From: pm@fortec.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Mayer)
Subject: Re: Networking software for ST
Status: RO
Keywords: TCP/IP network ANS ethernet telnet
Organization: Technical University of Vienna
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 16:53:59 GMT

In <pm.701722127@fortec.tuwien.ac.at> pm@fortec.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Mayer) writes:

>Hello,

>some time ago we purchased a "Riebl-Card plus" ethernet card from Atari
>to connect our Mega-ST to our LAN.

As we were interested in networking between computers of different brands
we built our own telnet and ftp based on the ANS GEMDOS extension
specifications. The performance of the ANS services seemed to be very poor
(ftp transfer rate ) so we decided to implement a new TCP/IP kernel.
To allow for several concurrently running applications we use the builtin
pseudo-multitasking capabilities of the AES.
The interface to the hardware is accomplished by a "Packet driver" with
an API modeled similar to the "Packet Driver Specification" for PC network
boards so the hardware layer is completely insulated from the network layer.
All the programs are written in PURE/TURBO-C with few lines of assembler in
the Packet driver.

We do not plan to integrate SLIP support into our TCP/IP implementation, but
it could be done easily by replacing the ethernet "Packet Driver" with one for
the RS232. Besides that, there is the KA9Q package available in the archives
which supports SLIP.
For all we know the Riebl-Card isn't very common (and cheap). 
Therefore we started to think about using one of the parallel-port-to-ethernet
adaptors available for PCs (e.g. Xircom). If you know the specifications of
such beasts please mail.

The TCP/IP kernel is implemented as a resident program, which hooks into 
the GEMDOS trap. Common TCP/IP parameters (default gateway, local
internet address, size of buffers, ...) are configurable by a resident
data structure accessible via a cookie. The network services are kept alive
by periodically calling a function supported by the kernel.
The original ATARI-ANS supports its own multitasking, background processes and
interprocess communication, these functions are NOT implemented.

UDP is supported in an ANS compatible way and used by our applications to
resolve internet addresses using the old style name server protocol.


Currently our applications are:

o  a multi-window AES based telnet client (TUW-Telnet)
    This program can be run as program or accessory and emulates a 
    VT100 terminal (without VT52 mode) for up to as many connections
    as the AES provides windows and your computer has memory. :-)
    The user-interface is modeled after the MW2 program (MinT Windowing
    program by Allan Pratt). Like in MW2 and former UW, various fonts
    including the ST system fonts, in sizes from 4x7 to 8x16 are supported.
    The 7x13 standard font currently also supports the VT100 semi-graphics
    characters. Also supported are cut/paste operations between TUW-Telnet
    windows and 80/132 character-per-line modes. 
    The VT100 emulator has been proofed to be sufficient for vi on a Sun
    and EDT on a VAX does like it too. It also passed the vttest program
    from Per Lindberg with good results.

o  a ftp server which can be run as program or accessory. It is designed
    to allow "back connections" from the remote host, that is, concurrently
    running telnet and ftp connections.
    It supports the standard command set. Password checking is planned to be
    added.

o  a network monitoring program (netstat) giving information on
    currently opened TCP connections.

o  a setclock program to set the ATARIs clock from a timeserver.

o  a ftp client will be adapted from an earlier version as soon as there 
    will be sufficient time to do it.


o  future plans also include porting of lpr and popmail clients to the 
    ANS specifications.

We place the binaries on a nearby ftp-site and include the source of the
Packet driver to allow for porting to different hardware.

Archive name:

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Peter
--
Dipl.-Ing. Peter Mayer                      Rehabilitation Engineering Group
Institute for Electronics               Technical University Vienna, Austria
Email: pm@fortec.tuwien.ac.at		             phone:  +431 58801 3967
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st