The KISS TNC: A simple Host-to-TNC communications protocol

Mike Chepponis, K3MC, Phil Karn, KA9Q

ABSTRACT

The KISS[1] TNC provides direct computer to TNC communication using a simple

protocol described here. Many TNCs now implement it, including the TAPR TNC-1

and TNC-2 (and their clones), the venerable VADCG TNC, the AEA PK-232/PK-87

and all TNCs in the Kantronics line. KISS has quickly become the protocol of

choice for TCP/IP operation and multi-connect BBS software.

1. Introduction

Standard TNC software was written with human users in mind; unfortunately,

commands and responses well suited for human use are ill-adapted for host

computer use, and vice versa. This is especially true for multi-user servers

such as bulletin boards which must multiplex data from several network

connections across a single host/TNC link. In addition, experimentation with

new link level protocols is greatly hampered because there may very well be no

way at all to generate or receive frames in the desired format without

reprogramming the TNC.

The KISS TNC solves these problems by eliminating as much as possible from the

TNC software, giving the attached host complete control over and access to the

contents of the HDLC frames transmitted and received over the air. This is

central to the KISS philosophy: the host software should have control over

all TNC functions at the lowest possible level.

The AX.25 protocol is removed entirely from the TNC, as are all command

interpreters and the like. The TNC simply converts between synchronous HDLC,

spoken on the fullor half-duplex radio channel, and a special asynchronous,

full duplex frame format spoken on the host/TNC link. Every frame received on

the HDLC link is passed intact to the host once it has been translated to the

asynchronous format; likewise, asynchronous frames from the host are

transmitted on the radio channel once they have been converted to HDLC format.

Of course, this means that the bulk of AX.25 (or another protocol) must now be

implemented on the host system. This is acceptable, however, considering the

greatly increased flexibility and reduced overall complexity that comes from

allowing the protocol to reside on the same machine with the applications to

which it is closely coupled.

It should be stressed that the KISS TNC is intended only as stopgap. Ideally,

host computers would have HDLC interfaces of their own, making separate TNCs

unnecessary. [15] Unfortunately, HDLC interfaces are rare, although they are

starting to appear for the IBM PC. The KISS TNC therefore becomes the ``next

best thing'' to a real HDLC interface, since the host computer only needs an

ordinary asynchronous interface.

2. Asynchronous Frame Format

The ``asynchronous packet protocol'' spoken between the host and TNC is very

simple, since its only function is to delimit frames. Each frame is both

preceded and followed by a special FEND (Frame End) character, analogous to an

HDLC flag. No CRC or checksum is provided. In addition, no RS-232C

handshaking signals are employed.

The special characters are:

Abbreviation Description Hex value

FEND Frame End C0

FESC Frame Escape DB

TFEND Transposed Frame End DC

TFESC Transposed Frame Escape DD

The reason for both preceding and ending frames with FENDs is to improve

performance when there is noise on the asynch line. The FEND at the beginning

of a frame serves to ``flush out'' any accumulated garbage into a separate

frame (which will be discarded by the upper layer protocol) instead of

sticking it on the front of an otherwise good frame. As with back-to-back

flags in HDLC, two FEND characters in a row should not be interpreted as

delimiting an empty frame.

3. Transparency

Frames are sent in 8-bit binary; the asynchronous link is set to 8 data bits,

1 stop bit, and no parity. If a FEND ever appears in the data, it is

translated into the two byte sequence FESC TFEND (Frame Escape, Transposed

Frame End). Likewise, if the FESC character ever appears in the user data, it

is replaced with the two character sequence FESC TFESC (Frame Escape, Tran-

sposed Frame Escape).

As characters arrive at the receiver, they are appended to buffer containing

the current frame. Receiving a FEND marks the end of the current frame.

Receipt of a FESC puts the receiver into ``escaped mode'', causing the

receiver to translate a following TFESC or TFEND back to FESC or FEND,

respectively, before adding it to the receive buffer and leaving escaped mode.

