# Network Operating System Certification Schemes

- Novell Certification Alliance
- IBM - Tested and Approved for OS/2 Warp
- Microsoft - Hardware Compatibility Labs
- SCO Tested and Supported
- Banyan Vines
- Sun Solaris

## Novell Certification Alliance (NCA)

Madge Networks is a member of Novell's NetWare Certification Alliance (NCA) and maintains a Novell accredited test facility at its Research and Development headquarters. This allows full certification testing of Madge products with the latest Novell software to be performed by Madge under the conditions defined by Novell. Once completed, Madge test reports are submitted to Novell for verification. Approved test results, detailing the products and environments tested are published by Novell as technical bulletins, which are available on-line from the relevant pages on Novell's WWW site (http://labs.novell.com).

This enables Madge engineers to test and certify our own network drivers in parallel with Novell's on-going operating system development program. This means that, when a new version of NetWare is released, Madge already has a fully tested and certified set of drivers. Thus, the next "Green River" release of NetWare in 1996 is expected to ship with certified Madge network drivers "in the box" from day one.

## IBM - Tested and Approved for OS/2 Warp

Madge actively participates in IBM's 'Tested and Approved' certification programs in order to verify compatibility between its adapter cards and OS/2 Warp-based systems. Once a Madge adapter completes internal quality testing, it is submitted for independent testing by the IBM Integration Test Lab in Austin,Texas, USA. This involves testing with a wide variety of IBM and non-IBM hardware and software products in customer-like environments. Once a product passes these tests, IBM publishes the test report and issues a notice that confirms its compatibility.

In the past, Madge products were certified under IBM's OS/2 and Warp LAN Systems certifications programs. Madge products are now tested as part of the new "Tested and Approved for OS/2 Warp Server "program that has now superseded these earlier schemes.

For more information on these schemes please refer to the IBM WWW site (http://www.developer.ibm.com).

## Microsoft - Hardware Quality Labs

Madge has a long standing relationship with Microsoft, which began as early as 1988 with the licensing of Madge Token Ring source code for the original version of LAN Manager. More recently, Microsoft signed a technology licensing agreement with Madge, which enables Microsoft to embed Madge driver source code in the latest 32-bit operating systems, starting from the new release 4.0 of its NT client-server network operating system.

Microsoft perform both compatibility and product development-level testing in their own labs, which includes Madge Token Ring adapters as a standard component in their test PCs. This means that Madge adapters are both used with early pre-release versions of software and tested in a broad and representative range of desktop hardware and software environments.

New adapters drivers and products are submitted as early as possible to Microsoft for testing and approval. Newly certified products are then added to the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility lists for Windows 95 and Windows NT (refer to the following WWW sites for more information: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/thirdparty.htm and http://www.microsoft.com/NTServer/hclintro.htm).

Currently, all Madge adapters are certified for Windows, with the latest generation of Madge Plug 'n' Play adapters for ISA, PCI and PCMCIA applications being certified as "Designed for Windows 95".

## SCO Tested and Supported

Madge actively participates in the SCO Tested and Supported program, in order to verify compatibility between its adapter cards and SCO software. Once a Madge adapter has completed internal testing it is submitted to SCO for compatibility verification testing.

SCO produce a Hardware Compatibility Handbook which lists all the third party hardware that they have tested or that the hardware vendor supports. For more information on this guide or on the Tested and Supported program in general, please refer to SCO's web site (http://www.sco.com).

## Banyan Vines

Banyan publish a Hardware Compatibility Guide which lists all the third party hardware that they have tested and approved for compatibility with Vines. For further information on this guide, please refer to Banyan's WWW site (http://www.banyan.com).

## Sun Microsystems Solaris

The Solaris Hardware Compatibility List is published every two or three months. Madge submits drivers for certification by Sun and these are included in updates to the operating system. For further information on this guide, please refer to Sun's WWW site (http://access1.sun.com/gateway/certify/hcl.htm)