Subject: FDDI support / Xinet comparision

From: [email-masked] (Dwight Kelly)
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 09:37:55 EST

Can anyone tell me what Sbus FDDI adapters have been tested
with netatalk-1.3?

Also, how does the performance and features compare to Xinet's
K-Talk, K-AShare, and K-Spool products?

Dwight Kelly
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 10:35:14 -0500

> From:    [email-masked] (Dwight Kelly)
> To:      [email-masked]

> Can anyone tell me what Sbus FDDI adapters have been tested

We have tried netaalk-1.3 with NPI's sbus FDDI card.  We had them
change the driver by a line or so, and the version that they gave us
(about three hours after we asked!) works fine.  We are currently
waiting on our networking folks to connect one of our machines to the
campus FDDI backbone, so we can do more extensive testing.  We promised
NPI to get back with them once we were confident of the version that
they gave us.  I assume they will release it at that time.

NPI's software looks just like an Ethernet interface to netatalk.  For
the most part, the FDDITalk specification requires that FDDI behave
like Ethernet, much like the IP FDDI RFC does.  If you are shopping
FDDI cards for use with netatalk, you are looking for something that
will act like Ethernet, and in particular, will use the kernel
facilities provided for Ethernet, i.e. those found in sunif/if_subr.c
that use the etherfamilies convention.

:wes

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From: Thomas Tornblom <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 08:39:33 --100

Speaking of different network interfaces, will netatalk work and be
able to route AppleTalk traffic through a PPP link?

This is somewhat interesting as I run netatalk at home between my 386i
and my mac and we also run netatalk at work. I'm just working on
setting up a PPP link from home to work, mainly to get IP connectivity
but it would also be interesting to be able to run AppleTalk over it.

Is anyone working on getting netatalk ported to Solaris 2? We are
about to switch to Solaris 2.3 from SunOS 4.1.2 at work and I have
moved our netatalk services from our 690 to an old 386i for continued
Appletalk support. I would love to see netatalk on Solaris though.

Thomas

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 17:52:30 -0500

> From:    Thomas Tornblom <[email-masked]>

> able to route AppleTalk traffic through a PPP link?

Well, certainly one could make it work that way.  So far, we haven't,
mostly because we've had no one else's implementation to talk to.
However, I *just* got off the phone with InterCon, and their InterPPP
is now available.  I will probably make that work with netatalk.
Presumably, netatalk will also be able to talk to other netatalk
machines, once it supports PPP at all.

:wes