[HECnet] PSTHRU.EXE poor-man routing object 123 for VMS on VAX -->Tops10

The PMR/PSTHRU is on the Trailing Edge Pdp10 archive: TOPS-10 Tools BB-FP64B-SB in Saveset TOPS10 Unsupported Tools in directory: 163 103770(7) <455> 10,773 6-Jul-87 dskb:[10,7,psthru]psthru.mac 36 22550(7) <455> 10,773 12-Jul-83 dskb:[10,7,psthru]psthru.plm 40 5120(36) <455> 10,773 1-Sep-88 dskb:[10,7,psthru]psthru.exe 39 24570(7) <455> 10,773 24-Feb-84 dskb:[10,7,psthru]pmr.mac Reindert -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul Koning Sent: Monday, 27 December, 2021 19:42 To: hecnet at update.uu.se Subject: Re: [HECnet] PSTHRU.EXE poor-man routing object 123 for VMS on VAX wrote: have the correct context? I know that this term existed for 20's route NRT sessions. It doesn't exist for CTERM. I don't think I remember seeing it for DAP/FAL/NFT. "Poor man's routing" as it appears in DECnet means a way to communicate with nodes that are unreachable by the primary protocol mechanisms. It works by making the user specify an explicit path to the destination (shades of uucp mail). For example, mail might be addressed to VAX4::STAR::Goldstein, i.e., the recipient was on node STAR but to get there I'd have to use VAX4 as an intermediate point. In Phase II, PMR would be used to reach destinations more than one hop away. With a mix of Phase III and IV, the Phase III nodes would need PMR to reach out of area destinations. And when "hidden areas" were used to deal with topologies that needed more than 63 areas -- such as DEC's internal network -- PMR would be used to get into or out of a hidden area. PMR the concept might be implemented in a number of different ways. Some applications, like MAIL, would provide it as part of the application. File transfer (DAP protocol) would offer it as a side effect of VMS transparent network access. And some applications, I think the old network terminal protocols might be an example, would rely on a separate application layer forwarder program. That would be PMR or PSTHRU, object 123. PMR as a separate program might originate on TOPS-10 since it has a program by that name that also provides the equivalent service on ANF-10. Someone posted the source of that recently (a year ago or so, perhaps). I don't remember ever seeing a protocol spec for the PMR protocol. Since I have the RSTS source code (it's a program PMR.BAS, in Basic-PLUS) I can reverse engineer such a spec, that's on my "soon" list. I don't remember if PMR was included with the DECnet kit. It's a pretty small and simple program. paul