alexis@dasys1.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (09/09/88)
Many new networking products made their debut at MacWorld Boston. Some, like
NetWare Mac, have been covered in detail elsewhere. Here I will go over some of
the less well-known products. (Sorry this took so long, but I do have real work
to do, you know :-)
Items discussed:
Liason, from Infosphere
DaynaTalk, from Dayna
FlashTalk, from TOPS
QuickMail, from CE Software
DaynaMail, from Dayna
Other News, from Me
Liason:
Liason is a chooser-level AppleTalk software bridge that runs in the background
on any Mac. This means that it will connect one or two LocalTalk networks with
one or more EtherTalk networks. It will also support half or full modem
bridges. The connections Liason makes are transparent. It takes care of zone
naming properly.
If you just want one server serving two networks, you just run Liason on the
server Mac, plug one LocalTalk network into the usual network (printer) port,
and plug the other network into the modem port. That's all. If you need to
bridge to EtherTalk, just plug an EtherTalk card into the server. Everyone is
transparently connected to everyone else. Another thing that it's very useful
for is connecting a LaserWriter to an EtherTalk network. One Mac gets connected
to both the LaserWriter and the net, and runs Liason. That's all you need.
The modem bridging is particularly nice. To create a full (network-to-network)
modem bridge, two copies of Liason must be purchased, one for each network.
However, half-bridges (single-Mac-to-network) require the purchase of only one
copy, since that entitles you to make as many 'unregistered' copies of Liason
as you like. The Mac on the network (the "Server") runs the registered copy of
Liason and the stand-alone Mac (the "Client") calls in with an unregistered
copy. It then becomes another node on the network, just like all the locally
connected devices.
Since Liason sits on level 3 (or is it level 4?) of the protocol stack it
should work with any AppleTalk-protocol network hardware, such as "TokenTalk",
and the Northern Telecom Meridian stuff. I have no experience with either of
these, though. Because of CPU contention, it may (or may not) be impossible to
run Liason with either of the forthcoming fast-AppleTalk networks.
Problems might arise if you want to run special software which uses TCP/IP on
the EtherNet hardware. Maybe not. Telnet software should work, I think, but
call Infosphere to find out.
Just a few days ago, I got a call from one of InfoSphere's tech people. She
wanted to know if I was happy with Liason. True, this is pre-release software,
but still that's pretty impressive support. It's a really neat product. When I
finally do get mine fully set up, I'll write some more...
Product by:
Infosphere
4730 SW Macadam Ave.
Portland, OR 97201
(503) 226-3620 or 226-3515
DaynaTalk and FlashTalk:
Both of these are fast-AppleTalk boxes. They sit between your mac and a
standard LocalTalk network. They both boost speed by about 330-360% over
standard LocalTalk rates (Dayna claims 850 kbps eventually but can only show
750 bps; TOPS has nothing to show yet but claims 770 kbps). The really nifty
feature of these devices, aside from the speed boost, is that you can mix and
match slow and fast AppleTalk transparently on the same LocalTalk network.
Furthermore, machines with a fast AppleTalk box can talk to devices without
them, such as a LaserWriter. Therefore you are never forced into making an
expensive convert-em-all-at-once decision. You can spend money on the heavy
network users and let the occasional users stick with what they've got.
TOPS has been playing this game for a long time now with the FlashTalk card for
the PC. I believe that most other PC AppleTalk cards support this protocol (the
Tandy card, the Apple card, the Hercules card, and the Tangent card). On the
other hand, the Dayna people say that they can double the PC performance (they
make their own PC AppleTalk card as well) to 1.7 mbps, and get the Mac up to
850 bps. Since the two companies' boxes are incompatible, I think that the
first one to make it to market will probably win most of the Mac market. It
might be difficult for Dayna to dominate the PC market (because FlashTalk
already has an installed base), but who know how much inertia they've actually
built up?
Two things to consider- TOPS has been trying to do this for a year now and has
not yet been able to deliver even Beta units. On the other hand, I don't know
how many internal schedules have been slipped at Dayna, if any. Also, the
marketing of these boxes should be interesting, since TOPS is owned by SUN (and
will eventually be moving over to NFS, probably) while Dayna has a major
relationship with Novell (current king of the PC-LAN market, and nearly ready
to ship MacNetWare). Thus the FlashTalk box may initially be a shoo-in in
UNIX-connected markets like education and government, while DaynaTalk may have
a big edge with the PC-using business market. (Then again, maybe not :-)
Dayna and TOPS can be found in all the major Mac magazines.
QuickMail, from CE Software:
This program is the first decent mail system for the Mac. I have it set up on
some of my clients' networks, and it meets all of our needs and then some.
The feature list is a mile long, and I will post a longer review if demand
merits it, but I will try to hit the high points...
* Network capability: QM fully supports internets and zones. It supports remote
modem bridging, to another mail net or to a single machine, without any help
from Liason or a hardware bridge. The modem support is very flexible. You can
even dial in from a non-Mac machine to retrieve and send mail.
* Remote software bridges: QM comes with software bridges to many commercial
email systems. You can write additional bridges (to a unix machine, for
example).
* QuickServer: This is a mail server that can run in the background on any
hard-disk equipped mac. You don't need to own networking software!
* Conferencing: QM has very nice conferencing. You can summon anyone on the net
who doesn't have privacy set. The display itself is very good.
* Mailbox organization: This is extraordinarily flexible. You can sort on many
different fields, like subject, time, priority... You can keep mail in folders
that you create and organize.
