Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utah.edu!haas
From: haas@cs.utah.edu (Walt Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Supporting Novell Networks on an internet
Message-ID: <1990Mar1.075033.11621@hellgate.utah.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 90 14:50:32 GMT
References: <29319@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 73

In article <29319@amdcad.AMD.COM> remaker@pepsi.amd.com () writes:
>I have a problem.  Here at AMD we have a well administered highly heterogenous
>TCP/IP and DECNET network.  Recently we have come under a great deal of pressure
>to support novell LANs on the network.  Now I know that these protocols can
>exist on the same backbone and be routed by our cisco routers.  I hope to get
>advice on the following:
>
>1)  How can I centrally administer these nodes?  Since the hardware address
>    is used as the network address, does this imply that I have to keep a
>    database of the hardware addresses?

Why do you need this information?  The routers keep track of addresses
quite nicely all by themselves.

>2)  How can I monitor traffic from a Unix platform?  etherfind is no help and
>    etherview is kind of ugly since I'd have to sit and disect individuall type
>    8137 packets.

I haven't found a method, if you find one I'd be interested.  The Network
General Sniffer does a nice job of translating to English.

>3)  What kind of diagnostic utilities (on a Unix platform) are available?
>    ...I want centralized troubleshooting at one point.

See answer to 2) above.

>4)  How can we do traffic accounting for bandwidth management?  I want to
>    keep the broadcasts as localized as I can IF I have to support IPX...

The ciscos do a good job of blocking broadcasts.

>    and I want to know WHO is producing the most traffic, and how to best
>    localize it.
>    This is especially a concern in keeping our long lines free of extraneous
>    traffic from careless mounts (a current problem with NFS).

Designing for good localization is a bear.  Somebody at Network General said
they are bringing out a new product that will help with this.  I immediately
started salivating and demanded to be a beta site :-).

>5)  Tell me any advice and experience you all have putting Novell, 3Com,
>    Banyan, and LAN manager based machines on your TCP/IP backbone.

As of 8.0(13) the cisco code seems to be fine.  We route Novell just like
IP and DECnet with it.  Sorry, no experience with those others.

> I appreciate any help.  I'm highly concerned, since IPX was designed as a 
> protocol for small LANs, I fear it will grossly misbehave in a WAN
> environment.

Novell just implemented XNS, it shows up that way on the Sniffer.

>I also fear that the traffic among these LANs may be prohibitive.

We haven't had any major problem yet, with our 35 Novell fileservers.

> But what I fear the most is the inability to adequately track, troubleshoot
> and document these nodes, since we will not be assigning addresses for them,
> and it would be hard to track down illegal installations.

The ciscos will help you localize who is where.

> We run a tight ship here and need 24 x 7 availability, and we simply cannot
> afford chaos on our network.

We have the same goals.  We accomplish them by letting the routers do 99.9%
of the work.  Of course our network may be smaller than yours, I don't know.
In general I don't think you would gain anything by forcing users to use
TCP/IP rather than Novell, at least until your network grows so large that
the routing tables become prohibitive in size (we may be approaching that
now with AppleTalk).

Cheers  -- Walt