TCP/IP Networking -- how do you make it work?

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <497 at litle.litle.com> tom at litle.litle.com (tom hampton) writes:

| 1) Who out there is doing heterogeneous networking using
|    Unix and other TCP/IP implemenations?

  We do it at work. We have Sun[234], Apollo, Cray, Convex, Stardent,
DG, HP, SCO {Xenix,UNIX,ODT}, Ultrix. All this shares an ethernet which
also has packets for Chaosnet and DECnet as well as TCP/IP. There are
printers, too, and a few Macs. This comes to about 2k ports.
| 
| 2) Is anyone having success doing networking on 386's?  If so, whose
|    TCP/IP package are you using on the 386?

  Other than having problems with the original TCP for Xenix/386, no
problems. I've also run Excelan's package for Xenix both 286 and 386,
and that runs nicely. I really like having uucp over TCP, since it
allows news to run without diddling with NNTP (which I never got running
on Xenix).
| 
| 3) Do you have any specific advice on how we get this going faster?  For
|    example, should we have a LAN analyzer (which one?) should we stick 
|    with a certain box for development (Sun?)

  If you're having trouble you should just run a few devices on a "tiny
net" to see what doesn't work. Turn off all the stuff which creates net
noise, like whod and the date and time check.
| 
| 4) Does anyone recommend building a TCP/IP module for general purpose
|    use -- something that hides some of the complexity of the Berkely
|    socket interface?

  But sockets hide the complexity of streams ;-) Seriously, no, not on
your life.
| 
| 5) Do people hire consultants to do this sort of work??  Do you 
|    recommend anyone in particular?

  We did the main net with in-house people who do it for a living, but
all the 386 stuff was put in by hackers, some of whom are not
programmers at all, just bizarre physicists and mechanical engineers.
Hell, it's so simple a manger could do it.

  Warning: we have been using virtually all SCO variants. We did have
ISC up for a while until it bit us once too often on big disks, and we
have one versions of V.4 beta in which works, and two more in the mail
(one will only do a limited number of ethernet cards at the moment).
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me