Does ZTERM 2000 support the AlphaNET protocol?
No. Alpha Micro’s unique AlphaNET protocol is documented as a “best effort” message delivery system. In reality, it’s a “no effort” delivery system. If packets get lost, AlphaNET does very little to retransmit them. Additionally, the protocol is not routable which leads to inefficiency on wide-area networks because bridge routing has to be used. AlphaNET on the PC is only available from Alpha Micro in 16-bit DOS mode, so as a result it’s not supported on any of the modern 32-bit Windows operating systems. Admitidly, it should be possible to get AlphaNET to work on Windows 95 and Windows 98 but both are a hassle to get working correctly and still leaves Windows NT out of the picture. Alpha Micro’s AlphaTCP product (which is now part of the operating system) is an excellent TCP/IP implementation and because the TCP/IP support in 32-bit Windows is also excellent, we only support the TCP/IP protocol for network connections in ZTERM 2000.