Receipt of any character other than TFESC or TFEND while in escaped mode is an

error; no action is taken and frame assembly continues. A TFEND or TESC

received while not in escaped mode is treated as an ordinary data character.

This procedure may seem somewhat complicated, but it is easy to implement and

recovers quickly from errors. In particular, the FEND character is never sent

over the channel except as an actual end-of-frame indication. This ensures

that any intact frame (properly delimited by FEND characters) will always be

received properly regardless of the starting state of the receiver or

corruption of the preceding frame.

This asynchronous framing protocol is identical to ``SLIP'' (Serial Line IP),

a popular method for sending ARPA IP datagrams across asynchronous links. It

could also form the basis of an asynchronous amateur packet radio link

protocol that avoids the complexity of HDLC on slow speed channels.

4. Control of the KISS TNC

Each asynchronous data frame sent to the TNC is converted back into ``pure''

form and queued for transmission as a separate HDLC frame. Although removing

the human interface and the AX.25 protocol from the TNC makes most existing

TNC commands unnecessary (i.e., they become host functions), the TNC is still

responsible for keying the transmitter's PTT line and deferring to other

activity on the radio channel. It is therefore necessary to allow the host to

control a few TNC parameters, namely the transmitter keyup delay, the

transmitter persistence variables and any special hardware that a particular

TNC may have.

To distinguish between command and data frames on the host/TNC link, the first

byte of each asynchronous frame between host and TNC is a ``type'' indicator.

This type indicator byte is broken into two 4-bit nibbles so that the

low-order nibble indicates the command number (given in the table below) and

the high-order nibble indicates the port number for that particular command.

In systems with only one HDLC port, it is by definition Port 0. In multi-port

TNCs, the upper 4 bits of the type indicator byte can specify one of up to

sixteen ports. The following commands are defined in frames to the TNC (the

``Command'' field is in hexadecimal):

Command Function Comments

0 Data frame The rest of the frame is data to be sent

on the HDLC channel.

1 TXDELAY The next byte is the transmitter keyup

delay in 10 ms units. The default

start-up value is 50 (i.e.,500ms).

2 P The next byte is the persistence parame-

ter, p, scaled to the range 0 - 255 with

the following formula:

P = p * 256 - 1

The default value is P = 63 (i.e., p =

0.25).

3 SlotTime The next byte is the slot interval in 10

ms units. The default is 10 (i.e., 100ms).

4 TXtail The next byte is the time to hold up the

TX after the FCS has been sent, in 10 ms

units. This command is obsolete, and is

included here only for compatibility with

some existing implementations.

5 FullDuplex The next byte is 0 for half duplex, nonzero

for full duplex. The default is 0

(i.e., half duplex).

6 SetHardware Specific for each TNC. In the TNC-1, this

command sets the modem speed. Other

implementations may use this command

for other hardware-specific functions.

FF Return Exit KISS and return control to a higher-

level program. This is useful only

when KISS is incorporated into the TNC

along with other applications.

The following types are defined in frames to the host:

Type Function Comments

0 Data frame Rest of frame is data from the HDLC channel

No other types are defined; in particular, there is no provision for

acknowledging data or command frames sent to the TNC. KISS implementations

must ignore any unsupported command types. All KISS implementations must

implement commands 0,1,2,3 and 5; the others are optional.

5. Buffer and Packet Size Limits

One of the things that makes the KISS TNC simple is the deliberate lack of

TNC/host flow control. The host computers run higher level protocol

(typically TCP, but AX.25 in the connected mode also qualifies) that handles

flow control on an end-to-end basis. Ideally, the TNC would always have more

buffer memory than the sum of all the flow control windows of all of the

logical connections using it at that moment. This would allow for the worst

case (i.e., all users sending simultaneously). In practice, however, many (if

not most) user connections are idle for long periods of time, so buffer memory

may be safely ``overbooked''. When the occasional ``bump'' occurs, the TNC

must drop the packet gracefully, i.e., ignore it without crashing or losing

packets already queued. The higher level protocol is expected to recover by

``backing off'' and retransmitting the packet at a later time, just as it does

whenever a packet is lost in the network for any other reason. As long as

this occurs infrequently, the performance degradation is slight; therefore the

TNC should provide as much packet buffering as possible, limited only by

available RAM.

