RS-422 (also EIA-422) is a technical standard that specifies electrical characteristics of a digital signaling circuit.

Differential signaling can transmit data at rates as high as 10 million bits per second, or may be sent on cables as long as 1500 meters. Some systems directly interconnect using RS-422 signals, or RS422 converters may be used to extend the range of RS-232 connections. The standard only defines signal levels; other properties of a serial interface are set by other standards. Several key advantages offered by this standard include the differential receiver, a differential driver and data rates as high as 10 megabaud at 12 metres (40 ft). The specification itself does not set an upper limit on data rate, but rather shows how signal rate degrades with cable length. The figure plotting this stops at 10 Mbit/s. RS-422 only specifies the electrical signaling characteristics of a single balanced signal. Protocols and pin assignments are defined in other specifications. The mechanical connections for this interface are specified by EIA-530 (DB-25 connector) or EIA-449 (DC-37 connector), however devices exist which have 4 screw-posts to implement the transmit and receive pair only. The maximum cable length is 1500 m. Maximum data rates are 10 Mbit/s at 12 m or 100 kbit/s at 1200 m. RS-422 cannot implement a truly multi-point communications network such as with EIA-485, however one driver can be connected to up to ten receivers. RS-422 can interoperate with interfaces designed to MIL-STD-188-114B, but they are not identical. RS422 uses a nominal 0 to 5 volt signal while MIL-STD-188-114B uses a signal symmetric about 0 V. However the tolerance for common mode voltage in both specifications allows them to interoperate. Care must be taken with the termination network. EIA-423 is a similar specification for unbalanced signaling (RS-423).

RS422 serial information

Introduction to RS422 Differential balanced signals with RS422 Electrical characteristics of RS422 Network topology with RS422 RS422 support forum

Introduction to RS422
Serial communication methods to transfer information between equipment have been defined by standards for nearly half a century. The oldest and best known standard is RS232, a standard which defines the communication between DTE, data terminal equipment, and DCE, data communication equipment. The relatively short distances and low speed the RS232 serial interface can handle demanded for newer standards like RS422, RS423 and RS485. In this document, I will focus on the RS422 interface for serial balanced differential communications.

Differential balanced signals with RS422

Serial, balanced and differential are the keywords for the RS422 interface standard. Serial means, that the information is sent bit by bit on a single transmission line, just like with RS232. Balanced differential is what makes RS422 different from RS232. On RS232 interfaces, the signals are send on lines which share a common zero. With RS422, each signal line consists of two wires, preferably twisted to reduce noise. The voltage-difference between the two lines is an indication of the signal value, rather than the voltage-level. Looking at voltage differences with RS422 rather than levels eliminates a lot of noice induced by external sources and allows for higher data rates and cable lengths compared to RS232. You can see the differences in speed and cable length between RS422 and other commonly used serial interface standards like RS232, RS423 and RS485 in the interface comparison table. Twisting the lines helps to reduce the noise. The noise currents induced by an external source are reversed in every twist. Instead of amplifying each other as in a straight line, the reversed noice currents reduce each others influence. The figure explains this in more detail.
Noise in straight and twisted pair cables

Network topology with RS422

There are more differences between RS422 and RS232 than the maximum data speed and cable length. RS232 was specifically defined as an interface between computers, printers and terminals with modems. The modem would translate the communication signals to protocol usable for long distance communication, where long distance could also mean a device on the other side of the control room or building. RS422 allows the direct connection of intelligent devices, without the need of modems. Furthermore, where the RS232 line driver is only designed to serve one receiver, a RS422 line driver can serve upto ten receivers in parallel. This allows one central control unit to send commands in parallel to upto ten slave devices. Unfortunately, those slave devices cannot send information back over a shared interface line. RS422 allows a multi-drop network topology, rather than a multi-point network where all nodes are considered equal and every node has send and receive capabilities over the same line. If you need to build a multi-point communication network rather than multi-drop, RS485 is the right choice with a maximum of 32 parallel send and 32 receive units parallel on one communication channel.

RS/EIA/TIA-423 is a standard for serial communications. It defines an unbalanced (single-ended) interface (similar to RS-232), with a single, unidirectional sending driver, and allows for up to 10 receivers (similar to RS-422). It is normally implemented in integrated circuit technology and can also be employed for the interchange of serial binary signals between DTE & DCE. There is no commonpinout for RS-423. The BBC Micro computer used a 5-pin DIN connector. DEC used it extensively with a Modified Modular Jackconnector. This was sometimes called "DEC-423".

