Using NS3000/iX Network Services (36920-90008)

21
2 Virtual Terminal
In order to issue interactive commands to a remote operating system or
to a subsystem available on a remote computer, you must establish a
session on the remote node. The Virtual Terminal service (VT) makes
the fact that the session is remote almost entirely transparent. You
enter commands and receive system/subsystem responses at your local
terminal just as if your session were local. When you edit text in a
remote editor subsystem, the text appears in the proper format on your
local terminal screen. In reality, input and output to your local terminal
pass through a “virtual” (as opposed to actual, physical) terminal
configured on the remote system. Your remote commands are
transmitted over network connections, sent to the virtual terminal, and
subsequently executed on the remote system.
Using the Virtual Terminal service, you can take advantage of a remote
system's processing capabilities. For example, if a program needs to be
run on a remote node, you can use VT to access it, edit the program, and
then compile, load, and run it directly on the remote node.
The Reverse Virtual Terminal service enables an application process
within a node to communicate with a real terminal that is on its
network or internetwork. The application’s home node sets up a virtual
terminal for each real terminal that the application needs access to.
Information sent from a terminal to the application process (or vice
versa) passes through the appropriate virtual terminal. With Reverse
VT, the application process can accept input from all nodes, though
individual sessions are not established on each node.
Figure 2-1 is a schematic illustration of the Virtual Terminal (and
Reverse Virtual Terminal) service. By using the NS 3000/iX Virtual
Terminal service on a network, you can log on to any session-accepting
node in the network from your own local node. All systems are
transparently accessible to each other.