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PC based network bridge that can do Ethernet to Token Ring

mR_Slug

mR_Slug

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Does anyone know of a program that can do bridging for Ethernet to token ring? I found the demonstration of the IBM Network Bridge Program on uxwbill's youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHylz96t45Y

I also seem to remember a program simply called 'bridge', which isn't very googleable, and I'm not sure if it can do TR to Ethernet. I'm looking for something like that.

I have an Ethernet to TR router I built about 10 years ago with Linux. I looked at Linux and bridging back then. I could get it to work with Ethernet and wireless but Token Ring IIRC has all sorts of issues.

I want to experiment with netBEUI and IPX/SPX, so TCP/IP routing isn't much help. I'm not looking for huge throughput, but just wondered if anyone can recall something that can do this.
 
Thanks, I did look at Cisco stuff about 10 years ago and it was still pricey. I think last time I looked at the stuff the 4000 series seemed to be the best. I'm trying to avoid buying more hardware though:)

I am surprised that there isn't more info on this. Someone must have made a product to do this. Particularly around the 1995-96 era, when a company could perhaps start upgrading to fast Ethernet and PCI (or EISA) would have likely been on a server.
 
If you were not going to use dedicated networking equipment then the usual way to do it was to build a Linux box with a Token Ring and Ethernet adapter and then set it up to route IP packets between the two interfaces.

I'm not sure what the state of Token Ring is on modern kernels, but the 2.x series definitely supported modern PCI Token Ring cards.
 
Routing IP yes, that works fine. I think it was a 2.4 kernel I used. Bridging on the other hand for non IP stuff, really didn't work for Token ring. I think it was something to do with a requirement to present an Ethernet compatible interface. Wireless cards apparently do this, but not token ring.

Is there a way to do Ethernet over TCP/IP?
 
@mR_Slug

Interesting. I wanted to do the same project, sent uxwbill a message on youtube, never got a reply. I just assumed I was blown off because I wanted a copy of the software, and he was one of those people who religiously cling to "don't copy that floppy".

More likely he just never saw it. But I did toss together a low power P3 with a pci token-ring network card (and Ethernet obviously). Then I got distracted by something shiny and the project got shelved so I can rebuild a pair of tube AM radios.
 
mR_Slug said:
Routing IP yes, that works fine. I think it was a 2.4 kernel I used. Bridging on the other hand for non IP stuff, really didn't work for Token ring. I think it was something to do with a requirement to present an Ethernet compatible interface. Wireless cards apparently do this, but not token ring.

Is there a way to do Ethernet over TCP/IP?
Click to expand...

I think we have a terminology problem.

You can "bridge" two different network segments together to form one larger segment. In this use case the network segments basically have to be the same type; Ethernet and Ethernet for example. (Wireless Ethernet can be bridged to Ethernet by just stripping the extra hardware headers; it's an Ethernet payload under the covers.)

A gateway is what you use when you have two incompatible network technologies and you want to route a higher level protocol from one to the other. For example, routing IP packets from a group of machines on Token Ring to the outside world using Ethernet requires a gateway machine that has both adapters and can route the IP packets between the two different network types.

By definition you are not going to bridge Token Ring to Ethernet .. but you can route packets between the two.
 
In the strictest sense you are right. FDDI-to-Ethernet, is another one, that in the strictest sense of the term "learning bridge" isn't technically bridging. On a side note, when looking up various circa 1990 "FDDI-to-Ethernet bridges", I came across non-learning bridges. I can't fully understand their purpose, other than media conversion. If fact these very early FDDI products stretch the definition even further, because most of them couldn't even talk to a FDDI NIC. They were more like tunneling Ethernet over FDDI.

At any rate, There must be something that can operate in a manner that takes an Ethernet frame, grabs the mac address & payload, then sticks the mac address and payload in a token ring frame. I should imagine MTU size is an issue though.

Right now I'm trying to get a Token ring client running NetBEUI (Lanman 2.0), to talk to an Windows 2000 Server, on Ethernet.

luckybob, If its helpful, I may be able to take a disk image of what I have. I seem to remember it was one huge PIA to get working. Though using Damn small Linux was part of the issue, as it was based on Knoppix, that's based on Debian. So there were multiple levels of configuration scripts.
 
it's certainly possible to bridge Token-Ring and Ethernet as long as you're using IEEE 802.2 framing. Ethernet_II framing may be problematic for bridging because there was no corresponding Token-Ring frame format. Also, Token-Ring frames larger than 1500 bytes will be a problem unless your bridge knows how to fragment packets, which generally requires your bridge to know about higher layers.

Ethernet and Token-Ring use different bit transmission orders, so bytes are often displayed with bits reversed, but as long as you account for that things work. so an Ethernet MAC of 01:02:04:10:20:40 corresponds to a Token_Ring address of 80:40:20:08:04:02 (and both of these are broadcast addresses because the first bit is set).

Decades ago we had CrossComm bridges that supported Ethernet-to-Token-Ring bridging; these devices were basically PCs with ISA network cards but no keyboard or monitor.
 
I'd love a copy of the software. If i need to ise actual IBM iron, Id probably bring my model 70 into service.
 
