[jiggawatts]

Novell primarily used IPX and gained support for TCP/IP very late, and then that still wasn't widely used even around 2003-5. Many networks used both: IPX for Novell, and TCP/IP for everything else.

Novell NetWare was most commonly used on a single, flat network with no routers or firewalls. The networks of the era were smaller, and the setup and routing of IPX is more automatic and simpler than IP. It didn't scale "up to the Internet", but it also needed less configuration and troubleshooting.

Notably, the "tracert" tool is specifically for IP, not IPX!

That's why Sam's Novell-expert friend hadn't used it and wasn't familiar with it.

It's like being surprised that someone that had used NoSQL for their entire career wasn't familiar with 3rd normal form and relational algebra.

[roenxi]

One of the humorous tells of a novice is they haven't yet had to deal with all their tool knowledge being obsoleted and haven't had to understand that competent people might not know said novice's favoured tools.

The amount of random trivia in tech is a vast ocean. Nobody knows all of it. Specific cultures swim in specific waters, but out of habit more than anything else.

[RajT88]

I knew this Sam well, as I also had worked in the IT department during my college days.

While you present a plausible sounding explanation for his lack of knowledge about TCP tooling, networking duties were under his purview as well. He spent a lot of time on the clock not hungrily learning technology, but sneaking off to smoke weed. I watched him once pack a bowl and smoke it while driving on the highway with his knees, coming back from a remote campus. He was very skilled at smoking weed.