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Date:      Mon, 19 Feb 1996 17:13:37 -0500
From:      dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
To:        Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: BSDi : Internet Gateway for Novell Networks
Message-ID:  <199602192213.RAA10103@etinc.com>

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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 do.  I did a product proposal for this type of thing at Novell.  Even
>did some preliminary code.  8-).
>
>
>The biggest pain is setting up the server engine to advertise itself
>and respond to "GetNearestServer()" requests of the apropriate type.
>
>You will need a NetWare developer kit for the client API on the
>Windows box.
>
>The largest amount of grunt-work is in writing the Winsock-over-IPX
>tunnel.  This is not quite traditional tunneling.
>
>Anyone have a full set of client developer red-boxes?

This is really quite silly (clearly an opinion)....haven't any of you heard that
Windows '95 is here? I think that BSDI (and you) missed the boat on this
one....now that Windows comes with a stack...and you have to be a real
moron not to be able to install it..the usefulness of this "gateway" product has
substantially diminished. Struggling with ODI on DOS boxes.....now i really 
could have used it then, but now it doesnt cost me anything for TCP/IP and
its a snap to install and configure.

Anyway...isn't Novell supposed to be moving toward an IP based link layer?

Dennis
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