[nycbug-talk] Noob networking question

[nikolai]

>
> On Jul 21, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Marco Scoffier wrote:
>
>> 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... :)
>
> mDNS is essentially the auto-discovery portion of Rendezvous/
> Bounjour.  It lets devices advertise services they provide and lets
> clients discover servers that provide the services they're looking
> for automatically.
>
> --Dave

It's multicast DNS. Fine on a single subnet (wired or wireless),
but won't work across a router without extra effort.
--
 nikolai