From: shahid@oit.gatech.edu (Shahid Sheikh)
Subject: Novell Server acting as Appletalk Router
Organization: Network Services
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:17:45 GMT

Hi Netters:

I am the AppleTalk network administrator on our campus and I had some concerns
regarding the internal router in the Novell server.

First of all let me explain how our network is basically setup. We have an
ethernet backbone running throughout the campus. All the buildings with a 
few exceptions are connected to this backbone through bridges which are in
the buildings themselves. The exceptions are the ip subnetted buildings which
come off cisco routers. On this network we have all types of protocols running
like IPX, AppleTalk, IP, XNS, etc except that all our backbone routers only
route IP. So basically all non-IP protocols are local to the class B network
that goes throughout the campus.

Now the problem is that we have over a hundred AppleTalk routers on this 
backbone which route AppleTalk to various LocalTalk segment and in some
cases to other EtherTalk networks too. With more and more people buying
Novell as a solution for PC filesharing and wanting to do Apple AFP services
as well, we are having a considerable increase in the AppleTalk subnets and
AppleTalk routers on the network. Which might not have been a problem if this
was a perfect world but hey nothing in here is perfect. The real problem
occurs when someone misconfigures the router for a zone name or something like
that, and as soon as that router comes up, it supplies that incorrect information
to all the other routers on campus through RTMP and ZIP after which the
non-seed routers propagate this further hence the creation of phantom zones
on the network and thats when you start seeing some real weird stuff happening. 
The only way you can correct this problem now is to turn off all the non-seed
routers (which in my case are almost all routers) at the same time so that
the bad info can be lost and then turn them all again. With a hundred routers
this becomes almost impossible to cordinate especially when all those servers
are maintained by different people. Plus I also have a limitation on the
number of AppleTalk subnets I can use because of some other reasons.

I do understand that Novell's multiprotocol support is based on the ODI
specifications but does that really mean that it has to run the AppleTalk
router and create a virtual network inside the machine? It would make
sense if your server was servering multiple Lans at the same time through
different network cards but what if there is only one network like in my case.
It would make sense because you want to have the same access speeds from
all networks and same ease of accessibilty. However, in case of just one
network, can the router be bypassed (for AppleTalk only) so that there is
no need for the management of that router. Moreover we'll be saving a lot
of AppleTalk subnets and reducing alot of RTMP and ZIP packets. If this is
not a feature right now, does Novell plan to incorporate this in the near 
future in their AppleTalk NLM?

My suggestion would be to write two different AppleTalk NLM's, one for the
server connected to multiple networks, and one for server connected to a
single network which doesnot run an internal router. Another feature that
would be highly desirable is to have some kind of remote management over the
router so that you can remotely shut down and bring it back up (just the
router) from a non-IPX node on the same network. Can this be done with the
existing SNMP NLM?

I appologize for the oversized posting but as you can tell I'm a complete
illiterate with the PC and Novell stuff and would greatly apprecite any help
that I can get especially from the guys at Novell.

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Shahid Sheikh
Network Services -- Georgia Tech.
shahid@oit.gatech.edu    (reply through e-mail would be best)