Use of a common ground is one weakness of RS-423 (and RS-232): if devices are far enough apart or on separate power systems, the ground will degrade between them and communications will fail, resulting in a condition that is difficult to trace. In this respect the balanced serial connections USB, RS-422 and RS-485 are better,
[1]

and Ethernet over twisted pair connections

are better yet, because of the galvanic isolation provided by the signal transformers.

RS423 serial information

Introduction to RS423 Single ended variable slew rate Electrical characteristics of RS423

Introduction to RS423
The RS423 standard is one of the lesser known serial communication standards. Its older brother RS232 is widely known because serial ports with this interface are present on almost all computer systems. RS422and RS485 are differential which makes them useful in applications where noise immunity is an issue, like in industrial applications. The single ended RS423 standard sits somewhere inbetween these standards as an enhancement of RS232 with longer cable lengths and higher allowed data rates. Although RS423 is currently not widely implemented, it has seen a broad usage in the late eighties of the previous century because of its backward compatibility with RS232. Hewlett Packard shipped their computers with a serial interface capable of communicating on both RS232 and RS423 levels and Digital Equipment Corporation used the RS423 signal levels on their DECConnect MMJ serial interface standard. Because RS232 and RS423 are both single ended serial communication standards with comparable signal levels, it was possible to use these RS423 interfaces in both pure RS423 applications, and mixed RS232/RS423 situations.

Single ended variable slew rate

Although RS423 is a single ended serial communication interface just like RS232, the standard allows higher data rates and cable lengths. This is achieved by introducing an adjustable slew-rate. With RS232, the slewrate is fixed at a speed of 30 V/s. RS423 has a variable slew-rate which can be set dependent on cable length en data rate. This adds noise immunity to the interface. On longer cable lengths where noise can be an issue, a lower maximum data rate can be set and the slew-rate is changed accordingly. RS422 and RS485 which are both differential serial interfaces do not need such a system of noise immunity.

The maximum allowed cable length with RS423 is 1200 meter, just as with RS422 and RS485. The maximum data rate is 100 kbps which is only five times faster than default RS232 and much slower than possible with RS422 and RS485. Detailed information of the interface characteristics of RS423 can be found in the serial interface comparison table.

AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk included a number of features that allowed local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the need for a centralized router or server of any sort. Connecting together AppleTalk equipped systems would automatically assign addresses, update the distributed namespace, and configure any required inter-networking routing. It was a plug-nplay system. AppleTalk was released for the original Macintosh in 1985, and was the primary protocol used by Apple devices through the 1980s and 90s. Versions were also released for the IBM PC and compatibles, and the Apple IIGS. AppleTalk support was also available in most networked printers (especially laser printers), some file servers and a number of routers. The rise of TCP/IP during the 1990s led to a re-implementation of most of these types of support on that protocol, and AppleTalk became unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009. Many of AppleTalk's more advanced autoconfiguration features have since been introduced in Bonjour, while Universal Plug and Play serves similar needs.
Contents
[hide]

1 History

o o o o o o o o o

1.1 Prehistory 1.2 AppleBus 1.3 AppleBus networking 1.4 AppleTalk 1.5 PhoneNet and other adaptors 1.6 EtherTalk, TokenTalk and AppleShare 1.7 AppleTalk Phase II and other developments 1.8 The capital-I Internet 1.9 Legacy and abandonment

2 Design 3 Addressing

4 Protocols

o o o o o o o o o o o

4.1 AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol 4.2 AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol 4.3 Apple Filing Protocol 4.4 AppleTalk Session Protocol 4.5 AppleTalk Transaction Protocol 4.6 Datagram Delivery Protocol 4.7 Name Binding Protocol 4.8 AppleTalk Echo Protocol 4.9 Printer Access Protocol 4.10 Routing Table Maintenance Protocol 4.11 Zone Information Protocol

5 Physical implementation 6 Networking model 7 Versions 8 Cross-platform solutions 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

