This document contains late breaking news of the latest features added to the VICOM Internet Gateway which do not appear in the VICOM Internet Gateway manual. At the end of the document, the version history of the product is also listed.
For the latest news about updaters, shows that Vicom Technology are attending, new versions of our software, new products, press news and lots more, take a regular look at our news page at:
http://www.vicomtech.com/newsflash.html
Contents:
• Unlimited number of ports
• Multiple Ports on one Ethernet Card
• The Gateway as a DHCP client
• CHAP PPP connections
• Dynamic PPP server ports
• Setting synchronous or asynchronous mode manually
• Detecting a dropped phone line
• Putting delays in login scripts
• Improved trace window
• The "DHCP Clients" file—new options
• Vicom Technology's Technical Support Area on the Web
• Saving Information About the Set-up of Your VICOM Internet Gateway (Contacting Technical Support)
• Version History
Unlimited Number of Ports
This version of the Gateway now allows you to have unlimited ports compared to the previous limit of 8 ports. The default memory required for the Gateway has been set to comfortably run it with 8 ports. If you wish to add more than 8 ports, you may need to increase the amount of memory the Gateway requires. To do this, select the VICOM Internet Gateway application icon and select "Get Info" from the "File" pull-down menu when you are in the Finder and increase both the "Minimum" and "Preferred" size.
NOTE: You cannot do the above adjustment to the memory allocation while the Gateway is launched, so quit the application entirely first.
Multiple Ports on one Ethernet Card
The new version of the Gateway allows you to assign more than one IP address to an Ethernet Card, but to do this you MUST be using Open Transport. To create an Ethernet port, simply select "New Port" in the "Gateway" pull-down menu, enter the desired IP address and then select the Ethernet card you are using as the "Method". To create a second Ethernet port, follow the above steps. There is no limit to the number of Ethernet ports you can have on the one card, as long as their IP addresses are on different networks.
The Gateway as a DHCP Client
The VICOM Internet Gateway can now be a DHCP client when it has an Ethernet port. To set the Gateway to be a DHCP client on an Ethernet port, set the IP address for that Ethernet port to be "Dynamic" (uncheck the "Static" check-box in "Basic" User Mode). The Gateway will then receive information about the IP address the port requires, the Default Gateway IP address, and the Domain Name Server IP address from a DHCP Server.
One area where this new feature is of particular importance is to cable modem users. Several cable modem providers now use a DHCP server to assign an IP address to customers when they connect using their cable modem, rather than assigning each customer with a static IP address.
NOTE: A Gateway cannot be a DHCP Server and a DHCP Client on the same Ethernet port. The Gateway will not serve DHCP addresses to itself. This means that if you have a DHCP Server and DHCP Client port on the same physical network, the server port will not respond to a request from the client port.
CHAP PPP Connections
The Gateway now supports the CHAP authentication protocol in addition to supporting PAP (password authentication) protocol. CHAP is more secure than PAP because the password is encrypted as it is transmitted over the network.
CHAP is mostly used for ISDN connections. There are no user settings for CHAP, the Gateway will automatically detect whether the remote host requires CHAP or PAP and will respond appropriately. Your ISP will have pre-determined the protocol to be used (PAP or CHAP).
Dynamic PPP Server Ports
The Gateway's PPP server ability has been improved. Previously each PPP server (dial-in) port had to be on a separate IP network to the other ports. From this version, it is possible to put a PPP server (dial-in) port on the same network as an Ethernet port, and the Gateway will bridge traffic between these two ports.
To activate this capability, set the address of a dial in port to "dynamic". When a remote client connects to this port, the Gateway will give it the address specified in "PPP Server Base Address" in the Preferences. If no address has been specified in the "PPP Server Base Address" option, an address on the same network as the first Ethernet port will be assigned to the dial-in port.
Setting Synchronous or Asynchronous Mode Manually
The Gateway supports synchronous and asynchronous PPP. It will detect the type of PPP connection made to an Internet Provider and either use asynchronous PPP or synchronous PPP. The Gateway can be forced into making a synchronous or asynchronous PPP connection (e.g. using an ISDN Terminal Adapter driven by the Apple Modem Tool), by setting the "Framing" preference in "Advanced Options" in the "Connect Info" window to the required setting.
NOTE: The "Advanced Options" button used to be called "PPP Setup..." in previous versions of the Gateway.
Detecting a Dropped Phone Line
The Gateway uses the Apple Modem Tool to drive modems. This tool does not always detect that the modem has dropped the line, so the Gateway will remain connected even though the modem has disconnected (e.g. caused by the a problem on the phone line).
The solution to this is "PPP Echo", found in "Advanced Options" within "Connect Info". When activated, the Gateway will send PPP echo packets to the remote end as specified. If the remote end does not respond (as will happen if the modem has disconnected), the Gateway will terminate the connection or, if "Keep connection open at all times" option is enabled, the Gateway will hang-up the modem and reconnect.
