MacIP

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Standard within the AppleTalk DDP protocol

title: "MacIP" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["macintosh-operating-systems-apis", "internet-protocols", "network-layer-protocols"] description: "Standard within the AppleTalk DDP protocol" topic_path: "technology/networking" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacIP" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Standard within the AppleTalk DDP protocol ::

MacIP refers to a standard for encapsulating Internet Protocol (IP) packets within the AppleTalk DDP protocol. This allows Macintosh computers with LocalTalk networking hardware to access the normally Ethernet-based connections for TCP/IP based network services. This was an important bridging technology during the era when Ethernet and TCP/IP were rapidly growing in popularity in the early 1990s.

Software implementing MacIP, such as MacTCP or Open Transport, was installed on the computer and a MacIP Gateway was placed elsewhere on the network. Applications that communicate with TCP/IP (such as Telnet) have their IP packets encapsulated in DDP for transmission across the LocalTalk network to the MacIP Gateway. The MacIP Gateway strips off the DDP encapsulation and forwards the IP packet on the IP network.

The gateways were often implemented as part of a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge device, small hardware systems primarily designed to allow communications between LocalTalk and EtherTalk equipped AppleTalk machines (like the Mac II and a LaserWriter). MacIP routing was often implemented as an optional adjunct to the AppleTalk routing. Cisco Systems supported AppleTalk in their proprietary IOS (up to and including version 12.4(15)T14, on select platforms) which in turn could provide MacIP-Services.

History

The practice of encapsulating IP packets within DDP was originally developed at Stanford University as the Stanford Ethernet - AppleTalk Gateway (SEAGATE) by Bill Croft in 1984 and 1985.

The SEAGATE hardware was commercialized by Kinetics in 1985. The Kinetics Internet Protocol (KIP) was used to integrate with their FastPath LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge. Apple Computer embraced the use of the encapsulation technology, which came to be known as MacIP.

One of the mandates for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) "IP over AppleTalk" working group was to document existing MacIP implementations and to develop a specification for MacIP that could be proposed as a standard. The draft document draft-ietf-appleip-MacIP was submitted, however it has expired without progressing to a standard.

References

References

  1. [http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/ios-nx-os-software/ios-packaging/product_bulletin_c25-520459.html Cisco.com: AppleTalk Support Discontinuation]
  2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20050508123156/http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/701/9.pdf Cisco.com: Setting Up MacIP, Doc-ID 10679]
  3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20040825091335/http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04%2F01%2F07%2F1555239&mode=thread MacWorld 2004 Keynote: A History Of Macintosh Networking - reported notes - See "Macs and the Internet: a long digression"]
  4. [http://www.opendoor.com/nethistory/MacWorld2004/pages/slide45.html MacWorld 2004 Keynote: A History Of Macintosh Networking - relevant slide] {{webarchive. link. (2006-10-16)
  5. [http://securitydigest.org/tcp-ip/archive/1985/02#000007 Bill Croft announces SEAGATE in TCP-IP list - See "000007"]
  6. [http://groups.google.com/group/net.micro.mac/browse_frm/thread/9defdc53193b85e5/f084989e3da699cb?lnk=gst&q=seagate+appletalk&rnum=2#f084989e3da699cb Bill Croft declares in net.micro.mac that Kinetics are using a modified version of the SEAGATE code]
  7. [http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/95jul/charters/appleip-charter.html IP Over AppleTalk Working Group Charter]
  8. [https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/idindex.cgi?command=id_detail&id=210 Internet-Drafts Database entry]
  9. [http://www.faqs.org/ftp/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-appleip-MacIP-03.txt Latest draft document with content removed]
  10. [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-appleip-MacIP-02 A Method for the Transmission of Internet Packets Over AppleTalk Networks [MacIP]]

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

macintosh-operating-systems-apisinternet-protocolsnetwork-layer-protocols