Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!hellgate.utah.edu!cc.utah.edu!cc.usu.edu!jrd
From: JRD@cc.usu.edu (Joe Doupnik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What is NETBIOS, and where can I get it?
Message-ID: <15265@cc.usu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 89 02:53:47 GMT
Lines: 14

Steve,
	Novell NetWare Entry Level 1 is under $500 and Ethernet boards, just
to make performance high, cost about $200 (Western Digital Wd8003E's). With
that you get all you wanted, and more. It pays to shop around for lan prices,
even with NetWare suppliers. RS232 solutions will be v. slow, natch.
	NetBios is an interface standard invented by IBM (by their supplier,
but IBM has the copywrite of my PC Lan Tech Ref) and typically refers to
regular LANs underneath. Thus each NetBios implementation provides the same
interface, +/-, but also couples to a particular kind of network interface
and is thus vendor dependent. NetBios comes with NetWare and with other
major networking products.
	NetBios itself provides no disk redirection and all the other things
people associate with lans, it is simply a communications interface.
	Joe D.