Greetings Gurus,

I think there's a good chance that one or more of you have some ideas on
an issue I'm facing.

We have HP3000 servers in the US, Mexico and Italy that all run the same
application and have been chatting merrily through VT-MGR and FTP for
many years.  Recently a portion of our company divested and the new
owner inherited the Italy system.  There is an on-going requirement for
these servers to continue communicating for up to three years to support
critical business transactions.  Three nights ago, the new company
switched the Italy server and others over to their network.  Regardless
of our plans to protect connectivity, *poof* it was gone.  After two
days, the new company had poked enough holes in their network firewalls
to supposedly allow FTP, TELNET and VT-MGR in every direction possible.
Well.... Almost.

Here's where we're at:
* We can create a remote session (DSLINE)from our US and Mexico servers
to Italy.
* We can DSCOPY files across those sessions if they are very small, 1kb
was the sample.
* We cannot DSCOPY files across those sessions if they are not very
small, 9kb was the sample.  The error is COMMUNICATIONS INTERFACE ERROR.
UNANTICIPATED CONDITION
* We can open an FTP session from our US and Mexico servers to Italy.
* We cannot GET or PUT data across those FTP sessions.  The error is
SOCKET TIMEOUT
* We cannot create remote VT-MGR or FTP sessions from Italy to any of
our other servers
* I have connected to the Italy server from a PC on the new company's
network using Reflection by way of their VPN.  I can transfer that giant
9kb file to the server using WRQ protocol.  I cannot transfer the same
file to the server using the FTP protocol (which would have been great
since the file has a REC size of 142).  

The OS versions are 5.5, 6.5 and 7.5
No IP or other network changes were made on the servers themselves.
We have verified that the routing table on the Italy server is open "@".

We have since changed the MTU on the Italy server from 1514 to 1480 (and
rebooted) so that it would not be > the MTU of any of the US and Mexico
servers.  I don't know an MTU from any other obscure acronym.  But I
trusted our network managers explaination.

If I can't get this resolved in the next day or two, I'm going to be
forced to use an FTP server at another location to pass files between
the two networks.  I'm adamantly against putting in a band-aid that will
become permanent, adding another point of failure and involving another
set of people in the production support path.  Yuck.

We don't have anyone in either of the networking groups who are familiar
with MPE.  So naturally, they're suspicious.

Cheers

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