PicLan-IP TCP/IP Configuration

The PicLan-IP TCP/IP configuration is contained within the Pick data item PLIP.CTRL CONFIG. This is a sample of this item:

1       PICLAN-IP SN=050001
        AUTH=12345678
        WEB BW AUTH=1000
        OTH BW AUTH=1000
        TELNET LIC=8
        POP3 LIC=50
        AUTH OPTIONS=1
        AUTH DATE=1/1/99
        *
        WEB BW=1000
        WEB BW SEC=5
        OTH BW=1000
        OTH BW SEC=5
        *
2       ADDR=207.215.231.98
        MASK=255.255.255.0
        DEFAULT GATEWAY=207.215.231.1
        *
3       DNS=198.68.32.10
        DNS=198.68.32.11
        DNS WAIT=2
        DNS RETRY=6
        DNS TIMEOUT=30
        DNS CLEANUP=3600
        *
4       LOCAL HOST NAME=mentor.piclan.com
        *
5       MAIL HOST=mailhost.primenet.com
        MAIL TIMEOUT=300
        *
6       SUPERVISOR=2
        PROCESS=3
        *
7       SUPERVISOR POLL=10
        SUPERVISOR TIMEOUT=90
        RESTART COUNTER=1000
        *
8       CONN=200
        DLL PATH=C:\MVBASE\SERVER\PLIP

9       HTTP DIR=*:80 FILE SAMPLE.WEB (S
        WWW TIMEOUT=45

10      TELNET PORT=15
        TELNET PORT=16
        TELNET PORT=17
        TELNET PORT=18
        TELNET PORT=19
        TELNET LISTEN=8:23 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 15-19 00:30:00 3 LOGON=SYSPROG LOGOFF=YES

It is important that you understand that the IP addresses and names used in this example cannot be used for your installation. If you are unfamiliar with IP address configurations, you consult the IP Addressing Primer or other documentation available on the subject.

Licensing and Bandwidth Metering

The first part of the configuration file deals with authorization codes. PicLan-IP requires an authorization code that is tied to your PicLan software serial number. For more information on PicLan metering, see PicLan Licensing Levels.

Each PicLan-IP user will receive a PicLan-IP License Authorization sheet. This sheet contains the following information fields:

PICLAN-IP SN
AUTH
WEB AUTH BW
OTH AUTH BW
AUTH DATE
TELNET LIC
POP3 LIC
LICENSE OPTIONS

You should fill in these fields exactly as they are stated on the PicLan-IP License Authorization sheet.

You should also note that PicLan-IP license codes may change from software release to release, so you may need to obtain a new authorization code if you are upgrading from an older release. Customers with PicLan-IP support contract can obtain new authorization codes from Modular Software either via telephone, email, or from our web site.

PicLan builds 2.0.0(105) through 2.0.0(107) all use the same authorization codes.

WEB BW: This is the actual number of KBytles/second that the PicLan-IP TCP/IP stack will transmit for web functions. This number cannot exceed the WEB AUTH BW setting.
WEB BW SEC: This is the number of seconds that the TCP/IP stack will save up unused bandwidth for web functions. This allows smaller PicLan-IP licenses to save-up and burst larger amounts of data after they have been inactive for a period of time. The maximum number of seconds is 5.
OTH BW: This is the actual number of KBytles/second that the PicLan-IP TCP/IP stack will transmit for non-web functions. This number cannot exceed the WEB AUTH BW setting.
OTH BW SEC: This is the number of seconds that the TCP/IP stack will save up unused bandwidth for non-web functions. This allows smaller PicLan-IP licenses to save-up and burst larger amounts of data after they have been inactive for a period of time. The maximum number of seconds is 5.

TCP/IP Addressing

The next part of the configuration involves assigning IP addressing information to the TCP/IP stack.

ADDR: This is the IP address in dotted-decimal notation for this host system. Multiple ADDR lines are allowed in order to support virtual hosting, but all addresses must be within the same sub-net range and use the same address sub-net mask.
MASK: This is the IP address mask that defines the sub-net that this host is located on. For a class 'C' network, an address mask of 255.255.255.0 is used.
DEFAULT GATEWAY: This is the default IP address that is to be used for traffic that lies outside of the local network.
ROUTE: This is a manual IP route entry. You supply this information in the format NET.ADDR MASK GW.ADDR where NET.ADDR and MASK define the destination network and GW.ADDR defines the local IP address for the gateway. Multiple ROUTE entries are allowed and are processed in the order that they are entered.

