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WalMart - AS2
- Thread starter t2tone
- Start date
Hello.
I am the technical guy at our company who has just been told that Wal-Mart has mandated that we trade via AS2. We have a very basic set up here with a persistent internet connection (T1) and a single firewall. All of our trading to this point has been via dial-up or we Push-Pull. With the Wal-Mart AS2 solution, Wal-Mart would like to Push data to us.
We were told that iSoft and bTrade had free AS2 client solutions. What I don't understand is do I need a server with an internet presence running the AS2 software or do I run the software on a box behind our firewall and just add a few firewall rules to let traffic through?
Any input on the technical requirements of making this AS2 stuff work would be very beneficial.
Thanks!
UnixGy
I am the technical guy at our company who has just been told that Wal-Mart has mandated that we trade via AS2. We have a very basic set up here with a persistent internet connection (T1) and a single firewall. All of our trading to this point has been via dial-up or we Push-Pull. With the Wal-Mart AS2 solution, Wal-Mart would like to Push data to us.
We were told that iSoft and bTrade had free AS2 client solutions. What I don't understand is do I need a server with an internet presence running the AS2 software or do I run the software on a box behind our firewall and just add a few firewall rules to let traffic through?
Any input on the technical requirements of making this AS2 stuff work would be very beneficial.
Thanks!
UnixGy
Unixgy -
I have attempted to install btrade. Key word ATTEMPTED. Our box is behind the filewall and have added rules to allow things to pass through. The problem that I am having is to do with the HTTP and HTTPS listeners.
Any clue about them?
Thanks...
I have attempted to install btrade. Key word ATTEMPTED. Our box is behind the filewall and have added rules to allow things to pass through. The problem that I am having is to do with the HTTP and HTTPS listeners.
Any clue about them?
Thanks...
Hello Soupkid.
What problems are you having with the listeners? I'm guessing that there are certain ports you have to set up for them. I would suggest setting these ports to values above 1024. You might have problems if you use ports 80 and 443. Let me know the specific problem you are having. It might be a firewall issue also - try snooping your internal interface on your firewall and see what the requests look like. Also, check firewall deny logs. If you can determine what port it's failing on, maybe you can open it up. But what do I know, I can't even figure out what this AS2 solution is all about.
Can you clue me in on a few things about this Wal-Mart project. Are we supposed to actually set up an AS2 server? A box which sits and listens for Wal-Mart to send us files. And also acts as the transport agent to send files? I was initially under the assumption that programs like bTrade and iSoft were just client software and not full blown servers. Are you using a box dedicated to AS2?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Sorry it takes so long to get back with responses - I'll actually remember to set the E-Mail notification on this one.
Thanks, again.
Unixgy
What problems are you having with the listeners? I'm guessing that there are certain ports you have to set up for them. I would suggest setting these ports to values above 1024. You might have problems if you use ports 80 and 443. Let me know the specific problem you are having. It might be a firewall issue also - try snooping your internal interface on your firewall and see what the requests look like. Also, check firewall deny logs. If you can determine what port it's failing on, maybe you can open it up. But what do I know, I can't even figure out what this AS2 solution is all about.
Can you clue me in on a few things about this Wal-Mart project. Are we supposed to actually set up an AS2 server? A box which sits and listens for Wal-Mart to send us files. And also acts as the transport agent to send files? I was initially under the assumption that programs like bTrade and iSoft were just client software and not full blown servers. Are you using a box dedicated to AS2?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Sorry it takes so long to get back with responses - I'll actually remember to set the E-Mail notification on this one.
Thanks, again.
Unixgy
use a linux box or a win 9x box with ftp server enabled. this way walmart can push the data and also pull the data from this box. the ftp server software would restrict the movements of the walmarts access on your servers. also a firewall will be of help.
a similar solution has been developed by us to work with govt agencies (not in usa)
icici
a similar solution has been developed by us to work with govt agencies (not in usa)
icici
edianalyst
MIS
I'm currently working on setting up Meijer and Wal-Mart AS2 solutions, so far, everything is going great, not much problems.
