Novell NetWare

NetWare is a network operating system and the set of network protocols it uses to talk to client machines on the network. Developed by Novell, the NetWare operating system is a proprietary system using cooperative multitasking to run various services on a PC, and the network protocols were based on the archetypal Xerox XNS stack. Today NetWare supports TCP/IP as well as IPX/SPX. NetWare was one of a series of XNS-based systems, which also included Banyan VINES and Ungerman-Bass Net/One. Unlike these products, and XNS itself, NetWare established a strong presence in the market in the early 1990s, and managed to barely survive the onslaught of Microsoft's Windows NT which killed off the other players.

Related Topics:
Network operating system - Network protocol - Novell - Cooperative multitasking - PC - Xerox XNS - Banyan VINES - Ungerman-Bass Net/One - Microsoft - Windows NT

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Netware evolved from a very simple concept: one or more dedicated servers were connected to the network, and and disk space was shared in the form of volumes. Clients running MS-DOS would run a special Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program that allowed them to map a volume as if it were a local hard disk. Clients had to log in in order to be allowed to map volumes, and access could be restricted according to the login name.

Related Topics:
MS-DOS - Terminate and Stay Resident

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Similarly, clients could connect to shared printers on the dedicated server, and print as if the printer was connected locally.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

While early Netware systems did entirely trust all modules (any misbehaving module could bring the whole system down), it was very stable. There are reports of Netware servers running for years without any human intervention.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~