OS/2 Tips: Warp Connect TCP/IP Issues

By Bill Kredentser

Around our office we've observed this on 3 quite different PCs all running WARP Connect with TCP/IP 3.0 attached by network cards to our corporate LAN.

There is something called ROUTED listed on the Autostart page of the TCP/IP Configuration Notebook. The online help is available only by clicking HELP when you are actually executing TCP/IP Configuration. In TCP/IP 2.0, this help was an icon in the TCP/IP folder. I think this hiding of the help was a step backwards. The online help says: The ROUTED server queries the network and dynamically builds routing tables from information transmitted by other hosts that are directly connected to the network.

What are routing tables? What are they used for? When would I find I coudn't run without them? When could I get away without them? Why would I want to automatically start ROUTED with the rest of TCP/IP? What would be the impact of not doing so? Under what conditions might I want or need to start ROUTED later if I didn't autostart it? IBM supplies no answers to these questions in the online help.

I raise this issue because in all 3 cases, we found our systems crunching our hard drives continuously when we arrived at the office after more than 12 hours of no use. My colleague Gary Blodgett discovered by a process of elimination and trial & error that his system got quiet when he cancelled ROUTED. I tried it and it worked for me too. Tim Sutter has done the same with the same results. We are all running without ROUTED and it seems to have had no adverse effects. (I have been able to enlarge my HPFS cache since eliminating ROUTED from my active configuration. I had previsouly shrunk it on the assumptions, now proven wrong, that the disk activity was swapping and I had taken too much RAM away from my working set by making the cache too big.)

It would be nice to offer an explanation for this mystery but. ..

I have 2 WARP Connect systems, one each at home & work. The hardware is a lot different but the software is about as close to identical as I can make it. The main bits of identical software are WARP Connect with Fix Pack 10, TCP/IP 3.0, and Web Explorer 1.03b.

At home, I connect to the Internet over a modem to a provider. After using Web Explorer, the directory identified in my CONFIG.SYS by SET TMP is full of files. Some files are deleted by shutting down Web Explorer but there's always lots left.

At work, I connect to the Internet through a network card to our corporate LAN, which connects to our corporate Internet provider over a leased line. Using the same Web Explorer configuration settings as at home, the TMP directory contains only WEBMAP.HTM after closing Web Explorer.

I can't explain this mystery & I'd like to see others put their comments about this here.

WW

Team OS/2 & PROUD OF IT!