Before you write to me with suggestions for the next version of Bolo, please read these frequently asked questions files, and read the "Bolo.futureplans" file to see if your suggestion is already on the list.
This file deals with frequently asked questions about networking issues.
• "I'm a network administrator. What is the best way to stop people playing Bolo?"
Diagnosing network problems can be almost impossible, and it is easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. Just because Doom and Netrek can overload your network doesn't mean that Bolo will. Here are the solid figures so that you can compare them with your network's capability and determine whether Bolo could be overloading it:
1. Each player in a Bolo game typically sends about 5 packets per second. An ethernet can typically carry 10000 packets per second, so a 16 player game of Bolo on your ethernet could be consuming as much as 0.8% of the network capacity in terms of packet rate.
2. The size of each packet depends on the number of players in the game -- typically about ten bytes per player. In a 16 player game, each player is therefore generating about 160 bytes per packet, which makes 6400 bits per second per player, or 102kbit/sec total for the whole game -- about 1% of ethernet bandwidth. 16 players on a single LocalTalk segment would amount to 44% of the total LocalTalk bandwidth, so you might want to limit Bolo players on LocalTalk to one or two per segment. On the other hand, if everyone on that network segment wants to play Bolo, who else is there to complain?
• "How do I network two LC3s, or an LC3 and an SE using only the printer or modem ports; with no modem, LocalTalk, Ethernet, etc. ?"
You can't buy a Macintosh without LocalTalk. It is not an option.
There are two ways to use LocalTalk on your Mac:
Cheap way ($8): Get a Macintosh serial cable (eg ImageWriter cable).
This will allow you to connect two devices together.
Proper way ($20 per computer): Get Farallon PhoneNet connectors. The connectors come with 6 feet of telephone wire. If you want the computers to be more than 6 feet apart then buy as much standard telephone wire as you want (up to 3km).
You can connect up to thirty devices together this way.
• "Please give detailed instructions from startup of both computers."
1. Plug cables into printer ports of computers.
2. Turn computers on.
3. Run Bolo and select AppleTalk game connection. Follow instructions on screen.
• "What is the best way to start up a sixteen player Bolo game on diskless Classics loading over LocalTalk?"
Run Bolo on all the Classics at the same time. Let them thrash the network loading the application and all the sound resources. Then, when they are ALL done, use one to start a new game and let all the others join. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for Bolo to cope gracefully with sharing a LocalTalk which is being thrashed to death loading big files at the same time.
• "How do I play an Internet game of Bolo?"
Run Bolo and select the "UDP/IP" option.
If your Mac is not connected to the Internet, then that's a different problem. You need the *Internet Protocol Suite* software on your Mac, and a physical connection to the Internet, by phone, by LocalTalk, by Ethernet, by Token Ring, or by anything else. The IP protocol software is sold by Apple, under the somewhat inaccurate name of "MacTCP", in its "TCP/IP Connection" package, which costs $59 for a single copy (Order No. D1785) or $128 for a 20 user licence (D1786). Order through Apple Catalog sales: 1-800-795-1000. If you buy System 7.5 then MacTCP is included. For the actual physical connection, you need to ask your school, university, company or other network administrator. Direct full-time Internet connections are not yet readily available to private individuals at an affordable price, though in many places you should able to get dial in access by modem for $30-$50 a month. See below for more details.
• "With all the problems with network delay in over the Internet, shouldn't I be making an effort to connect into the game via the player closest to me, instead of everyone connecting to the same machine?"
It does not matter. Regardless of the machine you initially establish contact with, Bolo 0.99 automatically "pings" every machine in that game three times to measure the round trip time and other parameters, and then joins into the ring at what it determines to be the optimum point to minimize delay. It may not always get it right, but it tries.
• "My Mac has no direct Internet connection. Can I write a Unix proxy for playing Bolo?"
No. Your Mac itself needs to be connected to the Internet. Bolo is not a client-server program and cannot easily be modified to connect via some other computer acting as its proxy on the Internet. Purists will argue that this is false -- anything is possible on a Turing Complete computer, given enough programming. They are right of course, but in this case, "enough programming" is enough to effectively connect your computer to the Internet, at which point it becomes easier to *actually* connect your computer to the Internet using existing software. You should also note that in order to provide sufficient real-time performance, the Bolo proxy could not be written as a user-level program, or even as a root-level program. On Unix, protocols like TCP/IP do not run as separate programs because they require accurate timing to work reliably, so they have to be compiled into kernel itself, and the same would be true of the Bolo protocol.
