kenw@noah.arc.CDN (Ken Wallewein) (03/30/89)
Some rumour/comments on the non-Gatorbox portion: I've been told that Pacer has AppleShare for Unix about to go into beta distribution. They also apparently have in-house a VMS Mail-connecting mail facility which works with Microsoft mail and keeps the mail on the server. That product is just waiting for Microsoft to release their product. Note that Pacer is currently working on Tops' VMS product, that Tops and NFS use very similar protocols, and that Tops is owned by Sun. Ushare has what looks to be a pretty complete Appletalk for Unix package, including AppleShare, virtual disks that support remote 'boot', and what appears to be a server-based mail facility. We hope to be testing both Unix products shortly. Server-based mail support is essential to allow a) communication with non-Appletalk users, and b) access to stored mail regardless of location. We currently use Pacer because of their multi-vendor host support. As far as speed goes, the general concensus seems to be that file service bottlenecks are LocalTalk, gateways, and (on VMS) AppleTalk for VMS. When AppleTalk for VMS is avoided, both AlisaTalk and Pacer are approximately comparable. /kenw Ken Wallewein A L B E R T A kenw@noah.arc.cdn R E S E A R C H (403)297-2660 C O U N C I L