Network OS's (Was:Off Topic - Novell Contractor Needed)

[Jeremy Fowler]

> NT's pretty good for small to medium sized networks, and because it can use
> straight TCP/IP it becomes a non-issue in larger ones.  I'm a local admin
> for a system where we run NT all over the country - nearly 5,000 systems in
> my domain alone, which is one of two primary domains and among 184 domains
> in all.  We converted from Novell to NT in late 98 - early 99, and saw a
> significant rise in productivity and reliability.  Network capacity
> increased significantly when we eliminated IPX traffic.  I had a few systems
> that lingered on Novel for a while, so I was able to see side-by-side
> performance differences.

First off, keep your replies to the group and learn to spell Novell correctly.

Microsoft's implementation of TCP/IP is anything but "straight". It's really
TCP/IP encapsulated NetBEUI Packets which is Microsoft's Non-routable
proprietary protocol. Since Netware 5, Novell has given us the option of running
a Pure IP network, so I don't want to hear anymore about how Novell doesn't
support TCP/IP. Also, from now on when you compare NT to Novell please fill us
in on what version of Netware you're talking about.

> NT is used for our file and print servers, and some light database work.
> Our heavy servers are mostly IBM systems running TSO or AIX; and we have a
> number of "conventional" Unix systems (meaning I don't know what hardware or
> OS flavor they are, I just link people to them).

Have you even experienced the power of NDPS? Do you even know what that is? It's
Novell's Distributed Print Services and it is a God-send when networking and
managing Printers. You can automatically install drivers to a workstation and
set the default printer when a user logs in, you can move print jobs from one
printer to another in case a printer goes down, and you get Bi-directional
feedback from the printers so you know what's going on. Those are just a few of
the many features that NDPS offers, compare that to NT print sharing and see how
it pails in comparison.

> We've found NT to be extremely stable - the servers here have been running
> continuously since late 1998 without a crash, and the majority of
> workstations simply don't have problems.  We had one rash of non-Windows
> software crashes which we were able to solve by increasing the RAM to 128M.

That is VERY hard to believe.

--Snip--

> But Novel?  Novel always had great tech, and they always benchmarked really
> well, and they always failed in the field.  They're an interesting
> historical footnote - the first real, practical PC Networking system.  But
> they've never really come into the TCP/IP generation.  They were slow to
> adopt industry standards over their own proprietary methods, and as badly as
> Microsoft has done at mangling standards, they've done better at adopting
> them than Novel did.  Novel never managed to integrate with Windows without
> hanging and crashing.  Every office where we installed NT beside an existing
> Novel network got rid of Novel in less than a year.

Again, there are two 'l' in Novell...

Never really come into the TCP/IP generation... When is the last time you worked
on a Novell server? Maybe that's your problem, why don't you check out what they
have today instead of viewing them as they were several years ago...

> Once PC's started to adopt Windows (3.1), Novel started to slip.  The
> drivers were difficult to load in DOS memory, and would often cause
> problems, hang, or fail if loaded to high memory.  Trying to add Novel's
> implementation of TCP/IP was a real nightmare, but it could be made to work.
> As I recall it provided a pretty effective firewall, but that was before
> anybody was really worried about that.  When Windows95 came along, Novel
> seemed to take the attitude that it was just a fad, serious work was done on
> text-based interfaces and this GUI stuff was for game players.  They caught
> their mistake too late, and they never managed to catch up.

Again, you are showing your ignorance... Your a victim of Microsoft FUD...

--snip--