Herbert Hanewinkel, Nov 1996
heha@biochem.mpg.de
CIPA, as it is provided, is a demo version. To make use of the full
capabilities of CIPA you have to register CIPA. The basic registration fee for a
single user version of CIPA is DM 70,-. Please read the file
CIPA:TXT for details.
As long as you have NOT
registered CIPA you may test CIPA for 30 days without a registration code. In
this case CIPA will stop forwarding data 20 min after startup.
The program and the documentation is
Copyright (C) 1995,1996 by Herbert
Hanewinkel,
All Rights Reserved.
It is provided as shareware with the following limitations:
This
program is copyrighted and it is not in the public domain. It may not be
distributed for profit or included in any CD-ROM or diskette software collection
without permission. This applies in particular to commercial PD libraries. The
program is not to be resold or distributed for sale with other programs which
are for sale without my express written permission.
There is no warranty or
claim of fitness or reliability. The program is distributed AS IS, and as such
the author shall NOT be held liable for any loss of data, down time, loss of
revenue or any other direct or indirect damage or claims caused by this program.
If
you are a distributor of ISDN products and would like to distribute unregistered
versions of this software or to sell registered versions of this software with
printed hard copy manuals, please contact me. You may not bundle or otherwise
distribute this software with any other software without my express written
permission (i.e., on the same diskettes as part of a commercial package,
compressed along with other software, etc.).
CIPA (= Common Isdn PAcket-driver) is an ethernet-type (class=1) packet-driver for IP-Routing or remote Ethernet bridging over ISDN. CIPA communicates with the ISDN card using the Common-ISDN-API 2.0 specification (an international standard for accessing ISDN cards). Because of this, CIPA is completely hardware independent and has successfully been tested with many active and passive ISDN cards.
CIPA supports a large set of protocols for communication with other vendors ISDN routers or servers. Among these protocols are: LAPB, Frame-Relay, PPP, SLIP, Cisco-HDLC.
CIPA's protocol suite has successfully been tested with a wide range of commercial, shareware and public domain TCP/IP packages e.g. Ftp PCTCP, Sun PC-NFS, Novell LanWorkPlace and PDTEHER, WATTCP based IP programs, NCSA & CU -Telnet/ftp, UMN gopher & popmail Trumpet WINSOCK, XFS.
CIPA can communicate at least with the following commercial systems:
Ascend
Routers, AVM MPR 3.0, Biodata ISDN Router, Cisco Routers, Conet S2M Router,
INS/CLS Banzai ISDN Router, netCS ISDN Router, RzK SLIP Bridge, SGI Indy ISDN
1.0 & 1.1, Spider Routers, SunLink ISDN 1.0 & 1.0.2.
CIPA is a MS-DOS TSR program for use with TSR or VxD CAPI 2.0 implementations. CIPA was written for use with ISDN BRI PC cards. CIPA was developed and implemented on a NCP /P8 card from NCP engineering GmbH, Nuernberg..
(Check for information on http://www.biochem.mpg.de/~heha/, if you are looking for details on a specific environment).
The current version of CIPA supports two independent active connections at a time. Alternativly a connection can use both B-channels for loadsharing. CIPA can be loaded more than once, if more than two simultaneous connections to different sites are desired. Loadsharing can be configured as static or dynamic (bandwidth on demand). Dynamic loadsharing can be used concurrently with a second independent connection.
Loadsharing over two channels is implemented using simple round robin scheduling, because IP doesn't require the original packet sequence. This is completely hardware independent and supported by many router systems. It works the same way as Cisco implements loadsharing over to X.21 interfaces and I have tested CIPA with a Cisco Router and two Philips TA's. With this kind of loadsharing it is possible to get a performance of up to around 13kBytes/s.
The latest version of CIPA is available on http://www.biochem.mpg.de/~heha/ or via ftp from: ftp.biochem.mpg.de in directory /pc/isdn.
To use CIPA you have to set up a configuration file with your ISDN configuration as described in the configuration guide. The default name for the confugration file is CIPA.INI.
