Novell Embedded Systems Technology (NEST) was a series of APIs, data formats and network protocol stacks written in a highly portable fashion intended to be used in

embedded system An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded ...

s. The idea was to allow various small devices to access

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the le ...

NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The original NetWare product in ...

services, provide such services, or use NetWare's IPX protocol as a communications system (and later also

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...

). Novell referred to this concept as "Extended Networks", and when the effort was launched they boasted that they wanted to see one billion devices connected to NetWare networks by year 2000. NEST was launched in mid-1994 countering

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

's similar

Microsoft at Work Microsoft at Work (MaW) was a short-lived effort promoted by Microsoft to tie together common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a common communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with ...

efforts, which had been launched in 1993. Neither technology saw much third-party support, although some of NEST's code was apparently re-used in Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS), and thus iPrint.

Architecture

NEST consisted primarily of a Novell protocol driver stack implemented in

ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and th ...

. The stack included drivers for then-popular networking hardware, including

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

Token Ring Token Ring network IBM hermaphroditic connector with locking clip. Screen contacts are prominently visible, gold-plated signal contacts less so. Token Ring is a computer networking technology used to build local area networks. It was introduc ...

AppleTalk AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the ...

(actually referring to LocalTalk, a common confusion) and

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work ...

, as well as higher-level modules for protocols such as Novell's own IPX, and AppleTalk, and later TCP/IP. The ''NetWare Services Layer'' added support for application protocols, notably NetWare client services such as file servers and network time synchronization, and the ''NEST Requester'' which acted as a pipe-like endpoint for lightweight communications. Orthogonal to these services, NEST also included basic implementations of Novell's PSERVER and NPRINTER servers. Finally, NEST also defined an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

interface known as ''POSE'' (''Portable Operating System Extension''), which was a thin translation module defining all of the calls NEST needed to support its own functionality, things like memory management and process creation (as

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming in ...

1003.1, 1003.4, and 1003.4A subsets), which the developer ported to the particular platform of interest. NEST was deliberately written to be able to run from ROM without secondary storage (i.e., it had no long-term state it needed to store). Whereas the

Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and ...

-inherited modular real-time multi-user multi-tasking operating system FlexOS was used by Novell as a primary test platform during development, NEST did not include an

of its own, and instead was intended to be used on existing platforms and OSs. One such third-party OS to support NEST in 1995 was pSOS+ by Integrated Systems (ISI) a company who had bought FlexOS from Novell for US$3,000,000 in July 1994. The deal comprised a direct payment of half this sum as well as shares representing 2% of the company. The NEST code was deliberately modular, in order to allow developers to use as much or as little of the overall package as they needed. It was expected that developers would pick and choose the components they needed, for instance, a device reporting status over the network might choose only the NEST Requester, IPX and an Ethernet driver, removing the rest from their assembly. In contrast, Microsoft at Work could be used in a similar fashion, but it seemed that it was generally expected that end users would use the complete system as the basis of their devices in a fashion similar to the later Windows CE.

Impact

Like at Work, however, NEST appears to have seen little real-world use. After the initial release in 1994, there appears to be little news on NEST, followed by another flurry in early 1996 when TCP/IP support was added, at which point Novell claimed there were over 80 companies using NEST, including major office machinery firms like Canon,

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Ricoh is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational imaging and electronics company (law), company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Riken, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken ...

, and

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...

. However, NEST then went the way of at Work, and was abandoned within Novell in January 1997.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , title=pSOSystem and the NEST Development Environment - Designing Embedded Applications with NetWare Connectivity , type=White paper , publisher= Integrated Systems, Inc. (ISI) , date=1998 , url=http://www.isi.com/Products/pSOS/Networking/pNDE.html , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980219173150/http://www.isi.com/Products/pSOS/Networking/pNDE.html , archive-date=1998-02-19 {{cite journal , title=Novell builds a NEST - Novell Embedded Systems Technology makes NetWare portable and embeddable , author-first=Salvatore , author-last=Salamone , date=August 1995 , journal=