To setup the entire AS2 solution, you just need any computer with the AS2 software setup and configured properly, rules for ports to open in the firewall, NAT for those who decide to put it behind the firewall and that should be about it.
Unixguy, yes, they're just software, not full blown servers. I think whether you need a dedicated box really would depend on your traffic, I am just running the entire thing as a service at the moment.
Soupkid, what problems are you having with listeners? List more info and maybe I could help. I've had some trouble myself at start.
To setup the entire AS2 solution, you just need any computer with the AS2 software setup and configured properly, rules for ports to open in the firewall, NAT for those who decide to put it behind the firewall and that should be about it.
Unixguy, yes, they're just software, not full blown servers. I think whether you need a dedicated box really would depend on your traffic, I am just running the entire thing as a service at the moment.
Soupkid, what problems are you having with listeners? List more info and maybe I could help. I've had some trouble myself at start.
Hello Unixguy, Soupkid, et.al.
Comments on what I know about the bTrade implementation.
Their implementation should be bundled with the HTTP(S) server and the AS2 listener. The listener is similar to an FTP listener -- it just sets there waiting for inbound traffic.
The AS2 protocol uses SMIME to carry the encrypted message body, the certificate information, etc. -- header, body, trailer. The other thing about AS2 is that it communicates 'acknowledgements' with MDN's (Message Disposition Notifications). So, when you sent Wal-Mart an SHTTP message you should get back an MDN (also MIME encapsulated) via your AS2 listener. Normally, you would have a program/person monitoring these MDN's to look for errors, then archive them or whatever.
Concerning the firewall and port problems: don't know if this is applicable with bTrade's AS2, but their other client-side products had a configuration option to do "data over command." The initial handshake between the two systems established a "command port". Then instead of the serving system responding with a different port number for you to send data over, it would retain the same port number for the data transmission. This alleviated the problem with a "random port" on your firewall side.
Hope this helps some.
Comments on what I know about the bTrade implementation.
Their implementation should be bundled with the HTTP(S) server and the AS2 listener. The listener is similar to an FTP listener -- it just sets there waiting for inbound traffic.
The AS2 protocol uses SMIME to carry the encrypted message body, the certificate information, etc. -- header, body, trailer. The other thing about AS2 is that it communicates 'acknowledgements' with MDN's (Message Disposition Notifications). So, when you sent Wal-Mart an SHTTP message you should get back an MDN (also MIME encapsulated) via your AS2 listener. Normally, you would have a program/person monitoring these MDN's to look for errors, then archive them or whatever.
Concerning the firewall and port problems: don't know if this is applicable with bTrade's AS2, but their other client-side products had a configuration option to do "data over command." The initial handshake between the two systems established a "command port". Then instead of the serving system responding with a different port number for you to send data over, it would retain the same port number for the data transmission. This alleviated the problem with a "random port" on your firewall side.
Hope this helps some.
Hello Everyone.
I am not convinced that anyone has successfully implemented an AS2 solution with bTrade. At least not on a UNIX platform. I have every piece of documentation they will give me and I still can't make this work. They want to charge us $750.00/HR for consulting and they give me these manuals which are all Windows based. Give me a decent technical manual and I'll figure anything out on my own. I just haven't seen a decent technical manual from these guys yet.
I have a very basic test set-up here with two UNIX boxes each running AS2 servers on the same network. All I want to do is transfer a file from one to the other. That should be simple, right. No firewalls, no third parties. With bTrade, tdclientc is the program used to initiate transfers. The problem is, there are a lot of configuration files doing a lot of things with very little documentation. The error I am getting now is that the trading partner information can't be found in the address book. And there's no UNIX documentation on how to populate the address book.
