NT _can_ connect to Novell! -- A WINMAG Exclusive!

Well folks, we dithered a bit over this one -- if we were a weekly,
we'd probably have held off until it could run, but since we're not,
the word gets posted here first. And the word is: NT can connect to
Netware _right_now_. You don't need to wait for Novell or Microsoft
to decide who'se going to provide an IPX stack or redirector.

How? By using the TCP/IP services built into Windows NT, in conjunction
with an NFS NLM on the Netware server (that's the rub -- list price on
that NLM is a whopping $5K). With the NLM up, and proper internet addresses
assigned to both machines, you can initiate an interactive FTP session with
the Netware machine using the FTP "open" command, and then issue the usual
FTP calls to transfer files. It isn't pretty, convenient, or particularly
user friendly -- but it absolutely does work. The following text was copied
directly from an NT command prompt:

C:\users\default>ftp                                
ftp> open 1.2.3.9                                   
Connected to 1.2.3.9.                               
220 win2 FTP server (NetWare v3.11) ready.          
User (1.2.3.9:): supervisor                         
230 User SUPERVISOR logged in.                      
ftp> ls                                             
250 PORT command successful.                        
150 Opening data connection for  (1.2.3.5,1025).    
vol$log.err                                         
tts$log.err                                         
backout.tts                                         
login                                               
system                                              
public                                              
mail                                                
deleted.sav                                         
etc                                                 
desktop.afp                                         
networkt                                            
edit                                                
226 Transfer complete.                              
127 bytes received in 0.14 seconds (0.94 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>                                                

That shows me logging into a Netware server with internet address 1.2.3.9
as the supervisor, and doing an LS (ftp's equivalent to DIR) on the Netware
server. This approach lets you transfer files, change directories, etc.

I hope (with many others) that Novell and  Microsoft will provide a more
direct approach to NetWare connectivity by the time NT goes into final
release, but in the meantime, using TCP/IP, if you gotta get NetWare connectivity
_now_, you can!

John D. Ruley, News Editor, WINDOWS Magazine

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