History[edit]
Prehistory[edit]
After the release of the Apple Lisa computer in January 1983, Apple invested considerable effort in the development of a local area networking (LAN) system for the machines. Known as AppleNet, it was based on the seminal Xerox XNS protocol [1] stack but running on a custom 1 Mbit/s coaxial cable system rather than Xerox's 4 Mbit/s Ethernet. AppleNet was announced [2] early in 1983 with a fall introduction at the target price of $500 for plug-in AppleNet cards for the Lisa and the Apple II. At that time, early LAN systems were just coming to market, including Ethernet, Token Ring and ARCNET. This was a topic of major commercial effort at the time, dominating shows like theNational Computer Conference (NCC) in Anaheim in May 1983. All of the systems were jockeying for position in the market, but even at this time Ethernet's widespread acceptance suggested [3] it was to become a de facto standard. It was at this show that Steve Jobs asked Gursharan Sidhu a seemingly innocuous [4] question, "Why has networking not caught on?" Four months later, in October, AppleNet was cancelled. At the time, they announced that "Apple realized that it's not in the

business to create a networking system. We built and used AppleNet in-house, but we realized that if we had shipped it, we [5] would have seen new standards coming up." In January, Jobs announced that they would instead be supporting IBM's Token [5] Ring, which he expected to come out in a "few months".

AppleBus[edit]
Through this period, Apple was deep in development of the Macintosh computer. During development, engineers had made the decision to use the Zilog 8530 serial controller chip (SCC) instead of the lower cost and more common UART to [6] provide serial port connections. The SCC cost about $5 more than a UART, but offered much higher speeds up to 250 kilobytes per second (or higher with additional hardware) and internally supported a number of basic networking-like [7] protocols like IBM's Bisync. The SCC was chosen because it would allow multiple devices to be attached to the port. Peripherals equipped with similar SCC's could communicate using the built-in protocols, interleaving their data with other peripherals on the same bus. This would eliminate the need for more ports on the back of the machine, and allowed for the elimination of expansion slots for supporting more complex devices. The initial concept was known as AppleBus, envisioning a system controlled by the host [8] Macintosh polling "dumb" devices in a fashion similar to the modern Universal Serial Bus.

AppleBus networking[edit]
The Macintosh team had already begun work on what would become the LaserWriter, and had considered a number of other options of how to share these expensive machines and other resources. A series of memos from Bob Belleville clarified these [4] concepts, outlining the Mac, LaserWriter and a file server system which would become Macintosh Office. By late 1983 it was clear that IBM's Token Ring would not be ready in time for the launch of the Mac, and might miss the launch of these other [9] products as well. In the end, Token Ring would not ship until October 1985. Jobs' earlier question to Sidhu had already sparked a number of ideas. When AppleNet was cancelled in October, Sidhu led an effort to develop a new networking system based on the AppleBus hardware. This new system would not have to conform to any existing preconceptions, and was designed to be worthy of the Mac - a system that was user-installable, had zero[10][third-party source needed] configuration, and no fixed network addresses - in short, a true plug-and-play network. Considerable effort was needed, but by the time the Mac was released, the basic concepts had been outlined, and some of the low-level protocols [4] were on their way to completion. Sidhu mentioned the work to Belleville only two hours after the Mac was announced. The "new" AppleBus was announced in early 1984, allowing direct connection from the Mac or Lisa through a small box that plugged into the serial port and connected via cables to the next computer upstream and downstream. Adaptors for Apple [11] II and Apple III were also announced. Apple also announced that AppleBus networks could be attached to, and would [5] [5] appear to be a single node within, a Token Ring system. Details of how this would work were sketchy.

AppleTalk[edit]
When the newly-christened AppleTalk shipped in early 1985, it included a number of compromises. These included a speed of [12] 230.4 kbit/s, 1000 feet maximum distance, and only 32 nodes per LAN. Since the basic hardware was built into the Mac, adding nodes only cost about $50 for the adaptor box. In comparison, Ethernet or Token Ring cards cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. The entire networking stack required only about 6 kB of RAM.
[13]

