Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!ftp!jbvb
From: jbvb@ftp.COM (James Van Bokkelen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Multiple Novell Servers on on eEthernet
Summary: NETBIOS over XNS vs. NETBIOS over TCP/IP: never the twain shall meet
Message-ID: <883@ftp.COM>
Date: 27 Feb 90 19:34:40 GMT
References: <539@opus.NMSU.EDU> <1990Feb20.113920.19222@hellgate.utah.edu> <7288.25e915df@dit.ie>
Organization: FTP Software Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 22

The issue of making different "NETBIOS over transport X"
implementations communicate is quite different from the Ethernet
encapsulations issue.  In general, everybody who implemented NETBIOS
as a programming interface over some transport layer they liked for
other reasons (XNS, IPX, etc.) chose to do it in a way that "seemed
reasonable at the time".  The only exceptions so far are TCP/IP, where
RFCs 1001 and 1002 specify all the grubby details, and a NETBIOS-over-OSI
consortium, who demoed at Interop last year.  Because all the vendors
in each group agreed on a common spec, and because they use the same
underlying transport layer, everybody (within each group) interoperates.

The case you seem to want to deal with involves two different
transports.  In order to make a NETBIOS-over-Foo system talk to a
NETBIOS-over-Bar system, you need some intermediate translating
gateway, which speaks both.  I know that 10Net/DCA did this between
their private NETBIOS transport protocol and NETBIOS-over-TCP/IP,
but I don't know of any others.


-- 
James B. VanBokkelen		26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA  01880
FTP Software Inc.		voice: (617) 246-0900  fax: (617) 246-0901