I have a program for on line test scoring with two modules: administration (from a server) and exam (from terminal). The server has the exams and permissions and the list of terminals in a file where I keep the net address of each terminal (the file has, for instance: \\ip68\c, \\ip69\c, etc., the name is exactly as it appears in the net environment under windows 95/98 or NT).
The terminals have the exam module who communicates with the server, to do this I keep in the terminal the address of the server in a file (it contains the address such as: \\digital\server\c).
To interchange information and communicate, what I simply do is to read or write using the address. For instance in the exam program at the terminal I have:
ServerAddress$="\\digital\server\c"
ServerFile$=ServerAddress$+"MyExam.dat"
open ServerFile# for input lock shared as #1
'------
' the program is here
'------
close 1
this way I read from the server the exam information.
Similar form where the server has to read something from the terminal or send data
The program worked fine in several sites, but the last test we did in a school ´we´ve found many troubles:
some terminals could communicate all the time, other communicate at the beginning but suddenly they "close" the communication and it was impossible to continue linked with the server, even that the windows net said the terminal was available,
some others never could communicate. We had to shared the root and the directory of the application in the server and in the terminals, and the site responsible wasn´t very happy with this, but we couldn´t be successful.
After several trials, we saw that the protocol was TCP-IP and we´ve changed to NetBeui and from there everything was fine. Communication was in order, never close the link with the server, etc.
The questions are:
1) Is it normal that the way we´re sharing the files cause conflict under TCP-IP and not in NetBeui?
2) Is it normal that TCP-IP needs to shared all the disks (server and terminal) in order to send and receive files?
3) Do I need to change many things if I wish to have a better file exchange between server and terminals?
Regards.
------------------
The terminals have the exam module who communicates with the server, to do this I keep in the terminal the address of the server in a file (it contains the address such as: \\digital\server\c).
To interchange information and communicate, what I simply do is to read or write using the address. For instance in the exam program at the terminal I have:
ServerAddress$="\\digital\server\c"
ServerFile$=ServerAddress$+"MyExam.dat"
open ServerFile# for input lock shared as #1
'------
' the program is here
'------
close 1
this way I read from the server the exam information.
Similar form where the server has to read something from the terminal or send data
The program worked fine in several sites, but the last test we did in a school ´we´ve found many troubles:
some terminals could communicate all the time, other communicate at the beginning but suddenly they "close" the communication and it was impossible to continue linked with the server, even that the windows net said the terminal was available,
some others never could communicate. We had to shared the root and the directory of the application in the server and in the terminals, and the site responsible wasn´t very happy with this, but we couldn´t be successful.
After several trials, we saw that the protocol was TCP-IP and we´ve changed to NetBeui and from there everything was fine. Communication was in order, never close the link with the server, etc.
The questions are:
1) Is it normal that the way we´re sharing the files cause conflict under TCP-IP and not in NetBeui?
2) Is it normal that TCP-IP needs to shared all the disks (server and terminal) in order to send and receive files?
3) Do I need to change many things if I wish to have a better file exchange between server and terminals?
Regards.
------------------
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