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NOV-BIO.DOC -- 19961024 -- Info on contributors to the Novell Internet List
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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.

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From: "Henno Keers" <H.J.F.Keers@ice.nl>
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.

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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 05:46:03 GMT
From: Brian Meek <bmeek@ITERATED.COM>
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.

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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 18:29:12 +0100
From: Richard Letts <R.J.Letts@SALFORD.AC.UK>
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' <JOKE>

>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
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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

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