[HECnet] How do you connect to HECnet?

[Johnny Billquist]

Angela Kahealani wrote:
I'm connecting via a NetBSD 4.0 system with two (2) NIC's.   One NIC
is connected to the Internet router, the other is managed entirely by
Johnny's bridge program.   
Does the bridge program need two NIC's?
one for DECnet (with the necessarily forced MAC)
2nd for UDP? can the UDP port share with TCP/IP functionality?
i.e., to get from
"Internet" <--> Bridge <--> DECnet <--> DECnet-consuming-application
how many NICs do I need? Since the DECnet-consuming-application
must have a DECnet address, I know it needs it's own NIC on which
it can own a corresponding MAC in the DECnet address range, but
does the DECnet side of the Bridge program need it's own DECnet
address also?
Is the short answer to go read some documentation on the bridge program?

No. The short answer is "no". :-)
One NIC is enough. The bridge program isn't visible to DECnet. Think of it as a cord extension. It grabs all the "correct" ethernet packets on an interface, and sends them out as UDP packets to the IP stack. What the IP stack choose to use for interface is none of it's concern. The same for the other direction. UDP packet is received, and sent out on a specified ethernet interface.

The one limitation is that it is usually problematic to have the same machine that is running the bridge also participate as a DECnet node on the same interface. Because then you need to see all your own outgoing packets. Not all hardware will do that for you.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol