Supervising the Network

7-24
Maintaining the NetWare Server
Network Security Features
Network Security Features
NetWare Services includes security and fault tolerance features to protect
network data from intruders and system failures. This section describes how
to prevent network data disaster and recover from failures.
Preventing Packet Forgery
NetWare Services includes a security feature, NCP packet signature, that
protects servers and clients using the NetWare Core Protocol.
NCP packet signature prevents packet forgery by requiring the server and
the client to “sign” each NCP packet. The packet signature changes with
every packet.
NCP packets with incorrect signatures are discarded without breaking the
client’s connection with the server. However, an alert message about the
invalid packet is sent to the error log, the affected client, and the message
monitor. The alert message contains the login name and the station address
of the affected client.
NCP Packet Signature Options
Because the packet signature process consumes CPU resources and slows
performance, both for the client and the NetWare server, NCP packet
signature is optional.
Several signature options are available, ranging from never signing NCP
packets to always signing NCP packets. NetWare servers and clients both
have four settable signature levels.
The signature options for servers and clients combine to determine the level
of NCP packet signature on the network.