May 1999 Newsletter

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

David Herren, Associate Director for Technology and Instruction

Clara Yu, Project 2001 Director

Bret Olsen, Digital Media Specialist

Robert Smitheram, Courseware Development and Technology Training Advisor

Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

Chris Sargeant, Middlebury College Computer Lab Manager

Greg Dargiewicz, School for Intl. Training

Jim Millard, St. Michael's College

Jeff Martin, M.I.T.

Bradley Gano, Yale University, Ctr for Language Study

Marisa Castagno, Connecticut College

Keyvan Karbasioun, Mount Wachussett Community College

The CET has created a web site that gives a nice overview of the conference presentations. The address is:

http://www.cet.middlebury.edu/workshops/neralld.html

An "almost transcription" (the words of Mary Fetherston, NERALLD secretary) is live at:

See NERALLD website, go to Member Resources

http://www.marlboro.edu/~neralld/resources.html

A condensed, "just the facts, ma'am" version follows on page 3-6 of this newsletter.

Italian- Nick Lasoff, Bennington College

English- Sergei Brunaev, Wesleyan University

French- Claire Keith, Marist College

German- Tony Niesz, Yale University

Spanish - Kevin James, Boston College

Lab Layout and Design

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

There are four basic physical layout models for language labs: Row, Pod, Sardine and Dual Purpose. When choosing between these four models, the goal is to decide which type fits the instructional purposes and space size. Each model is good for its own purpose and budget.

The Row Model consists of rows of desks that all face the instructor. This is the most expensive design because of cable running through the floor and power outlets at each station. Another problem is that the instructor cannot see the computer screens.

The Pod model is used in situations where students would be working in small groups or independently, and thus no centralized layout for instruction would be needed. The Pod Model is characterized by groups of computers arrayed from one power outlet and data junction box. Thus layout creates a feeling of openness even in small rooms. The Pod Model can be flexible, although it offers little privacy for students.

The Sardine Model puts the maximum number of computers into the minimum amount of space. It can be used in any lab where no instructional space is needed and in rooms with a small amount of square footage. The Sardine Model is comprised of single rows of computers, with two rows back to back.

The Dual Purpose Model is less space efficient than the other three models. It is used for rooms that must be shared between instruction and use as a computer lab. A large room is required because the computers occupy only the perimeter of the room--tables or desks occupy the middle of the room and a multimedia projector is mounted on one wall. With this design, the instructor can see all the computer screens at a glance and thus provide help to students experiencing problems or help keep students on task. This model combines seminar and technology space, so if students are shifting between technology tasks and instruction another task, they can move between the computers to the desks.

Platform choice is another initial consideration in lab design with the choices being Macintosh vs. UNIX vs. Windows platforms. At sites where many different languages have to be supported from one computer, the Macintosh platform should be seriously considered for word processing-- especially for support of Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Western languages on the same computer without rebooting. In labs where the computers get taken down and reconfigured constantly, a Windows lab is easier to manage.

Hardware standardization is a problem in sites where all the computers run different operating systems or different versions of the same operating system. For instance, even on Macintoshes (traditionally where the hardware and software are more tightly integrated), although they have different processors, the PowerMac 8600s can be in the same lab with G3s. The blue and white G3s require an almost totally different system folder than the 8600s and beige G3s. This requires some fancy footwork to be able to get the 8600s, the 9600s, and the beige G3s all to work more or less with the same system folder.

When using image distribution software (such as ImageCast or Ghost) on Windows, separate images are required for every model and cards must be standardized in particular slots.

As students have more access to labs and computer cases are easier to open up, hardware security is more of an issue. Even with the security devices on the new computers, students will bring whatever they need, including their patience, to rip you off. This is not really a problem with monitors but keyboard and mice can disappear. The most simple anti-theft device is an easy configuration of washers and wires. Some labs are very concerned about software security and configure the machines so tightly that any changes are difficult. This can make it inconvenient to fix problems as they arise.

