Lan Manager/X

[Martin O'Nions]

bob at rel.mi.org (Bob Leffler) writes:

>In article <1393 at pdxgate.UUCP> dmatlock at eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Delbert Matlock) writes:
>>What's the word on interoperability between HP-LM/X, SCO-LM/X, and Microsoft
>>LAN Manager (1.1 & 2.0)?  In particular, what will be the deal with protocol
>>support?  3Com's NBP protocol easily allows for 521K of available memory on
>>DOS workstations, so it would be nice to someday see something along the lines
>>of an NBP protocol in LM/X.  With 3Com's recent change in direction I don't 

>I don't foresee things like Decnet or NBP being adopted on all the LM/X
>servers.  Perhaps using TP4 or some similar scheme makes more sense.
>I guess only time will tell.

Not guarenteed, but I did see some information (from SCO I think) saying that
DLC/NetBEUI would be supported on SCO's LM/X full release. This is not exactly
the world's most popular protocol set, but it is the one used by IBM/Microsoft
for LAN Manager, and is supported under 3+ Open (until 1.1 dies, probably later
this year).

It may not be as memory efficient as NBP, but it is small and fast relative to
say TCP/IP or XNS (IMHO), and its penetration into the PC LAN marketplace does
mean that it is reasonably well placed for interoperability requirements. It
also has the advantage over NBP of supporting routing, which is increasingly
being viewed as important given the number of WANs in the modern world.

The best thing as far as I am concerned would be flexible routing of ESMB
packets across transmission protocols, so that given a TCP/IP based LM/X
net on one side of the corporate IT structure, and DLC/NetBEUI on LAN
Manager on the other, one could route through a single machine if necessary,
reducing the need to either standardise on one protocol only, or make every
machine multi-protocol. Obviously, there are many structures which require
the flexibility of multiple support, but a choice would be nice.

Ah well.

Martin

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Martin O'Nions            Logitek Group Support      martino at logitek.co.uk
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