DNS Lookups

PicLan-IP DNS Configuration

Local Host Name

This is the DNS name of this host. This field is required by the email sub-system.

Mail Host Information

PicLan-IP SMTP/POP3 Configuration

Helper Process Information

These fields are used to control what ports PicLan-IP helper processes run on. There are two types of PicLan-IP processes, a supervisor process and one or more thread processes. The thread processes are what actually do the high-level PicLan-IP processing. You can configure PicLan-IP to have one or more thread processes. How many you need depends on how you use PicLan-IP, what type of web server software you develop, the amount of TCP/IP traffic, and the speed of your Pick host. You should start with a single thread process and add additional processes if performance requires this.

The supervisor process is a single process that watches the thread processes for hangs and aborts. If a thread process fails, logs off, enters the debugger, or simply hangs and stops processing requests, then it is the responsibility of the supervisor process to kill it (log the thread process off) and restart it (log the thread process back on). The supervisor process also generates appropriate error messages to TCP/IP users when this occurs. In theory, the supervisor process is unnecessary with a correctly operating system. System problems, bug in PicLan-IP, bugs in your web application software, and other potential problems make the supervisor process mandatory for a production system.

These two processes are configured with the following fields in the CONFIG item:

SUPERVISOR: This is the port number of the supervisor process. Initially this port should be logged off. The PLW-START command will log this port onto a q-pointer to the PICLAN-IP account. If you wish the supervisor process to run on an AP/Pro phantom port, you enter a port number of '*'.
PROCESS: This is the port number of a thread process. Initially this port should be logged off. The supervisor process will log this prot anto a q-pointer to the PICLAN-IP account. If you wish a thread process to run on an AP/Pro phantom port, you can enter a port number of '*'. If you wish to start multiple thread processes, you can enter the PROCESS= line multiple times.

Supervisor Process Timeout Information

You can control how often the supervisor process looks at the status of the thread processes and how long the supervisor process will wait until it assumes that a thread process has hung.

SUPERVISOR POLL: This is the amount of time in seconds that the supervisor will sleep between checking on the status of thread processes. The default is 10 seconds.
SUPERVISOR TIMEOUT: This is the number of seconds that a thread must be "stuck" before the supervisor will asume that a hang has occurred and restart the thread. The default is 90 seconds. You must set this value long enough for the web server internal functions and any web applications that you have to complete. If you have a slow system, you may wish to lengthen this value to 180 seconds. If you have a fast system and are doing web development, you may wish to shorten this value to 30-45 seconds so that your application can run to completion without the supervisor process killing it prematurely.
RESTART COUNTER: This is an optional field. If you leave this field out (or set it's value to zero) the PicLan-IP thread processes will run forever without periodically restarting. Unfortunately, some MultiValue hosts run in a less than optimal mode when large mv/BASIC programs run literally forever without returning to a command prompt. The restart counter lets you configure PicLan-IP so that each running thread process will exit to a command prompt and then automatically restart after a specified number of PicLan-IP 'events'. If your system needs this value set, you should probably start with relatively high numbers (1000+) to prevent performance degredation.

Connection Handles and DLL Paths

On native implementations, the PicLan-IP Web Server uses PicLan driver memory to manage TCP/IP connections as well as IP and UDP transmit and receive buffering. Hosted PicLan-IP implementations (Unix, WinNT, and Win95) use host memory dynamically for this buffering.

For native systems:

CONN: This is the total number of available connection handles that PLIP-ALLOC will allocate for PicLan TCP/IP stack usage. Each 100 connections uses about 1 Megabyte of system memory. The maximum number of connections that the TCP/IP stack can currently allocate is 4096, but this number includes existing PicLan IPX connection handles. This field is used only on native systems.
DLL PATH: This is the path to the PicLan-IP PLIP.DLL file. This field is only used on NT hosted systems.

HTTP Directory Definitions

PicLan-IP HTTP Configuration

TELNET Listen Definitions

PicLan-IP Inbound TELNET Configuration