The "DHCP Clients" and "Gateway Names" File Have Been Combined
To display which users are on the Internet at any one time, select the "View Users" option in the "File" pull-down menu. To show names in this window rather than IP addresses, a file called "Gateway Names" used to be created in previous versions of the Gateway. This is no longer required as the information can be entered directly into the "DHCP Clients" file.
If you are not using the DHCP capability of the Gateway, or you are using it but the machine you wish to list is not to be served by the DHCP Server, make an entry which begins with a "-" in place of the MAC address, the IP address of the machine, and the name you wish to be displayed.
For example:
-<TAB><IP Address><TAB><Name>
Displays as such:
- 192.168.1.120 Non_DHCP_Client
For more details about "DHCP Clients" file, see Chapter 11 of the VICOM Internet Gateway User Manual v. 3.8.
For details about the Managing Local Users ("View Users") option, see Chapter 5 of the VICOM Internet Gateway User Manual v. 3.8.
Putting Delays in Login Scripts
When using a login script to log into a service provider, it is quite common to need to send several Carriage Return (CR) characters to "wake up" the provider. Some providers may not respond to a carriage return (CR) and may require a carriage return line feed character sent to them (CRLF). A pause between sending each character is also another possible requirement. To accommodate this, the Gateway now allows three special character sequences in a "Send" string of a login script:
\r sends a CR (carriage return)
\n sends a CR LF (carriage return followed by line feed)
\d causes a one second delay
For example, to send three CRs with a one second delay between them, one would use:
\r\d\r\d\r
Improved Trace Window
The Trace window has been improved to display more information, which will help in analyzing connection and login problems. The Window is now resizable and has a "Save to Disk" option. This option will save all the Trace window contents to a file after the trace has been shown in the Trace Window. The "Record to File" option from previous versions of the Gateway has been kept and will record all trace information directly into a file without displaying anything in the Trace window.
Vicom Technology's Technical Support Area on the Web
Vicom Technology's Technical Support team have an area on the Vicom web site which contains:
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Tutorials
• Vicom Software Updaters
• Application Notes and Version Histories
• Contacting Technical Support
This area is constantly updated to address common questions and problems our users experience.
The main page for the Support area can be found at:
A new set of web pages have been added to the Support area called "Communications Products". These pages contain a list of TCP/IP applications that can be used with the VICOM Internet Gateway and that Vicom Technology's Technical Support team think users will find useful. The web page can be found at: http://www.vicomtech.com/support/appnotes/vig.apps.html
Saving Information About the Set-up of Your VICOM Internet Gateway
When contacting VICOM Technical Support for help with the VICOM Internet Gateway, you can now help us to help you by sending a text document containing the set-up of your VICOM Internet Gateway.
If you need help from VICOM Technical Support, we recommend the following:
1) Select "Save Config As..." from the "File" pull-down menu of the VICOM Internet Gateway and save the file (this file is automatically saved as a text file).
2) Fill out the "Contacting Technical Support" form along with the contents of the configuration text file on the following web page: http://www.vicomtech.com/support/support.form.html
3a) Email the file along with a description of your problem to "support@vicomtech.com" OR
3b) Print the file (by using any text editor) and fax the file along with a description of the problem to:
North America: +1 415-691-9838
Europe/International: +44 1202 310241
Sending this file to VICOM's Technical Support Team helps us provide a speedier and more accurate response.
Version History
Version 3.8.4
1. The previous limit of 8 ports has now been extended to allow an unlimited number of ports.
2. On machines running Open Transport, you can now create multiple Ethernet ports on a single Ethernet card.
3. The Gateway now supports the CHAP authentication protocol used by some ISPs. The Gateway will automatically detect if the ISP is using PAP or CHAP and respond accordingly.
4. The Gateway can now be a DHCP client by setting an Ethernet port to dynamic address.
5. It is now possible to manually set PPP connections to synchronous or asynchronous mode.
6. The Gateway now has a login script template for CompuServe users to set-up the Gateway.
7. The "DHCP Clients" and "Views Users" windows (available in the "File" pull-down menu) are both resizable.
8. A problem was fixed where if the Gateway had two ports on the same physical network with the DHCP Server functionality enabled, client machines had difficulty getting their IP configuration information.
9. PPP framing information is shown in the trace window for a PPP port to enable Vicom Technology's Technical Support staff to be able to help with problems related to connecting to an ISP via PPP.
10. The Gateway now reports the speed at which a modem connection was made. In previous versions, the Gateway would display "Connected". It now display's "Connected at x" where x is the speed at which the port was set to connect (e.g. 9600).
11. Previously, in extreme circumstances, a "Dial-In, Answer Only" port on the Gateway could try to dial out. This problem has been fixed in this version.
12. The Gateway can distinguish the difference between echo replies from a modem and echo replies from an ISP, and therefore will correctly detect that the line has been dropped if the "Echo Interval" has been set.
