DECnet-RSX V4.0 course 1984

This document is the DECnet-RSX Student Guide (SWS). It outlines a comprehensive lecture/lab course designed to train system programmers, application programmers, and network managers in the use, installation, monitoring, and troubleshooting of DECnet software on RSX-11M/M-PLUS/S systems.

Key course goals include enabling specialists to:

• Describe DECnet-RSX product features.
• Utilize the Network Management interface for monitoring, managing, and testing.
• Perform DECnet-RSX generation and installation.
• Write programs for intertask communication using supported RSX languages.
• Trace DECnet-RSX internal data structures and data flows.

The course topics delve into using DECnet-RSX utilities for system generation (PREGEN, NETGEN), installation, and checkout, as well as network management utilities for configuring, testing, controlling, inspecting, and monitoring nodes and networks. It also covers troubleshooting node problems and programming intertask communication.

Prerequisites for the course are a technical understanding of the DIGITAL Network Architecture (DNA) and network components, programming proficiency in BASIC-PLUS II, FORTRAN-77, or MACRO-11, and a minimum of six months of experience supporting RSX-11M/M-PLUS/S. The course explicitly states its non-goals, which include not providing support training for Ethernet products, comprehensive network troubleshooting, or heterogeneous network support.

The guide is structured modularly, with sections corresponding to individual course module booklets, such as:

• DECnet-RSX Overview
• DECnet-RSX User Interface
• DECnet-RSX Network Management
• DECnet-RSX Packetnet System Interface
• DECnet-RSX Installation and Checkout
• DECnet-RSX Additional Network Capabilities
• DECnet-RSX Performance Considerations
• DECnet-RSX Internals
• DECnet-RSX Node Troubleshooting
• DECnet-RSX Presales

The latter part of this document itself presents the detailed content of the "DECnet-RSX Overview" module, including its introduction, objectives, resources, and technical explanations of DECnet functions, layers, protocols, communication methods, and interfaces.