• "How come Bolo doesn't work very well on MAE and other Macintosh emulators?"
One of the benefits of Unix is that it is does pre-emptive multi-tasking. What that means is that the Operating System decides when and for how long an application get to run, not the application. Obviously this doesn't work very well for interactive programs like Bolo. You'll get best results if you use a very fast workstation with no other unneccessary programs running on it, and use the "renice -20" command (as root) to make MAE the highest priority process on the system.
• "Why can't different versions of Bolo play in the same game?"
While Bolo is still in development, the comunication protocol is undergoing substantial changes, making different versions completely incompatible. Tell your friends to upgrade to the latest version. It is not as if upgrading costs you anything.
• "When there are several different Bolo games running on AppleTalk, how do I choose which game to join?"
Click on a player in the list who is a member of the game you wish to join.
• "I don't have a network, or any friends with PowerBooks. Can I play by modem?"
Yes, you can use a modem with Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) or with PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol).
• Why doesn't Bolo work with ARA?
When you run a personal ARA server, it works by changing the network addresses inside the packets. It does this for ATP, ADSP, NBP, and other protocols that it knows about, but not for the Bolo protocol. I have been told that if you run the ARA server on your router (a Mac that's running AppleTalk Internet Router) then it doesn't have to change the network addresses inside the packets and Bolo works fine.
• "Can I play directly by modem, without having to use a network protocol?"
Yes you can, but you can only have two players if you do this, and the procedure is not straightforward.
1. Player A runs Bolo and selects the "Serial Port / Modem" option.
2. Player A enters "ATA" as the modem initialization string.
3. Player A waits for Player B to call.
4. Player B runs Bolo and selects the "Serial Port / Modem" option.
5. Player B enters "ATD <the phone number>" as the modem initialization string.
6. Player B clicks the "New Game" button, and sets up the options for the game.
7. When Player B clicks "OK", the modem should dial player A.
8. When Player A hears the telephone ring, he or she clicks "Join" to have Bolo answer.
9. Both players now see the "Modem Initialization" dialog. They should both wait until the modems have established a connection. Most modems make an audible squealing noise while they are negotiating the baud rate with the modem at the other end. After about 10-15 seconds the noise should stop, and both players should click "OK" to begin the game. Do not click "OK" too soon, or the modem will hang up.
• "Why don't you support modem connection scripts like ARA, and add a terminal window to type commands to the modem, and add a status display showing what the modem is doing, and ...?"
Modems are a gross hack to convert computer data into whistling sounds to trick a voice-oriented communications media into unwittingly carrying computer data. The only reason they exist at all is because the telephone companies still don't provide any credible data communications service. Even ISDN, which is a simple point-to-point service and 100 times slower than basic Ethernet, is too expensive for most people. I realize that many people don't have any better option, which is why I put in some basic modem support, but there is a limit to how much time I can spend on it.
• "I can't seem to join any BOLO games. Even though I'm running SLIP over a 14.4kb/s modem I always get the message that the network delay is too great."
There are two main metrics which characterise the performance of a network device, throughput (bits per second) and latency (interactive response time or round-trip delay). Throughput is easy to improve -- if one ISDN line is too slow you can get a pair, and then you have twice the throughput. If you get 23 lines then you have 23 times the throughput. Data compression can also be used to improve throughput if you don't mind adding extra delay to compress the data before sending and to decompress it at the other end. Bad latency is much harder to fix, because if it takes x miliseconds for a single character to get from here to there, there's nothing you can do to that character to make it go any faster. For this reason, modem manufacturers always quote the throughput of their modems and conveniently ignore the latency. In fact they often use compression to make the throughput figures better and don't worry about how much worse it makes the latency. Until customers start asking about latency, it is going to carry on getting worse as modem manufacturers continue to concentrate solely on throughput. For now, the best way to maximize Bolo's responsiveness is to turn off all your modem's compression and error correction features to minimise the delay through the modem.
• "What is the 'hardware handshaking' option for?"
Its inclusion is historical -- it was to allow Mac Bolos to communicate with my original BBC Micro Bolo program, which used the CTS/RTS handshaking line for error signalling. If you wire the cables so that the output of each serial port goes to the input of the next, in a ring, then you can connect up to 16 Macs or BBCs together to play Bolo. Now that all computers have networking built in, the use of an RS232/422/423 ring is just a historical curiosity.
• "Why does the game occasionally seem to freeze for a second or two for no reason?"
When data packets are lost or damaged in the network, it can take the Bolo a few seconds to back-track and get in sync again.