Macintosh Lab Management

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

Apple Network Administrator Toolkit (ANAT) is a comprehensive lab security and software management solution for Macintoshes. Its from Apple (http://www.apple.com/networking/anat/index.html) and it costs about $399. ANAT is a combination of two software products: AtEase 5.0 and Apple Network Assistant. In the past, Macintoshes have always been a single user computer, in the sense that there were no user accounts. ANAT gives access control to the Macintosh so that the user has to log on through server. ANAT gives access control to applications, documents, removable media, and restricts the use of certain printers. ANAT also establishes apple menu, document access and system resource access. Multiple user types are preconfigured such as student, teacher, administrator, so you don’t have to design your own configurations.

ANAT is user friendly. It saves individual user preferences for internet applications which eliminates the need to create generic profiles in Netscape. ANAT also allows students to have individual user preferences, bookmarks, printer quotas, and disk quotas. It automatically configures different save options so that the computer always saves by default to certain folders. ANAT runs with TCP/IP or AppleTalk. ANAT has a screen control capability so that an instructor can look at individual users’ screens and see what they are doing. Also, different lab users can be configured to share screens for a collaborative purpose.

ANAT is very good at software management. It can install applications on every computer. ANAT also has a lot of general administrative features, like tracking serial numbers and hardware profiles. ANAT can run an audit on each computer to determine how much memory it has, how big the hard drive is, what applications are resident and ANAT also does automated shutdown and start-up.

RevRdist is a hard drive synchronization tool that is used by CET and Middlebury College for lab management. RevRdist stands for Reverse Rdist--Rdist is a UNIX application which runs on a server and pushes a master image to clients. RevRdist is an application that runs on the client and pulls a master image from the server. RevRdist is freeware developed by Dale Talcott at Purdue University. RevRdist is Mac only. Based on a distribution (dist) file, RevRdist synchronizes the client machine’s hard drive with the master image. The system administrator put rules in the dist file concerning how the master image is distributed. Your dist file can range from being somewhat extremely simple, only a few rules, to extremely complex. All the processing occurs on the client, the files on the server are read only. Thus any AFP (Apple filesharing protocol) compliant file server can be used (either an Appleshare server, a Netware server with the Macintosh module installed, Windows NT services for Mac, or a UNIX server with one of the myriad AFP packages for UNIX).

RevRdist only replaces the things that are different between the master image and the client machine. RevRdist should only take as long as it takes to drag copies on network. We use RevRdist because we have a lot of stuff on our hard drives we don’t want to have changed. This looks very confusing but if you download RevRdist from Purdue (http://www.purdue.edu/revrdist), it comes with a default distribution file that will do most of what you need it to do. There are also many sample files on web site with different options and lots of commentary on how to do things, If you want to install an application throughout your lab, you copy the application to your master image and RevRdist all your machines and you’re done. RevRdist can also sweep all documents from wherever they have been saved into a lost and found folder in the client machine. So regardless of where a student saved their document, it will end up in the lost and found folder of the machine so they can come back and find it the next day.

MacAdministrator and MacPrefect are authentication and security tools, respectively, with some management and auditing capability. MacPrefect has different levels of security settings so that it can be configured either tightly or loosely depending on how malicious your users are. The whole MacAdmin suite allows user level access to Macintoshes. If your campus has Macintoshes in the lab but they don’t want to put any Macs in the server role, and you already have a good user data bases -- Novell, UNIX or whatever -- you can authenticate MacAdministrator against your existing database. MacAdmin also controls whether users can copy applications so it prevents people from stealing your software legally (which is important if you’re concerned with liability). MacAdmin can save individual application preferences, automounting of file servers, set up drop boxes for submitting work on servers, and, like ANAT, it can do system auditing to find out what kind of hardware and software is on your machines. MacPrefect is the security subset of MacAdmin. It doesn’t give you authentication but will give you the ability to prevent users from deleting applications, copying applications, accessing the system folder or control panels. MacAdmin is quite reasonably priced; ask about an education discount. More info is available from http://www.hi-resolution.com.

Windows/PC Lab Management

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

On Windows machines, a disk imaging utility is used to get your first image onto your server. The most popular disk imaging utility is called Ghost which is DOS-based. Ghost enables a machine to be booted into DOS and then to connect to a server where the hard drive is downloaded byte by byte or bit by bit onto the client computer. Ghost is one of the most difficult pieces of software to use, but, once it is set up then it becomes easier.

