Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!ucbvax!VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU!LEICHTER
From: LEICHTER@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU ("Jerry Leichter ", LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: re: VAX mail and ASYNC DECNET
Message-ID: <8802110528.AA14642@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 23 Jan 88 19:15:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 59


	Can one of you net.wizards please tell me whether or not it's possible
	to send mail to a remote node, who's configured as a dial-up DYNAMIC
	async DECNET node?

Yes; an asych DECnet link is just like any other DECnet link.

	My company wants me to connect it's microVAX in New York to his mommie
	in Geneve, Switzerland.  And of course, their too cheap to use a X.25
	packet switched network (ie, TYMNET).  So I figured I'd use ASYNC
	DECNET.  The only problem is that since it's a dynamic connection
	(link is made once a week), we can't seem to send mail to the remote
	node when it's not there.

Of course; an asych DECnet link is just like any other DECnet link!  :-)

VMS MAIL does not queue messages; it sends them immediately.  Hence, it must
make a connection at the time you want to send the mail.  That the connection
happens to go over an asynch, dial-up line isn't of importance to MAIL; in
fact, it's not even VISIBLE to MAIL, which simply asks DECnet for a link.  If
you had an Ethernet link that you connected once a week, MAIL wouldn't work
over that any better when it was disconnected!

What you need is a mailer that maintains a set of queues.  Actually, most
mailers that do that aren't really tuned for a once-a-week link - they keep
retrying regularly - say, every hour.  They could easily miss the once-a-week
window when the link is up.  Really, you want a queuing mailer that has some
mechanism for describing such a link.  Rather than polling the link, it would
simply leave messages in the queues until TOLD that the link was open.

DEC sells a queuing mail product, the Message Router.  I don't know if it
supports the kind of link you are talking about here.

An alternative would be to get a copy of PMDF - discussed recently on this
list.  PMDF will hold mail jobs in queues for you.  Further, you could
probably put together a special-purpose "channel" to talk across your
dial-up link when told to do so.

	Another related problem I've been having is switching the line
	manually from interactive to DECNET (set term TT:/protocol=DDCMP).
	Since I'm logging on to the bigVAX in Switzerland first, to receive my
	mail, then trying to switch the line to DECNET while I'm still logged
	in.  I get "device already allocated to another process (Burp)"

See the Networking Manual, page 2-14 to 2-17, for a full description of how to
accomplish a dynamic switch to DDCMP.  Make sure you've got everything set up
as it tells you set it up.

	Any ideas will be greatly appretiated, and rewarded with a bar of
	Swiss chocolate.

This machine fully supports the ICTP (Internet Chocolate Transfer Protocol).
We run a SMTP-to-CTB (Chocolate Transfer Bus) agent, so you can use my mail
address to send my bar to.  I prefer bittersweet.

			  Thanks in advance.
							-- Jerry

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