BSD4.3 For Banking

[Michael Furtney]

Hello,

	I currently work part time for a relatively small software development 
	company called XCEL-Soft.  We are based in Toronto, and our major 
	product is a retail banking system that runs on a UNIX System V 
	platform.

	Right now, we are in the midst of designing an 'Inter-Branch Banking'
	facility, and we are planning to make use of a Public Data Network (X25)
	to facilitate communications between branches.  The software 
	has been developed by us, for this project, and is now being tested
	on a local network.

	While this poses no problems from our point of view, it is felt
	by one of our major customers (A bank based in Jamaica), and by my
	employer, that a private network would be more secure, and offer 
	better response times.

	We are looking at a solution of porting our retail banking system
	to BSD, and perhaps implementing a TCP/IP network of some kind
	that would facilitate inter-branch communication.  We have various
	other reasons for switching to BSD, eg. the socket is a more robust
	IPC mechanism than is the standard System V IPC Message Queue routines,
	and our banking software relies heavily on this.  But this article
	is not concerned with that...

	We are experienced with X25, and interfacing our banking software
	to other networks. (VISA/NET in particular) .

	This leaves us with a few questions, that I am sure many of the
	knowledgable gurus out there could answer for us :

	  1) Were could we write, or call, or FTP to obtain information
	  concerning 

		a) The purchase of 4.3BSD.
		b) Implementing a TCP/IP based network.
		   In Particular: What types of communications medium are
				  supported by TCP/IP.

				  (With our PDN solution, each branch
				  has a leased line to the network, is that
				  possible with a TCP/IP solution?)

	These are broad, and rather vague questions, but any responses would 
	be appreciated.  

	All responses should be directed  to :

			mfurtney at dahlia.waterloo.edu
			..!watmath!watcgl!electro!grimm!mike  (At home)

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