--------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOV-BIO.DOC -- 19961024 -- Info on contributors to the Novell Internet List --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to add or edit this document and then email it back to faq@jelyon.com Bio for Don Provan, donp@novell.com October 26, 1995 Don's been working with TCP/IP since 1982 when, as a Digital Equipment Corporation employee, he wrote a TCP/IP implementation for Digital's TOPS-10 OS. He came to Novell in 1989 when Novell bought Excelan, a supplier of TCP/IP front end boards. At Novell, Don led the small team which developed the TCP/IP support for NetWare v3.11. Subsequently he designed NetWare's SNMP support and NetWare's INetCfg configuration utility. As a member of Novell's MultiProtocol Router team, he's had his hand in many aspects of NetWare protocol development and WAN support. In his spare time, Don fills potholes in the road of NetWare development. For example, he developed and still supports the Initialize System facility, the PTUI support library, and the ever popular CONLOG NLM. Somewhat further afield on DOS, Don implemented PDEther so people with NICs that only support Packet Drivers can run ODI protocol stacks. He's been stuck supporting the stupid thing ever since. Things about NetWare you can blame Don personally for: 1. He's the one that suggested to the ODI team that Ethernet ODI drivers support the Ethernet frame types as four independent "logical boards". At least he made up for it by also suggesting board names. (It's hard to believe, but "load ne2000 name=foo" wasn't in NetWare before v3.11. You don't want to know how binds were done before that...) 2. He's the one that said, "It's not legal to use subnet zero, so we don't have to support it in TCPIP.NLM." 3. SYS:ETC and, a couple years later, SYS:ETC\NETINFO.CFG. 4. TCP/IP on ARCNET. (RFC-1201) 5. IP Tunneling of IPX packets. (RFC-1234) Don's married to Jan Provan, a manager at Novell. They live near Livermore, California with their two children: T.C., almost 5, and Ian, 3. ------------------------------ From: "Henno Keers" Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 16:08:28 +0200 Subject: Re: Joe's BIO He is in his late fifties, and really looks like an old Professor, gray longish hair and skinny (at least he was 2 years ago, when I met him at that notorious NightWare party at the dutch NGN meeting, with the famous NCP hack). I am just 30 years, there ya go. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 05:46:03 GMT From: Brian Meek Subject: Re: Joe D., Don Provan, bio? While at Novell I worked with Don -- he was the lead developer on building the NetWare TCP/IP NLM set for what we then called "NetWare 386". I had the product marketing job on the same project. While I managed to push the TCP/IP set into the stock NetWare v3.11 release (NetWare v3.10 was premature), I can't say I was overly successful on the marketing front... For his part, Don provided a superb implementation, built from the ground up, that has evolved to be among the most stable (and perhaps the fastest) TCP/IP stack found in any Intel-based OS. Don is the authority on NetWare TCP/IP and knows as much about the networking layer as anyone I know. Joe Doupnik has been part of the community for many years. Once upon a time I spent a fair amount of time out here, trying to be helpful based on what I knew about what we all did... All of my cumulative efforts never amounted to the level of good advice that Joe puts out here over the course of a good week. He wrote MS-kermit fer gosh sake! "Expert" as term used to describe Joe is an understatement. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 18:29:12 +0100 From: Richard Letts Subject: Re: Tech Support Statistics >I am in the process of compiling tech support statistics to evaluate the >need for additional staff. If anyone has pertinent data to submit, it would >be very welcome. The type of info I'm looking for is: > >1. Number of machines in your organization Over 5 000. Not all Pcs; some unix systems, some servers, some printers. >2. Number of full-time and part-time tekkies This has no meaning, as we are Library, computing and Telephone Services. 1 Network Services Manager 2 IO Netware Systems 2 IO Unix Systems 1 IO Technicans 5 technicians 6 Operators plus the staff who meet real users, catalogue library books, install applications, staff enquiry desks, register users, etc. IO == Information Officer [ALC1/2] ~= an engineer in the true sense. >3. How dynamic the dsektop systems are (how often changes are necessary) Very. but this varies depending upon your definition of a desktop 'what the user sees when the turn their computer on' being our defintion. Systems (my group)is defined as 'That which prevents the user from seeing anything when they turn their machine on' >4. How computer-literate the user community is. From nurses and budding rock-musicians to computer scientists, biologists, scientists and engineers. User population: 26,000 in our tree but the nurses aren't registered in our tree yet, merging trees is a task for when I've got the Netware people drunk. Richard Letts --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Network Services Manager mail: R.J.Letts@ais.salford.ac.uk University of Salford phone: +44 161 745 5252 Great Britain fax: +44 161 745 5888 ------------------------------