Editing NetWare (section)

=== {{anchor|ELS}}Early years ===
NetWare originated from consulting work by [[SuperSet Software]], a group founded by the friends [[Drew Major]], Dale Neibaur, Kyle Powell and later Mark Hurst. This work stemmed from their classwork at [[Brigham Young University]] in [[Provo, Utah]], starting in October 1981.

In 1981, [[Raymond Noorda]] engaged{{Clarify|date=May 2010}} the work by the SuperSet team. The team was originally assigned to create a [[CP/M]] [[disk sharing]] system to help network the Motorola 68000-based hardware that Novell sold at the time. The first [[NetWare 68|S-Net]] is [[CP/M-68K]]-based and shares a hard disk. In 1983, the team was privately convinced that CP/M was a doomed platform and instead came up with a successful file-sharing system for the newly introduced IBM-compatible [[Personal computer|PC]]. They also wrote an application called [[Snipes (video game)|Snipes]] – a text-mode game – and used it to test the new network and demonstrate its capabilities. Snipes [aka 'NSnipes' for 'Network Snipes'] is the first network application ever written for a commercial personal computer, and it is recognized as one of the precursors of many popular multiplayer games such as ''[[Doom (1993 video game)|Doom]]'' and ''[[Quake (video game)|Quake]]''.<ref name="Snipes"/><ref name="connor20070405">{{Cite magazine |last=Connor |first=Deni |date=2007-04-05 |title=Novell and the computer game that changed networking |url=https://www.networkworld.com/article/830595/infrastructure-management-novell-and-the-computer-game-that-changed-networking.html |access-date=2025-05-21 |magazine=[[Network World]] |language=en}}</ref>

First called [[ShareNet]] or [[NetWare 68|S-Net]], this [[network operating system]] (NOS) was later called Novell NetWare. NetWare is based on the [[NetWare Core Protocol]] (NCP), which is a packet-based protocol that enables a client to send requests to and receive replies from a NetWare server. Initially, NCP was directly tied to the [[IPX/SPX]] protocol, and NetWare communicated natively using only IPX/SPX.

The first product to bear the NetWare name was released in 1983. The original product, ''NetWare 68'' (AKA [[NetWare 68|S-Net]]), ran on Novell's proprietary 68000-based file server hardware, and used a star [[network topology]]. This was later joined by ''NetWare 86'', which could use conventional Intel 8086-based PCs for the server. This was replaced in 1985 with Advanced NetWare 86, which allowed more than one server on the same network. In 1986, after the [[Intel 80286]] processor became available, Novell released Advanced NetWare 286. Two versions were offered for sale; the basic version was sold as ELS I, plus an enhanced version, ELS II. *ELS* stood for "Entry Level System".