[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP V2.6 for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

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

This is version 2.6 of BQTCP/IP.


It's been five months since the last official update, and there been 
various smaller improvements.


Highlights:
. Improved TCP performance.
. Bugfixes in DNS subsystem.
. Fixed various MAIL bugs that caused issues.
. Improved MAIL performance, handling and features.
. Added EPSV and EPRT to FTP and FTPD.
. Improved TELNETD performance.


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


TCP:
. In TCP, Change IO.REJ to create a socket in Time Wait, so that we
   don't get multiple requests for something we reject.
. Improved TCP congestion window handling.
. Improved TCP retransmit recovery logic.
. Correct TCP slow timer handling. If KAF is active, cancel timer.
. Improve TCP sender. If the only thing motivating a send is a window
         update, we always delay it.
. Added not starting new processes if pool is low.
. Changed TCP PU.RXP option to always return partial data, independent
         of push flags.


DNS:
. Bugfix for resolver. If DNS resolving results in multiple answers,
         the resolver only handled the first answer correctly.
. Bugfix for resolver. If a DNS response is received, which has an
         empty answer section, that is also an answer.
. Improve resolver cache. If we get multiple identical answers,
         only cache one copy.


TELNET/TELNETD:
. Added timeout to telnetd console logging I/O.
. Changed TELNET server to delay small sends.
. Improved telnet server to not set push on data sent.
. Improved telnet client to use PU.RXP when in binary mode.
. Improved telnet client. If connecting to something else than port 23,
         assume we don't do telnet negotiations. However, if remote side 
start
         doing them, we will also start doing them.


FTP/FTPD:
. Added EPRT and EPSV handling to FTPD. Improve EPSV handling in FTPD.


MAIL:
. Improved mail reader screen handling.
. Fix MAILD to remove temporary files if connection is dropped.
. Improved MAILD SMTP receive parsing.
. Fix various priv issues in mail reader causing notification problems.
         (Bugs reported by Kevin Jordan)
. Added mail label handling in mail reader.
. Bugfix in mail. FILE command filed wrong mail.
. Added better handling of locked records in mail.
. Improved mail submission processing to not wait until
         mail actually delivered before returning status.
. Improved performance in adding mails to a mailbox.


IPNCONFIG:
. Updated IPNCONFIG.CMD for managing DECnet over IP connections.
         Contributed by Oleg Safiullin


NETSTAT/RMD:
. Changed port lists in RMD and NETSTAT to not include local address
         by default.
. Change TCP state texts. Previous LISTEN is now ACCEPT.
         Previous SERVER is now LISTEN.


BQTLIB:
. Bugfix in BQTLIB. BP2 multiple IO code could misbehave.




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 not 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

!!! BQTCP is also available through RPM !!!


(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