There is a network-aware version of Ghost which allows TCP/IP multicasting. There is also the DOS-only utility where the image is on an external drive, a second hard drive or CD-ROM. Ghost is mostly used to boot an image off the CD-ROM to the hard drive. Ghost has problems with Windows NT security identifiers --the unique number that identifies each Windows NT computer on the network. When you join a domain, the machine is assigned a security identifier (SID) and that is how it is identified. If all the Windows NT workstations are ghosted from a master image, the SID will be the same on all the machines. This will confuse Windows NT but will not cause any catastrophic failures (but Windows 2000 may be a different case). There is now a Ghostwalker utility which will generate a statistically unique SID for each client but this requires manual intervention at each machine every time the lab is Ghosted.

Imagecast 3.0 is a hard drive imaging utility with a GUI (graphical user interface) and post imaging configuration options. The DOS boot disk still has to be made, but the GUI- based DOS boot maker will theoretically make the DOS boot disk for machines with different network cards. Imagecast has a menu driven DOS utility which enables you to configure the client side. Imagecast is a lot more user friendly than Ghost and allows some post-imaging manipulation. If you have a few machines that are identical except for their sound cards or if the sound cards are in different slots, it allows you to make hardware specific changes after initial configuration. Imagecast also automatically generates statistically different SIDs for each of the client workstations. More info at http://www.imagecast.com.

There are also many other hard-drive imaging utilities out there. There is a review of about ten different ones in Information Week, last year and it gives the pros and cons of all the different ones. (Do an Altavista search and it’ll pop up.) They listed Imagecast as by far the best.

PC-Rdist is a hard drive synchronization tool with registry management, GUI interface, and NT support. In many ways its like RevRdist but for PCs. However, unlike RevRdist, PCRdist is not freeware, it costs about $45 a seat and a site license is about $6,000. PCRdist 2.0 has a GUI interface and nice features. One of the problems with Windows software distribution and especially with Windows NT, is registry management. Version 2.0 handles registry problems very well. Unless otherwise specified, PCRdist will replace a file on the client: if something is missing on the client machine, if the file size is different, if the modification time on the client is different, and if the permissions have changed on the client. Also if there is something on the client that is not on the server, PCRdist will move it to the Lost and Found folder using the Junk option.

Lab Expert is a GUI-based, centrally managed lab administration tool which is really expensive. The image casting system with a centralized GUI interface is drag and drop. Lab Expert lets you remotely administer network machines. Initially, you have to manually install a few files on each machine and then its easy to manage. It keeps an image for the hard drive and a copy of the registry for each machine on the server. Lab Expert does basically the same things as PCRdist and has some really neat tools for tech heads. Lab Expert is a lot more expensive. The site license was listed as $10,000 last year. There is a program called Image Blaster, which is part of Lab Expert, that can be bought separately and, basically, it is just like Ghost or Image Cast.

Windows NT has its own security solutions, you just assign your users the appropriate privileges so that they can’t do anything dangerous.

UNIX and Mixed Environments

Presented by David Herren, Associate Director for Technology and Instruction

MacOS X Server (http://www.apple.com/macosx/server) is the first release of Apple’s next generation operating system. MacOS X Server will be followed by MacOS X (Client) later in 1999. Based upon technologies developed by NeXT Software and BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution) UNIX, this is a powerful, robust server and workstation operating system offering:

Quicktime 4.0 Streaming

NetInfo is a database technology for managing hierarchies of MacOS X and Openstep computers. NetInfo is now central to Macintosh management and netbooting of Macintosh clients. There are versions of NetInfo available for Linux and other UNIX flavors as well. The source code to NetInfo has been open sourced. For information about what NetInfo go to http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/n60038. For a basic introduction to NetInfo domains go to http://til.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n30832.

Network File System (NFS) is essentially the standard UNIX way of sharing files. It differs significantly from file sharing on the Macintosh and Windows platforms, and offers some significant advantages. It is "stateless" --the server can be restarted while machines and users are connected. Client machines will simply and transparently reconnect when the server comes back online. NFS is an important part of MacOS X.

