EXCELAN TCIP

[Terry Slattery <tcs@usna>]

> Well, the excelan product may be ok for your particular set-up, but
> its given us here a real haedache.  The problem is, (at least with our
> version of the software) that the Excelan IP doesn't know about
> internet routing!
> 
> Also, some other folks here at Ames used the boards over a sky link
> between 2 vitalink boxes and discovered that the TCP on the board
> only lets one packet or so be outstanding without an ack, now
> this isn't too bad on direct ether links, but over satellite
> links you get massacred by the long transit time.  You'd probably
> notice this too on the MILNET, but since you can't use gateways
> anyway, it probably doesn't matter.

The current product that Excelan is marketing PROPERLY HANDLES GATEWAY
ROUTING!  You want version 3.2 of their software.  I have a 2.9BSD PDP11
here running V3.2 (I was a beta test site) and can talk on the internet
(MILNET) with it.  As far as I know, the SGI workstations are still
using 3.1a.  Pound on SGI to get the latest release out. I've had 3.2
since August.  We have an SGI also and it still doesn't know about
routing but I intend to ask about it at the Defense Computer Graphics
Conference in Washington, D.C. next week.  It's about time they got
it distriubted.

I can't comment on the single outstanding packet problem since I havn't
done extensive internet testing.  I'm quite pleased with Excelan's 3.2
version of their TCP/IP software.  It's been cleaned up quite a bit and
the glaring problems you mentioned have been fixed.  One aggrivating
thing though; rlogind & telnetd run in the card and the interface into
the kernel is via a serial multiplexor type driver.  So you wind up
with getty running on all the ptty lines (no auto-authentication for
rlogin).  It uses the 4.1a network semantics, so work is needed to
port 4.2/3 programs.

I also have implemented BRL's MDQS spooling system and it worked first
time!  Really slick!

	-tcs
	Terry Slattery	  U.S. Naval Academy	301-267-4413
	ARPA: tcs at usna.arpa
	UUCP: decvax!brl-bmd!usna!tcs