xcommsim Readme
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Trevor Woerner
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Copyright &copy; 2001 by Trevor Woerner



Table of Contents
The Itch, The Scratch, and Usage
Legal Stuff

The Itch, The Scratch, and Usage
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Being a simple and poor student at the time, i was always looking for ways
to pay my bills, preferably doing things that were programming related. So
when a professor (and good friend) of mine suggested i create a simulator
for one of his courses i jumped at the offer (especially after he arranged
funding for it! :-). 

The course was an introduction to computer communication for a computer
science class he taught. Being that as it may, the program simulates a
sender, a receiver, and a communication controller in-between. There's
nothing much that's fancy about the simulator. The user is given an
opportunity to inject errors into the stream (in the controller). When the
checksum is performed, if an error is detected the controller is slowed down
and the transmission is re-tried. 

You can either start the application and provide a filename. If the file is
found the contents of that file are fed to the sender. If the file isn't
found or no file is given the sender takes its data from the keyboard; use
the ESC key to terminate your input. 

Data is transmitted in packets of 255 bytes (or less) at a time. Once 255
bytes (or the end of the input stream) is buffered it is transmitted through
the controller who is connected at the other end to the receiver. 

Legal Stuff
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See the file COPYING or the copying web page. Basically all code is
covered under the GPL and is copyrighted to me (Trevor Woerner) and all
documentation that pertains to this project is covered under the FDL. 


