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From: billkatt@mondo.engin.umich.edu (billkatt)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: MacTCP/Telnet
Message-ID: <1990Mar2.223208.14833@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 90 22:32:00 GMT
References: <1141loganj@yvax.byu.edu> <2323@unocss..unl.edu>
Sender: news@caen.engin.umich.edu (USENET News System)
Reply-To: billkatt@mondo.engin.umich.edu (billkatt)
Organization: Computer Aided Engineering Network (CAEN), University of Michigan
Lines: 44

In article <2323@unocss..unl.edu> dent@unocss..unl.edu (Local Submission) writes:
>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).

You don't want to use kboxes to do your IP for Macs with ethernet.  It slows
things down too much and makes your Macs dependent on the kbox.  Doubles
net traffic for IP, too.
>
>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:

Um... That is a power supply problem, not a problem with not having atalkad
yet.  Actually, it works like this:
Power glitches->Kbox glitches->kbox stack dumps on the LocalTalk.

The problem is that the kbox stack dumps so rapidly and often that the net is
so full of kbox packets that it can't carry any other traffic.  Also, I don't
think the kbox listens before talking when it stack dumps.
>
>	"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?"
Imagewriters come in above 127.  They also crash when anything broadcasts
excessively, like a crashed kbox.
>
>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...)
The story of my life.

-Steve