Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!ucbvax!VAX.FTP.COM!jbvb
From: jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: multiplexing interfaces (was 'ethernet over pcnet')
Message-ID: <8806302243.AA04705@vax.ftp.com>
Date: 30 Jun 88 22:43:15 GMT
References: <8806291332.aa02464@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 40


   Thus, this is a good approach for occasional use by a subset of the
   PCs on your PC network.  But if you plan prolonged use by most of your
   PCs, you would be better served by obtaining a multiplexing interface
   at a lower layer than Netbios.  The trouble here is that there is little
   more than rumours of support for such multiplexing interfaces from many 
   of the PC LAN vendors (e.g. 3Com, Novell).  Of course, if the PCs
   spend all their time using TCP/IP, it would be better to connect
   to the Ethernet directly.

   Keith McCloghrie

The first commercial offering that allowed multiplexing a single Ethernet
interface between a LAN program and TCP/IP was offered by BICC Data Networks,
in 1986, for MS/NET and PC-IP.  Presently, the market looks like this (as
fas as I know), in order of first commercial offering:

Board /network type		LAN Program		TCP/IP available

BICC 4113/Ethernet		MS/NET, Netware		FTP's PC/TCP
Univation NC516/Ethernet	Netware, Lifenet	FTP's PC/TCP
All supported Ethernet boards	Banyan Vines 2.10	FTP's PC/TCP
Sytek/Ethernet & Broadband	Netware			FTP's PC/TCP
IBM Token Ring Adapter/802.5	Vines, Netware, PC LAN	IBM TCP/IP, FTP PC/TCP
Schneider & Koch/Ethernet	Netware			FTP's PC/TCP
Excelan EXOS205/Ethernet	Netware			Excelan TCP/IP
Bridge PCS1/Ethernet		3+			Bridge
Proteon P1300/ProNET-10		Netware			FTP's PC/TCP
Interlan NI5120 & NI9210/Ether	Netware			FTP's PC/TCP

There are a number of things pending which will affect this picture:
One is TRW's support for our Packet Driver spec.  Another is Banyan's
introduction of Vines 3.0, which will allow co-existence with TCP/IP
on any network interface they support, instead of just Ethernet as it
is now.  The forthcoming "MAC/Vector" specification from 3Com and Microsoft,
which should open up 3+/Open to co-existence with other vendors, and
might change the whole picture of co-existence and drivers.

James VanBokkelen
FTP Software Inc.