Samba (http://www.samba.org) is a suite of UNIX tools and applications which provide Windows-style file and print serving to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT machines. It is an open source project, freely distributed. Out of the box, it is faster than Windows NT or Novell networking for Windows clients.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

David Herren, Associate Director for Technology and Instruction

Clara Yu, Project 2001 Director

Bret Olsen, Digital Media Specialist

Robert Smitheram, Courseware Development and Technology Training Advisor

Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

Chris Sargeant, Middlebury College Computer Lab Manager

Greg Dargiewicz, School for Intl. Training

Jim Millard, St. Michael's College

Jeff Martin, M.I.T.

Bradley Gano, Yale University, Ctr for Language Study

Marisa Castagno, Connecticut College

Keyvan Karbasioun, Mount Wachussett Community College

The CET has created a web site that gives a nice overview of the conference presentations. The address is:

http://www.cet.middlebury.edu/workshops/neralld.html

An "almost transcription" (the words of Mary Fetherston, NERALLD secretary) is live at:

See NERALLD website, go to Member Resources

http://www.marlboro.edu/~neralld/resources.html

A condensed, "just the facts, ma'am" version follows on page 3-6 of this newsletter.

Italian- Nick Lasoff, Bennington College

English- Sergei Brunaev, Wesleyan University

French- Claire Keith, Marist College

German- Tony Niesz, Yale University

Spanish - Kevin James, Boston College

Lab Layout and Design

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

There are four basic physical layout models for language labs: Row, Pod, Sardine and Dual Purpose. When choosing between these four models, the goal is to decide which type fits the instructional purposes and space size. Each model is good for its own purpose and budget.

The Row Model consists of rows of desks that all face the instructor. This is the most expensive design because of cable running through the floor and power outlets at each station. Another problem is that the instructor cannot see the computer screens.

The Pod model is used in situations where students would be working in small groups or independently, and thus no centralized layout for instruction would be needed. The Pod Model is characterized by groups of computers arrayed from one power outlet and data junction box. Thus layout creates a feeling of openness even in small rooms. The Pod Model can be flexible, although it offers little privacy for students.

The Sardine Model puts the maximum number of computers into the minimum amount of space. It can be used in any lab where no instructional space is needed and in rooms with a small amount of square footage. The Sardine Model is comprised of single rows of computers, with two rows back to back.

The Dual Purpose Model is less space efficient than the other three models. It is used for rooms that must be shared between instruction and use as a computer lab. A large room is required because the computers occupy only the perimeter of the room--tables or desks occupy the middle of the room and a multimedia projector is mounted on one wall. With this design, the instructor can see all the computer screens at a glance and thus provide help to students experiencing problems or help keep students on task. This model combines seminar and technology space, so if students are shifting between technology tasks and instruction another task, they can move between the computers to the desks.

Platform choice is another initial consideration in lab design with the choices being Macintosh vs. UNIX vs. Windows platforms. At sites where many different languages have to be supported from one computer, the Macintosh platform should be seriously considered for word processing-- especially for support of Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Western languages on the same computer without rebooting. In labs where the computers get taken down and reconfigured constantly, a Windows lab is easier to manage.

Hardware standardization is a problem in sites where all the computers run different operating systems or different versions of the same operating system. For instance, even on Macintoshes (traditionally where the hardware and software are more tightly integrated), although they have different processors, the PowerMac 8600s can be in the same lab with G3s. The blue and white G3s require an almost totally different system folder than the 8600s and beige G3s. This requires some fancy footwork to be able to get the 8600s, the 9600s, and the beige G3s all to work more or less with the same system folder.

When using image distribution software (such as ImageCast or Ghost) on Windows, separate images are required for every model and cards must be standardized in particular slots.

As students have more access to labs and computer cases are easier to open up, hardware security is more of an issue. Even with the security devices on the new computers, students will bring whatever they need, including their patience, to rip you off. This is not really a problem with monitors but keyboard and mice can disappear. The most simple anti-theft device is an easy configuration of washers and wires. Some labs are very concerned about software security and configure the machines so tightly that any changes are difficult. This can make it inconvenient to fix problems as they arise.

