STARLAN NAU connections on UNIX pc, some comments ...

[doug at marque.mu.edu]

In article <983 at icus.islp.ny.us> lenny at icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
>In article <693 at hsi86.hsi.UUCP> stevens at hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) writes:
>|>Can anyone provide a quick description of what the programming
>|>interface to the Starlan system looks like on the 3b1 ??
>|>Is it in any way similar to TLI ??
>|>
>|>	Richard Stevens
>|>	Health Systems International, New Haven, CT
>|>	   stevens at hsi.com
>|>           ... { uunet | yale } ! hsi ! stevens
>
>Well I don't have my STARLAN programmers manuals yet, but from
>what I see, it is TLI, or a derivative thereof.
> ...
>The routines are a STREAMS-like interface to the network.  I've seen
>them documented t_bind(), t_connect() in the network section of
>the 386 in section 3N.

The 3B1/Starlan routines are TLI.  Once upon a time they were documented
in AT&T manuals, along with the DOS version, compatible with NetBios,
and the 3B2 version, which is actually a real STREAMS version.
In particular there was an "Application Programmer's Reference Manual",
order code 999-802-215IS, and a "Starlan Network Tecnnical Reference
Manual", order code 999-300-208IS.  These manuals explain (;--)
the NAU/NRU/NEU construction for 3B2/3B1/DOS, and document (;;-)
the low level protocol, which is URP (Yeh:-good choice for a name,
AT&T calls it Universal Receiver Protocol) at the network level,
and NetBios like naming conventions above the transport level.

With apologies for the commercial, some of this is explained in
the recent Howard Sams Unix library book "Unix Networking",
which has chapers by me on STREAMS, TLI, and RFS (along with
UUCP by Brian Redman, TCP by Doug Comer, NFS/RPC by Louis Delzompo,
Lan Manager by Martin Dunsmuir, X Windows by Adrian Nye, and
NEWS by Owen Densmore).  The TLI chapter materials were developed
initially on 3B1 (actually 7300), there is sample code, and
explanations of some of the mysteries.

I'll post the sample code shortly, after digging it out and making
sure it compiles :--.  We run the oclient/srvo, iclient/srvi code
given in the book here, with Starlans in two separate buildings,,
and a 3B2/310 on each Starlan as a server.  The 3B2s also have Ethernet
but there is no bridge (we just use UUCP as a bridge for mail and
file transfer).  The programs are primitive, therefore I can almost
understand them and fix them if they have a problem.  Bells and
Whistles can be added to taste.

Douglas Harris
doug at marque.mu.edu
uunet!marque!doug