Reviving ARPAnet

Peter Coghlan cctalk at beyondthepale.ie
Thu Jan 18 11:53:18 CST 2018


>
> Here's a link with a lot of gory details on NetWare's support of 
> multiple Ethernet frame types.
>
> Link - Migrating Ethernet Frame Types from 802.3 Raw to IEEE 802.2
>   - https://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/ana19930905.html
>
> Here are the four frame types that NetWare supports:
>
>   - Ethernet II
>      - I think this is what we are using for just about everything today.
>   - IEEE 802.3 "raw"
>      - I'm speculating that this is the frame type that Frank is referring to above.

I thought that what Novell refers to as "IEEE 802.3 raw" was an early day
foulup on their part where they put IPX data directly into IEEE 802.3 frames
with nothing to indicate what protocol was being transported.  It became a
problem because lots of people whose first experience of networking was a
Novell Netware server used it because it was the default frame type, making
life difficult for them when they wanted to add other protocols to their
network later on.

>
>  - IEEE 802.3 with 802.2
>  - IEEE 802.3 with 802.2 SNAP
>

The above are what they should have used instead of IEEE 802.3 "raw" if they
really wanted to fly the 802.3 flag.  As far as I know, anyone who wanted
everything to work just used Ethernet II (and 802.3 / 802.2 SNAP if they also
wanted Appletalk support).  I don't thing IEEE 802.3 with 802.2 and no SNAP
was very useful because of the limited number of protocols it could be used
to specify.

>
> I /think/ that NetWare can bind IP to all four Ethernet frame types. 
> Hopefully one of them is compatible with V-delta-4 and before.
>

Maybe, if V-delta-4 and before used IEEE 802.3 with 802.2 but I doubt if
anyone other than Novell used what they called IEEE 802.3 "raw".

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.


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