Ampro Corporation 486E manual Using Network Operating Systems NOS

Product Reference

many industry suppliers. Standard RJ45 connectors are used for all connections in a twisted-pair cable network. Twisted-pair Ethernet cables must be 100 meters or less between any node and hub or repeater.

Using Network Operating Systems (NOS)

The most common method of using the Little Board/486e Ethernet LAN interface is by means of a NOS. The NOS can be either part of the computer’s OS; DOS and Windows 9x, or provided separately.

Novel Netware’s NOS supports client server communication; a central computer that runs Netware as its NOS provides file server and network services to the distributed systems connected to the LAN. Each node on the network must also have a compatible NOS installed.

Modern network architectures are based on the Open Standards Interconnect (OSI) model that defines:

!Layers of software between the network hardware

!Network operating system

!Applications that use the network services

At the bottom level is the actual Ethernet cable and the hardware interface, in this case, the Little Board/486e LAN interface. A driver talks directly with the hardware, masking any unique differences in the hardware from the layers above it, including the NOSs. Several NOS drivers compatible with the Little Board/486e’s LAN hardware are provided on the Utilities diskette that is included with Little Board/486e Development Kit. New drivers or new versions of existing drivers are made available on Ampro’s Technical Support bulletin board. The driver is the only unique software needed to use the LAN interface. The supported NOSs provide the other layers in the OSI model.

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