NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/sys/sgi/admin/262

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-21 | 1.6 KB

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi.admin,comp.unix.aix
Path: sparky!uunet!nih-csl!alw.nih.gov!rdew
From: [e-mail] (Bob Dew)
Subject: Re: Is NFS a dead-end on PC's?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Organization: National Inst. of Health, DCRT, CSL
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Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:48:07 GMT
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A reason why PCNFS may not be widely popular in networks shared by PC
and UNIX hosts may simply be that PCs presently lack commercially available
application software that can take advantage of merging PC and UNIX
filesystems.

Where NOS systems, like the ones you mention, can provide immediate
"plug-and-play" solutions to file management and mail exchange issues,
PCNFS merely represents a tool whereby a UNIX file system may be accessed
from DOS.  PCNFS by itself does not address real-life issues seemingly as
simple as, "how can person 'a' send a message to person 'b'?", or "how can
you make a shared software package available to some users, but not to
others?", and so on. To compound the problem, most UNIX-based systems (with
the notable exception of AFS), and certainly most NFS-based applications,
aren't designed to accommodate several thousands of simultaneous users, such
as may be the case in today's large-sized LANS.

I think PCNFS could potentially be very valuable in bridging the gap
between PCs and UNIX machines sharing the same network, but the applications
software has yet to be written.

-Bob

Bob Dew
National Institutes of Health