Individual packets at least 1024 bytes long should be allowed. As with buffer

queues, it is recommended that no artificial limits be placed on packet size.

For example, the K3MC code running on a TNC-2 with 32K of RAM can send and

receive 30K byte packets, although this is admittedly rather extreme. Large

packets reduce protocol overhead on good channels. They are essential for

good performance when operating on high speed modems such as the new WA4DSY 56

kbps design.

6. Persistence

The P and SlotTime parameters are used to implement true p-persistent CSMA.

This works as follows:

Whenever the host queues data for transmission, the TNC begins monitoring the

carrier detect signal from the modem. It waits indefinitely for this signal

to go inactive. When the channel clears, the TNC generates a random number

between 0 and 1.[2] If this number is less than or equal to the parameter p,

the TNC keys the transmitter, waits .01 * TXDELAY seconds, and transmits all

queued frames. The TNC then unkeys the transmitter and goes back to the idle

state. If the random number is greater than p, the TNC delays .01 * SlotTime

seconds and repeats the procedure beginning with the sampling of the carrier

detect signal. (If the carrier detect signal has gone active in the meantime,

the TNC again waits for it to clear before continuing). Note that p=1 means

``transmit as soon as the channel clears''; in this case the p-persistence

algorithm degenerates into the 1-persistent CSMA generally used by

conventional AX.25 TNCs.

P-persistence causes the TNC to wait for an exponentially-distributed random

interval after sensing that the channel has gone clear before attempting to

transmit. With proper tuning of the parameters p and SlotTime, several

stations with traffic to send are much less likely to collide with each other

when they all see the channel go clear. One transmits first and the others

see it in time to prevent a collision, and the channel remains stable under

heavy load. See references [1] through [13] for details.

We believe that optimum p and SlotTime values could be computed automatically.

This could be done by noting the channel occupancy and the length of the

frames on the channel. We are proceeding with a simulation of the

p-persistence algorithm described here that we hope will allow us to construct

an automatic algorithm for p and SlotTime selection.

We added p-persistence to the KISS TNC because it was a convenient opportunity

to do so. However, it is not inherently associated with KISS nor with new

protocols such as TCP/IP. Rather, persistence is a channel access protocol

that can yield dramatic performance improvements regardless of the higher

level protocol in use; we urge it be added to every TNC, whether or not it

supports KISS.

7. Implementation History

The original idea for a simplified host/TNC protocol is due to Brian Lloyd,

WB6RQN. Phil Karn, KA9Q, organized the specification and submitted an initial

version on 6 August 1986. As of this writing, the following KISS TNC

implementations exist:

TNC type Author Comments

TAPR TNC-1 Marc Kaufman, Both download and dedicated ROM

& clones WB6ECE versions.

TAPR TNC-2 Mike Chepponis, First implementation, most

& clones K3MC widely used. Exists in both

downloadable and dedicated ROM

versions.

VADCG TNC Mike Bruski, Dedicated ROM.

& Ashby TNC AJ9X

AEA PK-232 Steve Stuart, Integrated into standard AEA

PK-87 N6IA firmware as of 21 January 1987.

The special commands ``KISS

ON'' and ``KISS OFF'' (!)

control entry into KISS

mode.

Kantronics Mike Huslig Integrated into standard

Kantronics firmware as of

July 1987.

The AEA and Kantronics implementations are noteworthy in that the KISS

functions were written by those vendors and integrated into their standard TNC

firmware. Their TNCs can operate in either KISS or regular AX.25 mode without

ROM changes. The TNC-1 and TNC-2 KISS versions were written by different

authors than the original AX.25 firmware. Because of the specialized

development environment used for the TNC-1 code, and because original source

code for the TNC-2 was not made available, the KISS authors wrote their code

independently of the standard AX.25 firmware. Therefore these TNCs require

the installation of nonstandard ROMs. Two ROMs are available for the TNC-2.

