AppleTalk Over IP

[sutekh]

I have what is probably an obvious question, but one I haven't been able to find an answer to searching the forum, Google, or via brute force attempts to make something work. I now have a small collection of PowerBooks connected to my LAN over wifi via SLIP and ESP8266-based serial modem replacement boards I built.

(Thread pertaining to the later in the Hacks forum here



They can access the interwebs and one another via TCP/IP using OpenTransport or MacTCP just fine, but AppleTalk is a missing link. I'd love to be able to share files via AFP, and especially play any of several AppleTalk only network multi-player games (e.g., Pararena). Recognizing that I'm dealing with two completely different network layer technologies (IP vs. DDP), was there ever a method devised for encapsulating AppleTalk datagrams in IP packets and bridging AppleTalk networks over TCP/IP?

I've tried Apple Remote Access, but it expects to interface with a serial port directly, not encapsulate anything or interface with the TCP/IP stack. I also fiddled with Rob Braun's nifty little "AppleTalk Over IP" extension, which in name sounds like exactly what I want, but is specifically designed to facilitate AFP access to a mac68k.info cloud resource: http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/avpn.html

Options exist to go the other direction, but I'm thus far stumped :/

 

[cheesestraws]

There's bad news and... slightly less bad news.

There are means of doing this but they're really all aimed at routing; so the idea was that if you wanted to do AppleTalk over an IP-only backbone, you could do that.  But as far as I know that is only a router plugin.  There's even an RFC for it, RFC1504.  But that doesn't help much.  The other options that I know of are all like ARA, and are more about talking AppleTalk over a point-to-point link.

The not-quite-so-bad news is that the AppleTalk Over IP extension is eminently hackable.  The source code is around, it's BSD licensed and it's not particularly complicated.  One of the things I really wanted to do with it was to try to make a version of it to implement my LToUDP specification, which is for tunneling LLAP over UDP.  But as usual with me, my neurochemistry intervened.  So you might have some luck ripping out the login logic for that and just using UDP broadcast as essentially an emulated shared medium.

(edit: I would be very happy to revive this project if anyone fancies joining in with me on it and jollying it along)

 

[MrFahrenheit]

What about the AppleTalk Internet Router software?

 

[cheesestraws]

This is what I meant by "routing" in my comment above.  Note also that "Internet" in the name of that product doesn't mean Internet as in IP, it means Internet in the older sense of the word, as in a network of networks.  It's an AppleTalk router.  I can't remember if it comes with a plugin to do RFC1504 or similar or whether you have to hunt something else down, but either way, not much use for a client machine.

 

[sutekh]

Very helpful info, thank you! If nothing else, it's nice to know I'm not missing something obvious  

I noticed that Rob's adev included the source and am staring at it now... As you suggest, I may be able strip out the uam portion and cross-compile something that meets my needs? Definitely willing and anxious to partner @cheesestraws, but don't get too excited. I'm rubbish at software development 

 

[cheesestraws]

I have a version of it somewhere that compiles in a newer version of codewarrior.  I'll try to dig it out when I'm not mid-work.

 

[Realitystorm]

was there ever a method devised for encapsulating AppleTalk datagrams in IP packets and bridging AppleTalk networks over TCP/IP?

I know this is an old post, but I was looking for a solution to this too and found IPTnnl: https://web.archive.org/web/19980122194308/http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/appletalk/doc/IPTnnl.userDoc.html

 

[NJRoadfan]

Several methods existed for tunneling AppleTalk over IP. Cayman Systems had one that worked with the GatorBox and I think Cisco routers. Apple had their own that came with AppleTalk Internet Router and worked with Cisco routers (AURP). Finally Shiva had one supported by the FastPath 5 that was supposed to be the standard (DR Pepper), but never really got adopted since it was late to the market.

Going WAY back, there was also a Kinetics developed protocol called IPTalk that assigned a UDP port range to common AppleTalk services and encapsulated DDP in IP. This was for UNIX machines running the Columbia AppleTalk Package, but did not yet have a native AppleTalk networking stack for them.

 

[History_SE30_Dude]

Some people are doing this now with vintage software for fun this month. Ive started looking into the software and hopefully will have something connected before they're done. Check out this link:

https://biosrhythm.com/?p=2767

BBraun also had a server in the past with a special extension that allowed AppleTalk through IP to connect to it, from what Ive read it was encapsulated in IP but that server he had is no longer up.

AppleTalk over IP