From: jwmanly@amherst.edu
Subject: Problems with BOOTP and NSCA Telnet for DOS
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst Mass.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 16:46:03 GMT

Hi there.  We are having a problem using BOOTP under NSCA Telnet 2.3.05.
The difficulty is that PCs who receive their IP addresses via BOOTP (as
opposed to via RARP), cannot seem to connect to sites with IP addresses
beyond our local 148.85.*.* network.

Background:

We have been using NSCA Telnet around here for quite a while to enable our
PC's to reach both sites on-campus and elsewhere, and it has been working
well.

Recently, however, we have become interested in using the dynamic IP
configuration capabilities of Telnet so that we might be able to have  a
single identical CONFIG.TEL file for all the PCs we use (they all  have the
same kind of ethernet card in them).

We first tried using the RARP (myip=RARP in the CONFIG.TEL file) mechanism,
and that worked just fine -- the machines got their own IP addresses just
fine, and could still reach sites both local and remote.

However, for various reasons we would prefer to use the BOOTP mechanism to
tell the PCs what their own IP addresses are.  When we do this
(myip=BOOTP), the PCs find their own addresses correctly, and can still
reach local sites (sites on our network, 148.85.*.*) just fine.  BUT, they
can't seem to reach sites outside our network through our gateway, even
though we have not modified the gateway address in the CONFIG.TEL file.

The error we get (from the messages screen) is

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NCSA Telnet 2.3.05 for the PC

Tektronix initialized
My Ethernet address: 2:60:8c:8e:7a:5e
My IP address: 148.85.8.11

Host machine not in configuration file

Querying the DOMAIN name server

DOMAIN lookup OK for: nic.near.net
Trying to open TCP connection to: nic.near.net

Domain Port is:23

Can't open connection, timed out
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that except for the last line, this is exactly the same screen that we
get when trying to do dynamic IP via RARP. Note also that the same failure
occurs if we try to TELNET via IP number -- instead of via name -- to some
place outside our own local 148.85.*.* network.

At first, this simply looks like TELNET has somehow gotten confused about
where it's gateway is, however a particularly confusing thing about the
error we get is that the "timed out" message is almost immediate.  If we
remove the gateway address from the CONFIG.TEL file, we get the same error
at the same speed.  HOWEVER, if we use dynamic IP via RARP, and remove the
gateway specification from the CONFIG.TEL file, then the timeout takes
quite a while and the error message is the more meaningful "gateway not
responding",  rather than "timed out".  So it appears that something more
than just "BOOTP messes up TELNET's gateway address" is going on.

Any ideas?  Is anyone else successfully using BOOTP to dynamically
configure the IP addresses of their PC's AND using those PCs to reach sites
beyond their local network?  Is there a more recent version of NCSA Telnet
which might have fixed this problem?  BTW, we are running DOS 5.0.

Thanks for any light anyone can shed on this matter.

- John W. Manly  <JWMANLY@AMHERST.EDU>  (System Manager -- Amherst College)

Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc