Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.tcp-ip:2302 comp.lang.c:6837
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!psuvax1!gondor.cs.psu.edu!schwartz
From: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C binding interfaces for TCP/IP
Message-ID: <3256@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 88 05:08:12 GMT
References: <25@vdelta.UUCP> <2168@cognos.UUCP>
Sender: netnews@psuvax1.psu.edu
Reply-To: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz)
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 32

In article <2168@cognos.UUCP> jimp@cognos.UUCP (Jim Patterson) writes:
>In article <25@vdelta.UUCP> dave@vdelta.UUCP (Dave Arnold) writes:
>>Are there efforts underway to standardize a C language interface for TCP/IP?
>
>Sun has developed a definition called RPC (Remote Procedure Call)
>which is becoming a defacto standard in some environments. 

>Sun has published the protocol to encourage its
>implementation on other systems. In conjunction with RPC, Sun has
>an excellent protocol called XDR (eXternal Data Representation)
>to deal with data conversions between different machine
>architectures in a flexible but structured manner.

>You might contact Sun Microsystems to get more information about
>RPC and XDR.

Sun has done more than just publish the protocol definition.  The 
source for the entire thing (at least the 4.3BSD version) is available 
from titan.rice.edu (the sun-spots-digest people) by anonymous ftp.

I recently compiled it all on a VAX/750 with no trouble at all.  Sun
encloses a fun demo called "rstat_svc" which suntools perfmeters can
interrogate to find out load, %cpu, etc.  It all comes with about 100
pages of documentation, too.

By the way, Apollo recently announced some other RPC protocol that 
they would like to become the standard, but I don't know anything 
about it.



-- Scott Schwartz            schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu