AT&T 3B* networking

[Robert Halloran]

In article <1098 at woton.UUCP> riddle at woton.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) writes:
>I gathered after interrogating some of our local AT&T technical and
>sales folks that the following is a chart of what's available in the
>way of networks for AT&T equipment:
>
>	               Starlan        3BNet         TCP/IP
>	              ---------     ---------      ---------
>	AT&T 3B15        no         yes (RFS)      yes (RFS)
>	AT&T 3B2      yes (RFS)     yes (RFS)      yes (RFS)
>	AT&T 3B1      yes (RFS)        no             no
>	AT&T 6386        yes           no             no
>	DOS clone        yes           no             no
>
>A hitch that you can't see in this chart is that RFS (Remote File
>Sharing) can't be used between different kinds of networks.  That means
>that while Starlan can give you RFS between a 3B2 and a 3B1, and either
>3BNet or TCP/IP can give you RFS between a 3B15 and a 3B2, there's no
>way to do RFS among all three. 
>
>Questions:
>
>(1) Is all of the above correct? 

	Since RFS is particular to SVr3, there is no way to run it
	on a 3B1 or PC/DOS system, period. 

	There IS (was?) an ethernet/TCP-IP option for the 3B1, though no
	3Bnet.  Order codes are 37422 for the board, 1030-008 for the
	Wollongong software to drive it.  This may no longer be available 
	with the closing down of the 7300 line.

	I have seen ads for ethernet boards for 386 machines purporting
	to support RFS under 386 Unix, though I have no experience with
	them to be able to comment on usefulness.

>(2) I was under the impression that 3BNet was essentially UUCP on top
>of TCP/IP.  I gather that the TCP/IP column refers to non-AT&T TCP/IP
>(Wollongong, perhaps).  What is the difference between that and 3BNet? 

	3Bnet was an AT&T proprietary protocol used over ethernet hardware.
	It is being phased out in favor of TCP/IP.  Programs are available
	to allow UUCP to run over either protocol suite.

>(3) I have some experience as a user of 4.2BSD NFS, and know about
>"rcp", "rsh", ".rlogin" files, etc.  Does that bear any resemblance to
>RFS?  How can I find out what RFS looks like to the user and to the
>administrator (especially security features)? 

	RFS relates to remote mounting of directories over a network.
	Once done, the standard cp/mv commands work just fine.  This has
	nothing to do with remote shell access/program execution, and 
	RFS per se does not offer these facilities.  The network you
	use as a transport may also have applications which do, though.
	Most network packages support 'cu' over the given network, for example.

	For RFS administrative information, check out an admin's guide
	for SVr3.

>(4) How does RFS interact with my plain old System V mail software? 

	Has nothing directly to do with it; your $MAIL may be a remotely
	mounted directory, but mail/mailx/.... doesn't see any difference.

>(5) The cells of the above chart marked "yes" without "(RFS)"
>apparently refer to the ability of Starlan to let a 3B2 or a 6386 act
>as a file server for DOS machines.  Correct?  Does this interfere with
>the use of Starlan to provide RFS and other goodies among Unix
>machines? 

	Not to my knowledge, though bandwidth constraints may prove an issue.

>(6) Is there some basic document, article or book I should read so all
>this will be clear to me and I won't have to ask silly questions? 
>
>-- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
>-- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.
>-- riddle%woton.uucp at cs.utexas.edu  uunet!ut-sally!cs.utexas.edu!woton!riddle

						Bob Halloran
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