Xref: utzoo comp.protocols.nfs:282 comp.sys.mac:35042 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!intercon!amanda@intercon.uu.net From: amanda@intercon.uu.net (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: NFS and Mac IIs Message-ID: <1289@intercon.UUCP> Date: 20 Jul 89 15:16:04 GMT References: <5458@b11.ingr.com> <2596@mit-caf.MIT.EDU> <1272@intercon.UUCP> <8058@hoptoad.uucp> Sender: news@intercon.UUCP Reply-To: amanda@intercon.uu.net (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation Lines: 30 In article <8058@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: > There never will be a good Macintosh NFS product, without major changes > to the NFS protocol. Those changes will not happen. This seems a little strong. I would agree that there will never be a good *simple* NFS product for the Mac without protocol changes, because there is not a simple mapping between the Macintosh file system and a UNIX-style file system (or much of anything else, for that matter :-)). However, I think that products like AUFS, the GatorBox, and others have shown that it is possible to do it acceptably well. The biggest problem I can see in implementing a good native Mac client NFS is simply one of size. Not because of RPC & XDR, which aren't too bad if you look at them as notational aids rather than implementation specs, but because the client code will have to maintain a fair amount of local state in order to buffer things well and avoid lots of network traffic. With UNIX or MS-DOS, you can get by with a pretty dumb client. With the Mac OS you have to do more work, which has good points and bad points, one of the bad points being that it will take longer to do well. NFS in general is all too healthy, and eventually someone will take the time and money to do a good Macintosh implementation. It would be nice if this "someone" turned out to be Apple, but I'm reserving judgement for now. Sigh. -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation -- amanda@intercon.uu.net | ...!uunet!intercon!amanda