Class C subnetting and Novell TCP/IP

> The justification offered for this is that the routing sotware for
> Novell servers and/or Novell Lan Workplace (their PC TCP/IP software)
> does not support subnetting of Class Cs. My initial reaction was
> disbelief that this sort of Dinosaur DNA is still so prevalent, but
> more than one offer of this sort of justification seems to suggest
> it is.

If this is indeed true (and my reaction is a bit like Keith's) we
certainly should put strong pressure on Novell to get this right.
My view would be to give these applicants a "reasonable" number of
Class C numbers so that they can get on today, but warn them that
the same justification won't be accepted next time and that they must
complain to Novell.

In practice, though, I guess they'd "only" cut usage by a factor of 2
by using 4-bit subnets in this case. What I find more of a pain is that
it may be difficult to connect a site to an external network via a
Novell server and using a 2-bit subnet. (We do this with IP connections
to JANET and I guess others do.) If the server couldn't support this
we'd have to end up using a whole Class C for a point-to-point link.

Bob Day