BILLY@VENERA.ISI.EDU (Billy Brackenridge) (08/06/88)
I am glad to see some discussion of OS/2 networking on this list. Does anybody besides the people at Microsoft, 3Comm, and Excelan know anything about what is necessary to add TCP/IP support to OS/2? As I understand OS/2 the LAN Manager is proprietary. Microsoft decided not to choose a specific transport layer protocol. Different organizations will implement IBM's proprietary protocols, Xerox's XNS, TCP/IP, and ISO protocols. I believe Excelan is the "official" TCP/IP vendor for OS/2. As I understand it one can run one or all of these protocol layers or substitute another vendor's transport layer. Those of us in the amateur radio, university, and defense communities would like to play the game too, but we are not Microsoft VARs. There are some good books on programming OS/2. Unfortunately there isn't much published on how to add your own transport layer protocols to OS/2. I think Microsoft figured nobody would want to do this. Last year at the TCP/IP interoperability conference there was some discussion of OS/2 at the PC "Birds of Feather" session, but nobody had any hard facts. Last Month I attended a Microsoft Developer's conference. I got the impression that the Microsoft network developers are real bright. They understand and say all the right buzz words about networking, but they are primarily interested in making a product that will compete with Novell. I don't think the several tens of thousands of DOS machines on the internet really figured in their marketing plans. Besides James van Bokkelen and myself is there interest on this list in developing OS/2 transport and below layer protocols? Is there enough interest to get together a meeting at the TCP/IP interoperability conference at the end of September? Is there anybody from Microsoft or one of the other companies involved willing to share information? -------