Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!rocky8!cucard!ccnysci!alexis
From: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Appletalk Bridge/Routing Inefficiency?
Message-ID: <1568@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 13 Apr 89 06:42:31 GMT
References: <2224@aecom.YU.EDU> <307@wcc.oz> <1516@ccnysci.UUCP> <899@smurf.ira.uka.de>
Reply-To: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 36

In article <899@smurf.ira.uka.de> urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de
(Matthias Urlichs) writes:
>In comp.protocols.appletalk alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>< Liason 2.0, from InfoSphere, ships with a little INIT called Network Tuner.
>< I'm not 100% sure what this thing does (it's about 2K, as I recall), but I
>< distinctly had the impression that it was designed to improve usage of
>< bridges and routers by regular nodes. Perhaps this does what Paul suggested?
>
>This INIT should be installed on Macs which want to communicate over an
>async/modem line but don't run Liaison (which includes it).
>Basically, ATP timeout which work splendidly for "normal" AppleTalk
>are much too short for modem use. You get a retry request halfway through the
>answering packet and this results in 2-3 times lowered throughput at best,
>and breaking longish file transfers (or Timbuktu screen updates :-) at worst.
>I have written such an INIT myself; it's pretty trivial to do.

Um. Quoting from the 2.0 release notes:

"An improved Network Tuner
 always selects the most direct
 route to a different network to
 eliminate the usual extra hop on
 nets with more than one bridge."

This sure sounds like what Paul was talking about... I'll talk to evan tomorrow
and find out for sure.

Liason 2.0 has Dial-back, activity logs, net resource hiding, monitoring,
integrated FlashTalk support (yay!), better async throughput, lots better MNP
support, better support of relayed calls, and some (very) minor bug fixes.

It's an extraordinarily elegant piece of work.

---
Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}