Macintosh Lab Management

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

Apple Network Administrator Toolkit (ANAT) is a comprehensive lab security and software management solution for Macintoshes. Its from Apple (http://www.apple.com/networking/anat/index.html) and it costs about $399. ANAT is a combination of two software products: AtEase 5.0 and Apple Network Assistant. In the past, Macintoshes have always been a single user computer, in the sense that there were no user accounts. ANAT gives access control to the Macintosh so that the user has to log on through server. ANAT gives access control to applications, documents, removable media, and restricts the use of certain printers. ANAT also establishes apple menu, document access and system resource access. Multiple user types are preconfigured such as student, teacher, administrator, so you don’t have to design your own configurations.

ANAT is user friendly. It saves individual user preferences for internet applications which eliminates the need to create generic profiles in Netscape. ANAT also allows students to have individual user preferences, bookmarks, printer quotas, and disk quotas. It automatically configures different save options so that the computer always saves by default to certain folders. ANAT runs with TCP/IP or AppleTalk. ANAT has a screen control capability so that an instructor can look at individual users’ screens and see what they are doing. Also, different lab users can be configured to share screens for a collaborative purpose.

ANAT is very good at software management. It can install applications on every computer. ANAT also has a lot of general administrative features, like tracking serial numbers and hardware profiles. ANAT can run an audit on each computer to determine how much memory it has, how big the hard drive is, what applications are resident and ANAT also does automated shutdown and start-up.

RevRdist is a hard drive synchronization tool that is used by CET and Middlebury College for lab management. RevRdist stands for Reverse Rdist--Rdist is a UNIX application which runs on a server and pushes a master image to clients. RevRdist is an application that runs on the client and pulls a master image from the server. RevRdist is freeware developed by Dale Talcott at Purdue University. RevRdist is Mac only. Based on a distribution (dist) file, RevRdist synchronizes the client machine’s hard drive with the master image. The system administrator put rules in the dist file concerning how the master image is distributed. Your dist file can range from being somewhat extremely simple, only a few rules, to extremely complex. All the processing occurs on the client, the files on the server are read only. Thus any AFP (Apple filesharing protocol) compliant file server can be used (either an Appleshare server, a Netware server with the Macintosh module installed, Windows NT services for Mac, or a UNIX server with one of the myriad AFP packages for UNIX).

RevRdist only replaces the things that are different between the master image and the client machine. RevRdist should only take as long as it takes to drag copies on network. We use RevRdist because we have a lot of stuff on our hard drives we don’t want to have changed. This looks very confusing but if you download RevRdist from Purdue (http://www.purdue.edu/revrdist), it comes with a default distribution file that will do most of what you need it to do. There are also many sample files on web site with different options and lots of commentary on how to do things, If you want to install an application throughout your lab, you copy the application to your master image and RevRdist all your machines and you’re done. RevRdist can also sweep all documents from wherever they have been saved into a lost and found folder in the client machine. So regardless of where a student saved their document, it will end up in the lost and found folder of the machine so they can come back and find it the next day.

MacAdministrator and MacPrefect are authentication and security tools, respectively, with some management and auditing capability. MacPrefect has different levels of security settings so that it can be configured either tightly or loosely depending on how malicious your users are. The whole MacAdmin suite allows user level access to Macintoshes. If your campus has Macintoshes in the lab but they don’t want to put any Macs in the server role, and you already have a good user data bases -- Novell, UNIX or whatever -- you can authenticate MacAdministrator against your existing database. MacAdmin also controls whether users can copy applications so it prevents people from stealing your software legally (which is important if you’re concerned with liability). MacAdmin can save individual application preferences, automounting of file servers, set up drop boxes for submitting work on servers, and, like ANAT, it can do system auditing to find out what kind of hardware and software is on your machines. MacPrefect is the security subset of MacAdmin. It doesn’t give you authentication but will give you the ability to prevent users from deleting applications, copying applications, accessing the system folder or control panels. MacAdmin is quite reasonably priced; ask about an education discount. More info is available from http://www.hi-resolution.com.

Windows/PC Lab Management

Presented by Jay Swan, CET System Administrator

On Windows machines, a disk imaging utility is used to get your first image onto your server. The most popular disk imaging utility is called Ghost which is DOS-based. Ghost enables a machine to be booted into DOS and then to connect to a server where the hard drive is downloaded byte by byte or bit by bit onto the client computer. Ghost is one of the most difficult pieces of software to use, but, once it is set up then it becomes easier.

