srvarma@rodan.acs.syr.edu ( ** Born 2 B Wild **) (10/27/90)
I tried posting it yesterday but apparently it didn't go through. Sorry if you
have already seen it.
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Hi Netters!
Pardon my ignorance as I am new to the world of appletalk/ethertalk and
slowly getting used to it.
We have a cluster of Suns, Macs, and a 386 machine. Macs and our laser
printers are on appletalk and thus macs print directly to them. Suns use
Columbia CAP for printing and print via a K-box (oops, a Shiva FastPath).
I am also running Aufs on Suns and thus macs are able to store files on
the sun. This file transfer, I believe, is done via K-box and is painfully
slow.
I recently installed Everex Emac-SpeekLink Ethernet cards in all the macs
(both MacIIs and MacSEs) and our mac users use MacTCP (from Stanford) for
telnet, ftp, etc. I would like to use these ethernet cards for Mac-Sun file
Sharing. So here is my quesion (especially to Rocky and Charles@RU):
1. I heard about RU-CAP (version 2.0) over the net. Is this the right package
that I should be using which will establish ethernet link for file transfer
between Macs and sun server and would eliminate this traffic via K-box? What
is UAB+ and where does that come into the picture?
2. If yes, will our Macs and Suns be able to print on laser printers (which
are on appletalk) as before? AND does something need to be done on K-box as
well? I need to know this so that I can ask our local LAN Adminstrator to
take care of it.
3. I also read some articles about EtherPrint probduct from Dayna Communi-
cations which puts your laser writers on ethernet. My question is: Does it
entirely eliminate the need of AppleTalk cabling and K-box since Suns would
send appletalk packets on ethernet now? Our entire dept. is moving in the
direction of Ethernet and hence, if possible, we would like to eliminate
other networks.
My apologies if I have thrown in too many questions simultaneously. Please
respond asap or ideally, send me an email at any of the following addresses:
srvarma@zookeeper.cns.syr.edu (preferably) or srvarma@suvm.bitnet.
Thanks very much. I deeply appreciate any help.
Sandeep.
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\ ___ \___ ___\ ___ ___ ___ \ /___ \___ \____ ___hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (10/27/90)
The new version of CAP is just like the old one, but gives your Suns the option to use Ethertalk on the Ethernet rather than IPtalk. This would allow Macs with Ethertalk cards to talk directly to the Sun rather than through the KBox. Of course Macs on Localtalk would still need to go through the Kbox. The Kbox would have to be reconfigured so that its Ethernet side speaks Ethertalk rather than IPTalk. Access to laserprinters is unchanged. It's the same software. It just uses Ethertalk instead of IPtalk, i.e. the format of the packet headers on the Ethernet is different. I haven't tried Etherprint. If it does what I think (make the LW an Ethertalk host) then you would be able to talk from the Sun to the LW directly, without needing a KBox. Of course if you have any Macs on the Localtalk, they'll still need the Kbox. Note that CAP currently supports only Ethertalk phase I. Thus the Macs with Ethertalk and the EtherPrint would have to be configured to use phase I. The only time this should be a problem is - if you have more than 254 hosts on one Ethernet, or on a collection of Ethernets connected by level 2 bridges (*real* bridges, not what Apple calls bridges, which are really routers) - if you are running software that only supports phase 2. Some commercial Unix or VMS Appletalk software is this way.