SUMMARY: PC-NFS or alternative

From: Swee-Chuan Khoo (sckhoo@emtds1.nsc.com)
Date: Mon Apr 24 1995 - 01:49:55 CDT


hi Sun-Managers,
   Thanx for the fast and fantastic reply.

   Here are the verdict.

   1) Deskview-X
  *2) samba - from ftp.econ.yale.edu - MOST POPULAR
   3) TCP stack
   4) WRQ
   5) XFS
   6) Tsoft
   7) Chamaleon
   8) PC-TCP versions 2.3 and 3.1 - very popular
   9) Beame & Whiteside NFS - quite popular

   I guest I'll try SAMBA first.

   The following are the complete reply I got.

1) dave@aries.uthscsa.edu (Dave Wagle)

We found that Deskview-X is a very nice alternative. It provides for a
windowing environment, tcp/ip and the ability to run X programs. It even
has an open-windows manager module.

We used a free-ware nfs product that we found on a simtel mirror along
with the Deskivew-X and were very happy.

2) Lenny Turetsky <lturetsk@econ.yale.edu>

Well, if you absolutely must use NFS, you can try to get one of the
clones from a simtel mirror (e.g., oak.oakland.edu://SimTel/msdos/nfs),
although I don't know which (if any) are good.

My alternative is to get samba (you can get it from ftp.econ.yale.edu,
in /pub/lturetsk/admin/service), which is a daemon that provides LAN
Manager service. There is a LAN Manager client built into Windows for
Workgroups v3.11, and I hear that there are free clients for DOS
available somewhere on ftp.microsoft.com.

For either solution, you also have to get a TCP stack, which can also
be gotten from a simtel mirror.

3) "Gary L. Berger" <gberger@eng.clemson.edu>

WRQ has a good product.

4) Dave Fetrow <fetrow@biostat.washington.edu>

 THere are several implementations of PC-NFS. By far the cheapest, and one
of the better ones, is XFS. If you throw in trumpet winsock, a winsock
ftp, telnet and netscape...you have quite a nice environment indeed for
Windows 3.x. If you use DOS: NCSA telnet/ftp are adaquate.

 The support for all that stuff is generally one person (each)....but that
seems to be a plus since problems seem to be fixed a lot faster that way
and PC-NFS/Winsock/etc.

 An alternative to NFS is SAMBA; which uses the networking scheme
Microsoft includes in Windows for Workgroups. It is free and somewhat
faster (by all reports).

 You can info on the whole shebang from
 http://www.biostat.washington.edu/pc/pcnfs.html

5) mdurkin@goonsquad.spies.com (Mike Durkin)

Of course we would say so, but we (Tsoft) make our own.
You can find a demo at ftp.tsoft.net:/pub/tsoft/nfs.
I would recommend the Novell TCP version (nfs101-n.zip), but
for eval you can get the nfs101-w.zip. If/when you decide you like,
you can get a site license for Novell's TCP stack for $99 (called the
'Netware Client Kit') to use with our nfs101-n.zip... that gets you
a winsock. Be sure to increase the rsize/wsize on the client to improve
your performance (see Performance Tuning in the manual).
The cost of our stuff is $40 * 50 * .65 (site discount) = $1300,
probably less than 10 of your PC-NFS licenses. We also do a little
better on memory use I suspect, and can usually get faster large-block
copy/read/exec performance if you can crank the rsize up closer to 8K.
Version 1.02 of our stuff will be out shortly, just some minor bug
fixes with bwnfsd support and added info about single-user licenses
for Novell's TCP stack available through us now (the site license from
Novell is cheaper for anything over 20 PCs).

6) Jose Mendez La Silla System Manager <jmendez@eso.org>

Dear khoo,

 We have Sun Sp20, Hp73X, and PC connected to ethernet ans using
 nfs, rpc, lpd, xdm, etc.
 
  try with the Product called. Chamaleon for window MS 3.1X
  Chamaleon is a Netmanage Product.

   Try ftp.netmanage.com

  there you will found demos and other information dowm /pub

7) Dave Fetrow <fetrow@biostat.washington.edu>

 Than Suns? EVERYTHING. Some are faster too.

 See http://www.biostat.washington.edu/pc/pcnfs.html

 ..especially the part about SAMBA.

