III-1. 16/32-bit issues.
WinVN is available in both a 16 and 32-bit version. The 32-bit version will work on Windows 3.1 with win32s installed (a la WinMosaic), but there is no real advantage in this configuration. WinVN may even run slightly slower, because of the 'thunking' done by win32s for the sockets code. 32bit calls by WinVN are translated to 16-bit calls to 'winsock.dll', which incurs a slight penalty.
32-bit WinVN does not take complete advantage of the 32-bit flat memory/address space... it is really just a recompile of the same sources, with some slight changes.
Note that even though some tcp/ip stacks (vxd-based ones like FTP's PC/TCP 3.0, and Microsoft's WFWG TCPIP32 product (wolverine)) are actually 32-bit stacks, they do not support the 32-bit WINSOCK interface (via 'wsock32.dll'). Using 32-bit WinVN on these stacks means that _another_ layer of translation is added to WinVN's winsock calls (32bit -> 16bit -> 32bit).
When you are running WinVN on a 32-bit operating system (such as Windows 4.0/Chicago and Windows/NT) we suggest that you use the 32-bit version of WinVN. Binaries are available for the Intel and Alpha/AXP platforms. We hope to have a MIPS/NT version soon.
[from Sam Rushing]