Mac on Novell network

[Veli]

A friend of mine from my school, has a problem connecting to the schools wireless network. It's a Novell-based network. It's easy to connect to with a Windows computer, but he has a Mac, and for some reason he can't connect. Does anyone know why? Is it some kind of windows only thing?

[retired1af]

Apple uses Appletalk as a default for networking. Netware uses IPX/SPX as a default. If your friend can't load IPX/SPX, he'll have to talk to the network admin and ask him to implement Appletalk on the school's network.

[Veli]

If your friend can't load IPX/SPX, he'll have to talk to the network admin and ask him to implement Appletalk on the school's network.

You see, that's the main problem. Our admin is pro Windows and against everything else, including Mac and Linux. So we figured that it could be nice if we could find another way to connect to it, because he'd probably never implement Appletalk.

[retired1af]

Like I said, if your friend can't use IPX/SPX, there's not much he can do.

[swemic]

Well, IPX/SPX was quite some time ago since Novell left as primary protocoll.
Which version of Novell is it your school? Your friends problem, has it to do with communication with the Novell/Netware server or plain Internet access?
If it is Novell/Netware communication problem, and you have a quite old Netware installation 3.x - 4.x, then Novell did provide a Mac client if you had the license to connect with a Mac into the Netware server, however, if it is a newer version 5.x - 6.x you should do just fine by adding IP support to the Mac, which should be default on newer MacOS. Apple left Appletalk as well a few years ago as the primary protocoll. Btw, if your friends mac is an old one, without any other protocolls as Appletalk, the NW-admin has to enable Appletalk on the Netware server.
(With that said, a side track, since this is kind of Off-Topic, this is a Linux forum )