I worked on UB Network's token ring and ethernet bridging products back in the late 80's/early 90's. What I recall is that compared to most modern networking problems, it's fairly straightforward to bridge between Ethernet and Token Ring. Unfortunately it was so long ago, I can't remember many details.

regards,
Mike Willegal
 
I had a quick look at CrossComm, in the hope I could use the software but according to this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.dcom.lans.token-ring/bwrsKil3k-0
They include a proprietary processor. Though the article did give me the term "80386 bridge" to search on.

This article:
https://books.google.com/books?id=V..._esc=y#v=onepage&q=80386 based bridge&f=false (page 49)

Mentions the CrossComm ILAN-H (image on p55) and a Novell external bridge.

"The Novell bridge is a software program run on a workstation with two adapter cards, one connected to each of the networks. Creation of a Novell external bridge requires setting up a workstation adapter and IBM 4M/16M token-ring adapter running at 4MHz. The Novell bridges have a packet size limit of 512 bytes."

I'm not familiar with Netware. A search for "novell bridge program" turned up two programs called BRGEN and ROUTEGEN. So it would indicate that BRGEN does do bridging. However I'm not entirely sure if this is specific to IPX stuff. As I understand it you have to install Netware on a system, then you run the program that creates the software to run on a spare PC. Before I go down this path, does anyone have any experience with this software?

--
luckybob, It ran on a pentium 133. It was an IBM PC330 with a 430FX chipset and a PCI bus. I tried linux (slackware) on a PS/2 and got nowhere fast. It can be done, but I gave up at the first hurdle when the boot disk hung. One thing I couldn't get working was routing from two 255.255.255.0 subnets. I ended up using 255.255.255.192 subnets. I will dig it out, and see if it
still boots.

mwillegal, that article mentions a UB bridge, that "Only Novel and CrossComm offer bridging solutions that support a variety of token-ring cards. For users willing to work exclusively with Ungermann-Bass token-rihg network interface cards, the list of manufactures expands to include Ungermann-Bass." So this would indicate that the bridge, is a PC with software and two UB cards. Does this ring a bell, the article just calls it a "Ungermann-Bass bridge".

I've looked at CISCO stuff again. There are lots of 3600 Series routers on ebay at the moment, but every time you find one cheap, it has no cards! I don't know how new these are, but it seems if its got just a token-ring+ethernet card rendering it obsolete, the price is £60. I don't understand why old Cisco stuff costs so much.
 
Get a Cisco 2800 series router and an NM-1FE1R2W module, that will give you an additional fast ethernet and 1 token ring port. The module runs about $10 to 20.

A 2811 or 2821 router will only cost you $50 or so.
 
Not that exact model, no. I did look as some others in the 2500 range, but this post:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/...and-token-ring-talk-to-each-other/td-p/287480

Gave indication that you need two of them connected via their serial interfaces. I'll have to check this one out a bit more closely. Thanks.

I do like the idea of PC based stuff though, It only takes up the space of a couple of NICs and a disk image.
 
mR_Slug said:
Not that exact model, no. I did look as some others in the 2500 range, but this post:
https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/...and-token-ring-talk-to-each-other/td-p/287480

Gave indication that you need two of them connected via their serial interfaces. I'll have to check this one out a bit more closely. Thanks.
Click to expand...

That message was using two router boxes, one with token-ring and one with ethernet
The 2513 has TR and Ethernet in the same box.

The other question is if you're only routing IP packets, or something else like from something in the non-IP IBM world.
 
I have one of those boxes with multiple interfaces which I used to connect my 3174 (Token Ring) to Hercules (Ethernet) but I just used a NATed routing connection as I only connect TN3270 from the 3174 box to elsewhere.
 
Sorry I think i may have confused everyone with the line "3600 Series routers on ebay at the moment". Perhaps I should have said routers that can be configured as a bridge for non-IP traffic.

I looked at the 2513 manual and could not find the term "bridge" anywhere. Although I may have missed something. Still looks like a nice piece of kit though. I haven't looked at the C2612 or the 2800 series yet.

@g4ugm - Which one do you mean, the C2612 you linked to in the second post?

What I want to do is "bridge" Ethernet and token ring. For non routable protocols like netBIOS/netBEUI. I think someone mentioned Source-Route Bridging. I think what i need is Source-Route Translational Bridging (SR/TLB):

http://www.rhyshaden.com/tokenr.htm (section 12).

I already have a Linux based IP router.

@luckybob
I plugged the router in today, everything came up and worked a treat. I'll try and make a disk image of it tomorrow. the two PCI NIC's I used (as reported by linux) were:
3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX
IBM 16/4 Token ring UTP/STP controller
 
Ok had a further look as the 2513 router and according to this it can do bridging. I did a word search on the manual for "bridging" and only 2 results came up, perhaps it's in another PDF. So this looks like it fits the ticket.

I may go for the 2800 series though as that can do fast Ethernet, which is preferred.

Does no one remember the Netware BRGEN and ROUTEGEN programs?

luckybob, I've put an image of the Linux based TR-to-Eth bridge here:
http://108.59.254.117/~mR_Slug/projects/eth-tr-router/

It's a bit rough and ready but it does work in its present state. The image is 300MB when uncompressed. I have it running on Pentium 133 w/ 16MB RAM. It may work on an SD card, but DSL has quite a bit of HDD activity building the filesystem on boot.
 
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