A malicious rumour has been doing the rounds that the Winet 3270 emulation does not work in a Virtual Private Network (VPN) environment. The rumour is untrue and Winet3270 does indeed work very well in a VPN environment. Let us examine the facts: To access a mainframe situated outside a VPN from a TCP/IP workstation or printer inside the VPN requires a Network Translation Unit between the VPN and the TCP/IP network on the mainframe or an SNA gateway situated inside the VPN connecting directly to the mainframe via a DLC or IP-DLC connection. For more efficient operation it is recommended that the 3270 emulator in the workstation fully supports the TN3270E protocol specified in RFC 2355. Winet3270 fully supports the TN3270E protocol and has been tested and demonstrated using a Microsoft® HIS gateway. It has also been demonstrated using an Attachmate® 3270 gateway. See also:
Please click here if this helped you. Explanation of Terms Winet comes with seven (7) terminal emulation programs: VTx00, 3270, 5250, T27, Uts60, HP, D211 (not all of them will be unlocked by your licence file). We like to call these the 7 different families of terminal emulators. Each program can be loaded with a configuration to specify some settings for this family to more closely emulate a certain old hardware terminal or to fit function key requirements of a specific application on the mainframe (or Unix server host). E.g.: InetVTx00 comes with configurations to emulate VT100, VT220, VT300, ANSI, SCO-ANSI and a Linux console. The title bar (top blue bar) of each emulator will display first the name of the Inet terminal emulation program and next the name of the active configuration. Mostly when we talk of terminal type, we refer to the string (name) passed by telnet to the remote host (mainframe, server or Unix box), telling it which terminal you are using. This name will affect what type of instructions the host will send to your terminal and what it will expect of your terminal. The terminal type is a string that identifies the model of the terminal. The terminal type is one of the settings saved in a configuration and you may change it as required. Depending on your Unix (or other) host, you might want to set the terminal type to something like vt220, VT100, ansi, ANSI or sco-ansi or whatever. (Unix is case sensitive.) A few popular options are listed in the drop down box under the Setup | Telnet | Terminal Type option in your terminal emulator, but you may also manually edit the strings as required. You can easily create your own custom configurations by using the File | Save As option in your terminal emulator. You may have an unlimited number of configurations for each terminal emulator on your PC, connecting to the same or to different hosts (mainframes). The configuration is used as a key in the registry to store all the settings for the emulator. The configuration to use is specified with the /t=configuration command line option in each short cut. See also:
Please click here if this helped you. You are trying to connect to your designated mainframe or server or Unix box, but you just get a black terminal screen. It is very uncommon for Inet to cause such an error. So let’s first look at the common causes. 1) Network or IP address problems: 2) Port or access rights problems: 3) Setup in Inet terminal emulator:
Please click here if this helped you. My function keys do not work Depending on the termcap or terminfo file on your specific Unix host (and what is used by your application on the Unix box), you might need to change the definitions for the function keys F1 to F12. These definitions are not standardized in the Unix world. The VT220, VT300 and SCO-ANSI terminals are a bit better in this regard than VT100 or ANSI. We recommend to try a VT220 or VT300 as a first step. The terminal type string will also influence what the application expects from the key definitions. If you need to fix only a few keys, one approach is to try all the F-keys with Alt, Ctrl and Shift combinations to see if some other key contains the definition you need. A better method would be to look at an existing working product, to see what the definition of that key should be. But the correct method is to examine the termcap, terminfo and applications on the Unix side to see what they need. The screen layout is wrong Problems with the screen layout might be caused by many configurable aspects. Various operating systems and their applications have different requirements that will affect how application’s screens appear in the InetVTx00 emulator screen. Unfortunately it is impossible for us to supply a golden bullet that will work everywhere. Please play around with these settings on the Setup | Settings dialog: the number of lines on the screen (24 or 25), the wrapping and CR/LF translations. They will solve most problems. The only other common mistake is to select the wrong screen font. The line draw characters (for boxes on the text screens) are mapped differently in different fonts. We recommend Inet or Terminal fonts. In rare cases a Courier font will also work. Do not use a proportional font like Arial or Times Roman. To change the size of your terminal screen, first change the size of your screen font. Then you may use the View | Resize option to set the screen size optimised for your selected font. Less common problems may relate to the VT/SCO/Ansi settings. We recommend VT on, SCO off and Ansi on for the most common scenarios. The “Scroll back Rows” is an enhancement and may confuse some applications. Set your Scroll back Rows to zero. The color instructions sent from the server may vary depending on the terminal type used. Your terminal will only go into 132-column mode if the proper command was sent from the server. I.e.: Esc[?3h and to return to 80-column mode Esc[?3l Once you are happy with the settings, you may save this configuration under a unique name and create a short cut to always launch and connect you to the selected host. Hint: You may also create more than one shortcut (e.g. to connect to different hosts) using the same configuration.
