Xref: utzoo comp.dcom.lans:1583 comp.protocols.tcp-ip:4095 comp.protocols.iso:118
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!pacbell!att!cbnews!mark
From: mark@cbnews.ATT.COM (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans,comp.protocols.tcp-ip,comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: TLI transport specific addresses
Message-ID: <666@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Jul 88 17:58:36 GMT
References: <297@scolex> <1084@nusdhub.UUCP>
Reply-To: mark@cbnews.ATT.COM (Mark Horton)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 33

In article <1084@nusdhub.UUCP> rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.) writes:
>It is important to remember that the "addresses" refered to by
>this are the _names_ assigned to the endpoint in question and
>_not_ the physical address/serial_number of the board, to whit:
>the address may be associated with different hardware at different
>times.  As such addresses are arbitrary character strings, usually
>numonic, with several "suggested guidleines" for safe naming.
>The transport provider bears the burden of translating this
>into a media-dependant address, and as such this is not the
>problem of your software.  The media-address may also be retreived
>through one call (I forget which...)

I've used TLI too.  What are you describing above?

I once did a port of a working TCP/IP/socket application (built around
the Wollongong WIN/3B2 1.1 distribution) to TCP/IP/TLI (WIN 2.0.)  I
found that I had to pass a struct sockaddr_in to t_bind, and I had to
build the struct myself using gethostbyname, getservbyname, and the
like.  It seemed like TLI only replaced the bottom half of the socket
interface, all the addressing stuff was still socket specific, which
means none of it would work for TLI on some other transport.

In general, for clients and servers, you have to specify not only the
remote host address, but also the port name/number.  Determining both
of these quantities is going to be transport specific.  For example,
to write a generic TLI "remote login" application ala cu, for TCP/IP
I have to somehow tell it to use the TELNET port, #25 (unless I want
to use rlogin or supdup or something else.)  For Datakit, I have to
get the default port, whose name I think is "login".  For OSI it will
no doubt be something else.  And of course these applications all
have different protocols in the session, presentation, and application
layer.

	Mark