mike@ymt.com (Michael Czeiszperger) (05/07/91)
Does anyone know the difference between the Macintosh Communications Toolbox, CTB, and MacTCP? From the documentation I have, both appear to handle remote sockets and ethernet type communications. -- Michael Czeiszperger | "I'm trying to teach a caveman to play scrabble mike@ymt.com | but the only word he is knows is 'uugh', and he Greenbrae, CA | doesn't know how to spell it!"
glenn@gla-aux.uucp (Glenn L. Austin) (05/08/91)
mike@ymt.com (Michael Czeiszperger) writes: >Does anyone know the difference between the Macintosh Communications >Toolbox, CTB, and MacTCP? From the documentation I have, both appear >to handle remote sockets and ethernet type communications. The Macintosh Communications Toolbox, or CTB, is a set of managers which allows developers to create applications and transport and display methods which do not have to know about each other. They talk to a common entity, the CTB, to permit transfer and display of information. MacTCP is an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol for AppleTalk. In order to use MacTCP, you need to know TCP/IP protocols and calling sequences (this is a simplified description, isn't it? ;-) You still need to provide a method of displaying the data, and if somebody does their own version of TCP/IP for the Macintosh, unless they follow the interface of MacTCP, you would need to write a special version of the software for the new TCP/IP implementation, and would also have to write code to handle any other connection, terminal, and file transfer methods you wished to support. The CTB (see above) permits developers to create applications which don't know or care about the transfer or display of information, or to create tools which provide additional or new connectivity or functionality to a CTB application. Incidentally, CTB is short for Communications ToolBox. -- =============================================================================== | Glenn L. Austin - Mac Wizard and Auto Racing Driver | | Usenet: glenn@gla-aux.uucp | | "Turn too soon, run out of room. Turn too late, much better fate." |
han@Apple.COM (Byron Han) (05/09/91)
In article <1991May6.181911.15129@ymt.com> mike@ymt.com (Michael Czeiszperger) writes: > >Does anyone know the difference between the Macintosh Communications >Toolbox, CTB, and MacTCP? From the documentation I have, both appear >to handle remote sockets and ethernet type communications. > Macintosh Communications Toolbox == CTB Specially, your question deals with the Connection Manager (part of CommToolbox) vs MacTCP. If you are writing an application that is to be transport independent (i.e. data connection over a variety of transport protocols like TCP/IP, ADSP, DECNet, SNA, X.25, etc) you should probably look into using the Connection Manager. If your application is only going to use MacTCP and indeed going to use specialized features of TCP/IP, you will use the MacTCP driver interface directly. Hope this helps. -- Byron Han, CommToolbox Emir The dream continues... Apple Computer, Inc. -------------------------------------------- 20525 Mariani Ave, MS: 35CP Internet: han@apple.COM Cupertino, CA 95014 AppleLink: HAN1 HAN1@applelink.apple.COM Phone: 1.408.974.6450 CompuServe: 72167,1664