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From: glenn@gla-aux.uucp (Glenn L. Austin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: Communications Toolbox V.S. MacTCP?
Message-ID: <1991May8.150347.4431@gla-aux.uucp>
Date: 8 May 91 15:03:47 GMT
References: <1991May6.181911.15129@ymt.com>
Organization: The Pit Lane
Lines: 29

mike@ymt.com (Michael Czeiszperger) writes:
>Does anyone know the difference between the Macintosh Communications
>Toolbox, CTB, and MacTCP?   From the documentation I have, both appear
>to handle remote sockets and ethernet type communications.

The Macintosh Communications Toolbox, or CTB, is a set of managers which allows
developers to create applications and transport and display methods which
do not have to know about each other.  They talk to a common entity, the
CTB, to permit transfer and display of information.

MacTCP is an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol for AppleTalk.  In order
to use MacTCP, you need to know TCP/IP protocols and calling sequences (this
is a simplified description, isn't it? ;-)  You still need to provide a
method of displaying the data, and if somebody does their own version of
TCP/IP for the Macintosh, unless they follow the interface of MacTCP, you
would need to write a special version of the software for the new TCP/IP
implementation, and would also have to write code to handle any other
connection, terminal, and file transfer methods you wished to support.

The CTB (see above) permits developers to create applications which don't
know or care about the transfer or display of information, or to create
tools which provide additional or new connectivity or functionality to a
CTB application.  Incidentally, CTB is short for Communications ToolBox.

-- 
===============================================================================
| Glenn L. Austin - Mac Wizard and Auto Racing Driver                         |
| Usenet:  glenn@gla-aux.uucp                                                 |
|  "Turn too soon, run out of room.  Turn too late, much better fate."        |