RFC 1088 (rfc1088) - Page 1 of 3

Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams over NetBIOS networks

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Network Working Group                                  L. McLaughlin III
Request for Comments: 1088                                           TWG
                                                           February 1989


 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams over NetBIOS Networks

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies a standard method of encapsulating the
   Internet Protocol [1] (IP) datagrams on NetBIOS [2] networks.
   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Introduction

   The goal of this specification is to allow compatible and
   interoperable implementations for transmitting IP datagrams over
   NetBIOS networks.

   NetBIOS is a standard which specifies a means of creating virtual
   circuits and of transmitting and receiving point-to-point, multicast,
   and broadcast datagrams.  This specification uses only the datagram
   services.

   Previous versions of this memo specified the use of the NetBIOS
   broadcast datagram services instead of the NetBIOS group name
   services to implement IP broadcasting.  These versions are now
   obsolete.

Description

   NetBIOS networks may be used to support IP networks and subnets [3]
   of any class.  By means of encapsulating IP datagrams within NetBIOS
   datagrams and assigning IP numbers to the hosts on a NetBIOS network,
   IP-based applications are supported on these hosts.  The addition of
   a router capable of encapsulating IP packets within ordinary data-
   link protocols (such as 802.3 [4]) as well as within NetBIOS
   datagrams allows these NetBIOS hosts to communicate with the Internet
   at large.

Address Mappings

   In general, NetBIOS names may be any series of 16 bytes, however, a
   few values are reserved or used by common networking packages.
   NetBIOS names for the IP applications on each host are chosen on the
   basis of the internet number of that host.  Since NetBIOS names are a
   mapping of IP addresses, no physical address query mechanism (e.g.,
   ARP [5]) is required.



McLaughlin
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