Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] ethernet sniffer?

From: Thomas Tornblom <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 23:17:45 +0200 (MET DST)

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> From: Mike Mansell <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: [netatalk-admins] ethernet sniffer?
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> 
> Anyone know of an ethernet sniffer that can handle packets other than IP? 
> - We're currently using snoop but its not enough.  
> 
> Preferably, it would run on Solaris or Linux so that we can see exactly
> what's being sent out by our embedded AFP server (under development).  We
> think that the structures aren't being properly aligned so bad packets are
> being sent out to the ethernet. 
> 

Check out my snoop with appletalk support:

ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/brent/snoop/at_snoop.tar.gz

> Thanks,
> 	Mike.
> 
> --
>     /\     Michael G. Mansell, BSc. (SCS)  Office:  (416) 665-0767  x228
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Real life:      Thomas Törnblom             Email:  [email-masked]
Snail mail:     HB Hax                      Phone:    +46  18 290 290
                Banvallsvägen 14            Fax:      +46  18 290 291
                S - 754 40 Uppsala, Sweden  Cellular: +46 708 323118

---

From: Mike Mansell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 10:16:20 -0400 (EDT)

Thanks to all those who replied... we're trying most of the suggestions
now.

I didn't want to go into too much detail before on the list, but I got
some queries back about what our product is and why we're making our own
AFP server.  If you're not interested... press DELETE now.

Our product is a stand-alone 'nearline' network file server - it has an IP
address and sits anywhere on the network - similar in concept to the
CD/Jazz-Server from Axis, or Sun's "Netra".  Right now its just NFS, but
we're trying to add AFP & SMB to eliminate the extra 'hop' through a UNIX
box to convert protocols (slows things down as I'm sure you all know).

The system runs on a PPC604e single board VME computer, and the software
is based on the VxWorks RTOS kernal (WindRiver Systems - www.wrs.com). 
VxWorks is UNIX-ish, so Netatalk and SAMBA are of course great models to
base our projects on.  The 'mass storage' part of our product is 12mm
(S-VHS) tape drives that hold 50GB (uncompressed) user data per tape. 

If you read the 'time-to-data' part of our FAQ, you probably see that the
'caching' ideas that A.Sun and others have been discussing on the list
would be very useful for our 'nearline' device.  We cache tape files on
disk/RAID, but if the .AppleDouble files have 'expired' in the cache, then
trying to get to a folder 5 layers deep can literally take hours!

We haven't gotten into the European market yet, but we have some potential
customers in Britain that use Xerox DocuTech equipment.  Donnelley and
Quebecor are some of our customers in Printing in North America, plus a
few hospitals locally are trying it out for digital X-rays and such.

If you know any Hardware/Software Engineers in Canada or the US that are
looking for a job related to R&D in mass storage and/or networking, get
them to contact us - our product is both!

Mike.