The Kinetics FastPath was a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge (now referred to as a router) created in 1985 to allow

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

computers (which at the time only had

LocalTalk LocalTalk is a particular implementation of the physical layer of the AppleTalk networking system from Apple Computer. LocalTalk specifies a system of shielded twisted pair cabling, plugged into self-terminating transceivers, running at a ra ...

network connections) to communicate with other computers on

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

networks. The product had five significant revisions (known as KFPS-1 through KFPS-5) during its lifetime and was ultimately sold to Shiva Networks late in its existence. The original FastPath was developed to extend

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

on Ethernet for

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

, but from the beginning it was also modeled after an implementation of the Stanford Ethernet–AppleTalk Gateway (SEAGATE) created at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Medical Center by Bill Croft in 1984 and 1985.Bill Croft declares in net.micro.mac that Kinetics are using a modified version of the SEAGATE code
/ref> SEAGATE was a combination of hardware and software that picked up IP packets from the Ethernet network and encapsulated them inside of DDP packets on the AppleTalk network and conversely picked up specially-encoded DDP packets on the AppleTalk network and placed them on the Ethernet network as IP packets. Although a few sites used the original SEAGATE multibus hardware as defined, it served as a proof-of-concept and was eclipsed by the Kinetics FastPath and similar hardware gateways by other companies. However, many university and research FastPath owners continued to be able to run the Stanford gateway software (later called KIP incorporating MacIP) inside the Kinetics FastPath. This is because KIP was an open source interface to the Kinetics hardware and local modifications and adaptations could be made. By 1987, Apple had begun shipping Macintosh computers that were capable of having Ethernet connections directly, but the LocalTalk networking products prospered into the early 1990s, due to the popularity of Apple's plug-and-play networking and the continued existence of popular LocalTalk devices such as the

LaserWriter The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker ...

References

External links

Information about the Shiva FastPath 5
Networking hardware {{network-stub

See also

References

External links