mshiels@tmsoft.uucp (Michael A. Shiels) (07/11/90)
Do your products hook into PROTMAN$ (Protocol Manager)?
Do they provide an upper layer that looks like NETBIOS? Or vendor proprietary
interface?
IE: PROTMAN$
^
|--------------+
V V
IP$ ARP$
|
|--------+
V V
TCP$ UDP$
Would be how I envision the protocols hooking together under PROTMAN$.
What about providing an uppoer layer that looked like NETBIOS? Would allow
lots of flexible programming interfaces to be written since NETBIOS is
integrated right into OS/2 and DOS now (at least for the LAN environment)backman@interlan.Interlan.COM (Larry Backman) (07/11/90)
>Do your products hook into PROTMAN$ (Protocol Manager)? >Do they provide an upper layer that looks like NETBIOS? Or vendor proprietary >interface? > >IE: PROTMAN$ > ^ > |--------------+ > V V > IP$ ARP$ > | > |--------+ > V V > TCP$ UDP$ > >Would be how I envision the protocols hooking together under PROTMAN$. > >What about providing an uppoer layer that looked like NETBIOS? Would allow >lots of flexible programming interfaces to be written since NETBIOS is >integrated right into OS/2 and DOS now (at least for the LAN environment) I'm not so sure that I understand your drawing, however...... NDIS currently has 2 well defined interfaces; the MAC/Protocol interface, commonly known as the NDIS interface, and the NETBIOS/Protocol interface. Unfortunately, any other interfaces, specifically Network or Transport layers, are "roll your own". The NETBIOS interface also is dependent on LAN Manager to do certain things for it (lock buffers, validate memory, etc). Protocols such as TCP or ISO on the other hand, typically export a series of inetrfaces at the layer 3 & 4 level, and stick a NETBIOS protocol layer on top of layer 4. The TCP application suite (FTP, Telnet, et. al) typically uses some sort of layer 4 interface (Sockets, TLI, etc.) to get data in and out of the protocol. So what does this mean to you? Yes you can get NETBIOS on top of TCP; its even a standard...However, the host of networking applications written for the TCP environment uses layer 4 rather than NETBIOS. But if you had your own application written to NETBIOS, yes you could concievably run it on top of a NETBIOS/TCP protocol stack. However, be warned, within OS/2 you need to load the LAN Manager rdirector to get to NETBIOS; once you do so it becomes the ultimate arbitrator of NCB's and decides what you can & can't do. For instance; a reset NCB is a no-no. What you want to do is possible; its work however no matter which way you look at it. Hopefully, at some point the guardians of the NDIS spec. will awake to the reality of providing a *real* transport layer interface! Larry Backman backman@interlan.com