From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Subject: Re: Novell servers running Internet Router
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 21:46:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.043801.24066@gatech.edu> shahid@oit.gatech.edu (Shahid Sheikh) writes:
>Hi netters
>Can someone explain why a Novell Server has to run an AppleTalk Internet
>Router in it. I know it runs one for IPX as well. But is there a real true
>reason why it has to run the router for appletalk. It seems kind of silly
>just to run an Internet router for one server and not being able to connect
>any devices on the Appletalk subnet. Moreover, if you have about a hundred
>routers already existing and you put like another 50 Novell servers on your
>network, wont that significantly increase your RTMP and ZIT tables and slow
>down the network?
>
Oh, probably.  We haven't benched it, but we've got about half of our 40
zones on campus running off Netware servers (3.11).  But I can't see why
it would load things up any more than the other 20 zones that are hiding
behind KFP/SFP's, Gatorboxen, and such.

>The response I've got from Novell so far is that they have designed the
>multiprotocol support according to the ODI specifications which requires
>them to run that router. Since when appletalk devices have to be designed
>according to ODI standards? 

They don't.  However, the way Netware is put together *logically* and 
*internally* (under ODI), the o/s counts as it's own internal-to-the-
machine-network (which is why each netware server has an 'internal network
number), which routes to each logical/physical interface.  Netware, by
nature, routes.  It can't help it.  It's designed that way.  To show this
in poor character graphics, a netware server, of itself, might look 
something like this:

	---------------------------------		The Server is like
	|		|		|		a router box...	
	|		|		|
        |               |               + board A is bound to IPX and ATK
	|		|
	|		+ board B is bound to IP and IPX and ATK
	|
	+ board C is bound to IPX

The server is routing IPX on three interfaces, IP on one, and Appletalk
on two.  Even if you only have *one* interface board in the server, you
must still run some level of routing for each protocol you bind to an
interface, since that is the layer that the 'internal network' talks
to a bound interface.

> Is there a way around this router other than
>not using the stupid Novell server at all? 

Nope.

> What kind of remote management
>tools come with the Novell router? Does it support SNMP? Can I monitor and
>control the router from a remote non-IPX device?
>
I know there is SNMP that runs under netware, but I'm not sure what it
has as a level of service (i.e. does it control routing characteristics?
does it report on nodes that don't run on smtp on server-local inter-
faces?...)  You might find it more profitable to ask this question 
particularly on comp.sys.novell.

Good luck!
-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
    of the NC Legislature, a mostly owned subsidiary of the DOT.      */
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk