Communications Group - Termly Report
====================================

Personel

N. S. Millar is joining the Training Unit on the 1st April, his move is being
phased over a period while the UMC Z80 committment lasts. A replacement will
be made as soon as possible.

Projects

Cambridge Ring DMA Interface

      The filestore development machine was connected up to the service ring
by a DMA Interface in early March. This has shown up a number of faults,
mainly hardware, some of which are still being investigated.  It is now
extremely unlikely that the DMA interfaces will be in service by the beginning
of the summer term.

Nodes

      At the beginning of this term there was a spate of hardware problems
with both PDP11 nodes, particuarily with the disc drives.  However the
past month has been almost trouble free and the nodes have adequately handled
the peak load.
      The new GEC X25 nodes should be ordered by the beginning of April and
the first one delivered by the third week in May.  After delivery a start
will be made to the transition to X25 by moving TCPs and FEPs over to the
new switches.

TCPs

      A new release of TCPs is just about to be made, this release contains
the improved screen handling code and changes to bulk i/o to allow a 'protocol'
to be run on top of it.  
      The X25 version of a TCP has been tried out and the next stage is to
put one into user service on the new switch to fully check it out.
      An investigation is currently being made of producing a new TCP on
a Metacomp board, which uses Intel hardware. It is hoped that such a TCP
could be produced by the end of the year once it is decided to go ahead with it.

RJE Protocol
      It has been decided to produce a new RJE protocol for X25 that should
be compatible with the requirements of a release 3 JNT PAD.  It is not
possible to use FTP on the current PDP11 TCPs.

Emas FEPs

      The reliability of the FEPs on the 2988 has now increased dramatically
after the fixing of some residual problems with the DCU.
      The ERTE machine has been used as a test X25 FEP onto the 2972 and
has been exercised over a period by JNT PAD users.
      The FTP service has now provided on the 2988 and has settled down
with about 500 transfers being made a week.
      During the coming term the priority will be to get a permanent X25
FEP on both the 2972 and the 2988 to check the software prior to full user
service before October '83.

IBM Black Box 

      The delivery of the Intel development system has considerably speeded
up the progress on the Black Box.  Most aspects of 88/45 board have now
been investigated and integration with the PDP11 program should start soon.


                                                     B. Gilmore
                                                     March 1983