TransSys PNI Beta 1.9 release
15 May 1994

Software and Documentation is
Copyright 1993, 1994 by TransSys, Inc. and Louis A. Mamakos
All rights reserved.

This software distribution is an interim release of the TransSys PNI
Software package.  TransSys PNI is a very flexible and configurable
networking product for Motorola- and Intel-based NeXTSTEP platforms.
TransSys PNI is intended to be run on Release 3.1 and 3.2 NeXTSTEP
systems.  TransSys PNI will allow your NeXTSTEP system to communicate
with remote systems using SLIP (Serial Line IP) over serial ports and
other virtual devices.  It has sophisticated packet filtering
abilities as well to control access to various services on your
system.

It is is available via anonymous FTP from:

  sonata.cc.purdue.edu: /pub/next/submissions/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz
  cs.orst.edu:          /pub/next/submissions/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz
  ftp.uu.net:           /tmp/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz

the copy on ftp.uu.net will only exist for a short time; the ones on
the Purdue and Oregon State archives will likely move to their final
resting places fairly quickly.  Archive maintainers: please remove any
earlier versions you might have.

The PNI Beta 1.9 version mainly repairs a few bugs in the PNI Beta 1.8
release.

Note, however, that previous license key strings and installed
keyfiles will not be compatible with this version.  It will be
necessary to use the license key strings included in this distribution
with this version (and later) of this software package.  One of the
bugs fixed caused this incompatibility.

The following bugs have been repaired in this version:

- Bug that prevented 1.8 from running: missing /usr/local/tclX/7.3a/TclInit.tcl
file problem.  This file is now, correctly, not required by the software.

- The pnirun shell script deals better with the
/etc/pni/config/pni0.config-auto file naming convention.

- The SLIP-only license key didn't work due to code that checked the
wrong bits.  It works now.

- The demo license key strings no longer include the "PPP" feature, since
there is no PPP encapsulator right now, and this got many peoples hopes
up for no good reason. 

- The kernel driver had a bug fixed where it didn't correctly queue
interactive traffic to the high priority interface queue on Intel-based
(little endian) platforms.  We convert to host byte order when doing
comparisons.

- TclX has been upgraded to 7.3a patchlevel 2 from patchlevel 0.

- The Tcl and TclX man pages are no longer provided in PostScript
format; rather the are in the "raw" format to save space.  It will be
necessary to format them with "nroff -man" or "ptroff -man" to read
them.

- Many, many spelling errors in the documentation have been fixed.  I
look foward to any suggestions and comments on improving the
documentation.

The Beta 1.8 release was mainly bug fixes, with few new features.  The
exception is that the Tcl and TclX libraries have been updated to Tcl
version 7.3 (and the associated TclX version).  Most notable in bugs
fixed is in the inactivity timeout logic in the Filter encapsulator.

TransSys recommends that only those users that are already familiar
with SLIP and IP networking in general attempt to install and use the
package.  At this time, support is very limited and cannot include
configuration or local issues.  You should be willing to invest a
little bit of time installing this software.  The bright side is that
it should be easier to install than TransSys DialUp-IP, so don't
despair completely!

The beta version of TransSys PNI is available free of charge, and
will implement SLIP and CSLIP as well as IP packet filtering and IP
tunnels.  A license to use these features is included for 90 days.
When the release version of this software is available, a base-SLIP
only version will be free of charge, just like TransSys DialUp-IP.
Other capabilities (CSLIP, filtering, etc) will be licensed at an
additional charge.

Also included is a SLIP-only license key string with no expiration
date.

Users of TransSys DialUp-IP who have purchased a license for the CSLIP
version will have a free (or nominal cost if media is required)
upgrade to TransSys PNI.  Details on the mechanics of the upgrade
process will follow with the first non-beta version.

Please read the doc/pni.ps.Z file which contains the documentation
which exists to date for TransSys PNI.  You should uncompress it and
either print the file (about 90 pages) or view it using the NeXTSTEP
Preview application.  There are also a set of ASCII files (in
doc/info-files.tar.Z) which can be extracted and read using the GNU
emacs "info" hypertext package or by just paging through it with a
text editor.  

Alternatively, if you have Internet connectivity and a WorldWideWeb
browser application, you can examine the URL

	http://WWW.TransSys.COM/TransSys/pni-info.html

to examine the manual without having to fetch the entire package.
This WWW service is experimental, and could change without notice.

Additional information on TCL and TCL extensions are available in the
files doc/Tcl.ps.Z and doc/TclX.ps.Z. 

This is an beta release of software.  Rather than run a small, limited
beta program, TransSys has decided to open it to anyone due to the
great desire for some sort of SLIP solution for Intel platforms.
Extensive support is just not available at this stage - there is still
development to be done, and little time available to do it in.  If
you've never tried to install SLIP software before and are not sure
what it even is, you probably don't want to find out using this
beta-quality software at this early stage.

It is anticipated that this will be the final beta release, barring
any horrible errors or bugs that are found.  The next release will
include pricing information for the non-SLIP-only licenses.

Comments, suggestions and feature requests can be sent via email to
pni-beta@TransSys.COM.  Users of the PNI package that would like to be
notified of new release and other occasional information should also
drop a message to pni-beta@TransSys.COM to get added to a distribution
list for announcements.

Louis Mamakos
TransSys, Inc.

($Id: README,v 1.8 1994/05/16 04:52:44 louie Exp $)
