Beta TCP/IP

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!morrow.stanford.edu!bir7
From: b...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ross Biro)
Subject: Beta TCP/IP
Message-ID: <1992Aug25.233806.11161@morrow.stanford.edu>
Summary: kernel tcp/ip now in beta testing 
Keywords: beta buggy tcp/ip
Sender: n...@morrow.stanford.edu (News Service)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 23:38:06 GMT
Lines: 68


At long last kernel tcp/ip is now ready for beta testing.

It is available at nic.funet.fi in Linux/kernel/NET and will soon
be available at tsx-11.mit.edu.

If you have not installed networking on a Unix box before, please find
someone who has before flooding the net with questions.

Currently only the Western Digital Ethercard Plus and compatibles
are supported (wd80[01]3 boards).  If you have a different ethernet
board you will either have to write your own driver or wait until
someone else does (There is someone who claims to be working on
drivers for many different ethernet boards.)  If you want slip
you will have to wait (There is a slip mailing list for people
interested in working on it.)

REMEBER ONLY THE WESTERN DIGITAL BOARDS ARE SUPPORTED.

Read the README file BEFORE attemptint to install anything.

You will need gcc 2.2.2d to compile programs which use inet sockets.

You will need the gcc 2.2.2 libs to run the programs which come with
the tcp/ip code.  

Currently all the clients and servers that come with the code are
buggy, and should be replaced as soon as possible.  Source code
is available from anywhere that has the berkeley net2 (or BIND) code.

ONLY TCP and UDP are supported.  Although there are provisions for two
other protocolos THEY ARE UNSUPPORTED AND WILL PROBABLY CRASH YOUR
MACHINE IF YOU USE THEM.

You may need 4 meg to run the tcp/ip code (At least with the SCSI code
compiled in.  There may be conflicts with the scsi code.)

The diffs are against .97 pl2 so you will need to have applied both
patches 1 and 2 to .97 inorder to apply the tcp/ip diffs.

The code is beta and has bugs, but most of the problems you will see
are in the clients and servers.  VERIFY THAT YOUR PROBLEM IS IN THE
KERNEL CODE BEFORE MAKING A BUG REPORT.  The best way to do this
is to write a small program which can repeat the bug.

Someone else will have to gather together and package new versions
of all the clients and servers once people have debugged them.

Now for some highlites

The code makes all other implementations of tcp/ip for pc's look
anemic.  FTP transfer rates of 200-300 Kbytes/second have been
reported by the alpha testers. (One person has reported peaks
of 500 Kbytes/second sending with ftp.) You mileage will vary.

For most user programs the socket interface is BSD compatible.

No NET2 code is in the kernel.   I did not even look at the NET2 code
while I was implementing this so the AT&T lawsuit against BSDI should
not have any affect on this code.

Named and the resolver are supported.

A machine can have multiple IP addresses and respond differently to each
one.