we also have some customers in Switzerland which are using MAC's with Filer. The best way to implement the connection depends on what you are doing with the MacIntosh Computers.

If most of your environment is Windows-Based (NT- or 2000) and only a few Mac-Clients and -users want to get access to MS-Office Files, DAVE (www.thursby.com) is great.

Advantages: With an existing Windows Domain, no other authentication method and maintenance of user accounts is necessary. No other license (beside CIFS) for the filer is needed.

Disadvantages: On every Client you will need to install the DAVE-Software and you have to buy the licenses as well.

If most of your environment are unix-workstations with propagating the passwd-file by NIS and only a few Mac-Clients and -users want to get access to Unix-Files, MACnfs (also www.Thursby.com) is great.

Advantages: With an existing NIS Domain, no other authentication method and maintenance of user accounts is necessary. No other license (beside nfs) for the filer is needed.

Disadvantages: On every Client you will need to install a MACnfs-Software and you have to buy the licenses as well.

If you need good performance, the Thursby Clients are a little bit to slow i guess.

If there is some good Unix-Know How arround, you can buy Ethershare from Helios (www.helios.com). It usually runs on solaris platforms and can provide File- and Print-Services for Macintosh. If the clients handle big picture files (to create Newspapers), the Ethershare offers some interesting features to improve the performance over the network.

The other solution is based on Linux. The shareware netatalk also provides good performance on File-Services for MAC. You need a good level of experience with linux.

If you can wait some weeks and take the risk to upgrade your Mac-Clients with an very new OS-release, you can use MAC OS10 to connect with nfs or MAC OS10.1 to connect with cifs. But maybe your applications does not run on this new releases.

I hope, i did not increase the confusion.........

We're looking to let our Art Department (Macintosh users) have a wee bit o' space on our 740. I'm looking at Dave software, but would appreciate any input from other administrators who might have some insight here.

Paul Maglinger, A+, CET, CA, MCSE

Systems Administrator