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From: croft@SAFE.STANFORD.EDU (Bill Croft)
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Mods to UDP KFPS for bridges
Message-ID: <8610140129.AA02822@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 13-Oct-86 20:37:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8610140129.AA02822
Posted: Mon Oct 13 20:37:00 1986
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Approved: info-applebus@c.cs.cmu.edu

The new Stanford code not only supports NBP, ZIP, and RTMP; it has the
following new features:

	An improved scheme for address management of MacIP-family
	programs (telnet, ftp, tftp, etc.)  This scheme eliminates
	the need for private hand taylored 'custom' files on the
	Mac disks and avoids assigning separate IP net or subnet
	numbers for the appletalk cable segments.

	Elimination of the need for a 'masterbridge'.  Instead of
	the gateways having to ask a masterbridge for every new route,
	each gateway carries a full appletalk routing table that
	is updated dynamically amongst all the kboxes in your net.
	A subset of these boxes (typically one or two) are declared
	'core' gateways so that each kbox does not have to exchange
	routes with every other kbox in the net (an N**2 problem).
	
	The kboxes get their initial routing tables (containing the
	location of other kboxes) and other configuration information
	from an 'AppleTalk Administrator' host, running on one (or more)
	UNIX host.  After this time, the kboxes make each other aware
	of other bridges (such as the Hayes) dynamically, as they are
	plugged into AppleTalk segments.
	
	The ATIS code is considerably simplfied so that each appletalk-
	on-ethernet host does not have to carry a private 'masterbridge'
	routing table.  Instead, the ether hosts send their appletalk
	packets to 'ABRIDGE', the nearest kbox.  The ATIS package caches
	the most recently used AppleTalk to ethernet address translation
	so that subsequent packets are sent directly to the applicable
	ether host or kbox.

	A number of other reorganization mods have been applied to
	the gateway code to make it faster and more generalized.

We anticipate releasing this new gateway code via FTP and Kinetics users
group within the month.  Another group on campus will at the same time
release the new C-based version of MacIP.

	--Bill Croft, Stanford