TCP Suite, and other networking.

I have been looking at VSTa for awhile now, and have finally decided to
start working on a few projects.

The first of these being, utilizing VSTa as an embedded OS for routers.
This of course requires a rather full Networking suite. My question is
anyone already working on this? Or has just basic TCP stuff been worked
on? If there are people working on this I would be more than happy to
coordinate things with them so that we do not duplicate any efforts.
Stuff that I will be needing to support in the near future are the
following: RIP, RIPII, SNMP, SNMPII, SLIP, CSLIP, PPP, HDLC, and a couple
of protocols for ISDN work.

The second major project would be porting VSTa to some Alpha based
computers that I have designed and built. Current OS work on them
includes Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and HURD. Some of the machine models
are indeed SMP machines. Has someone been working on multiprocessing
primitives, or is that still at the stage of just 'holding' places for
them in the code? Again I would prefer to coordinate things so that
duplicated work is not done.

Somewhere down the line when I have the time, I am also interested in
experimenting with VSTa as the core kernel for a MPP system. I also want
to work with VSTa in a distributed environment. The work cluster that I
have in mind for this experimentation is a smallish (prototype) model of
an Alpha based MPP system, coupled via ATM to 4-8 Alpha workstations (of
various configurations). I am interested to see how VSTa can be made to
behave in this sort of an environment. Again, this is something for a
bit further down the road. Hopefully some people will be interested in
helping out with such a project, and when things are at that stage I can
and will definately have the machines available for use via internet.
All of this listed hardware is stuff of my own desgin. I have all the
documentation that one would need, from design documentation clear up to
overview documents on how various sections of the machines work. The MPP
system would be started as a 64 PE (Processing elements) machine with two
IOPs (Input Output Processors) and one Supervisor element. Storage is
connected Via Storage Modules, which are seperate cabinets connected via
fiber based HIPPI channels, that support a RAID type array of disks with
a log based filesystem, CDROMs, and backup storage. The MPP has access
to PCI card cages, and several PCI buses, as well as the option to
utilize VME card cages/buses. Storage units can be accessed directly
from the PEs or through the IOPs. The interconnection structure of the
communications network is flexible (4 links per PE to other PEs, 1 link
per PE to the I/O Mesh, 1 link per PE to the Graphics Mesh). I think
VSTa could be used, hopefully without a large amount of modification, as
something akin to a lightweight kernel on the PEs. Front ends for the
MPP will be variously configured Alpha machines. This MPP is a pet
project of mine, that I have been assisted with by a few interested
individuals, I would love to see an interesting OS running on it that
didn't take up 1-2 Megabytes/ Per cpu per PE just to run (Each PE has two
cpu's).

For those interested in looking at the Alpha machines (not the MPP),
please feel free to look at:
http://red-branch.mit.edu/~jsmith/alpha/alpha.html

Sorry for rambling on so long.

Thanks for your time,

Jonathan
Received on Fri Aug 4 07:07:26 1995