From: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
Subject: B&W 3.0 - - changes under Windows - - Cat's Meow!
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 03:14:00 GMT
Organization: Macro Computer Solutions, Inc., Chicago, IL

Those of you who haven't upgraded your B&W NFS package to V3.0, and use MS
Windows 3.1, REALLY ought to do so.

I've checked out the following at this point:

1)	Faster printing -- like 3-6x the old speed.  This appears to have
	been accomplished by allowing >512 byte writes to print spool files.
	The result is incredibly fast printing from Windows applications to
	the network printers, as well as from DOS printers.

2)	Windows print and file browser -- Now THIS is nice.  If you compile
	and install the new bwnfsd you can now view the queues on the
	server and select them from a menu.  Same for filesystem mounts.
	A >nice< change - and about time.  This is something I used to be
	able to do from Novell, but not NFS.  No longer.  Also, reverse-map 
	lookups for the names of printer and fileserver hosts now work from 
	inside windows (they used to all display as "\\NFS\" for the machine
	name).

3)	Telnet to your PC (!) and get a DOS character mode session.

4)	FTP to or from your PC and get files from it.

5)	Use it as an LPD print server (!) from both DOS and Windows.

6)	FTP >FROM< windows in a window mode and play "move the file" easily --
	VERY easily.  Like no "get and put" commands at all!  Just move
	files -- the way you'd expect to in a "point-n-click" interface.  
	(this one I did not expect; its REALLY nice -- nice and simple enough 
	that FTP is now reasonable for "non-technical" users to engage in...)
	I gotta try this on the real Internet; some of those "unmanageable"
	sites with 10,000 directories are likely much more reasonable when
	you can scroll through the lists!

7)	Somehow, Beame seems to have made the file browser about 300% faster
	with this release than it was before.  I don't quite understand the 
	reasons for this -- but it IS.  Something has changed here for the 
	better internally :-)

8)	Bw220 (the telnet emulator) under windows now displays the different
	sessions in different windows.  This makes bw220 a real alternative
	for character-mode applications that one used to use an X emulator
	for before.  Being able to have multiple windows up on a big Windows
	monitor, all active, all in different windows is really nice -- and
	being able to do it without having to deal with the X11 overhead is
	even better.

9)	"add-on" software which uses the transport seems to run faster.  I
	haven't quantified this yet, but in particular X emulators seem to
	be quite a bit faster under 3.0

10)	SNMP is now supported (!) on the PCs through a load-in module that 
	requires about 2K.  MIBs are loadable (there are a bunch of them).

11)	BWTAR can back up your system to a remote tape drive!  Now that's
	seriously nice.  (Its about time.)  I've seen this in PCNFS'
	lifeline, but never in an integrated package.  You can go to devices
	on your PC OR to a server's tape device -- if you can "rsh" to the
	server.  Damn nice; there goes my need for Fastback!

On the bad side:

ETHDEV.SYS and TCPIP.SYS >still< do not like to load high on a number of
machines with QEMM.  That's not a real big deal, but it detracts from what 
would otherwise be a picture-perfect package.  I can live with this; it 
means that I lose something like 35K or so of low memory on a '386, but 
the other two components (BWRPC and BWNFS) do load high properly.

That's it for "complaints".

If you can't tell I really like the new release.  Highly recommended, 
especially for Windows users.  If you use Windows, this release makes your
PC as nice as some of the other network systems such as Novell as far as the
ability to "see" what's going on.

All in all, Beame keeps the edge in a big way... 

Now all I need is the promised electronic mail package which was supposed to
ship with 3.0 but is a little late......  ;-)

If its anything like the rest of the package, Sun >really< has some worrying
to do.  B&W 3.0 is the "benchmark" to beat now.

-- 
Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
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