsletter. Talk to Ole Jacobsen (ole@csli.stanford.edu) about that. > All Pc/Ip implementations support IP, TCP, FTP and Telnet. No, they don't, and now there's a column for FTP in the chart, so I think this text needs to be changed slightly. >Vendor TFTP POP ICMP SMTP VT- 3270 FTP ARP UDP max cost > 100 FTP ($) >-----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ >MIT | Yes| | Yes| | | | No | Yes| Yes| | 50| NO NO NO NO 5kbytes/sec > The "max FTP" column is for the fastest FTP to a Pc (*not* from) >seen by a user (in Kb/sec). Two things should be clarified here. "Kb/sec" is the usual notation for "kilobits per second" while "KB/sec" is the usual notation for "kilobytes per second". I read the text as saying kilobits per second, but I think some of the numbers written there are really kilobytes. When I'm afraid that I'll be ambiguous, I usually write it as "KBytes/sec" or "Kbits/sec". Also, FTP to what? Floppy disk, hard disk, RAMdisk or the NUL device? I suggest the NUL device. That removes the disk performance as a variable affecting the speed. The two other biggest variables are the network card and the processor speed (for instance, a PC/XT's going to be a lot slower than a 386 for a several reasons due to the speed difference). This really is important for the speed column to have any meaning. To gauge raw TCP throughput, FTP to the NUL device is one good way, but the best way is to take two of the TCP's on roughly the same configuration machines and have one of them send data over a TCP connection to the other as fast as it can and measure the transfer rate. The receiver just throws the data away when it receives it. This gets the filesystem out of the way, too, and gives a better idea of raw TCP throughput. Having the FTP number there does seem to be a good idea, too, though, since it will be a lot closer to what users will really see. Also, all TCP/IP implementations for ethernet should support ARP. If one doesn't, it's next to useless since it won't be able to talk properly to other hosts on the network. And ICMP is another must for proper internetwork operation - no ICMP and you can't process ICMP redirects and do proper routing. >Vendor 3com Excelan Interlan UB WD 3Com UB NIC > 3C501 EXOS205 NI5010 2273A 8003 3C523 PS/2 >-----------+-----+--------+--------+-----+-----+-----+------+ >MIT | Yes | No | Yes | No | | | | NO NO NO There are other network interfaces people are probably interested in, too, especially IBM Token Ring. There are also the Proteon p1340 and p1344 IEEE 802.5 (ie: IBM) token ring cards and ProNET-10 p1300 board. You might want to create a category of additional network interfaces. If you do I'd move SLIP there. Some people might also be interested in SLIP. Also boards like the Micom-Interlan NI5210 and the 3COM 3C503. Some people like StarLAN too. Micom-Interlan has a StarLAN version of the NI5210; Western Digital has one of the WD8003. AT&T has a StarLAN only board. Another point is that some implementations have very good interoperability with proprietary LAN systems like 3COM 3+, Novell NetWare, Banyan Vines or Univation Lifenet. There should be some way to indicate what software has such interoperability features. >Vendor name time fing whoi NFS gate srce Net ping SLIP > srvr way code BIOS >-----------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ >MIT | No | | Yes| | | | Yes| | Yes| | | | YES YES YES NO NO NO NO Questions: what does 'gateway' mean? Does it mean that the software can function as an IP router? If so, FTP Software's PC/TCP needs a 'no' there. If it means that the software will work with IP routers, then MIT's needs a 'yes'. This should be clarified in the discussion. Also, it should be clear whether 'name srvr' means IEN 116 or Domain or both. There's a very big difference, and for a TCP/IP implementation to be useful on the Internet, it almost has to support the domain name protocol. But it doesn't have to in order to be useful on an isolated LAN. On source code, does this mean 'free' or 'included' with the binaries, or does it indicate whether or not the source code is available at all? For instance, FTP Software's entry says NO. But FTP is willing to sell source, it's just expensive. There's a big difference between expensive and not-at-all. Maybe there should be three indications here: "inc" (included), "$" (more money), "no" (not at all). A lot of people will probably also be interested in knowing whether a package has any Berkeley extensions (like rlogin, rexec, rsh, rcp) and whether it supports servers (FTP, SMTP and TFTP are common). A useful appendix to this scorechart would be a list of sources of implementations; how to contact them (US Mail, email, phone, telex, fax) or get the code over the net (anonymous FTP or Bitnet LISTSERV). A list of network hardware vendors and contact methods would also be useful. Between all of us on this list we ought to come up with a complete one. To seed things off, to get MIT PC/IP, contact: MIT Microcomputer Center Room 11-209 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 telephone: (617) 253-6325 And FTP Software is: FTP Software, Inc. PO Box 150 Kendall Square Branch Boston, MA 02142 phone: (617) 868-4878 telex: 981970 fax: (617) 864-3943 email: info@FTP.COM - john romkey ...harvard!spdcc!kaos!romkey romkey@kaos.uucp romkey@xx.lcs.mit.edu -------