8) "Michael Daley" <daley@tbd.ford.com>

We have had great results with FTP Software's PC/TCP (also known as
OnNet 1.x). It is widely used here and is very stable. The price is
reasonable. PC/TCP employs a virtual kernel when run under windows
which means that you don't use up conventional memory. All-in-all, a
nice package.

9) sunlist@mendel.ucsc.edu <Stephen Hauskins>

You could try looking at the program (shareware) called SAMBA.

I have the WWW site address: http://lake.canberra.edu.au/pub/samba/samba

10) dfalk@sqwest.bc.ca <Dave>

Beame & Whiteside make an NFS product for PC's that works much nicer than
PC-NFS, and costs less. This is what we used to run at my site before
we used SAMBA.

11) johnp@suntzu.cs.vims.edu (John Posenau)

I like FTP software`s PCTCP much better than the SUN product. There are also
a few others out there. Most seem to perform better than the SUN product.

12) Joseph P DeCello III <decello@beal.cpp.msu.edu>

Put SAMBA on the Sun, and get the ms dos client from ftp.microsoft.com.

This is much faster than PCNFS, and you'll have less headaches.

SAMBA is free, and so is the network dos client from microsoft.

13) anil@kuroda.com (Anil Bharvaney)

        One choice is FTP, Inc's FTP (PCTCP) product. It works good..
        But... If you not running under MsWindows, it will run as a TSR...
        And you get all the annoying features of them, least not including
        it eats low-memory and a lot of it... The older versions ate
        glutunously (75-100k)... The newer mswindows versions eat less
        as they are implemented as vxd's (load above the 640k), but the
        cost is, vxd's only run under windows hence, to tcp/ip or
        any of its protocol suites in msdos...

14) Joe Konczal <konczal@csmes.ncsl.nist.gov>

Don't buy PC-NFS! Don't buy PC-NFS! Don't buy PC-NFS! There are
several other TCP/IP implementations for PCs running DOS that include
NFS, and almost all of them are faster and better than PC-NFS. PC-NFS
is the slowest package reviewed in "Data Communications," February
1995. PC-NFS also can not use DNS directly, only through NIS on the
server, and a few of the PCs here don't work using NIS+ in
compatibility mode on a server running Solaris 2. Our upgrade to
PC-NFS 5.0 last year failed to correct many of the problems, and it
did not contain all the new features that the sales people told me
would be there, like kerberos.

Also, although you won't be using Windows, it is important for you to
know that the PC-NFS winsock implementation contains a defect that
allows only Sun winsock applications to work correctly, although there
is a patch available. This reminds me of the broken function in the
shared C library in SunOS 4, which used one more byte than it
allocated. Sun's malloc compensated by allocating extra space, unless
you were using GNU C which has its own more efficient built in malloc.
Sun swears these were accidental bugs rather than anticompetitive
features.

No support is better than Sun support, because with no support you
still get nothing, but you don't have to pay for it, and you don't
waste time on the phone tutoring Sun support "engineers." Sun's
hardware is good and reliable, though, and thier hardware support was
good.

PC-TCP versions 2.3 and 3.1 seem to work well with DOS, although we
use them more here with Windows. They both include NFS and use DNS
directly with no problems. FTP Software's support also gets very good
reviews.

15) Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})

You might try Samba - I've heard good things about it.

16) drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (David R. Linn)

I recommend BW-Connect for MS-DOS from Beame and Whiteside Software (bws.com).
You can get a evaluation copy of their product from ftp.bws.com.

17) dhoward@worldlinx.com

Do I understand correctly that the PC's will run MS-DOS but not Windows
?

If so, then memory becomes an obvious issue (Well, it's important in
running Windows too, but more so now...)

FTP Software's "PC/TCP for DOS & Windows" seemed to do NFS reasonably
well. I think FTP has fallen behind the competition as fas as Windows
goes - a lot of vendors offered some neat stuff before FTP. However,
many vendors provide *only* windows TCP apps.

You could also look at "SuperTCP" and "Chameleon/NFS" from Frontier
technologies and NCD respectively (if I remember correctly...)

18) brobbins@mako.Newbridge.COM (Bert Robbins)

Look at FTP Software's PC/TCP product. It integrates easily with many PC
applications and Windows. It is harder to configure but gets the job done.

MeToo

1) ron@mtb.phil.mop.com (Ron Gawel)

I am interseted in a public domain solution so if
you get any replies to the like it would be greatly appreciated
if you forward them to me. Thnx.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:22 CDT