The system was designed for future expansion; the

addressing system allowed for expansion to 255 nodes in a LAN (although only 32 could be used at that time), and by using "bridges" (which came to be known as "routers", although technically not the same) one could interconnect LANs into larger collections. "Zones" allowed devices to be addressed within a bridge-connected internet. Additionally, AppleTalk was designed [14] from the start to allow use with any potential underlying physical link. The relatively slow speed of AppleTalk allowed further reductions in cost. Instead of using RS-422's balanced transmit and receive circuits, the AppleTalk Personal Network cabling used a single common electrical ground, which limited speeds to about 500 kbit/s, but allowed one conductor to be removed. This meant that common three-conductor cables could be used for wiring. Additionally, the adaptors were designed to be "self-terminating", meaning that nodes at the end of the network could simply leave their last connector unconnected. There was no need for the wires to be connected back together into a loop, nor the need for hubs or other devices. To join an existing network, one simply plugged the adaptor into the computer and connected a cable to the nearest machine with a free port. AppleTalk was so easy to use that ad-hoc networks tended to appear whenever multiple Macs were in the same [15] [16] room. Apple would later use this in an advertisement showing a network being created between two seats in an airplane.

PhoneNet and other adaptors[edit]

A thriving 3rd party market for AppleTalk devices developed over the next few years. One particularly notable example was an [17] alternate adaptor designed by BMUG and commercialized by Farallon as PhoneNet in 1987. This was essentially a replacement for Apple's connector that had conventional phone jacks instead of Apple's round connectors. PhoneNet allowed AppleTalk networks to be connected together using normal telephone wires, and with very little extra work, could run analog phones and AppleTalk on a single four-conductor phone cable. Other companies took advantage of the SCC's ability to read external clocks in order to support higher transmission speeds, up to 1 Mbit/s. In these systems the external adaptor also included its own clock, and used that to signal the SCC's clock input pins. The best known such system was Centram's FlashTalk, which ran at 768 kbit/s, and was intended to be used with [18] their TOPSnetworking system. A similar solution was the 850 kbit/s DaynaTalk, which used a separate box that plugged in between the computer and a normal LocalTalk/PhoneNet box. Dayna also offered a PC expansion card that ran up to [19][20] 1.7 Mbit/s when talking to other Dayna PC cards. Several other systems also existed with even higher performance, but these often required special cabling that was incompatible with LocalTalk/PhoneNet, and also required patches to the networking stack that often caused problems.

EtherTalk, TokenTalk and AppleShare[edit]

By 1987 Ethernet was clearly winning the standards battle over Token Ring, and in the middle of that year Apple introduced EtherTalk 1.0 for the newly released Macintosh II computer. The package included both a NuBus card with Ethernet ports and a new Network control panel that allowed the user to select which physical connection to use for networking (from "Built-in" or "EtherTalk"). The release's new networking stack also expanded the system to allow a full 255 nodes per [21] LAN. With its release, AppleTalk Personal Network was renamed LocalTalk. Token Ring would eventually be supported with the similar TokenTalk product, which used the same Network control panel and underlying software. Many 3rd party companies would introduce compatible Ethernet and Token Ring cards that used these same drivers. The appearance of EtherTalk also led to a problem - networks with new and old Macs needed some way to communicate

between each other. This could be as simple as a network of Ethernet Mac II's trying to talk to a LaserWriter. Apple had considered the problem, and AppleTalk included the possibility for a low-cost LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge, but they felt it would [22] be a low-volume product and left it to 3rd parties. A number of companies responded, both existing communications vendors like Hayes and Cisco Systems, as well as newly formed companies like Kinetics. Contrary to Apple's belief these would be lowvolume, by the end of 1987, 130,000 such systems were in use. AppleTalk was at that time the most used networking system [23][third-party source needed] in the world, with over three times the installations of any other vendor. 1987 also marked the introduction of the AppleShare product, a dedicated file server that ran on any Mac with 512 kB of RAM or more. A common AppleShare machine was the Mac Plus with an external SCSI hard drive. AppleShare was the #3 [24] network operating system in the late 1980s, behind Novell NetWare and Microsoft MS-NET. AppleShare was effectively the replacement for the failed Macintosh Office efforts, which had been based on a dedicated file server device.

