NRPC communication

Domino® servers offer many different services. The foundation for communication between Notes® workstations and Domino® servers or between two Domino® servers is the Notes® remote procedure call (NRPC) service.

Network protocols for NRPC communication

To communicate, two computers must run the same network protocol and software driver.

Notes® and Domino® support PPP using either Microsoft Dialup Networking (DUN) or Remote Access Service (RAS) for network dialup. In addition, you can use any IETF-compliant PPP communications server to dial into the network on which the Domino® server resides or though which the server can be accessed.

On LANs, Domino® is compatible with the TCP/IP and NetBIOS over the low-level transport IP For NetBIOS connections to work, both Notes® workstations and Domino® servers must use the same low-level transport.

For detailed information on which protocols are compatible with Domino® for each supported operating system, see the system requirements.

Notes® network ports

During the Server Setup program, Domino® provides a list of Notes® network ports based on the current operating system configuration. If these ports are not the ones you want to enable for use with the Domino® server, you can edit the list during setup.

Because each network protocol consumes memory and processing resources, you might want to exclude one or more ports and later remove the associated protocol software from the system.

In TCP/IP and NetBIOS, you can install multiple network interface cards (NICs) and enable additional Notes® network ports for each protocol, using the NOTES.INI file to bind each port to a separate IP address or NetBIOS LANA number.

Notes® named networks

Consider Notes® named networks in your planning. A Notes® named network (NNN) is a group of servers that can connect to each other directly through a common LAN protocol and network pathway -- for example, servers running on TCP/IP in one location. Servers on the same NNN route mail to each another automatically, whereas you need a Connection document to route mail between servers on different NNNs.

When you set up Server documents, be sure to assign each server to the correct NNN. Domino® expects a continuous connection between servers that are in the same NNN, and serious delays in routing can occur if a server must dial up a remote LAN because the remote server is inadvertently placed within the NNN. Also bear in mind that the Notes® Network field for each port can contain only one NNN name, and no two NNN names can be the same.

NNNs affect Notes® users when they use the Open Application dialog box. When a user selects Other to display a list of servers, the servers displayed are those on the NNN of the user's home server for the port on which the Notes® workstation communicates with the home server. Also, when users click on a database link or document link, if a server in their home server's NNN has a replica of that database, they can connect to the replica.

Note: If a server is assigned to two NNNs in the same protocol, as in the case where the server has two Notes® network ports for TCP/IP, a Notes® workstation or Domino® server connecting to that server uses the NNN for the port listed first in the Server document.