From: mcc@WLV.IIPO.GTEGSC.COM (Merton Campbell Crockett)
Subject: Network Coexistence and Integration
Organization: GTE Government Systems
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 01:13:36 GMT

Reading the comp.sys.novell newsgroup, it would appear that I and a number
of other individuals who are more comfortable in the Internet environment
have suddenly found ourselves responsible for a NetWare network.  Welcome
to the world of marketing power and competing "standards". ;-)

I'm sure by now you're totally frustrated by ASI, DLL, NDIS, NetBios, Net-
BEUI, Packet Driver, and ODI specifications and the various "shims" needed
to interface the various networking products that need to be supported.  I
know that I am!  To top it off, this one-shot task of "getting things to
communicate" has the smell of becoming a permanent task--my Director of
Engineering has been heard telling other divisions that I was a Novell Net-
Ware "expert".

Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Keith Brown and Dirk
Howard (Novell) and Graeme Moffatt (University of Aukland) for providing
guidance in my effort to merge our NetWare network into the Internet.  All
that's left is the simple task of running a cable to the cisco AGS and re-
configuring the routing tables.

I ended up using a Packet Driver to support the ethernet interface.  FTP
Software's PC/TCP Plus to provide support for Microsoft Mail's SMTP Gateway.
(A corporate decision to use Microsoft Mail for all electronic mail was the
major impetus behind the integration effort.)

Given that I decided to use a Packet Driver to support the ethernet, I could
have used BYU's IPX to support the NetWare protocols.  The major problem
to this approach was that BYU's IPX had not kept pace with Novell's changes
and enhancements to IPX.  Microsoft's Windows 3.1 seems to complain, albeit
quietly, about using versions of IPX earlier than the 3.22 release.

One problem that I faced was that some of the ethernet boards that I needed
to use didn't have an ODI compliant driver.  Fortunately, Don Provan (Novell)
had written PDETHER, a Packet Driver to ODI "shim", which allowed me to use
the current version of IPXODI to support the NetWare protocol stack.

The changes needed to CONFIG.SYS were to add the environment "drivers",
IFCUST.SYS and IPCUST.SYS, needed by PC/TCP Plus.  The AUTOCONFIG.BAT changes
were to add the following lines:

        C:\NET\PKTDRV\TIARA -d -w 0x60 10 0x320
        C:\NET\PCTCP\ETHDRV
        C:\NET\NETWARE\LSL
        C:\NET\PKTDRV\PDETHER -v
        C:\NET\NETWARE\IPXODI
        C:\NET\NETWARE\NETX /PS=HOST1

You will need to have a NET.CFG file in C:\NET to define the number of buffers
to be managed by LSL and the packet types to be supported by PDETHER.  I used
the following statements in NET.CFG:

        Link Support
                ;
                buffers 4 1514
        #
        Link Driver PDETHER
                ;
                frame ETHERNET_II
                protocol IPX 8137 ETHERNET_II

As of this morning, I had tested all of the normal NetWare functions and
had no errors.  I had no problems restarting all my permanent connections
to each server in the NetWare network.  Also, I had no problems manipulating
files on the server through DOSSHELL, Windows 3.1 File Manager, and Norton
Desktop for Windows.  I should note that Windows 3.1 is defined as a DOSSHELL
program item and is started in enhanced mode out of a DOSSHELL program group.

I hope this might be useful to those embarking on a NetWare integration effort.

Merton Campbell Crockett
GTE Government Systems
Electtronic Defense
Imagery and Intelligence Processing Organization
Intelligence Data Handling Systems (IDHS) Engineering

mcc@wlv.iipo.gtegsc.com

Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell