The justification offered for this is that the routing sotware for Novell servers and/or Novell Lan Workplace (their PC TCP/IP software) does not support subnetting of Class Cs. My initial reaction was disbelief that this sort of Dinosaur DNA is still so prevalent, but more than one offer of this sort of justification seems to suggest it is.

Hmm, the Novell Netware Supervisor's Guide, Chapter 5 (Sample IP network configurations), Case 4, suggests subnetting is supported ... Ian.