IPX and NetBIOS
Once upon a time, there was no such thing as Windows NT (and the world was a nice place for UNIX system administrators). Novell NetWare and Internetworking Exchange Protocol (IPX) ran on 60 to 70 percent of all networked Intel/DOS-based computers. Novell is a proprietary 100 percent DOS-compatible network operating system (NOS). Its basic design goal was to provide shared file system and printer access transparently to desktop PCs through the I/O interfaces provided by DOS. Networked file systems were available to users as drive letters (such as E:\), and networked printers were available through virtual (LPR) printer ports. Novell NOS runs on almost any Layer 2 protocol and is available for almost every major computer platform, ...
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