The University

Networking

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Networking Products

SLIP

Gnome Computers' SLIP driver, combined with Acorn's TCP/IP suite, provides a low cost means of connecting an Archimedes Computer to remote computer resources over a serial line. The software conforms to the industry standard SLIP protocol as defined in RFC 1055. To establish a SLIP connection, either directly or via a modem, a set of user specified send/expect commands are transmitted down the serial port. This allows the user to dial out, login to the remote machine, and start the SLIP service on the remote machine if required.

Once a SLIP connection is established then all TCP/IP clients can be run as though the connection was across an Ethernet. This includes X Windows, FTP and telnet.

The software can also be used as part of a SLIP-Ethernet gateway. This allows users on the Ethernet access to networks at the other end of the serial line and vice versa.

BIND

The standard Acorn TCP/IP suite allows TCP/IP connections to be made over Ethernet and Econet to know hosts in the machines hosts table.

For small networks this is satisfactory, but for large networks such as the Internet the size and continual need to update the table on each host would be an impossible task. To remove this problem, System Administrators place databases of names for the domain(s) on specified Domain Name System (DNS) servers. Any machine can interrogate these "name servers", using the correct protocol, to find a specified host's internet address. This interrogation function is performed on Acorn RISC OS machines by the resolver module provided with this suite.

All programmes in the TCP/IP suite have been compiled so that they translate host names to associated IP addresses, by first using the resolver module. If no match had been found the machine's own host table is checked.

DIG

DIG (Domain Information Groper) is a flexible command line tool, which can be used to gather information from the Domain Name System servers. Information stored regarding hosts includes IP address, system specification and list of services available.
For further information, contact:
Dr Chris Stenton
Gnome Computers Ltd
25a Huntingdon Road
St Neots
Cambridge
PE19 1BG

jacs@gnome.co.uk or tertiaryinfo@acorn.co.uk

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