One contains ``dedicated'' KISS TNC code; the TNC operates only in the KISS

mode. The ``download'' version contains standard N2WX firmware with a

bootstrap loader overlay. When the TNC is turned on or reset, it executes the

loader. The loader will accept a memory image in Intel Hex format, or it can

be told to execute the standard N2WX firmware through the ``H''[3] command.

The download version is handy for occasional KISS operation, while the

dedicated version is much more convenient for full-time or demo KISS

operation.

The code for the TNC-1 is also available in both download and dedicated

versions. However, at present the download ROM contains only a bootstrap; the

original ROMs must be put back in to run the original TNC software.

8. Credits

The combined ``Howie + downloader'' ROM for the TNC-2 was contributed by

WA7MXZ. This document was expertly typeset by Bob Hoffman, N3CVL.

9. Bibliography

1. Tanenbaum, Andrew S., ``Computer Networks'' pp. 288-292. Prentice-Hall

1981.

2. Tobagi, F. A.: ``Random Access Techniques for Data Transmission over

Packet Switched Radio Networks,'' Ph.D. thesis, Computer Science

Department, UCLA, 1974.

3. Kleinrock, L., and Tobagi, F.: ``Random Access Techniques for Data

Transmission over Packet-Switched Radio Channels,'' Proc. NCC, pp.

187-201, 1975.

4. Tobagi, F. A., Gerla, M., Peebles, R.W., and Manning, E.G.: ``Modeling

and Measurement Techniques in Packet Communications Networks,'' Proc.

IEEE, vol. 66, pp. 1423-1447, Nov. 1978.

5. Lam, S. S.: ``Packet Switching in a Multiaccess Broadcast Channel'',

Ph.D. thesis, Computer Science Department, UCLA, 1974.

6. Lam, S. S., and Kleinrock, L.: ``Packet Switching in a Multiaccess

Broadcast Channel: Dynamic Control Procedures,'' IEEE Trans. Commun.,

vol COM-23, pp. 891-904, Sept. 1975.

7. Lam, S. S.: ``A Carrier Sense Multiple Access Protocol for Local

Networks,'' Comput. Networks, vol 4, pp. 21-32, Feb. 1980

8. Tobagi, F. A.: ``Multiaccess Protocols in Packet Communications

Systems,'' IEEE Trans. Commun., vol COM-28, pp. 468488, April 1980c.

9. Bertsekas, D., and Gallager, R.: ``Data Networks'', pp. 274-282

Prentice-Hall 1987.

10. Kahn, R. E., Gronemeyer, S. A., Burchfiel, J., and Kungelman, R. C.

``Advances in Packet Radio Technology,'' Proc. IEEE. pp. 1468-1496.

1978.

11. Takagi, H.: ``Analysis of Polling Systems,'' Cambridge, MA MIT Press

1986.

12. Tobagi, F. A., and Kleinrock, L. ``Packet Switching in Radio Channels:

Part II The Hidden Terminal Problem in CSMA and Busy-Tone Solution,'' IEEE

Trans. Commun. COM-23 pp. 1417-1433. 1975.

13. Rivest, R. L.: ``Network Control by Bayessian Broadcast,'' Report

MIT/LCS/TM-285. Cambridge, MA. MIT, Laboratory for Computer Science.

1985.

14. Karn, P. and Lloyd, B.: ``Link Level Protocols Revisited,'' ARRL

Amateur Radio Fifth Computer Networking Conference, pp. 5.25-5.37,

Orlando, 9 March 1986.

15. Karn, P., ``Why Do We Even Need TNCs Anyway,'' Gateway, vol. 3 no. 2,

September 5, 1986.

[1] ``Keep It Simple, Stupid''

[2] To conform to the literature, here p takes on values between 0 to 1.

However, fractions are difficult to use in a fixed point microprocessor so

the KISS TNC actually works with P values that are rescaled to the range 0

to 255. To avoid confusion, we will use lower-case p to mean the former

(0-1) and upper-case P whenever we mean the latter (0-255).

[3] For ``Howie'', of course.