DBMABAC@CFRVM.BITNET (John Moore Workstation Support 3188) (02/09/90)
I am trying to use NOVELL Ethernet Adapter PC cards in a network that runs TCP/IP. I have IBM's flavor of TCP/IP as well as SUN's version. Anyone know of any drivers that will allow this mixture? Any help would be sincerely appreciated! Thanks for your time.
ronc@XLNVAX.EXCELAN.COM (Ron Cully) (02/09/90)
TCP/IP is defined by a whole bunch of RFCs and is probably
more interoperable than the new OSI stuff (since there
are so many flavors of functionality in OSI). As a result,
any reasonably implemented flavor of TCP/IP should work with
the reputable implementation from Sun. I'm not familiar
with IBM's directly, but I believe it is a pretty reasonable
implementation as well.
The important issue is to make sure your implementation
is RFC compliant.
There is one issue that is a little strange and you
might watch for it. In the TCP header there is a
"PUSH" bit. When set, this bit tells TCP that it
must push the datagram up to the application. If
it isn't set, TCP is not obligated to push the data.
In some TCP implementations, TCP buffers packets up
and pushes them up later. Depending upon what is
happening, this may be more efficient and less
taxing on the host. If a Telnet client fails to
set the push bit on all characters, and the host
doesn't automatically push data without the PUSH bit,
the user may see some delays in keystroke echoing.
While the TCP/IP stacks will interoperate, the result
is not quite what you might expect and they are
both RFC compliant. For the most part, good implementations
avoid this pitfall.
Besides that, you might be concerned with congestion control
and other efficiencies that can have a big impact in
a WAN. A good implementation should include the Nagle
algorithm, true exponential back-off on retry (not
linear as with many), dynamic round trip delay calculation
(used for retransmit timer set-up), and full ICMP support.
There are tons of other issues to look for if you are being
real picky. A good place to pose more detailed questions
is in the Internet news in the topic comp.protocols.tcp-ip.
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Ron Cully Voice: (408) 473-8363
E-mail: ronc@novell.com FAX: (408) 433-0775
(formerly ronc@excelan.com)
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The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect
any official views of Novell.JRD@USU.BITNET (Joe Doupnik) (02/09/90)
John,
"Novell Ethernet Adapter boards" plus TCP/IP from IBM and SUN.
The obvious answer, echoed by about half the listservers' readers is
Use Packet Drivers.
I presume the boards are NE1000 and NE2000. There is P.D. support for
NE1000's but not yet for NE2000.
The Packet Driver stuff I rewrote will cope with Sun's PC-NFS at the
same time as Novell connections.
Other people on the net will undoubtedly add more detailed help. You
can see me for the locally improved Packet Driver material (including srcs)
and, golly, I'll bet you could make them even better!
Joe D.