Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!tcdcs!swift.cs.tcd.ie!dit.ie!alawlor
From: alawlor@dit.ie (Aengus Lawlor)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Multiple Novell Servers on on eEthernet
Message-ID: <7314.25ed5fcd@dit.ie>
Date: 1 Mar 90 17:45:48 GMT
References: <539@opus.NMSU.EDU> <1990Feb20.113920.19222@hellgate.utah.edu> <7288.25e915df@dit.ie> <883@ftp.COM>
Organization: Dublin Institute of Technology
Lines: 31

In article <883@ftp.COM>, jbvb@ftp.COM (James Van Bokkelen) writes:
> 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

That's what I figured. But, if ECONFIG doesn't let IPX packets be read as
TCP/IP / XNS / FOO.BAR / ...   packets, then what's it for? (NETBIOS aside,
that was just an example)
-- 
Aengus Lawlor    Dept of Computer Science.           Time flies like an arrow,
ALAWLOR@DIT.IE   Dublin Institute of Technology.     Fruit-flies like a banana
                 Kevin Street. Dublin 8. Ireland.