CIPA can be used with DOS CAPI 2.0 implemenations or VxD 32 Bit Bit CAPI 2.0 implemenations.
For standard DOS TSR CAPI implementations you have to load CIPA after starting your CAPI 2.0 software.
For use with VxD CAPI implemenations under WfW or Win95 with Windows applications (e.g. Trumpet Winsock) you can start CIPA via WINSTART.BAT. WINSTART.BAT has to be in one of your PATH directories and is automatically executed at Windows startup.
For use with VxD CAPI implemenations under Win3.1 or with VxD kernel level software (e.g. ftp OnNet Windows kernel), start CIPA in AUTOEXEC.BAT. CIPA will hook automatically to your CAPI software on Windows startup.
CIPA.EXE accepts the following arguments:
(Parameters in [ ] are
optional, if not given a default is used)
CIPA RegCode [PacketInterrupt [ConfigFile]]
" RegCode" is your personal registration code you will receive after registration of CIPA. As long as you have NOT registered CIPA you may test CIPA using a ? in place of the registration code. In this case CIPA will stop forwarding data 20 min after startup.
" PacketInterrupt" defines the software interrupt for the Packet Driver application. The value has to be in the range from 0x60 to 0x80. If not specified, the default of 0x60 is used.
" ConfigFile" specifies the name of the CIPA configuration file. If the name is not given, it defaults to "CIPA.INI". The configuration file is a readable text file. How to set up a configuration file and a complete reference of all configuration options is described in the configuration guide.
The Windows utility program ISDN2MON.EXE allows you to:
File
Save Buffer saves the screen contents to a file. If the file exists the contents is appended to the file.
Exit terminates the program
View
Status selects the status page for display
Configuration displays the active configuration
Control
Connect manually connect to a IP destination. In case of PPP with authentication the program prompts for authentication information. The initial setting of the repeated dial request option depends on the Preferences configuration.
Disconnect disconnects all active ISDN connections or terminates a repeated dial reuqest.
Reset Statitstics resets all counters.
AutoDial enable or disabes the auto dial feature.
Preferences defines the initial program settings. Selectable are the language of menus and messages, the cost per unit and currency value and the initial setting of the repeated dial option. All settings are saved in a file ISDN2MON.INI. The program beeps on connect and disconnect. If the "Play Sound" option is checked, the program will play the .WAV files assigned to ISDNup on connect and ISDNdown on disconnect.
Help
Info displays program version information.
ISDN2MON.EXE tries to locate CIPA automatically searching for a signature. Optionally you may specify the "PktInterrupt" as an argument to attach ISDN2MON.EXE to a dedicated CIPA Driver.
The DOS utility program CIPATL.EXE allows you to:
CIPA can be unloaded using CIPACTL.EXE or TERMIN.EXE from the Clarkson/Crynwr Packet Driver collection.
To unload CIPA from memory with CIPACTL use:
CIPACTL -u PktInt
If WINPKT is loaded on top of CIPA, CIPACTL.EXE or TERMIN.EXE will automatically unload WINPKT as well.
CIPA works as an ethernet type Packet Driver. The ethernet address of CIPA is defined as: 00-00-0xFB-0xAA-00-<pkt-int>. (Thanks to RzK, Asbach, Germany for using numbers from their official 00-00-0xFB range.) "pkt-int" is replaced by the software interrupt number in the range 0x60 to 0x80 used for accessing CIPA.
With PKTADDR.EXE from the Clarkson/Crynwr Packet Driver collection the ethernet address can be changed to any other desired value.
Changing the ethernet address may be required when connecting two CIPA's with direct applications using an ethernet bridging protocol. It is not necessary when using CIPA with PCBRIDGE.
The latest version of CIPA is available on http://www.biochem.mpg.de/~heha/
Please mail comments, questions, problems to heha@biochem.mpg.de. I can not guarantee any level of technical support, or for any length of time. In general, I will give priority to registered users
There is absolutely NO WARRANTY, expressed or implied with this software. If you choose to use this software, you assume all risk.