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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!dalcs!aucs!paul
From: paul@aucs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Faster networks
Message-ID: <354@aucs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-May-87 09:39:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: aucs.354
Posted: Tue May 19 09:39:47 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 20-May-87 02:14:14 EDT
References: <347@aucs.UUCP> <5777@eddie.MIT.EDU> <350@aucs.UUCP> <2706@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: paul@aucs.UUCP (Paul Steele)
Distribution: na
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia
Lines: 37
Keywords: Networks, Appletalk, Ethernet, SCSI

In article <2706@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Pierce T. Wetter) writes:

>Personally, I don't feel the mac
>is behind as far networking is concerned. In fact when one considers that all
>macs come complete with a network card installed, (as opposed to the PC's). THe
>real limitation of the Mac as far as networking is concerned is the speed of the
>Apple talk network. (the file server ranges from a little slower then a floppy
>to a lot slower) the other limitation is the face that it is impossible to boot
>from a fileserver, meaning you always need at least one floppy which has the
>correct software on it.
>    _ONe_ fileserver is nice as a distribution point, but individual hard disks
>are better.

There certainly seems to be a lot of disagreement on the best way to network
Macs and set up a usable lab.  In my opinion, individual hard disks are just
not workable in a typical public environment.  It removes file safety and
privacy which is essential in a network.  Its not quite as easy to say
DEL *.* in a Mac environment, but that doesn't mean that users won't find
something worse to do.

It would be nice if Macs could be booted from a file server like many
of the PC networks, but servers are still necessary to easily manage a
network of Macs.  As far as the Mac's built-in networking capabilities,
its adequate for sharing printers in a reasonably sized network, but if
you want to share a hard disk, imagewriter, and laser writer among 20
macs, I think you'd be looking at less than floppy performance.  Its
nice to have built-in networking, but I would like to have the option
of popping in my own network card to get better performance.

It would have been great if the SE had come with built-in Ethernet
or Token-ring... :-)


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