13. The login monitor shown when tracing a port on the Gateway (which can be seen by selecting "Start Tracing Port" from the "Gateway" pull-down menu) has been improved, including the ability to scroll and to save items from the Trace Window directly to disk after seeing the trace information.
14. The Gateway now creates a folder called "VICOM Settings" in the VICOM Internet Gateway folder. The folder will be used in the future to store text settings files, but at present is not used.
15. Some 68k Macs running MacTCP with a MacIP port on the Gateway while using LocalTalk experienced crashing, which this version fixes.
16. The RIP hop count now correctly gets reset if a connection to a router was disconnected for a few minutes.
17. Changing a user from using a static DHCP-assigned address to a dynamic DHCP-assigned address led to the client machine still receiving the static address. This problem has been corrected in this version.
18. The Gateway would sometimes crash when generating a log. Another symptom of this problem was that "online" times in the log were not calculated correctly. This problem has been fixed.
19. A problem has been fixed where the Gateway wasn't fragmenting large packets correctly. This caused problems when using FTP over MacIP and in some rare cases, over Ethernet.
Version 3.8.3
1. A problem with the "Save Config" option led to some information not being saved about all the ports; therefore, some ports could have been omitted from the text file produced.
2. The Gateway Names and DHCP Clients files have been combined.
3. RIP packets no longer affect idle timeout on OpenLink and non-proxy PPP ports.
Version 3.8.2 (Beta release)
1. The "Login Info" window has been improved to provide the option of entering a login script or using PAP in the one location.
2. The "Port Trace" window is now resizable.
3. An Import and Export facility has been added to the Global Host Access Rights.
4. The "Gateway Names" file and the "DHCP Clients" file have been combined so that only the "DHCP Clients" file is required. The "Gateway Names" file can still be used if required (i.e. when another DHCP Server is being used other than the VICOM Internet Gateway.)
Version 3.8.1 (Internal release)
1. New 3D look.
2. New Global Host Access Rights option.
Version 3.7.4
1. The Gateway now supports plug-in International Language Enablers.
2. Some Web Servers have been occasionally seen to continue to send packets to a disconnected client, preventing timeout of the port or the client. The Gateway's timers now ignore these packets.
3. Some problems were experienced when dialling into the Gateway from a remote client which have been fixed in this version.
4. A problem was fixed when trying to process a log file on some machines.
5. Fixes some minor bugs related to the main status window.
6. A problem was fixed where the Gateway would stop sending RIP when a port was disabled/stopped.
Version 3.7.3
1. The Gateway now supports PCI Token Ring cards.
2. Fixes a problem on some machines where the Gateway would crash when quit.
Version 3.7.2
1. A problem was fixed with editing the port ranges in the inbound mapping option.
2. Downloading large files using a web browser on the Gateway machine could cause the transfer to fail.
3. The Routing Tables window correctly appears on small monitors rather than appearing slightly off the screen.
Version 3.7.1
1. The VICOM Internet Gateway now supports PCI Ethernet cards.
2. The Gateway also supports PCMCIA Ethernet cards.
3. The lease time is shown in the "DHCP Clients" window. This also enables the user to see which clients are BOOTP clients and which clients are DHCP clients.
4. The VICOM Internet Gateway now includes native code for both PowerPCs and 68k Mac's. This fat binary application (which is the default installation) will only work on PowerPC's with Open Transport. To use MacTCP with the VICOM Internet Gateway on a PowerPC, you will need to install the secondary installation Gateway. Please click on the "Read Me" button within the "Install Gateway" program for more details.
5. The time-out values for the Internet Proxy port have changed and are now: Never, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes and 1 hour of inactivity.
6. While the Gateway is running, the mirror port cannot be deleted.
7. A message is now shown to indicate when the "Mirror this Port" option has been used.
8. In previous versions of the Gateway, if a client machine was assigned the same IP address as one of the Gateway's ports, the Gateway would stop the port until it was manually reset. In this version the Gateway will not stop the port, and it will become active when the conflicting address is removed.
9. The number of DHCP/BOOTP clients that the Gateway can handle can now be adjusted up to a maximum of 1024.
10. The DHCP lease time can now be changed from the default of 1 hour.
11. Inbuilt PING function added.
12. A "DHCP Clients" file is now installed as standard.
13. Settings are saved every time something is changed by the user.
14. Synchronous PPP support added.
15. The default IP address the Auto Set-up utility assigned was 192.163.x.x This IP address was not a Private Net Address that we recommend. It now assigns the correct Private Net Address of 192.168.x.x
16. When a dial-out port has connected, the "Connect" pull-down menu option now becomes "Disconnect" rather than being greyed out.
Previous Versions
For the history of previous versions of the VICOM Internet Gateway, please see the complete VICOM Internet Gateway Version History document on our web site at:
