Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!pikes!udenva!mbrookov
From: mbrookov@udenva.cair.du.edu (Matthew B. Brookover)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Mac networking?
Message-ID: <12020@udenva.cair.du.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 89 16:16:46 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Denver, CO, USA
Lines: 68


Hi, We are in the process of purchasing 20 Macintosh SE's for a lab at
the University of Denver.  We would like to network them to get the
following services:

	File service: programs such as MacWrite, Excel, 
	type fonts, MacDraw, and a few public domain 
	programs need to be available to each work station
	The students will keep their files on their own
	floppy disk.

	Printer sharing: we would like to share both 
	Imagewriters and a Laserwriter //nt. It would 
	also be nice to have the server keep track of how
	many pages are printed for charging purposes.

	Telnet and ftp: we would like to be able to telnet
	and ftp to several BSD 4.3 Unix and VMS hosts in a 
	central computing facility.  The VMS hosts are running
	Multinet TCP/IP. 

Questions:
We currently have a lab of MS-DOS machines with a Novell file server,
we have heard about Novell's Macintosh support.  How well does it
work?  Am I required to have Novell's NE/2 Appletalk card in the server
or are there any other options?  The Novell file server is a PS/2 model
80, and it is running Netware 2.15.

We do have a Vax 11/750 and an IBM RT running BSD 4.3 Unix that could be
used as an NFS server.  What NFS client products are available for the
Mac?  do they require ethernet or will the run on localtalk?

To do the TCP/IP stuff we would need the Kinetics fastpath or the
Gatorbox.  Are their any other less expensive products that will move
localtalk packets to ethernet?

Has anybody used NCSA telnet?  How well does it work? what other
telnet/ftp programs are out there?

Localtalk is supposed to be very slow, will it provide good performance
to 20 workstations, 1 file server and a TCP/IP gateway?

On MS-DOS, the network card can only be used by one application
(Novell, telnet, etc) at a time unless you have something like FTP's
packet driver.  Will the Mac allow a workstation to run telnet and
read/write to a disk mounted from a file server at the same time?

How good is AppleShare?  will it provide good performance for 20
workstations on Localtalk?

The ethernet cards for the Mac are very expensive, and I am not sure
we can afford 20 of them.  Is localtalk fast enough to provide
reasonable performance?

I would also like to hear some peoples experiences with Macintosh labs.
How do you deal with viruses? How is you Mac lab set up? How many Macs
on a segment of localtalk cable?  what file server do you use and what
do you think of it?

If any body is interested I will provide a summary of the answers I get.

Thanks

Matt Brookover
Computing and Information Resources
University of Denver
internet: mbrookov@nike.cair.du.edu  [130.253.1.14]
uucp: ncar!dunike!mbrookov