prc@ERBE.SE (Robert Claeson) (11/18/88)
In article <1562@stiatl.UUCP>, john@stiatl.UUCP (John DeArmond) writes: > I have an extensive amount of experience with Novell as a user and as a > developer and a significant amount of experience with Vines. From my > vantagepoint, Vines is not even in the same league with Novell. > > I'm afraid that the fact that Vines uses a unix system as a server blinds > many people. The fact of the matter is, it does not really matter what > hardware platform is used for a server as long as it's performance is > adequate and it is reliable. John DeArmond tells us a lot of things about the differences between Banyan's Vines and Novell's NetWare, and why Novell is a better PC Lan. But the fact that Vines uses, among others, UNIX systems as file servers opens up a question -- does it store a PC file as a UNIX file in the UNIX file system, or does it create "virtual disks", implemented as UNIX files with some kind of file system in it? And what if I want to share files between PC software and UNIX dito's (for example, WordPerfect documents)? What I can see, that's relatively easy to do using the Vines network, but I haven't seen that ability with Novell's NetWare. Face this: AppleTalk/LocalTalk is adequate for MacIntoshes. Novell's NetWare is one of the best PC LAN's available today. And UNIX, well, TCP/UDP/IP and NFS aren't exactly uncommon. So now I want to connect those LAN's together so I can use a minicomputers/mainframes as file servers, print servers, mail servers and all other nifty applications you might dream up for MacIntoshes and PC's w/PC-DOS and/or OS/2. The idea is to let those three kinds of nodes live with the networking technology that's best suited for them. And that implies some kind of transparent gateway between them. There's the GatorBox for connecting LocalTalk's to Ethernet's with AppleTalk on the LocalTalk and TCP/UDP/ IP+NFS on the Ethernet side. But I haven't seen any product like that for PC LAN's. Or, I can make all nodes use the same network system. Some kind of TCP/IP and NFS on the Mac's and PC-NFS on the PC's. Or maybe I should still use the GatorBox for the MacIntoshes. Or, I can make the UNIX file server use all three protocols, which means something like CAP or PacerShare (when it becomes available) and Vines on the UNIX host. What would *you* recommend? For what reason? And how does it work? -- Robert Claeson ERBE DATA AB rclaeson@ERBE.SE