AppleTalk Phase II and other developments[edit]

A significant re-design was released in 1989 as AppleTalk Phase II. In many ways, Phase II can be considered an effort to make the earlier version (never called Phase I) more generic. LANs could now support more than 255 nodes, and zones were no longer associated with physical networks, but were entirely virtual constructs used simply to organize nodes. For instance, one could now make a "Printers" zone that would list all the printers in an organization, or one might want to place that same device in the "2nd Floor" zone to indicate its physical location. Phase II also included changes to the underlying internetworking protocols to make them less "chatty", which had previously been a serious problem on networks that bridged over [25] wide-area networks. By this point Apple had a wide variety of communications products under development, and many of these were announced along with AppleTalk Phase II. These included updates to EtherTalk and TokenTalk, AppleTalk software and LocalTalk hardware for the IBM PC, EtherTalk for Apple's A/UX operating system allowing it to use LaserPrinters and other network resources, and the Mac X.25 and MacX products. Ethernet had become almost universal by 1990, and it was time to build Ethernet into Macs direct from the factory. However, the physical wiring used by these networks was not yet completely standardized. Apple solved this problem using a single port on the back of the computer into which the user could plug an adaptor for any given cabling system. This FriendlyNet system was based on the industry-standard Attachment Unit Interface or AUI, but deliberately chose a non-standard connector that was smaller and easier to use, which they called "Apple AUI", or AAUI. FriendlyNet was first introduced on the Quadra [26] 700 and Quadra 900 computers, and used across much of the Mac line for some time. As with LocalTalk, a number of 3rd party FriendlyNet adaptors quickly appeared. As 10-BASE-T became the de facto cabling system for Ethernet, second-generation Power Macintosh machines added a 10BASE-T port in addition to the AAUI, and eventually dropped AAUI on Macs with the New World ROM, and 10-BASE-T was then universal.

The capital-I Internet[edit]

In 1988 Apple had released MacTCP, a system that allowed the Mac to support TCP/IP on machines with suitable Ethernet hardware. However, this left many universities with the problem of supporting IP on their many LocalTalk-equipped Macs. Stanford University pioneered development of MacIP, which allowed IP packets to be routed over LocalTalk networks

with the support of a suitable "gateway" machine. These were initially custom devices, but it was soon common to include [26] MacIP support in LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridges. MacTCP would now become a standard part of the Mac OS until [27] 1994, by which time it also supported SNMP and PPP. For some time in the early 1990s, the Mac was a primary client on the rapidly expanding Internet. Among the better known programs in wide use were Fetch, Eudora, eXodus, NewsWatcher and the NCSA packages, especially NCSA [28] Mosaic and its offspring, Netscape Navigator. Additionally, a number of server products appeared that allowed the Mac to host Internet content. Through this period, Macs had about 2 to 3 times as many clients connected to the Internet as any other [29][third-party source needed] platform, despite the relatively small overall marketshare. As the world quickly moved to IP for both LAN and WAN uses, Apple was faced with maintaining two increasingly outdated code bases on an ever-wider group of machines as well as the introduction of the PowerPC based machines. This led to the OpenTransport efforts, which re-implemented both MacTCP and AppleTalk on an entirely new code base adapted from the [30] Unix standard STREAMS. Early versions had problems and did not become stable for some time. By that point, Apple was deep in their ultimately doomed Copland efforts.
[citation needed]

Legacy and abandonment[edit]

With the purchase of NeXT and subsequent development of Mac OS X, AppleTalk was strictly a legacy system. Support was added to OS X in order to provide support for the large number of existing AppleTalk devices, notably laser printers and file shares, but alternate connection solutions common in this era, notably USB for printers, limited their demand. As Apple abandoned many of these product categories, and all new systems were based on IP, AppleTalk became less and less [31] common. AppleTalk support was finally removed from the MacOS in Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009. Fully removed in OS X Mavericks. However, the loss of AppleTalk did not reduce the desire for networking solutions that combined its ease-of-use with IP routing. Apple has led development of many such efforts, from the introduction of the AirPort router to the development of the Zero configuration networking system and their implementation of it, Bonjour.

Design[edit]
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The AppleTalk design rigorously followed the OSI model of protocol layering. Unlike most of the early LAN systems, AppleTalk was not built using the archetypal Xerox XNS system. The intended target was not Ethernet, and it did not have 48-bit addresses to route. Nevertheless, many portions of the AppleTalk system have direct analogs in XNS. One key differentiation for AppleTalk was it contained two protocols aimed at making the system completely self-configuring. The AppleTalk address resolution protocol (AARP) allowed AppleTalk hosts to automatically generate their own network addresses, and the Name Binding Protocol (NBP) was a dynamic system for mapping network addresses to user-readable names. Although systems similar to AARP existed in other systems, Banyan VINES for instance, nothing like NBP has existed

until recently. Both AARP and NBP had defined ways to allow "controller" devices to override the default mechanisms. The concept was to allow routers to provide the information or "hardwire" the system to known addresses and names. On larger networks where AARP could cause problems as new nodes searched for free addresses, the addition of a router could reduce "chattiness." Together AARP and NBP made AppleTalk an easy-to-use networking system. New machines were added to the network by plugging them and optionally giving them a name. The NBP lists were examined and displayed by a program known as the Chooser which would display a list of machines on the local network, divided into classes such as file-servers and printers.

Addressing[edit]
An AppleTalk address was a 4-byte quantity. This consisted of a two-byte network number, a one-byte node number, and a one-byte socket number. Of these, only the network number required any configuration, being obtained from a router. Each node dynamically chose its own node number, according to a protocol (originally the LocalTalk Link Access Protocol LLAP and [32] later the AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol, AARP) which handled contention between different nodes accidentally choosing the same number. For socket numbers, a few well-known numbers were reserved for special purposes specific to the AppleTalk protocol itself. Apart from these, all application-level protocols were expected to use dynamically-assigned socket numbers at both the client and server end. Because of this dynamism, users could not be expected to access services by specifying their address. Instead, all services had names which, being chosen by humans, could be expected to be meaningful to users, and also could be sufficiently long enough to minimize the chance of conflicts. As NBP names translated to an address, which included a socket number as well as a node number, a name in AppleTalk mapped directly to a service being provided by a machine, which was entirely separate from the name of the machine itself. Thus, services could be moved to a different machine and, so long as they kept the same service name, there was no need for users to do anything different to continue accessing the service. And the same machine could host any number of instances of services of the same type, without any network connection conflicts. Contrast this with A records in the DNS, where a name translates to a machine's address, not including the port number that might be providing a service. Thus, if people are accustomed to using a particular machine name to access a particular service, their access will break when the service is moved to a different machine. This can be mitigated somewhat by insistence on usingCNAME records indicating service rather than actual machine names to refer to the service, but there is no way of guaranteeing that users will follow such a convention. Some newer protocols, such as Kerberos and Active [original research?] Directory use DNS SRV records to identify services by name, which is much closer to the AppleTalk model.

Protocols[edit]
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2012)

AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol[edit]

AARP resolves AppleTalk addresses to link layer, usually MAC, addresses. It is functionally equivalent to ARP. AARP is a fairly simple system. When powered on, an AppleTalk machine broadcasts an AARP probe packet asking for a network address, intending to hear back from controllers such as routers. If no address is provided, one is picked at random from the "base subnet", 0. It then broadcasts another packet saying "I am selecting this address", and then waits to see if anyone else on the network complains. If another machine has that address, it will pick another address, and keep trying until it finds a free one. On a network with many machines it may take several tries before a free address is found, so for performance purposes the successful address is "written down" in NVRAM and used as the default address in the future. This means that in most real-world setups where machines are added a few at a time, only one or two tries are needed before the address effectively become constant.

AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol[edit]

This was a comparatively late addition to the AppleTalk protocol suite, done when it became clear that a TCP-style reliable connection-oriented transport was needed. Significant differences from TCP were: a connection attempt could be rejected there were no "half-open" connections; once one end initiated a tear-down of the connection, the whole connection would be closed (i.e., ADSP is full-duplex, not dual simplex).

Apple Filing Protocol[edit]

The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is the protocol for communicating with AppleShare file servers. Built on top of AppleTalk Session Protocol (for legacy AFP over DDP) or the Data Stream Interface (for AFP over TCP), it provides services for authenticating users (extensible to different authentication methods including two-way randomnumber exchange) and for performing operations specific to the Macintosh HFS filesystem. AFP is still in use in Mac OS X, even though most other AppleTalk protocols have been deprecated.

AppleTalk Session Protocol[edit]

ASP was an intermediate protocol, built on top of ATP, which in turn was the foundation of AFP. It provided basic services for requesting responses to arbitrary commands and performing out-of-band status queries. It also allowed the server to send asynchronous attention messages to the client.

