Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!proteon.COM!jas
From: jas@proteon.COM ("John A. Shriver")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: doing IPC on existing novell network
Message-ID: <8805091447.AA17558@monk.proteon.com>
Date: 9 May 88 14:47:23 GMT
References: <1728@alliant.Alliant.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 17

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.