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.