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From: Martin Renters <martin@tdc.on.ca>
Message-Id: <199602191532.KAA09432@freebsd.tdc.on.ca>
Subject: Re: BSDi : Internet Gateway for Novell Networks
To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 10:32:52 -0500 (EST)
Cc: phil@zipmail.co.uk, hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <18792.824712223@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Feb 18, 96 10:43:43 pm
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> > One of these was a system called the BSDi Internet gateway for novell 
> > networks. it sells for $1595 for 5 users and comes with www/ftp etc, 
> > but the bit that caught my attention was the fact that it can be used 
> > for leased-line/dialup routing and (if the article is correct) no 
> > tcp/ip support is needed on the local n/w at all !!
> 
> Yep!  A few people tell me that Novell admins love this since it lets
> them keep their networks "pure" - no icky TCP/IP frames on their
> lovely little IPX networks (and, of course, the clients don't need to
> run TCP/IP stacks).
> 
> I think it would definitely be a well-regarded feature for FreeBSD if
> we supported TCP/IP encapsulation like this.  I don't know how much
> work is involved, but..

I think the way these things work is that they provide you with a WINSOCK
implementation that works over the network.  That is, when you create a
socket, this WINSOCK will send an IPX message to the Internet gateway
and the gateway creates the socket.  Similarly, when you do a bind or
read or write, WINSOCK will pass those requests on to the server which
actually carries them out.  The PCs don't have any IP stacks on them at
all.   Only the gateway has an IP address.  Think of it was splitting
WINSOCK into 2 pieces, the API portion (that runs on the PC) and the
action doer (which runs on the gateway).

I think the hard part in implementing this is finding a PD WINSOCK
implementation that does this.

Martin