Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!wellfleet.com!pprindev
From: pprindev@wellfleet.com (Philip Prindeville)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Novell and TCP/IP
Message-ID: <8908231652.AA17070@tien.Wellfleet.Com>
Date: 23 Aug 89 16:52:04 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19

> to get a special version of IPX from Novell of course. And you might have to
> change the drivers on the server too. I think you have to have the type-field/
> length field in the ethernet frames set to 8137, which is assigned to Novell.
> In some versions of Novells drivers the field is interpreted as a length field
> ( that's 802.3 i think ). In this case you can run applications which support

Well, it's sort of 802.3; if there was a valid SAP after the length, then this
would be legitimate.  But it isn't.  Fortunately, Novell ships there boxes with
checksumming turned off (sound familiar?) so that the checksum (the first two
bytes after the frame length) is always 0xffff.  This is not a valid LSAP, and
most hosts will ignore this.

This bogusity got me the first time.  Novell ships a tool called econfig, that
allows you to fix the driver to use Ethernet-II frames (and put 0x8137 in the
length/type field).  How many sites have their PC's using the pseudo-802.3
encapsulation?  Not many I hope, but I would be interested in hearing from you
if you do.

-Philip