cmilono@netcom.COM (Carlo Milono) (05/31/91)
There is a new Stable publication from the OSI Implementors Workshop that supersedes NIST/Special Publication 500/#177. It is not, to my knowledge, made a standard, but is stable. For those of us who must deal with 802.5 networks, including vendors of Sniffer products, it changes the NSAP addresses for ES and IS in the 802.5 arena. It seems that IBM reserved too many bits, and in order to accomodate OSI protocols, needed to change the Functional address(es) to gain further address space. Luckily for many vendors, the standard states that such addresses must be configurable; however, for performance purposes, some products had implemented these addresses in some type of firmware (PROM/ROM). There is a rather extensive embedded base of OSI software based on TP4, with perhaps the "Lion's Share" being based on the MAP/TOP spec. I do not have any information on whether MAP/TOP is in sync with the NIST. Here are the proposed (stable) changes: ALL_ESN 802.3 0900 2B00 0004 ALL_ISN 802.3 0900 2B00 0005 ...these have been stable since early 1988, and adopted by MAP in 9/89. ALL_ESN 802.5 WAS: C000 0008 0000 WILL BE: C000 0000 4000 ALL_ISN 802.5 WAS: C000 0010 0000 WILL BE: C000 0000 8000 -- -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Carlo Milono | | Personal: cmilono@netcom.com or apple!netcom!cmilono | | Hobbes: "Life in the Great Suburban Outback is certainly fraught with | | peril." | | Calvin: "If you'd seen it, you'd have been scared too." | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+