[nycbug-talk] Noob networking question

[Marco Scoffier]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 12:37:49PM -0400, Brad Schonhorst wrote:
>> AFP, Apple Filing Protocol, is the protocol that Macs prefer to use
>> for file sharing. Has very little to do with AppleTalk these days
>> other than it's one of the few protocols that actually works over
>> AppleTalk. TCP is the way to go.
>>
>
>I guess that was my question.  When referring to 'AppleTalk File
>Sharing' are you speaking of AFP?  My understanding was that AFP used
>to use Appletalk net protocol but now uses TCP port 548.
>
>So does the atalk service provide appletalk service (like netatalk) or
>AFP over TCP/IP or something else altogether?
>
I think I can answer this one.  I was sloppy with the terms before.
Older OS 9 couldn't do AFP over TCP/IP.  So I had to run atalkd
and afpd, now you can run afp over tcp/ip.  The FreeBSD man pages and
config file were a great source of demystification on this one.  Atalkd
runs the appletalk protocol on Unix, and afpd runs the AppleTalk Filing
Protocol (confusing).  AFP does not require AppleTalk.

>> As said before, you definitely want to use bonjour/mDNS for
>> announcing the service. Even if you did have some old Mac OS 9
>> machines on the network, you'd still want to be using mDNS for the
>> sake of the newer boxes.
>>

I'm looking up mDNS now.  What are the advantages of this on OSX ?
Basically everything is hardwired in this small office.  I'm the only
tech support and I go in like 3 times a year.  They aren't doing
anything on their own, not even plugging in a new printer... :)

-- 
Marco