"Marc" == Marc Chametzky <marc at bluevine.net> writes: Marc you might also double check your cabling (in fact even change them). Marc> There is no cabling between the two systems. Both LULU and Marc> DUSTY are virtual systems running on the same ESXi hardware. Marc> At least that's one issue I don't have to worry about. :-) Marc> I'm still thinking it has something to do with Personal Alpha's Marc> network handling. I know that they play funny games between Marc> promiscuous mode and regular, and since I did set the Windows Marc> network adapter to have the right hardware address for DECnet, Marc> it's not using promiscuous mode, and perhaps it's not Marc> recognizing some of the multicast packets. That's a silly thing Marc> to consider, but I imagine it's possible. With virtual hardware you might have virtually any problem... Clearly if you have multiple DECnet nodes, each of them will need to set its own DECnet-style MAC address. You should verify that your virtualization setup is capable of supporting that. Marc> I suppose it's also possible that DUSTY isn't able to send out Marc> the hello packets. That I could find by snooping quite Marc> easily. I wonder whether Wireshark on the virtual Windows Marc> system would give me a decent idea of what DUSTY is sending Marc> out... or at least what LULU /could/ be seeing. It should. Certainly it should see the multicast packets. That will let you confirm that they are there, and that they have the correct MAC address. Any reasonable wireshark or Ethereal (same thing, different name) should be able to parse DECnet frames well enough to help you walk through them. The protocol specs are also available on-line. paul