makmur@athos.rutgers.edu (Hanz Makmur) (06/28/91)
Hello appletalker, I have a simple question to ask concerning appletalk zones. I hope this has not been asked before. In Inside Appletalk Book, zone is defined as: (p.7-10) "An arbitrary subset of nodes within an internet. A particular network can obtain nodes belonging to any number of zones ( although all nodes in a non extended network must belong to the same zone). A particular node belongs to only one zone. The union of all zone is the internet. A zone is identified by a string of no more than 32 characters. The concept of zones is provided to establish departmental or other user-understandable groupings of the entities of the internet. Zones are intelligible only to NBP and to the related Zones Information Protocol (ZIP)." Let say I have 30 macs on Ethertalk and 3 Fastpath and 30 macs on localtalk. If I were to group these Macs, will it be advantages for me to: 1. group the Macs to 1 zones and 4 networks ? and why so ? 2. group the Macs to 4 zones and 4 networks - 1 ethertalk zone (30 macs) , 3 localtalk zones (10 macs each) and group the macs to the specific net they belong to. ? and why so ? 3. group the macs to the specific groups/department they belong to and create 20 zones and 4 networks ? and why so ? Hanz Makmur Rutgers University
kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) (06/28/91)
They're intended for what they were always intended for - to group logically related nodes. The idea is that by default the objects that you want to reference should be in the same zone as you are, and others you rarely reference should be in other zones. Its not always possible to achieve that, due to all kinds of weird constraints, but that's what you should be aiming for. kre