I think I may have finally gotten to the bottom of this.? It's a level 1 
routing message that I'm getting from 2.1023 (A2RTR) that does not 
appear to be respecting lengths, viz:
*22:04:30*.749823 aa:00:04:00:ff:0b > ab:00:00:03:00:00, ethertype DN 
(0x6003), length *1478*: lev-1-routing src 2.1023 {ids 0-726 cost 0 hops 0
This is two (2) bytes over the maximum that Tops-20 can accept.
    NCP>*SHOW LINE NI-0 CHARACTERISTICS *
    NCP>
    22:16:04 ??? NCP
    Request # 23; Show Line Characteristics Completed
    Line = NI-0
     ? Receive Buffers = 6
     ? Controller = Normal
     ? Protocol = Ethernet
     ? Hardware Address = 00 1F 16 EC CE 47
     ? Receive buffer size = *1476*
It would appear that the 20's are advertising this length in their layer 
1 hello messages:
22:04:21.018507 aa:00:04:00:0a:0a > ab:00:00:03:00:00, ethertype DN 
(0x6003), length 60: router-hello l1rout vers 2 eco 0 ueco 0 src 2.522 
blksize *1476* pri 5 hello 15
22:04:21.082680 aa:00:04:00:08:0a > ab:00:00:03:00:00, ethertype DN 
(0x6003), length 60: router-hello l1rout vers 2 eco 0 ueco 0 src 2.520 
blksize *1476* pri 5 hello 15
About two seconds after the message comes in from A2RTR, the following 
appears in the error log:
    ***********************************************
    DECNET ENTRY
     ?LOGGED ON 17-Jan-2021 *22:04:32*-EST MONITOR UPTIME WAS 1 day(s)
    1:17:54
     ??????? DETECTED ON SYSTEM # 3691.
     ??????? RECORD SEQUENCE NUMBER: 70952.
    ***********************************************
    DECNET Event type 5.15, Receive failed
     From node 2.520 (TOMMYT), occurred 17-JAN-2021 22:04:08
     ? Line NI-0-0
     ? Failure reason = Frame too long
     ? Ethernet header = AB 00 00 03 00 00 / AA 00 04 00 0A 0A
So... no way I can get around this without some /serious/ hacking of 
DNADLL and ROUTER (see below), which would probably take me a few months 
to learn and debug.? Of course, then maybe I could put level 2 routing 
into Tops-20, which I been daydreaming about...
Paul, what does this suggest to you?
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 On 1/17/21 7:39 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 On 2021-01-18 00:17, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
 Well, the frames certainly won't be larger than 1,500 bytes, right?? 
 So I'm guessing they'll be the maximum.? Problem is, all of that 
 stuff is hidden under several layers of drivers, so I'm not sure how 
 I'm going to get the overage passed back.? And I also need to put in 
 some BUGINF logic to alert if I get more of these than whatever I 
 decide the interval to be. 
 That depends on what they count. Like I said - ethernet
payload is 
 1500. Then you have the ethernet headers which is 14 bytes, plus the 
 crc trailer, which is 4 bytes. If you count them, you end up at 1518 
 bytes.
 Depends on the hardware I guess.?? I have no idea what the NIA-20 expose. 
I meant the maximum frame size; I suspect this is 1500 for the NI, but I 
don't actually know.? My speculation is that DECnet is using part of the 
buffer to piggy back node and and other information into it instead of 
holding this meta-data, separately.? I don't know what Multinet does, 
but there you can configure the NI to have a packet size of 1500.
   If you are a
DDP (LD.DDP), then you are not CPU dependent and you go 
 ahead always, otherwise, you have to be on the CPU that owns the 
 device (.CPCPN) So I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but DDP 
 is not CPU dependent; not sure if that is a synonym for 'shared'.? If 
 I stumble over something more, I'll report it. 
 It's actually the same in
RSX. The DDCMP layer is sort of between the 
 hardware driver and the higher level protocols, and it's not tied to 
 any specific CPU.
 But that code would suggest that LD.DDP is just an indication of 
 whether something is CPU dependent or not, and would have anything to 
 do with DDCMP. 
  From looking at the routing code, seems LD.DDP is used when
something 
is getting handed to the NSP to play with, I guess that would be goig 
through some kind of layering.