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From: backman@interlan.UUCP (Larry Backman)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: re NetBIOS/TCP (UDP)
Message-ID: <573@interlan.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 12:40:42 GMT
References: <8811010516.AA05874@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: backman@interlan.UUCP (Larry Backman)
Organization: Interlan, Inc., Boxborough, MA (1-800-LAN-TALK)
Lines: 51

In article <8811010516.AA05874@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> snorthc@NSWC-OAS.ARPA writes:
>To: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa
>
>Here is where I have the problem.  If you are talking theory or ideals
>you are right of course.  If you are talking implementations of
>NetBIOS/TCP then perhaps the memory issue needs to be revisited.
>If you have an MS-DOS machine, you may find 256k or so of your available
>memory space gone to provide this transparency (example 3c505, FTP SW,
>IBM PC LAN program rdr).  Cut off another 60 - 80k for DOS and many
>of the applications that provide the user with menus and manage the
>files cannot run.  Then what does transparency buy you?
>
>It is my belief that the vendors who invested time/effort/
>brains/$$$$ to develop NetBIOS/TCP implementations (FTP SW, Excelan,
>Bridge [they weren't 3Com at the time], Network Research Corp) wish
>they had placed their investment somewhere else like NFS or OSI or
>whatever.
>

	[]

	An individual employee of a vendor's view:

	I've implemented NETBIOS on top of ISO as both a host based and
	board based protocol under both DOS and OS/2.  Observations:

		1).  The board is 8 Mhz. 80186 based; the board based protocol
		     is 50% as fast as the host based protocol.

		2).  The host based protocol takes up 128K of space under
		     both DOS and OS/2.  The board based protocool takes up
		     less than 10K of space.

		3).  The board based protocol can support 32 sessions easily;
		     the host based protocol can support at most 8-16 sessions
		     before needing another 64K of memory for data buffers.

	Opinions:

		1).  Under OS/2 you want a host based protocol for performance;
		     under DOS you want a board based protocol for memory.

		2).  Future DOS NETBIOS protocol stacks will be more cognizent
		     of Expanded memory version 4.0;  there is no reason why
		     a 128K driver can't use 64K of DOS memory for code, and
		     a large chunk of expanded memory for data; this would
		     save valuble DOS memory, and also allow more data buffers;
		     i.e. more sessions.


						Larry Backman
						Interlan, Inc.