From: eengelke@sail.uwaterloo.ca (Erick Engelke)
Subject: Re: ibm tcp/ip a ripoff?
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 03:39:08 GMT

In article <1iratf$aqq@agate.berkeley.edu> jp1ek@sunc.shef.ac.uk writes:
>i am beginning to think ibm tcp/ip is a rip off.  my comparative
>reference is the wattcp freeware tcp/ip for msdos and tcp/ip for
>xenix.

As the author of the cheaper one you mention, here are some
observations and comments.


>c) few ethernet cards supported (compared to wattcp with clarkson
>packet drivers);

Clarkson and later CRYNWR packet drivers have served wonderfully
over the years.  But probably one of the greatest contributions
was Russ's skeleton which allowed anyone to write a decent driver
for any new hardware they encounterred.  

To my knowledge, there is no NDIS driver freely available in source 
code for either DOS or OS/2.  From my warped view that makes it seem
like every hardware manufacturer has to either contract an overpriced
NDIS writing team or learn the hard way.

And the configuration is pretty gruesome.  I find this true of
all NDIS installations, who decided we didn't mind rebooting
20 times and manually editing scripts just to get the configuration 
right or if we want to try someone else's TCP.

I can run DOS based ODI and Packet Drivers fine under DOS VDMs,
but my 3c507 NDIS driver kills my modem, go figure!



>d) common tcp/ip programmes not or badly implemented (rsh does
>not accept piped input or properly return stdout from the
>executed command; ftp does not implement piped input/output for
>get and put commands; etc).

I wouldn't want to brag here because most of the free apps I
distribute are pretty haphazzard.  My contribution was more
a small TCP stack suitable for inclusion into other's programs, 
like Kermit, WAIS, various 3270 emulation TSRs, several commercial 
TCP applications, and embedded systems. 

But I too have found the IBM supplied apps very crude and
often broken (worst VT100/220 emulator I've seen, TELNETD
crashes much more frequently and is less responsive than my own
running under DOS!)

>i) hard to setup (xenix tcp/ip took me about three hours from
>openning the box to a reliable anonymous ftp service; wattcp took
>about an hour from loading to basic operation; with os2, i'm
>still at it weeks later).

The reason why WATTCP, NCSA, CUTCP, KERMIT and most other free TCPs
are so easily configured is simple - we authors don't want people 
calling us asking how to get the software working and we don't
want to have to document much - hence simple software.

You might want to note that all the free software use ASCII config
files, support some way to do include files so multi-station 
installs are simple, easily support BOOTP, and seem to need
comparatively little documentation to get you rolling.  This
is not a boast but a reminder that TCP installation does not
need to be the pain that it is under IBM's lable.

Most commercial houses would do well to take a look at getting
back to basics and putting the emphasis on the software and 
ease of installation/use.

From a programmer's standpoint, I think IBM made a big mistake
in their approach to reading/writing data to the tcp connection.
Under OS/2 you quickly find that pipes, shared memory, 
semaphores, queues, everything else maps wonderfully into the
filesystem except TCP.  Do Novell's, FTP's, Essex's or anyone
else's TCPs provide this support?  Everything else about OS/2
makes BSD code relatively simple to support except TCP, someone 
really goofed up IMHO.

These are the opinions of me and my evil twin cousin,
Erick
-- 
Erick Engelke					  Engineering Computing
						 University of Waterloo
Waterloo TCP Architect		 erick@development.watstar.uwaterloo.ca
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy