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Number: F2TH072790U209
Subject: Multi-protocol Ethernet Environments
Date: August 21, 1990
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GENERAL
INFORMATION: In multi-protocol Ethernet environments,wehave often come
across instances of servers crashing or hanging. This appears
to be caused by various rouge packets being sucked in by the
servers, causing them to go into Kamikaze mode. We have found
two causes of these events: 1) Various TCP and XNS packets
from other systems on the same backbone, and 2) occasionally
the presence of 3C503 cards in workstations.
There are two solutions for the first cause. Some LAN drivers
are better at rejecting bad packets than others, but its not
really known which ones are the best. We have seen the
problem fixed by replacing NP600s by NE2000s, for example.
The second solution is to ECONFIG all server and bridge
drivers on the backbone side to run on Ethernet II. The
drivers then reject all packets without the correct type
number for NetWare. According to one university, this also
tends to speed up server performance, because it spends less
time trying to find out if any given packet is meant for it,
or not. The July 1990 NetWare Technical Journal has some
useful background reading related to this.
If the customer has the 3C503 cards, we have seen that using
the ODI workstation drivers shipped with v3.1 helps solve the
problems on the backbone, even with an all-NetWare 286 site.
(X) This information was verified in the lab.