Newton Internet Enabler Patch

TOC | Introduction | Installation | Source code | License | Contact | Change History

What is NIE Patch?

NIE Patch is a patch for Newton Internet Enabler. There are several bugs/problems with Newton Internet Enabler, and NIE Patch is a package to fix them. Currently, it only fix one bug.

Indeed, NIE caches DNS entries with a wrong TTL. Apparently, the developer forgot that Time() NewtonScript function returned the time in minutes, not in seconds, and therefore, NIE DNS cache has all its TTLs 60 times too long than what the DNS server actually said.

Please also note that NIE DNS endpoint service only gives the TTL as a number of days. A future version of NIE Patch may fix this (by providing its own DNS service).

What is open source?

NIE Patch is open source, which generally means that the source code is available.

NIE Patch is available under the Kallisys Reflexive License. It's a copy-left license with several requirements, read it before using this software or just the source code.

Glossary

Before using NIE Patch, there are some terms which need to be defined. If you look for better definitions for these terms or definitions for terms which I haven't put here, I suggest you to go and read the Newton Glossary.

NIE

NIE stands for Newton Internet Enabler. It's a set of packages published by Apple to let your Newton connect to the Internet. NIE doesn't do anything alone, you will need Internet applications. It's normally distributed with your Newton, and it can be downloaded from Apple's FTP.

DNS

DNS means Domain Name Server. It refers to the protocol on the internet to translate a domain name (e.g. "www.kallisys.com") into an IP (e.g. 216.147.65.81).

Patch

A patch is a piece of software that normally modifies another program. NIE Patch doesn't modify NIE on the internal store (it cannot), but instead it does some magic to change its behavior once it's loaded. That's why you need NIE Patch to be loaded after NIE.

About this manual

As you probably noticed it, English isn't my mother's tongue. There can be some ideas poorly expressed here, mistakes and other errors. Please correct me and report these problems to pguyot@kallisys.net.

Copyright © 2001 by Paul Guyot. All rights reserved worldwide.