Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!ssbell!mcmi!unocss!dent
From: dent@unocss..unl.edu (Local Submission)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: MacTCP/Telnet
Message-ID: <2323@unocss..unl.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 90 17:07:17 GMT
References: <1141loganj@yvax.byu.edu>
Organization: U. of Nebraska at Omaha
Lines: 53

loganj@yvax.byu.edu writes:

>We had a similar problem because we didn't understand how the "Dynamic" and
>"Static" addresses work in the KFPS with K-star.  If I remember correctly,
>at least one of them must be non-zero or nothing works.  These numbers
>specify a range of legal consecutive node numbers immediately following the
>KFPS node number (in your case 195) that can be used by the Macs.  And if
>your Mac node number falls out of that range then it doesn't work. :(

I think the way it is set up, 'dynamic' IP node numbers are handed out more-
or-less randomly to a mac whenever it needs it, regardless of it's AppleTalk
node number, location on the LocalTalk, etc.  So, if you were running, say,
NCSA Telnet, and told it to get the IP node number dynamically, it would
just ask the FastPath, and be assigned one.

The 'static' IP node numbers are sort of ignored by the FastPath; all it seems
to dp is move the start of the dynamic IP numbers.  So, if you have 5 static
numbers, 10 dynamic ones, and the FastPath's IP node number ends in .106,
the FastPath would dynamically hand out IP node numbers from .112 to .122.
I suppose this is in case you have any macs on your LocalTalk net that have
specific IP node numbers that you want constant (which can be done by using
MacTCP, for example).

So in any case, if you want dynamic IP number handling, then you shouldn't
be hand-assigning /any/ Macs IP Node numbers.  The corrolary to this is that
if you are hand-assigning Mac IP node numbers, you don't need /any/ dynamic
ones inthe FastPath.  One more thing to note: if you don't care for having all
of your Mac IP node nums directly following the FastPath one, K-Star 8.0 lets
you move the beginning of the range elsewhere (or to have a few right after
the FastPath's, and a few somewhere completely elsewhere).

As an anecdote... has anyone else had their FastPaths suddenly seize control of
the LocalTalk?  We had a power glitch (we think!), and weren't running atalkd
anywhere yet, so the FastPath wound up scrambling itself in the user room.  
Then, it took control of the LocalTalk net and wouldn't let anyone on it!  We
brought up the chooser on one Mac, to see why the printers were acting weird,
and noticed that all 4 of our ImageWriters were blinking in and out of the
network.  I can imagine the following conversation:

	"Hi!  I'm an Apple ImageWriter just coming on to the AppleTalk,
	 so could I please have, say '114' as my node number?  Anyone
	 using that one yet?"

Fastpath: "SHUT UP!  GET OFF MY NETWORK!"

	"Yikes!  Ok, ok!"

I guess the FastPath was bullying around all those poor innocent ImageWriters.
:-)  (We wound up completely reloading the FastPath to fix the problem...)

-/ Dave Caplinger /---------------------------------------------------------
 Microcomputer Specialist,   Campus Computing,   Univ. of Nebraska at Omaha
 dent@zeus.unomaha.edu         ...!uunet!unocss!dent            DENT@UNOMA1