I know together we can all figure this stuff out without paying these companies $750.00/HR for support. Once I figure it out I plan on documenting the whole thing and making it public for everyone.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Unixgy
I am not convinced that anyone has successfully implemented an AS2 solution with bTrade. At least not on a UNIX platform. I have every piece of documentation they will give me and I still can't make this work. They want to charge us $750.00/HR for consulting and they give me these manuals which are all Windows based. Give me a decent technical manual and I'll figure anything out on my own. I just haven't seen a decent technical manual from these guys yet.
I have a very basic test set-up here with two UNIX boxes each running AS2 servers on the same network. All I want to do is transfer a file from one to the other. That should be simple, right. No firewalls, no third parties. With bTrade, tdclientc is the program used to initiate transfers. The problem is, there are a lot of configuration files doing a lot of things with very little documentation. The error I am getting now is that the trading partner information can't be found in the address book. And there's no UNIX documentation on how to populate the address book.
I know together we can all figure this stuff out without paying these companies $750.00/HR for support. Once I figure it out I plan on documenting the whole thing and making it public for everyone.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Unixgy
Has anyone implemented iSoft's Peer-to-Peer Agent with Sterling's Gentran Server for Windows? Does anyone think since Wal-Mart chose iSoft that iSoft is the best? I am just trying to get a feeling of what are my best and most cost efficient options so if anyone has any comments, I would love to hear them.
edianalyst
MIS
I think Wal-mart chose isoft because of its scalability, not sure if it's best though. I tried btrade's tdaccess and lexicom from cleo, lexicom's far easier to setup.
edianalyst
MIS
I thought they're using ISoft's suite. Didn't they choose IBM and Sterling as the backup VAN provider?
- Thread starter
- #13
tdacquisto
Programmer
I'm in the process of setting up TLE/400 and iSoft to trade with Walmart.
Set up of iSoft was pretty simple. We traded documents with iSoft tech support without any issues.
Testing date with Walmart is the 28th of this month.
Seems pretty simple: iSoft is running 24/7 on a server that has access to the internet.
Using pseudo networks for the trading partner in TrustedLink/400 and then the TLE supplied API to transfer data to and from the iSoft mailbox.
Hope it all goes well. If anyone out there has done this, I'd like to hear how thing went.
Tom.
Set up of iSoft was pretty simple. We traded documents with iSoft tech support without any issues.
Testing date with Walmart is the 28th of this month.
Seems pretty simple: iSoft is running 24/7 on a server that has access to the internet.
Using pseudo networks for the trading partner in TrustedLink/400 and then the TLE supplied API to transfer data to and from the iSoft mailbox.
Hope it all goes well. If anyone out there has done this, I'd like to hear how thing went.
Tom.
We chose Wal-Mart's freebie version of iSoft's Peer-to-Peer agent. Installation was fairly easy and testing went pretty smooth. We started encountering problems after going live with Wal-Mart. It seems when transmitting large files to Wal-Mart, our firewall (Symantec Raptor) was removing some header information. So, when the MDN would come back it didn't know where to go. This caused the AS2 communications to fail, leaving the port open on Wal-Mart's end. Eventually we had tied up all of Wal-Mart's ports not allowing anybody else to communicate. Symantec and iSoft worked on this problem for several weeks, and the only resolution they could come up with was to move the iSoft server outside our firewall. I hope this helps anybody encountering the same problem.
got to
they have edi and as2 solutions that they provide
they have edi and as2 solutions that they provide
rpgguruhere
Vendor
I have a question for all AS2 users installed the software inside the firewall and using Internet.
If the Wal-Mart is going to push data isn't it dangerous to install the AS2 software inside the firewall? It opens the risk for the whole company’s network to be accessed from outside. The limit by IP only looks secure since the IP can be faked.
If the Wal-Mart is going to push data isn't it dangerous to install the AS2 software inside the firewall? It opens the risk for the whole company’s network to be accessed from outside. The limit by IP only looks secure since the IP can be faked.
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