From: medici@dorm.rutgers.edu (Mark Medici)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Subject: Re: IP Tunneling - max # servers? WHY?
Date: 6 Oct 92 16:39:17 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:

>In article <01GPIAPRIFJY91X7C5@CC.USU.EDU> Novell LAN Interest Group <NOVELL@SUVM.BITNET> writes:
>>I have yet to hear of one decent reason to restrict the backbone to IP only
>>traffic.
>>        Joe D.

>What about "lack of multiprotocol routers"

I don't see any definciency of multiprotocol routers in the market.
Cisco, Wellfleet and Proteon are just three of the major players, and
all have a good stable of such devices.  Unless you're talking about
software-only routers, this should be no problem.

> and "avoidance of interference 
>from badly-configured LANs on the same WAN?"  Don't you ever get cases
>where some idiot starts spewing broadcast IPX packets all over the campus,

With abut a half-dozen protocols, including IP, IPX and AppleTalk2 as
the major bandwidth consumers, this has not been a problem here.

>and doesn't restricting them to IP tunnels help to avoid this?

Not necessarilly.  However, tunnelling certainly makes attempting to
troubleshoot this problem and most other WAN problems much more
difficult.  Not only do you have to decode the IP packet, but then you
have to unwrap the underlying protocol and decode it.  What tools
would you use to accomplish this?

>I would love not to have to use IP tunnelling. But I need a convincing
>response to the above arguments. Ciscos don't grow on trees...

We have over 50 NetWare boxes, 150 AppleShare boxes, 100 DECnet boxes,
50 terminal servers, a few IBM mainframes and a couple thousand
UNIX/IP boxes all talking their native protocols accross our backbone.
We use Cisco routers, mostly AGS chassis but many smaller as well.
Novell routing on our backbone is only about 3 years old, and has
resulted in little additional work for our telecommunications staff
(the folks who run the backbone).  In my three years experience, I
have never seen or heard of a Novell or any other LAN significantly
affecting performance on the WAN, regardless of how badly it was
configured.  And, since many of the Novell LANs are set-up by persons
with little or no prior network experience, I have seen some widely
configured LANs.

The biggest obstacle to opening the single-protocol WAN is getting
folks to realize that their familiar protocol of choice is not the
center of the universe.  Although IP has some advantages over IPX/SPX,
there is nothing in the latter to make it unsuitable for WAN use.  In
fact the only "gotcha" is that IPX/SPX does not perform end-to-end
error detection, so if any of your WAN links transverse lines that do
not inherently provide error detection, such as 56kbps or T1 lines,
you would need to configure your router to perform link error
detection on Novell traffic.  This is a simple process with cisco
routers, as I suspect it is for most others that provide high-speed
serial interfaces.-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
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