Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!rutgers!att!mtuxo!mtgzz!drutx!druhi!cosmos
From: cosmos@druhi.ATT.COM (Ronald A. Guest)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Who is King?  TOPS or Ethernet for Mac/IBM Network?
Summary: Ethernet
Message-ID: <3780@druhi.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Dec 88 15:19:41 GMT
References: <2841@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO
Lines: 18



You don't really say what you are going to do, so it's hard to give an
informed answer.  However, we recently went from TOPS over Appletalk, to
TOPS over Ethernet, to AppleShare over Ethernet.  There is no doubt that
AppleShare over Ethernet is much superior to TOPS on either, for what WE are
doing.  TOPS is pitiful at handling large disks.  It has no intelligence
about how to handle the desktop file, which gets very large. Also, you can't
implement any real security with TOPS.  AppleShare gives you very Unix like
capability here.  TOPS does not require a dedicated server, AppleShare does.
You can get the necessary hardware and software for TOPS and AppleShare for
both PC, Mac, and Unix environments.  If you are doing much work, you end up
dedicating a machine to the server anyway.  TOPS really degrades service to
anyone using the machine.  We also had lots of trouble with TOPS forgetting
things that were published on drives other than the boot drive.  Sometimes
it would just forget they were ever published.  I would recommend highly
going with AppleShare, based on our experiences and how we use the network
and server.
Ron