• "Why does Bolo's startup procedure so grossly violate Apple's human interface guideline which says that no modal dialog should ever lead to another modal dialog?"
I agree with Apple's "modeless" interface principle -- the user should be able to perform tasks in any order, and should not be asked question after question in an order determined by the program, like some kind of electronic interrogation. However, when you are setting up some network service like a Bolo game (or an AppleShare file server) there are certain tasks which simply have to be performed in the right order. Bolo guides the user through those tasks in the right order, which I see as a benefit.
When you set up System 7 personal file sharing, you have to understand and use some or all of: one Chooser (to turn AppleTalk on), four Control Panels (Network, File Sharing Monitor, Sharing Setup, Users & Groups), one Finder "Sharing..." command and one File Sharing Extension (which must already be correctly installed). All these separate tools may give you the illusion that you can perform your tasks in any order you like, but in fact you have to know the correct order to make it work. Try opening "File Sharing Monitor" before you start file sharing. Try opening "File Sharing Monitor" immediately after you start file sharing. Try putting an alias to "File Sharing Monitor" in your Startup Items Folder. You know what "Startup Items" is for, right? You know what "File Sharing Monitor" is for, right? So why don't they work when put together?
• "I can't ftp from moneygrab.com because we've deliberately crippled our network to 'improve security'. Will you mail Bolo and the editors and the map files to me instead?"
No. Shooting yourself in the foot might get you out of the army, but I'm doing a PhD in networking, so don't expect any sympathy from me if you are deliberately destroying the worldwide network that I am working to build.
• "Can I get Bolo from you by transferring it by modem?"
I don't have a modem. Never had. My apartment has an Ethernet connection directly onto the Internet, it runs 300 times faster than a 28.8Kbaud modem, I can have unlimited numbers of simultaneous connections to computers all over the world 24 hours a day, and there's no monthly phone service to pay. I probably never will get a modem.
• "How do you get an Internet connection in your apartment? Can I get one?"
There is good news on this front. Since the last release of Bolo things have changed. In many places you can now get an ISDN connection for the same price as a normal residential telephone line. Add $50 for your Internet service provider, and you can be connected to the Internet at 100kbit/sec for only $100 a month. It's not ethernet speed, but it's bettern than a modem. The hardware you will need still costs about $500, but prices are coming down. Many parts of Europe are ahead of the USA in this respect. East Berlin's telephone system was in such poor shape that the entire thing has to be replaced, and since they have to basically start from scratch with all new wiring, they are running fibre to every house instead of copper. The reason the USA is slower to respond is that telephones here are not run by the government as a public service, but by private companies, because it is more efficient that way. The problem is that efficiency is measured by how much profit they make, not by what services they provide.
• "What about companies that offer "Full Internet Service" for about $30 a month?"
I'm glad to see more companies offering Internet access, but be careful to read the fine print. Almost every advertisement says "Full Internet Access", but often that means that they have Full Internet Access, not that you'll get it. They have a Unix workstation on the Internet, and for $30 a month they'll let you log onto it. Some only let you log in with a dumb (vt100) terminal emulator, and some provide a fancy graphical AOL-style front-end, but in either case it's their computer that's on the Internet, not yours. That's very different from having your own computer connected to the Internet, which is what you'll need if you want to run Bolo, Nuntius, Newswatcher, Fetch, Anarchie, Mosaic, Netscape, etc. on your Mac. The beauty of the Internet is that on your own computer you can use (or write) any program you wish without having to get anyone else's permission or support. For that you need to get true IP connectivity -- i.e. SLIP, CSLIP or PPP, which can be hard to find in some places. Netcom, for example, which used to offer SLIP (Serial Line IP) service, told me last summer that they stopped accepting new SLIP customers because they couldn't afford the time it was taking on technical support trying to explain to customers how to fix their CONFIG.SYS AUTOEXEC.BAT files. When you do find a company offering real Internet access, be sure to check if they have time limits. The basic price frequently covers only one hour a day, which may be OK for an occasional login, but is hardly the thing if you had planned to be running your own World Wide Web server.
• "Should I just give up then?"
No. The Internet is growing at such a rapid rate that the facts are changing all the time. I hope that by the time you read this you'll be able to get at least dial-up Internet access everywhere in the US. MacUser December 1994 has an article on the subject and lists some Internet Service Providers on page 134. One Internet Service Provider with wide coverage in the USA is PSI, which you can reach at http://www.psi.com/ or 1-800.827.7482. You can also find a list of Internet Service Providers at http://thelist.com/ and at ftp://ftp.primus.com/pub/providers/isp-list