AppleTalk Transaction Protocol[edit]

ATP was the original reliable transport-level protocol for AppleTalk, built on top of DDP. At the time it was being developed, a full, reliable connection-oriented protocol like TCP was considered to be too expensive to implement for most of the intended uses of AppleTalk. Thus, ATP was a simple request/response exchange, with no need to set up or tear down connections. An ATP request packet could be answered by up to eight response packets. The requestor then sent an acknowledgement packet containing a bit mask indicating which of the response packets it received, so the responder could retransmit the remainder. ATP could operate in either "at-least-once" mode or "exactly-once" mode. Exactly-once mode was essential for operations which were not idempotent; in this mode, the responder kept a copy of the response buffers in memory until successful receipt

of a release packet from the requestor, or until a timeout elapsed. This way, it could respond to duplicate requests with the same transaction ID by resending the same response data, without performing the actual operation again.**

Datagram Delivery Protocol[edit]

DDP was the lowest-level data-link-independent transport protocol. It provided a datagram service with no guarantees of delivery. All application-level protocols, including the infrastructure protocols NBP, RTMP and ZIP, were built on top of DDP. AppleTalk's DDP corresponds closely to the Network layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communication model.

Name Binding Protocol[edit]

NBP was a dynamic, distributed system for managing AppleTalk names. When a service started up on a machine, it registered a name for itself as chosen by a human administrator. At this point, NBP provided a system for checking that no other machine had already registered the same name. Later, when a client wanted to access that service, it used NBP to query machines to find that service. NBP provided browseability ("what are the names of all the services available?") as well as the ability to find a service with a particular name. Names were human readable, containing spaces, upper and lower case letters, and including support for searching.

AppleTalk Echo Protocol[edit]

AEP (AppleTalk Echo Protocol) is a transport layer protocol designed to test the reachability of network nodes. AEP generates packets to be sent to the network node and is identified in the Type field of a packet as an AEP packet. The packet is first passed to the source DDP. After it is identified as an AEP packet, it is forwarded to the node where the packet is examined by the DDP at the destination. After the packet is identified as an AEP packet, the packet is then copied and a field in the packet is altered to create an AEP reply packet, and is then returned to the source node.

Printer Access Protocol[edit]

PAP was the standard way of communicating with PostScript printers. It was built on top of ATP. When a PAP connection was opened, each end sent the other an ATP request which basically meant "send me more data". The client's response to the server was to send a block of PostScript code, while the server could respond with any diagnostic messages that might be generated as a result, after which another "send-more-data" request was sent. This use of ATP provided automatic flow control; each end could only send data to the other end if there was an outstanding ATP request to respond to. PAP also provided for out-of-band status queries, handled by separate ATP transactions. Even while it was busy servicing a print job from one client, a PAP server could continue to respond to status requests from any number of other clients. This allowed other Macintoshes on the LAN that were waiting to print to display status messages indicating that the printer was busy, and what the job was that it was busy with.

Routing Table Maintenance Protocol[edit]

RTMP was the protocol by which routers kept each other informed about the topology of the network. This was the only part of AppleTalk that required periodic unsolicited broadcasts: every 10 seconds, each router had to send out a list of all the network numbers it knew about and how far away it thought they were.

Zone Information Protocol[edit]

ZIP was the protocol by which AppleTalk network numbers were associated with zone names. A zone was a subdivision of the network that made sense to humans (for example, "Accounting Department"); but while a network number had to be assigned to a topologically-contiguous section of the network, a zone could include several different discontiguous portions of the network.

Physical implementation[edit]

Interior of Apple LocalTalk interface box. In 1989, these boxes typically cost US $90 each. The connectors feature automatic electrical termination of the LocalTalk signal bus; insertion of a LocalTalk bus cable depresses a normally closed switch behind the connector, disabling termination for that connector.

Farallon PhoneNET adapter.

