[WinMac] Re: WinMac Digest #104 - 10/11/98

ZMac1@aol.com
Mon, 12 Oct 1998 02:26:54 EDT

>>3) Performance - AppleShare IP 6.0 is more than twice as fast as NT 4.0 in
>>copying files across a 100bT network from/to Macintosh clients. If you're
>>looking for speedy file transfers with Mac clients, AppleShare IP is what
>>you want.
>
> What part of 600 mHz don't you understand?!

Actually, Windows NT Server's support of Macintosh clients isn't
particularly fast, even with multiple, fast processors. I've seen lots of
test results, and AppleShare IP 6's AFP over AppleTalk is faster than
that of NT Services for Mac. In fact, test results presented at Seybold
SF showing that NT's AFP over AppleTalk on a dual-Pentium II server ran
slower than AppleShare IP 6 on a Mac, as well as slower than a UNIX box.
An NT consultant I talked to the other day said "NT has the slowest
AppleTalk stack on the planet."

(Robert Cowart, NT expert and enthusiast, and author of more NT books
than just about anyone, recommends not using the NT SFM print server at
all.)

Also, with NT Server, AFP over AppleTalk is your only option for Mac
clients. Just about every other server that supports Mac clients offers
AFP over IP, which is significantly faster. (TCP/IP streams; AppleTalk
does not.) This includes AppleShare IP 6, Xinet's KA-Share (Unix), Helios
EtherShare (UNIX), and several other UNIX products -- even Netatalk for
Linux and CAP for NetBSD support AFP over IP. I could list a dozen
servers that support AFP over IP.

As for the Mac client support of AFP over IP, version 3.7 or later comes
with AppleShare IP 6 and the UNIX servers, as well as with Mac OS 8.1 and
later.

I'm not saying NT is a poor server platform--it has many excellent
features. But it's support of Mac clients is not anything close to
state-of-the-art.

John Rizzo
http://www.macwindows.com

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Sun Oct 11 1998 - 23:29:29 PDT