* Forms design: You can create your own forms, with a MacDraw-like program that
comes with QM. QM comes with lots of useful forms, such as a message pad (pink
slips).
* Mailing/distribution lists: Very flexible here, too.
* Public bulletin board, sign-on message from custodian, auto-login, passwords,
great on-line help, lots of command keys, included files and clipboard, return
receipts, privacy, forwarding, CC: and BCC:, auto-expiration, etc. etc....
I love this product. It's powerful, flexible, easy to use, and (so far)
bug-free. It does the job right. There should be a PC version available in a
few months. I think that QuickMail is so powerful that CE will be able to gain
market share against MicroSoft Mail-- a miserable program, but sold by the
number one Mac software company. That's how good QuickMail is.
DaynaMail, from Dayna:
This seems to be the second decent mail system for the Mac. I have not had a
chance to really use it, but I played with it at the show and it seems to be
nearly as good as QuickMail. It may be as good, once it is finally released. I
did note two important differences: First, QuickMail is MUCH cheaper. Second,
DaynaMail is compatible with MHS, a mail-handling protocol that is bundled with
NetWare and runs on PCs, minis, and mainframes. DaynaMail was written by Action
Technologies, Inc. (the creators of MHS, I believe) and will also be marketed
separately by them under a different name.
Unfortunately, despite all of its foreign systems connectivity, DaynaMail seems
no closer than QuickMail to being able to do UUCP stuff. WHEN ARE THEY GOING
TO LEARN??? At least QuickMail has a bridging script feature that seems up to
the task up retrieving unix mail.
If you want a commercial MacOS <--> UUCP package, I suggest to all of you that
you bug Star Nine mightily. They seem to be the only company with any expertise
in this area right now, and as far as I know they are NOT doing any such
product. (I think their usenet machine is ...!sun!starnine, but I'm not sure.)
Oh well...
Other News and Observations:
It appears that Apple is finally going to revamp their serial port driver
stuff, and we can probably expect that to show up in System 7.0 (but who
knows?). The new serial drivers imply a Chooser rewrite, but that should not
affect most software (even chooser resources, as far as I can see). At that
point, all sorts of neat new hardware becomes available.
For starters, EPIC currently makes an internal modem for the Mac II. I can't
think of anything more useless (in most circumstances), but they are also
working on a six modem board. Right now, six modems aren't useful since you can
only use two serial ports at a time (including LocalTalk), but when the new
serial drivers arrive, that problem goes away. A twenty-four- or thirty-modem
Mac might make a very cheap modem server for a company or campus network...
It would also make for a very nifty bulletin board system.
There are also a few comm boards out that are currently only useful with unix.
However, when the new serial port stuff debuts, you should see these supported
very quickly (perhaps automatically). The ones I know about are a two and four
serial port board from AST, a similar board from SuperMac, a four serial + one
modem board from Tara (maybe "Tiara", and possibly being marketed by Palomar
Software?). Dove also announced some comm boards of various sorts, and
(InfoWorld reports) started shipping them last week, but they mix ports of
several types and seem to be more suited to custom applications.
I think Kinetics is going to get REALLY crunched in the next three months. Not
only is their FastPath unit going to suffer mightily from the combined attack
of the GatorBox and Liason, but their EtherSC finally has some competition, and
at roughly half the price: Adaptec's Nodem. This device, like the Kinetics
unit, connects a Mac directly to EtherTalk via the SCSI port. It is an
excellent option for a Mac SE, especially if you want to later add an
accelerator or large screen, and it is the only choice for a Mac Plus. At about
$550 ($595?), it is finally in the same ballpark as internal cards.
Kinetics has even more to worry about: Dove is bringing out two EtherTalk cards
for the Mac II, one with a 10 MHz 68000 and a lower-performance dumb card.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be very surprised if TOPS and Farallon brought out
EtherTalk cards within the next three to six months.
TokenTalk may be here sooner than you know. I expect it to come hard on the
heels of Novell's MacNetWare, which is due within a month or two. (Fox Software
is testing their multi-user database's AppleTalk compatibility against
MacNetWare, so it must be pretty solid. It looked very good at the show.) I
would expect Dayna and Apple to both announce TokenTalk boards by the end of
the year, and possibly even ship by then. Of course the new 16 Mbit Token-Ring
hardware will take about another year to materialize, but that won't be far
behind the PC world. It is possible that Novell will announce a TokenTalk
product as well, but I don't think so-- they are doing their best to get out of
the hardware business, and I don't see any compelling reason for them to get
back in over this.
One point which a lot of people have been missing- NetWare may very well blow
away AppleShare for medium and large installations, even if there are no PCs
around and IBM connectivity is irrelevant. Why? Because you can get a cheap
'386 box for a bit over $2000. NetWare costs around $2200. Price that against a
Mac II with AppleShare- about $5000. What's more, NetWare is probably much
faster than AppleShare, so in situations where the server is the bottleneck
(i.e., using EtherTalk or TokenTalk), NetWare on a '386 may very well perform
several times better than AppleShare on a two. Even if the software is roughly
on a par, cheap '386s are getting much faster than the Mac II (and shame on
Apple for that, but that's another article).
-------
Hmm. That was a bit lengthier than I had intended... Stay tuned for Expo
Report #3: B&W monitors.
I will also drop an atomic bomb on Apple in the near future (flames are not
sufficient to my wrath :-) Fair warning...
----
Alexis Rosen {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
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The Big Electric Cat {portal,well,sun}!hoptoad/
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