rosenkra@Alliant.COM (Bill Rosenkranz) (05/07/88)
--- does anyone know if it is possible to run two incompatible protocols on any novell network? i think novel has both token and contention schemes (don't they?) which say to me that as long as i have the network, it is mine for that packet. the question then is do/will file servers ignore/pass on strange messages to the proper handler? i would like to impliment an IPC (interprocess communication) mechanism without tcp/ip if possible. it must exist in an existing novell/banyan network used for file serving. thanx -bill
acm@RELAY.PROTEON.COM (05/09/88)
---------------------------------- Forwarded ---------------------------------- From: acm at proteonwebo Date: 5/9/88 9:30AM To: linus!aliant!rosenkra@husc6.harvard.edu at ARPA Subject: doing IPC on existing novell network ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >does anyone know if it is possible to run two incompatible protocols on >any novell network? Some of the hardware drivers use protocol headers that can reject other packets addressed to Novell stations (such as broadcasts.) ProNET software all does that. ProNET-10 can run multiple types to the same machine with little difficulty. The same is true of Banyan software. >i think novel has both token and contention schemes (don't they?) >which say to me that as long as i have the network, it is mine for that >packet. the question then is do/will file servers ignore/pass on strange >messages to the proper handler? i would like to impliment an IPC >(interprocess communication) mechanism without tcp/ip if possible. it >must exist in an existing novell/banyan network used for file serving. They support about 35 or so different pieces of network hardware and that includes both types (actually 3 types.) They already have a protocol that DOES go through all the internetwork they set up. It is called IPX and is based upon XNS protocol. All packet drivers for the cards support this protocol and you can do station to station communications with this. You can get details from Novell by talking with David Hills in Provo. He is in charge of third party hardware/software vendors. He has put out a book on all the programming interface to talk with the drivers. It is called "Application Programmer's Guide to Netware and Function Call Reference." There is another protocol that is available with 2.1 Netware called SPX which is guaranteed delivery end-to-end. This can be used too. -Al Marshall, Proteon
jas@proteon.COM ("John A. Shriver") (05/09/88)
We have no problem sharing Novell wires with other protocols. What is limited is sharing Novell network interfaces with other applications. Some of the shell drivers allow this, most don't. The sharing has nothing to do with the arbitration scheme used at the physical and data-link layer, eg. Token-Ring versus CSMA/CD. That is only involved in time-sharing a common communication medium between multiple hosts. The sharing has to do with the data-link layer having a header in it specifying what network-layer protocol the rest of the packet is. There are seperate values for Novell and Banyan, as well as for TCP/IP. However, if you want to implement IPC, and are not particularly fascinated by writing device drivers and network layers, and are writing it on PC's, you might as well use Novell IPX network layer and programming interface. It would save a lot of work. It is almost, but not quite exactly, XNS IDP.