Thanks Mr Hofmeister. After your reply, I talked to our system manager here, and he confirmed your exposé. So now, I understand that you can have Oracle on a HP3000 without having purchased NS/3000 Services, because there are enough IP Network Services bundled in MPE to make SQL*Net working properly. However, our operation team confirmed to me that when we do a NSCONTROL STOP before stopping the SQL*Net listener, it hangs. So I would say that if we do a NSCONTROL STOP, without specifying which network service, every single network services are stopped, including NS/3000/XL transport (TCP/IP) layer, bundled with MPEiX Michel Gauthier Donohue Inc