Subject: netatalk and Open Transport

From: [email-masked] (Peter Link)
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 08:35:14 -0800

We're starting to get Macs that run Open Transport (1.0.8). Will
there be any problems or enhancements found when accessing netatalk
servers? Thanks.

Peter Link
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
P.O. Box 808, L-665
Livermore, CA 94550
[email-masked]

---

From: Mark Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 14:34:42 -0500

>From:     [email-masked] (Peter Link)
>  To:     [email-masked]
>

We haven't noticed any problems using OpenTransport (OT) Macs with
netatalk here at UMich (which doesn't mean that problems don't
exist!).  Current versions of OT only replace the DDP layer of the
AppleTalk protocol stack; all of the higher-layer stuff (AFP for file
server access, PAP for printing, etc) is still done using the same code
as on Macs not running OT.  This means that while compatibilty is
pretty good, AppleTalk performance is probably still not nearly as good
as it could be on PowerMacs.  OT does replace almost all of the Mac's
TCP/IP code, which leads to worse compatibility but better performance
(but you didn't ask about that).  Refer to this document from Apple for
more info about OpenTransport (it is also on their WWW site somewhere):

  ftp://seeding.apple.com/ess/public/opentransport/OT_gen_info/OTQA.txt

-Mark