Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Programs under AppleTalk
Keywords: AppleTalk, networks
Message-ID: <34243@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 12 Feb 90 00:17:41 GMT
References: <1895@neoucom.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 30

Ok, you've got a program that runs on a single mac and you'd like to make
it compatible with a network.

1.) Read a good book on operating systems and make sure that you
understand the problems concurrency brings. You should understand
semaphores, critical sections, and serializability at the very least.
You might check out the File Manager (I.M. Vol4) call that deal with
record and range locking that are only available on a network file
server.

2.) Read Inside Appletalk and the associated tech notes. In addition to
the above issues, add redundancy and reliability (a node can go dead
during your program, or one node can time out and re-request a packet,
then the packet can arrive, then another copy of the packet, which took a
different, slower route can arrive out of order.)

3.) If you are using Localtalk, you'll probably have to use it
asynchronously because it will be too boring for the user to wait for the
packets to move around the net.

4.) Decide if you will be using a broadcast or a point-to-point protocol.
If broadcast, you'll need to make some decisions about network zones and
about network gateways.

Depending on how much you already know, allocate 1-3 man months to the
network part of your first Macintosh network project.

--- David Phillip Oster            --  No, I come from Boston. I just work
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --  in cyberspace.
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu