AppleTalk has been the mainstay of Macintosh networking for a decade, but it’s time to stick a fork in it: it’s done. Anyone building a Macintosh office network today bases it entirely on TCP/IP for Internet-wide accessibility, improved performance, and compatibility with third-party networking products. Alas, migrating an existing AppleTalk network to TCP/IP can be a painful process. Open Door Networks’ AppleTalk to IP Migration Suite eases your pain by giving you tools to make the AppleTalk-to-TCP/IP transition gradually.
The Migration Suite bundles four Open Door products–ShareWay IP Professional Edition 2.0, DoorStop 1.0.1, LogDoor 2.2, and AFP Engage 2.0.1–with a Web-based tutorial that explains migration strategies. The package also gives you templates that help you organize and plan your move, along with helpful tutorials on IP printing and TCP/IP security. Following the three-step plan outlined in the migration tutorial, you first establish concurrent AppleTalk and TCP/IP routing throughout your network. You then use ShareWay IP Pro to make existing AppleTalk Filing Protocol (AFP) servers visible on the TCP/IP network, and finally minimize or eliminate AFP altogether by replacing existing AFP server software with IP-capable software.
ShareWay IP Pro is the central component of the suite, giving AFP servers TCP/IP access by mapping individual servers to a single IP address. The program supports the Service Location Protocol (SLP), a TCP/IP standard for providing Chooser-like access to servers across a wide-area network. Remote users can get to any AFP server made accessible by ShareWay IP Pro using a Web browser or the supplied AFP Engage client rather than the Chooser.
Security is a concern any time you connect a network to the Internet. The Migration Suite’s security component is DoorStop, a TCP/IP filtering package that controls access to servers from the Internet by IP address and protocol. Unlike traditional firewalls, DoorStop doesn’t offer centralized protection–you need to run a copy on each server. And you must configure each DoorStop installation separately, multiplying security-administration chores and increasing the possibility of leaving security holes.
LogDoor, the final component of the Migration Suite, provides log analysis and reporting for events recorded by ShareWay IP Pro, DoorStop, and Open Door’s AFP Logger (not included in the suite), as well as for other Web servers’ logs. LogDoor can display real-time traffic graphs or output batch reports periodically to HTML or text files.
Individually, each tool in the suite handles its assigned task well, and the excellent Web-based tutorials clearly explain how to pull off a successful migration. However, the tools themselves are not integrated–you have to do a lot of reading before putting the suite to work.
Macworld’s Buying AdviceIf you’re still running a multizone AppleTalk network, you need to make the move to TCP/IP. AppleTalk to IP Migration Suite simplifies the process by letting you gradually shift services from AppleTalk to IP and gives you a great education in the process. Migrating an AppleTalk network to IP will never be fun, but with this suite it can be painless.
RATING: 
September 1999 page: 51