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

, url=http://www.byte.com/art/9508/sec13/art2.htm , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001002035211/http://www.byte.com/art/9508/sec13/art2.htm , archive-date=2 October 2000 , access-date=13 September 2006 {{cite web , title=NEST Architectural Overview - Articles and Tips , author-first=Mary , author-last=Hill , location=Extended Networks Division , publisher=

, work=Novell AppNotes , date=1994-11-01 , url=http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19941103.html , access-date=2018-08-18 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818183100/https://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19941103.html , archive-date=2018-08-18 {{cite web , title=Novell Announces RTOS Vendor Program Which Brings Integrated Networking Solutions to the Embedded Systems Marketplace , type=Press Release , date=1995-05-23 , location=Orem, UT, USA , publisher=

Novell, Inc. Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the leade ...

, url=http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1995/05/pr00121.html , access-date=2018-08-18 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818184611/https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1995/05/pr00121.html , archive-date=2018-08-18 , quote="Because

used Integrated Systems' FlexOS during the development and testing of NEST, we are in the unique position of supporting it through both our real-time product lines pSOSystem for deeply embedded markets, and FlexOS for

point of sale The point of sale (POS) or point of purchase (POP) is the time and place at which a retail transaction is completed. At the point of sale, the merchant calculates the amount owed by the customer, indicates that amount, may prepare an invoice f ...

," said Moses Joseph, vice president of marketing for Integrated Systems. "Developers using the FlexOS development kit and the expanded pSOSystem/NEST package for everything from home security and entertainment to office automation and global communications applications, now have quick and easy access to the widest variety of standard networking protocols. {{cite web , title=Novell's NEST comes to the Internet , date=1996-02-27 , editor-first=Mark , editor-last=Bell , work=NETstuff / Newsbytes News Network , url=http://www.monitor.ca/monitor/issues/vol3iss7/netstuff.html#15 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001015233705/http://www.monitor.ca/monitor/issues/vol3iss7/netstuff.html#15 , archive-date=15 October 2000 , access-date=13 September 2006 {{cite web , title=Novell Forms New Systems Group To Develop Next Generation Network System Software , type=Press release , author-first1=Kelly , author-last1=Hindley , author-first2=Catherine , author-last2=Raphel , author-first3=Melanie , author-last3=King , date=1995-06-15 , publisher=

, location=Orem, UT, USA , url=https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1995/06/pr00148.html , access-date=2018-08-18 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818192926/https://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1995/06/pr00148.html , archive-date=2018-08-18 {{cite journal , title=Novell Integrating Parts of NEST With Company's Other Divisions , author-first=Brooke , author-last=Adams , date=1997-01-22 , journal=

Deseret News The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...

, publisher= Deseret News Publishing Company , url=https://www.deseretnews.com/article/538867/NOVELL-INTEGRATING-PARTS-OF-NEST-WITH-COMPANYS-OTHER-DIVISIONS.html , access-date=2018-08-19 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180819224220/https://www.deseretnews.com/article/538867/NOVELL-INTEGRATING-PARTS-OF-NEST-WITH-COMPANYS-OTHER-DIVISIONS.html , archive-date=2018-08-19 {{cite web , title=Novell abandons Nest and prompts Sun to join embedded systems group (440) , author-first=Mike , author-last=Magee , date=1997 , publisher=Incisive Business Media Limited , url=https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1950764/novell-abandons-nest-prompts-sun-join-embedded-systems-440 , access-date=2018-08-19 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180819222015/https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1950764/novell-abandons-nest-prompts-sun-join-embedded-systems-440 , archive-date=2018-08-19 {{cite news , title=Empty NEST: Novell dumps universal operating system plan , author-first=Matthew , author-last=Woollacott , date=1997-02-03 , newspaper=

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

, issn=0199-6649 , volume=19 , issue=5 , publisher= InfoWorld Publishing Co. , page=6 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aToEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6 , access-date=2018-08-19 , url-status=live , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200209202515/https://books.google.de/books?id=aToEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false , archive-date=2020-02-09 Novell software

Architecture

Impact

See also

References