The initial default hardware implementation for AppleTalk was a high-speed serial protocol known as LocalTalk that used the Macintosh's built-in RS-422 ports at 230.4 kbit/s. LocalTalk used a splitter box in the RS-422 port to provide an upstream and downstream cable from a single port. The topology was a bus: cables were daisy-chained from each connected machine to the next, up to the maximum of 32 permitted on any LocalTalk segment. The system was slow by today's standards, but at the time the additional cost and complexity of networking on PC machines was such that it was common that Macs were the

only networked personal computers in an office. Other larger computers, such as UNIX or VAX workstations, would commonly be networked via Ethernet. Other physical implementations were also available. One common replacement for LocalTalk was PhoneNet, a 3rd party solution (from a company called Farallon, now called Netopia) that also used the RS-422 port and was indistinguishable from LocalTalk as far as Apple's LocalTalk port drivers were concerned, but ran over the two unused wires in standard four-wire phone cabling. PhoneNet was considerably less expensive to install and maintain. Ethernet and Token Ring was also supported, known as EtherTalk and TokenTalk respectively. EtherTalk in particular gradually became the dominant implementation method for AppleTalk as Ethernet became generally popular in the PC industry throughout the 1990s. Besides AppleTalk and TCP/IP, any Ethernet network could also simultaneously carry other protocols such as DECnet, NetBEUI, and IPX.

Networking model[edit]
OSI Model Corresponding AppleTalk layers

Application

Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)

Presentation Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)

Session

Zone Information Protocol (ZIP) AppleTalk Session Protocol (ASP) AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol (ADSP)

Transport

AppleTalk Transaction Protocol (ATP) AppleTalk Echo Protocol (AEP) Name Binding Protocol (NBP) Routing Table Maintenance Protocol (RTMP)

Network

Datagram Delivery Protocol (DDP)

Data link

EtherTalk Link Access Protocol (ELAP) LocalTalk Link Access Protocol (LLAP)

TokenTalk Link Access Protocol (TLAP) Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)

Physical

LocalTalk driver Ethernet driver Token Ring driver FDDI driver

Versions[edit]
This section requires expansion. (June 2008)

AppleTalk version Apple Filing Protocol Corresponds to

Notes

56

System 7.0

57.0.4

System 7.12

58.1.1

System 7.1.2

58.1.3

System 7.5

60.3

Mac OS 7.6.1

Open Transport 1.3

60.0a6

Mac OS 8.6

Open Transport 2.0.3

3.0

Mac OS X 10.0.3

2.1, 2.0 and even 1.1

Mac OS X v10.2

2.2, 3.0 and 3.1

Mac OS X v10.3

3.2

Mac OS X v10.4

Cross-platform solutions[edit]
When AppleTalk was first raoed, the dominant office computing platform was the PC compatible running MS-DOS. Apple [33] introduced the AppleTalk PC Card in early 1987, allowing PCs to join AppleTalk networks and print to LaserWriter printers. A [34] [35] year later AppleShare PC was released, allowing PCs to access AppleShare file servers. The "TOPS Teleconnector" MSDOS networking system over AppleTalk</ref> system enabled MS-DOS PCs to communicate over AppleTalk network hardware; it comprised an AppleTalk interface card for the PC and a suite of networking software allowing such functions as file, drive and printer sharing. As well as allowing the construction of a PC-only AppleTalk network, it allowed communication between PCs and Macs with TOPS software installed. (Macs without TOPS installed could use the same network but only to communicate with other Apple machines.) The Mac TOPS software did not match the quality of Apple's own either in ease of use or in robustness and freedom from crashes, but the DOS software was relatively simple to use in DOS terms, and was robust. The BSD and Linux operating systems support AppleTalk through an open source project called Netatalk, which implements the complete protocol suite and allows them to both act as native file or print servers for Macintosh computers, and print to LocalTalk printers over the network. The Windows Server operating systems supported AppleTalk starting with Windows NT and ending after Windows Server 2003. Miramar included AppleTalk in its PC MacLAN product which was discontinued by CA in 2007. GroupLogic continues to bundle its AppleTalk protocol with its ExtremeZ-IP server software for Macintosh-Windows integration which supports Windows 2008 Serverand Windows Vista as well prior versions. HELIOS Software GmbH offers a proprietary implementation of the AppleTalk protocol stack, as part of their HELIOS UB2 server. This is essentially a File and Print Server suite that runs on a whole range of different platforms. In addition, Columbia University released the Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) which implemented the protocol suite for various Unix flavors including Ultrix, SunOS, *BSD and IRIX. This package is no longer actively maintained.