Re: PPersonal Oracle 8.1.5 and Bequeath-Protocoll

"Sybrand Bakker" <postbus_at_sybrandb.demon.nl> wrote:

>3 Because of the architecture of Windose, all protocols you mention will
>ultimately get automatically converted to netbeui, even TCP/IP. This will
>change with win2000 where Microsux desupported and removed the netbeui
>protocol in favor of tcp/ip.

Beg to differ Sybrand. All protocols do not get converted into NetBEUI on Windows. You can run a pure IPX/SPX Windows system without NetBEUI. Or a pure TCP/IP system without NetBEUI.

What you however still can get is "NetBIOS pipes" on these protocols. Traditionally Microsoft has used the NetBIOS API (interrupt 4C or something I think in the old DOS networking days) on top of NetBEUI.

When Microsoft started to support TCP/IP and then also SPX/IPX, they extended their NetBIOS API to include these protocols. I guess it was easier for them to rather extend the API, than to rewrite all their client software to support different network API's for the different protocols. So instead of using the Berkely Sockets API (called Win Sockets on Windows), you can used the NetBIOS API on TCP/IP. Part of the problem with this API extension was Microsoft lack of taking security concerns into consideration - which lead to infamous DoS (Denial of Service) attacks like WinNuke which send an OOB (Out Of Band) IP packet to a "NetBIOS controlled" TCP port.

In addition, Microsoft Windows (95 and 98) supports 3rd party protocol stacks and even real mode (old 16bit DOS) protocol stacks. We used to run the initial beta versions of Windows'95 (or Chicago as it was called back then) on top of Novell's Lan Workplace for DOS (a 16bit TCP/IP stack using ODI drivers) to test for upgrade compatibility from WFW 3.11 with Novell Lan Workplace to Windows'95, keeping the protocol stack in place.

Part of the reason why Windows'95/'98 is such a screwup, was because Microsoft attempted to create a 32 bit operating system, running on and using 16bit components in order to support DOS and Windows 3.1 system software (network drivers, device drivers, TSR's etc.).

NetBEUI is not a bad protocol - it is intended for small workgroups. It is a small footprint protocol, fast, minimal overheads and routable. Meeting the requirements of little peer-to-peer networks back in the early 90's. However, I would not recommend anyone using NetBEUI in the business environment. Run pure SPX/IPX or TCP/IP protocol stacks instead.

regards,
Billy Received on Fri May 05 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT