Using NS3000/iX Network Services (36920-90008)

18 Chapter 1

Introduction to NS 3000/iX

Network Services

NS 3000/iX is the name of Hewlett-Packard’s interactive and

programmatic user-level, network services. All of these services are

listed below and are fully documented in this manual:

• Virtual Terminal (VT) creates an interactive session for you on

another system in the network, making your terminal appear as

though it were directly connected to the other system. This service

permits you to issue commands to the remote operating system, use

subsystems such as editors and compilers within the remote

environment, and run application programs that reside on the

remote system. A feature called Reverse Virtual Terminal enables a

local application program to communicate efﬁciently with remote

terminals.

• Remote File Access (RFA) enables you to perform I/O operations

to ﬁles and peripheral devices located on other nodes.

• Remote Data Base Access (RDBA) allows you to access and

update TurboIMAGE data bases located on other nodes.

TurboIMAGE is a Hewlett-Packard data base management system.

• Network File Transfer (NFT) allows you to transfer or copy ﬁles

from one node to another, or within a single node, interactively or

programmatically. For information on transfers between the PC and

the HP 3000, refer to the User Guide for HP PC Network Services.

• Remote Process Management (RPM) enables a given process to

create and terminate processes on other nodes. RPM is commonly

used in conjunction with Network Interprocess Communication

(NetIPC). NetIPC provides programmatic access to the

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is the Transport Layer

protocol used by NS 3000/iX link products. For more information on

NetIPC, refer to the NetIPC 3000/iX Programmer’s Reference

Manual.

These network services allow you to perform essential functions across

a network or across gateways in an internetwork. In addition to a

“virtual terminal” you have what amounts to virtual storage and

virtual devices; you are not limited to the processing and storage

capacities of your own system.

The NS 3000/iX network services including NFT (DSCOPY) and RFA

do not support POSIX—the services cannot work with either

bytestream ﬁles or ﬁles residing in HFS (hierarchical ﬁle system)

directories. To transfer bytestream ﬁles across systems, use

Hewlett-Packard’s FTP/iX product.