From: medici@dorm.rutgers.edu (Mark Medici)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Subject: Re: IP Tunneling - max # servers? WHY?
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:05:02 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

>Fine, but there _is_ no central control!  It's all very well saying
>"You should have set up a central authority in 1985", but sometimes
>it's hard (politically) to do that, and sometimes you have people who
>started off independent and then want to plug their system into your
>WAN. With IP tunnelling you can be sure that you are totally protected
>from anyone doing this.

Come on, Alasdair.  The same can be said about IP hosts.  If you allow
people to connect ANY device to the backbone without having some
"central authority" to administer network numbers you are asking for
trouble.  Your past message stated that you would love to be able to
run Novell without tunnelling.  However, your arguments clearly
indicate the opposite.

As for "central control", now you're talking like the archtypical
steriotype of a 1970's MIS director.

IPX is a routable protocol.  If you use one of the major multiprotocol
routers, you will get substantial subnet control to limit any problems
caused by an errant LAN.  If you're bridging to the backbone, then I
suggest that you don't have the proper equipment to start with, and
then yes, adding any additional traffic, be it IP or IPX, will add to
your misery.

You, or whomever officially runs your backbone, has the right and
responsibility to set reasonable standards for connection to this
resource, whether the LAN to be connected is IP, IPX, AppleTalk or
whatever.  A precondition of access will include getting Novell
network numbers from a central coordinator, and setting-up the LAN
according to standards.  If existing LANs need to be reconfigured to
accomodate these standards, that is a minor inconvenience (it takes,
at most, only a day to change a server name, network number and
frame type, and usually the process can be accomplished quicker than
that). 

Rutgers handles the situation thus:

 1. All NetWare/Ethernet LANs must be configured to use Ethernet_II
    framing, as opposed to Novell's default 802.3.
 2. All NetWare networks require a unique network number.  We assign
    an IP subnet number for the Novell cable address, and this is
    entered, in hex, as the NetWare network number.
 3. All NetWare servers require an IP host address, regardless of
    whether IP will be used by the server.  This IP host address is
    used as the INTERNAL Novell network number on NetWare 3.x servers.
 4. No protocol tunnelling of any type is permitted on the WAN.

Both #2 and #3 are administered by our central IP address registry, so
no additional staff is required.  And yes, #4 is enforced: a tunnelled
protocol is much more difficult to troubleshoot, and if a LAN is
determined to be tunnelling (or in any other way affecting the
integrety of the WAN) it's router interface is turned-off pending
correction.-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
RUCS     | Mark A. Medici, Systems Programmer III, User Services Division
User     | Rutgers University Computing Services, New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Services | [medici@gandalf.rutgers.edu]                    [908-932-2412]
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU