[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

Time for a new release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS.


Highlights:

. Improvements to TCP performance.
. Bugfixes and improvements for DNS/mDNS.
. RSX security improvement.


Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release:


TCP:
. Bugfix in longword arithmetic condition code setup. This affected 
performance and stability of TCP communication.
. Improved TCP retransmit logic. TCP now better handles when 
retransmitting, and getting an acknowledge of parts of the data. 
previously, this could lead to very long retransmit times.


DNS/mDNS:
. Bugfix in DNS resolver. Possible stack corruption in some situation.
. Added MDNS as a separate resolver type.
. Bugfix in resolver. mDNS reverse lookups were not responded to.
. Bugfix in resolver. Resolver could fail to join multicast group at 
startup.
. Improved DNS timeout handling. If trying to resolve an ambiguous name 
only do local lookup if global lookup fails.


FTP:
. Bugfix in FTP. If user failed to log in, FTP client got out of sync 
with server.
. Improve FTP client. Exit with status reflecting state in FTP session.


MAILD:
. Added a possibility to have an SMTP relay for all outgoing mail.


Installation:
. Improved installation process, and added IP configuration for mDNS and 
UTC offset for NTP.


RSX:
. Bugfix in RSX. INS did not properly set uic if /UIC was given.


Some additional notes:

As usual, I would recommend people to update as soon as possible.
The changes are not critical, but will lead to a much better experience.
For the RSX fixes to be applied, it is necessary to answer yes to the
question about installing RSX patches. Otherwise those fixes will not
be installed. This does not lead to any failures, but it might lead to
some components running exactly the way you might be expecting (such as
daemons running under the wrong user).


As usual, the distribution is available from:
ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.dsk
ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.tap
ftp://ftp.update.uu.se/pub/pdp11/rsx/tcpip/tcpip.dsk

(As an additional note, I have become aware of that there is some device
proxying access to the ftp service at Mim. This might lead to failure to 
transfer large files. If you observe such problems, try connecting to 
Mim at port 10021 instead, which is an alternative port for the ftp 
server, and which circumvents the proxy.)

The documentation is also available through ftp on Mim, or also at 
http://mim.update.uu.se/tcpipdoc

I hope people find this update useful.


	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