TCP/IP on Xenix - summary

[Patrick Baur]

 It's a bit late but I will throw in my remarks for what their worth.

 We have a small network with 2 x AST Premium 386, 3 Mac's, 1 Opus
1 Textronics, 1 Sun. All (except 2 Mac's) running some sort of Unix/Xenix.
1 Mac is a gateway to Appletalk. We have 2 Excelan terminal servers
(Export 2000), 2 CMC terminal servers (TranServer). As Network software
server for the execlan terminal servers a sperry AT is also connected
to the network running Excelan NMS under DOS.

I have had experience with 
	1) Excelan's Lan Workplace for Xenix with a excelan 205 board
	2) SCO TCP/IP with a WD 8003 board

Xenix version 2.3.2
Excelan Lan Workplace version 3.5
SCO TCP/IP version 1.0 (controlled release)

1) Excelan Lan Workplace
	- As remarked by Chip Rosenthal the SMTP is lousy.
	  It took me 4 houres to get it to work at all. (mail exos:host at user ?)
	  I won't repeat what he said about it but it's all true.
	- Same for the socket libary interface. Again Chip discriped it
	  acuratly. This means that installing sendmail is out (as is every
	  other network software without major rewriting).
	- For all the psuedo devices for rlogin and telnet a getty is started
	  (Not like BSD where a getty (and the rlogind as for that matter) is
	  started when needed). This is not so bad but adds 16 processes.
	- It happens painfully often that when logged in via rlogin that
	  the rlogind or telnetd locks up. I don't no why or what causes it.
	  The result it that ALL processes you where running on the machine
	  are locked and they CANNOT be killed, only by rebooting the
	  machine !!.
	- The rlogin deamon is like SMTP 'brain dead'. It does no autologin
	  The manual states that the onboard rlogind is actually the same
	  as the telnet deamon (!).
	- telnet, rlogin to and from any machine is oke
	- rcp, rsh : At this point I lost all faith in Excelan.
	  rcp and rsh form the Excelan to any other computer we have
	  functions oke. rcp and rsh from any other machine to Excelan does
	  not function. As long as your program does not produce output
	  all is oke, but as soon as data has to be send back ('rsh host ls'
	  or any rcp) the connection is broken.
	- Could not get Domain name resolver to work, but I suppose this
	  is due to the fact that I don't know must about this. (Can 
	  anybody tell how to set a DNS up for a small network ?).
	- ftp, rpr not tested

	All the above points are tested from and to several machines
	all running different flavors of Unix. With one exception. When
	working on a terminal connected to an Excelan terminal server,
	the connection seems to crash less often.

2) SCO TCP/IP
	Altough I tested this must less thoroughly, seems to work oke
	A few remarks:

	- It is based on Lachman System V Streams TCP.
	- rcmd (=rsh), rlogin telnet work fine. To and from any machine
	- rcp works oke, but makes a mistake when handeling remote to
	  remote copies (e.g rcp host1:file1 host2:file2). It sends
	  a wrong request to host1:
		'sh -c rcp file1 (null)host2:file2'
	  (it tries to print a NULL pointer).
	  solution:
		rcmd host1 rcp file1 host2:file2
	- Never had a crash or a locked process.
	- We had a lot of trouble getting the new kernel with
	  Streams/WD/TCP support to boot on our AST/386. It reboots
	  as soon as I start the kernel. The funny thing is that this only
	  happens when you do a COLD boot (power on/off). When you first
	  boot a old kernel without Streams/WD/TCP then do a shutdown
	  and reboot the machine, the new kernel works fine. We have
	  an other AST/386 which only difference is a newer ROM BIOS,
	  on which this trick does not function, and the kernel will not
	  boot at all.
	    Since I installed the software on other 386's without any
	  problems I think it is a hardware problem.
	- ftp, sendmail not tested 
	- I don't know about porting other network software
	  (We only have a runtime system, I think)

When testing for speed, load average etc. I could not notice any difference
between the two. (Maybe I didn't use the right tests).
Again I can't say that I tested SCO TCP/IP very well but enough to form
a opinion. When also taking into account that the WD board is much
cheaper as the Excelan board (I don't know about the software prices), I'd
say go for SCO.

 Any response is welcome. If you reply by News please Mail me a copy
since I'm leaving for a two weeks and might miss it.

mail address:  ...!seismo!mcvax!chx400!pan!epr!maarten
or the address below

Maarten Huisjes.                ...!seismo!mcvax!chx400!ethz!pb
(Temporary using this account)
[Life is hard, then you die!]