ISPA Version 4.4, a Packet-Driver for ISDN-API 1.1

Herbert Hanewinkel, Mar 1999
mail@hanewin.de

Registration

ISPA is Shareware
ISPA, as it is provided, is a demo version. To make use of the full capabilities of ISPA you have to register ISPA. The basic registration fee for a single user version of ISPA is DM 70,-. Please read the file ISPA:TXT (German version: ISPA-D.TXT) for details.
As long as you have NOT registered ISPA you may test ISPA for 30 days without a registration code. In this case ISPA will stop forwarding data 15 min after startup.

Disclaimer

The program and the documentation is
Copyright (C) 1993-1999 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.).

Overview

ISPA is an ethernet-type (class=1) packet-driver for IP-Routing or remote Ethernet bridging over ISDN. ISPA communicates with the ISDN card using the ISDN API 1.1 specification (a standard defined by German ISDN card manufacturers and the German Telekom). Because of this, ISPA is completely hardware independent and has successfully been tested with many active and passive ISDN cards.

ISPA was initially developed for use with PCROUTE as a cheap Ethernet-ISDN Router. However, it is more and more used to connect a standalone PC system to the Internet using ISDN. ISPA 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 PDETHER, WATTCP based IP programs, NCSA & CU -Telnet/ftp, UMN gopher & popmail Trumpet WINSOCK, XFS.

ISPA 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.

ISPA can communicate at least with the following commercial systems:
3COM Sonix Arpegio, ACOTEC MPR, 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, Shiva AccessPort, Spyder Routers, SunLink ISDN 1.0 & 1.0.2.

ISPA is a MS-DOS TSR program for use with TSR or VxD CAPI 1.1 implementations. ISPA was written for use with ISDN BRI PC cards.

The current version of ISPA supports two independent active connections at a time. Alternativly a connection can use both B-channels for loadsharing. ISPA 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 ISPA 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.

Installation

To use ISPA you have to set up a configuration file with your ISDN configuration as described in the configuration guide. The default name for this file is ISPA.INI.
ISPA comes in three flavours. Depending on the protocol you need you can choose the standard (smaller) version or the bigger Plus version ISPAP.EXE. Only the Plus version contains code for CSLIP, PPP CHAP and NAT. For router set up should be preferre the 8B version even with one controller, because it uses greater buffer sizes for enhanced performance. The 8B version contains all features of the Plus version.

ISPA can be used with DOS CAPI 1.1 implemenations or VxD 32 Bit CAPI 1.1 implemenations.

For standard DOS TSR CAPI implementations you have to load ISPA after starting your CAPI 1.1 software.

For use with VxD CAPI implemenations under WfW or Win95 with Windows applications (e.g. Trumpet Winsock) you can start ISPA 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 ISPA in AUTOEXEC.BAT. ISPA will hook automatically to your CAPI software on Windows startup.

ISPA.EXE accepts the following arguments:
(Parameters in [ ] are optional, if not given a default is used)

ISPA RegCode [PacketInterrupt [ConfigFile]]

" RegCode" is your personal registration code you will receive after registration of ISPA. As long as you have NOT registered ISPA you may test ISPA using a ? in place of the registration code. In this case ISPA will stop forwarding data 15 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 ISPA configuration file. If the name is not given, it defaults to "ISPA.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.

Controlling and Monitoring

The DOS utility program ISPACF.EXE allows you to:

Deinstallation

ISPA can be unloaded using ISPACF.EXE or TERMIN.EXE from the Clarkson/Crynwr Packet Driver collection.

To unload ISPA from memory with ISPACF use:
ISPACF -u PktInt

If WINPKT is loaded on top of ISPA, ISPACF.EXE or TERMIN.EXE will automatically unload WINPKT as well.

Ethernet characteristics

ISPA works as an ethernet type Packet Driver. The ethernet address of ISPA 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 ISPA.

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 ISPA's with direct applications using an ethernet bridging protocol. It is not necessary when using ISPA with PCBRIDGE.

Availability

The latest version of ISPA is available on http://www.hanewin.de .

Support

Please mail comments, questions, problems to mail@hanewin.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

Warranty

There is absolutely NO WARRANTY, expressed or implied with this software. If you choose to use this software, you assume all risk.