Please click here if this helped you. In the IBM world, the function keys are nicely standardized but there are also differences among the terminal types used. To connect to most IBM (and compatible but not AIX or AS/400) mainframes, you would use the Inet3270 terminal emulator. Here the telnet TN3270E setting (See the Setup | Telnet menu) can have a major influence on how well you communicate with the mainframe. By default Inet3270 will run with a terminal type of IBM-3270-5. A few other options listed in the drop down box under Setup | Telnet | Terminal Type, but you may also manually edit the strings as required. For proper TN3270E connections, the mainframe might require a –E in the terminal type as in IBM-3278-9-E. The screen layout or colour is wrong IBM-3270 is a fairly generic name. IBM-3278 and IBM-3279 are also popular with the latter being a colour terminal. The colour instructions for an IBM-3278 and an IBM-3279 differ. The default configuration will use colours to distinguish text of various attributes even if the terminal is considered to be a monochrome terminal. A mainframe will not send instructions to switch the terminal to 132-column mode, unless the terminal type contains a –5 as in IBM-3278-5. Your terminal will only go into 132-column mode if the proper command was sent from the server. If you set a terminal type of IBM-3287, the mainframe will consider the terminal as a printer and may send print jobs to the terminal, which then acts as a print server. The Inet5250 emulator is used mostly to connect to IBM AS/400 systems. The most popular and default terminal type is IBM-3179-2 with a few other options listed in the drop down box under Setup | Telnet | Terminal Type. See also:
Please click here if this helped you. You may use a PC as print server supporting multiple TCP ports for the socket (IP) InetPrintServer. Each port may be mapped to the same physical printer using different printer configurations, or to different printers and even other network printers. For each port, you’ll need a separate instance of InetPrintServer running with each instance using its own unique configuration. How to do it: A more robust/secure setup: Tick the View | Minimized to system tray option to move the program out of sight when running. This will lessen the chance of users closing the server. Add the /a command line option to the StartUp shortcuts to ensure that the server will always be running.
Please click here if this helped you. Printing is one of Winet’s strongest points. We supply both robust printing methods and highly configurable options to accommodate the widest variety of needs expressed by our clients. The printing is not a case of “one size fits all”. Therefore it would be very valuable for a system administrator or support person to read through this whole section.
Please click here if this helped you. Terminal Emulators: SSH and SSL The Inet terminal emulators support the SSL/TLS and SSH protocols for secure connections providing encryption and authentication. TLS was formally defined in RFC2246 in January 1999. For SSL one or more Certificate Authority certificates can be installed to verify certificates presented by servers. A client certificate can also be installed to be presented to a server. If the private key part of the client certificate is protected by a pass-phrase, the user has to enter it every time a connection is established. It uses the SSLeay library written and copyrighted by Eric Young ([email protected]) with parts written by Tim Hudson ([email protected]). SSH was designed in Finland to circumvent the USA laws restricting export of strong encryption techniques. SSH servers are available for most popular platforms. A variety of commercial server implementations of SSH are available – some early versions include a bug that has to be supported by clients. SSH specifications are found in the IETF’s Internet-draft draft-ietf-secsh-*.txt documents of June 1999. Setting up of SSL or SSH configuration is performed by selecting the Setup | Security property pageHIDD_SECURITY. BTW: SSL and SSH does not mean Set Security Low and Set Security High! Single Point SignOn (SPS or SSO) Various SPS and SSO schemes can be supported using Visual Basic or other OLE enabled programs to communicate between your authentication server and the Inet terminal emulators. Print and FTP Servers The Inet servers have built-in firewalls and automatically “black list” IP addresses trying brute force attacks. The servers can be hidden in the system tray and can be locked to prevent users from closing them and thus disabling required services. By default, an IP address that tried more than 20 times to gain FTP access without a valid username/password, will be blocked until the FTP server is rebooted. Support Issues and Hints The function key dialog is by default in “View” mode. It is often a pain when changing key definitions but saves a lot of hassles by preventing accidental changes by users. A system administrator may create a custom.reg file that can be entered at any user’s PC to repair damaged registry settings. In severe cases you might need to delete the GPvNO keys in both HKCU and HKLM to remove settings not covered in your custom.reg file. By setting customized icons on users’ desktops with the /h= and /n command line optionsCmdLineParam, very little may be changed by users. A system administrator may hide selected buttons by editing the Toolbar entries in the registry. (There is no other interface to this facility.) The idea is to hide the menu with the /n command line optionCmdLineParam and only display selected buttons on the toolbar. The menu displayed with a mouse Right-Click can be removed from the Setup | Settings menuemulSetupMenu by disabling the Show Right Click Menu option. We can supply you with information to disable the following facilities: Copy, Paste, ScreenPrint (not the Windows PrintScreen facility), Write Log, Trace, Script and Read input file. Please contact us!ContactUs This information will only be supplied to system administrators. Locking Registry Settings We do provide a method to lock certain registry settings to values specified in a read only file on a file server. Most system administrators prefer to use policies to achieve the same effect. We do not document our method here since it would allow clever users to circumvent the system. Please contact the suppliers for more information if you need this facility. We love to assist clients in developing efficient systems. See also: Remote commandsRemCmdGenInf – Some programs may execute remotely issued commands.
Please click here if this helped you.General
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Before you try to connect using Inet, try to ping the server. If you can’t ping it then it is no use trying Inet. The problem must be located in a network, router or server that is down. Or perhaps typing or logic problems with the IP addresses or names.
You can ping the server, but not make a connection (The title bar always says “Connection Closed”). Check that you are trying the correct TCP/IP port at the server. Some servers use non-standard (not 23) ports. A firewall with improper settings might also cause failures by locking the port out.
You do get the “Connected” message on the title bar but the screen stays black, static or accepts no input. Settings like font, color, local mode or telnet options might trigger such a problem. Or perhaps even a messed-up keyboard mapping. See Setup menus.
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Set up the built-in firewall at Setup | Firewall to prevent access from unauthorized PCs.
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