Reviving ARPAnet

[Grant Taylor]

On 01/18/2018 10:53 AM, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:
> 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.

That's my understanding as well.

It's also my understanding that they made this decision prior to the 
standards we use today existed.  -  So, assuming my understanding is 
correct, I don't fault them for betting on the wrong option.

> 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.

Agreed.

> The above are what they should have used instead of IEEE 802.3 "raw" 
> if they really wanted to fly the 802.3 flag.

I don't know that Novell /wanted/ to fly the 802.3 flag.  I think they 
just wanted something that worked.  Purportedly, standards didn't exist 
yet, or weren't widely adopted, and they made a decision.  Granted, in 
retrospect it was the wrong decision.  But it did work for them at the time.

> 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.

Agreed.

Though most of this is related to having multiple protocols on the same 
network segment / broadcast domain.  -  It's also my understanding that 
most businesses had multiple disconnected networks (likely using 
different physical technology) that had their native protocol(s) and 
didn't inter operate with each other.

> 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".

Fair enough.  I don't have any information to refute that.  -  So I 
modify my statement to be "I wonder if NetWare 4.x / 5.x can route IP 
between (what Novell called) 802.2 and Ethernet II.  ;-)

My desire is to find a way to interconnect between the existing 
protocols & frame types without needing to modify things on hosts.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die