Submission for mod-protocols

Thread View: mod.protocols

2 messages

[T] Back to Threads [V] Tree View [G] Group Articles

2 total messages Started by mrs2 Thu, 19 Feb 1987 15:14

#88

Author: mrs2
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1987 15:14

38 lines
2199 bytes

Path: bunny!mrs2
From: mrs2@bunny.UUCP (Mark Scherfling)
Newsgroups: mod.protocols
Subject: Re: Submission for mod-protocols
Keywords: Courier, Xerox, XNS
Message-ID: <927@bunny.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 87 15:14:51 GMT
References: <8702172315.AA00735@uvabick.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrs2@bunny.UUCP (Mark Scherfling)
Followup-To: Info on Courier
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA
Lines: 26

The Courier Remote Procedure Call protocol (RPC) was developed by
Xerox as part of their XNS protocol suite.  Two years ago, they were
selling documentation packets which contained all the Xerox protocols
(currently published for external consumption) including the Interpress
printing protocol. Below is the contact I had in ordering these manuals:
   Dennis Frahmann
   Manager, Protocols Marketing
   Xerox Corp.
   Office Systems Division
   2100 Geng Rd.
   Palo Alto, California  94303

I am unsure of any commercial implementation of Courier.  Network Research
Corp.'s Fusion products may have implemented Courier, but I'm not sure.  XNS
has lost favor among the network integrators due to the need to communicate with
government agencies (running TCP/IP), the overwheming availability of TCP/IP in 
Berkeley Unix implementations, and the incomplete (read: non existence) of
common applications for XNS. 
Its too bad.  Courier and Clearinghouse were some of the finest higher level
protocols to exist when they were published. Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems liked
them so much, he rewrote them for TCP/IP and called them RPC and YellowPages,
respectfully. Oh well, protocols marchs forward.

-- Mark Scherfling
   GTE Labs

Re: Submission for mod-protocols

#90

Author: jqj
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1987 21:11

40 lines
2863 bytes

A request for information on Xerox Courier and publicly available
implementations appeared recently on this news group.

It should first be noted that very few compatible implementations of Courier
and the Xerox applications protocols that use it exist.  Most of the Xerox
implementations (for XDE, ViewPoint, Cedar, and Interlisp) interoperate, but
even there there are some incompatibilities.  3Com has an implementation
which interoperates at the Courier level, but not at the applications level;
for example, they use different Clearinghouse properties.  Last I checked,
Fusion's XNS protocol suite was Xerox-compatible at the SPP level but not at
the Courier level.

One non-commercial, but publicly available, implementation of the Courier
protocols is the Cornell xnscourier suite distributed as part of the
"user contributed" software for 4.3BSD.  It is designed to interoperate with
Xerox implementations, especially with the XDE implementation.

The suite includes a stub compiler which takes descriptions in the
Courier language and generates C client and server stubs, a fairly
large runtime library for common dataconversion and applications
problems (e.g. almost all Xerox uses of Courier require dynamic binding
to a network address based on a Clearinghouse name, so the library
includes routines that find a Clearinghouse, use it to translate from a
string to network address, generate the appropriate authentication,
etc.).  Also, the library includes sample applications using some of
the public Xerox protocols layered on Courier:  remote terminal
emulation client and server (GAP protocol), file transfer client
(Filing protocol; a file transfer server is coming soon), printing
client so you can send your Interpress masters to a Xerox printer, and
so on.

The package runs on 4.3BSD on VAXes and UTX 2.0 on Goulds.  I have not
tested it on SUNs, but believe that it would run there with little
problem (requiring currently undistributed SUN XNS kernel support).
For further information on the UNIX Courier package, send me mail.

	jqj@systems.cs.cornell.edu
	jqj@cornell.arpa
	cornell!jqj
	jqj@crnlcs.bitnet

Thread Navigation

This is a paginated view of messages in the thread with full content displayed inline.

Messages are displayed in chronological order, with the original post highlighted in green.

Use pagination controls to navigate through all messages in large threads.

Back to All Threads