There is a network-aware version of Ghost which allows TCP/IP multicasting. There is also the DOS-only utility where the image is on an external drive, a second hard drive or CD-ROM. Ghost is mostly used to boot an image off the CD-ROM to the hard drive. Ghost has problems with Windows NT security identifiers --the unique number that identifies each Windows NT computer on the network. When you join a domain, the machine is assigned a security identifier (SID) and that is how it is identified. If all the Windows NT workstations are ghosted from a master image, the SID will be the same on all the machines. This will confuse Windows NT but will not cause any catastrophic failures (but Windows 2000 may be a different case). There is now a Ghostwalker utility which will generate a statistically unique SID for each client but this requires manual intervention at each machine every time the lab is Ghosted.

Imagecast 3.0 is a hard drive imaging utility with a GUI (graphical user interface) and post imaging configuration options. The DOS boot disk still has to be made, but the GUI- based DOS boot maker will theoretically make the DOS boot disk for machines with different network cards. Imagecast has a menu driven DOS utility which enables you to configure the client side. Imagecast is a lot more user friendly than Ghost and allows some post-imaging manipulation. If you have a few machines that are identical except for their sound cards or if the sound cards are in different slots, it allows you to make hardware specific changes after initial configuration. Imagecast also automatically generates statistically different SIDs for each of the client workstations. More info at http://www.imagecast.com.

There are also many other hard-drive imaging utilities out there. There is a review of about ten different ones in Information Week, last year and it gives the pros and cons of all the different ones. (Do an Altavista search and it’ll pop up.) They listed Imagecast as by far the best.

PC-Rdist is a hard drive synchronization tool with registry management, GUI interface, and NT support. In many ways its like RevRdist but for PCs. However, unlike RevRdist, PCRdist is not freeware, it costs about $45 a seat and a site license is about $6,000. PCRdist 2.0 has a GUI interface and nice features. One of the problems with Windows software distribution and especially with Windows NT, is registry management. Version 2.0 handles registry problems very well. Unless otherwise specified, PCRdist will replace a file on the client: if something is missing on the client machine, if the file size is different, if the modification time on the client is different, and if the permissions have changed on the client. Also if there is something on the client that is not on the server, PCRdist will move it to the Lost and Found folder using the Junk option.

Lab Expert is a GUI-based, centrally managed lab administration tool which is really expensive. The image casting system with a centralized GUI interface is drag and drop. Lab Expert lets you remotely administer network machines. Initially, you have to manually install a few files on each machine and then its easy to manage. It keeps an image for the hard drive and a copy of the registry for each machine on the server. Lab Expert does basically the same things as PCRdist and has some really neat tools for tech heads. Lab Expert is a lot more expensive. The site license was listed as $10,000 last year. There is a program called Image Blaster, which is part of Lab Expert, that can be bought separately and, basically, it is just like Ghost or Image Cast.

Windows NT has its own security solutions, you just assign your users the appropriate privileges so that they can’t do anything dangerous.

UNIX and Mixed Environments

Presented by David Herren, Associate Director for Technology and Instruction

MacOS X Server (http://www.apple.com/macosx/server) is the first release of Apple’s next generation operating system. MacOS X Server will be followed by MacOS X (Client) later in 1999. Based upon technologies developed by NeXT Software and BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution) UNIX, this is a powerful, robust server and workstation operating system offering:

Quicktime 4.0 Streaming

NetInfo is a database technology for managing hierarchies of MacOS X and Openstep computers. NetInfo is now central to Macintosh management and netbooting of Macintosh clients. There are versions of NetInfo available for Linux and other UNIX flavors as well. The source code to NetInfo has been open sourced. For information about what NetInfo go to http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/n60038. For a basic introduction to NetInfo domains go to http://til.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n30832.

Network File System (NFS) is essentially the standard UNIX way of sharing files. It differs significantly from file sharing on the Macintosh and Windows platforms, and offers some significant advantages. It is "stateless" --the server can be restarted while machines and users are connected. Client machines will simply and transparently reconnect when the server comes back online. NFS is an important part of MacOS X.

Samba (http://www.samba.org) is a suite of UNIX tools and applications which provide Windows-style file and print serving to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT machines. It is an open source project, freely distributed. Out of the box, it is faster than Windows NT or Novell networking for Windows clients.