NOVELL TECHNICAL INFORMATION DOCUMENT

TITLE:  SPXS.NLM and STREAMS.NLM File Server Modules
README FOR:  SPXSTR.EXE

NOVELL PRODUCTS and VERSIONS:
NetWare 4.1

ABSTRACT:

This file contains updated spxs.nlm and streams.nlm modules for
Netware 4.1.




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NOVELL.  NOVELL
 MAKES EVERY EFFORT WITHIN ITS MEANS TO VERIFY THIS INFORMATION. 
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SYMPTOM:

1.NWSAA server crashed at STREAMS.NLM. It happened when the
integration was running two hours. Streams memory management
problem results in server abend.

 2. Applications could not use the T_ORD_REL TLI primitive when
an SPXII connection is established.

 3. SPXII performance was bad across some 3rd party routers which
did not preserve packet ordering during forwarding. The effect
was significant retransmissions which slowed down performance.

 4. Some applications had connection indication lost problems.
There were 2 problems here. One was fixed in SPXS, the other in
TLI.NLM (The latest tli.nlm can be found in tli4x.exe in NOVLIB).

 5. A timing problem occurred in connection cleanup which could
cause SPXS to crash. This would depend on how an individual
application was written as to whether a crash were to occur.

 6. A problem exists where SPXS stops PBURST and some other NLMs
to work. If SPXS receives an invalid packet type, buffers would
be given back to the system, but the counters were not updated.
This caused applications which relied on these counters to stop
functioning (like PBURST).

 7. A deadlock condition existed which stopped 2 SPX sessions
talking to each other if some NAK packets are lost.

 8.  Retransmission of size negotiation packets does not update
the ack and alloc fields.  This could cause confusion when the
ack number seems to be decreasing. 

 9.  There is a bug in the client SPX which can overrun the SPX
windows. SPX now simply ignores the extra data and waits for a
later retransmission. This fix stops a client being confused -
even though strictly it is a client problem.

 10. If a NAK packet arrived with only 1 packet lost, a compiler
bug was causing SPXS to itterate a loop too many times causing
quite an inefficiency.



SOLUTION: 

Fixed a routine which allowed pointers to get corrupted under
very special conditions.


Self-Extracting File Name: spxstr.exe

Files Included     Size     Date      Time

..\
      SPXSTR.TXT     (This file)
        SPXS.NLM           36118         1-27-95     11:32:56 am
     STREAMS.NLM           63344         1-27-95      4:33:34 pm


Installation Instructions:

1. Create backup copies of your old spxs.nlm and streams.nlm.
 2. Copy the new spxs.nlm and streams.nlm in system directory.




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