Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!anableps.berkeley.edu!glass
From: glass@anableps.berkeley.edu (Brett Glass)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: NetBIOS Datagrams: Potential Incompatibility in RFC 1001
Message-ID: <21754@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 17 Mar 89 00:33:39 GMT
References: <8903160644.AA03229@trwind.ind.TRW.COM>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 28

In article <8903160644.AA03229@trwind.ind.TRW.COM> karl@TRWIND.IND.TRW.COM
 (Karl Auerbach) writes:

>Hi -- The paragraph that you quote from RFC1001 is from a part which
>is background material describing the typical PC-DOS service interface
>to Netbios.

Please see my more recent message concerning RFC 1002. The
implementation details of the datagram service protocol contained in
that RFC embody the same error. Implementors who use the RFC as a
guide when building a NetBIOS (which they are likely to do; the
original IBM document is now out of print) may build this error
into their code, causing crashes, hung systems, and scrambled
databases. I know of two programs -- an SQL package and a network
conferencing program -- for which this problem can be fatal.
Both run perfectly on every NetBIOS-based network I've tested --
EXCEPT those which attempt to conform to the pseudocode description
in RFC1002. Others are more tolerant but still malfunction.

>The RFC specifies the protocol, not the service interface.
>Even if the quoted paragraph is, in fact, inconsistant with the
>Sytek/IBM definition of the NCB service interface, there is no impact
>on the RFC1001/1002 protocol.

The error is independent of the NCB interface; it is a problem in the
underlying service protocol.

<BG>