I installed a 1000 node netware 386 network for GE in Schenectady at the time. It worked very well, what killed netware was NT had no per seat licenses initially, it was priced per server, unlimited users. Most of my customers only used file/print services. Nobody paid for netware after that. After Novell was fatally weakened, Microsoft introduced per seat licensing, then started aggressively auditing compliance.