Subject: Re: IPX protocol support?
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: John Darrow <John.P.Darrow@wheaton.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 07/27/1997 20:23:39
In article <199707280035.RAA24985@pescadero.dsg.stanford.edu>,
Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> wrote:

>Perry Metzger writes:

>>John Darrow writes:

>>> Is anyone currently porting or planning to port IPX protocol support to
>>> -current?  It's present in both FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but not NetBSD.

>>I don't believe any such work is currently planned, BUT I suspect that
>>a port would be fairly easy and likely would be committed to the main
>>line source tree if it was clean.

>Yup.  tech-net or tech-kern might be a better place to discuss this.

>>> "Clean" might, of course, partially

>>mean not duplicating code from the xns stuff...

>Of course, IPX basically _is_ XNS, with some of the fields set to
>zero, and a checksum algorithm that, historically, is a buggy XNS
>checksum.  Merging the in-kernel IPX protocol code with the XNS code
>is probably the right thing to do..

>If what John Darrow is really after is Netware filesystem client
>(e.g., ncpfs) support, that might be another question altogether.

Actually, what I want to do is dial in using PPP from a DOS machine at home
to a NetBSD machine on the network at work.  I need to be able to run both
TCP/IP programs and Novell IPX-based utilities on my home machine, routing
through the NetBSD box.  I would greatly prefer using NetBSD for the dial-
in server, than to try to fight with Novell Remote Access or a Win95
machine.  Neither Netware/IP or IPTUNNEL is an option in this case.

John Darrow
John.P.Darrow@wheaton.edu