Product Reviews

Usually when you need to send a document to a client, you have to either call the courier company or struggle up four flights of stairs to the ISDN machine. In an attempt to end this hassle, JPY's ISDNShare provides a transparent connection between AppleTalk-based Local Area Networks, enabling you to see the client's computer, select it, and then simply transfer a file to it.

Currently, the ISDN market is all about peer-to-peer file transfer - a connection made from one Mac to another using ISDN. For other Macs to use it, you have to buy additional software. This requires configuration, extra memory, maintenance and training. If you're a repro house sending files out to different clients every day, this is ideal, simply because you can key in a new address and telephone number, dial up, and send the client your document. However, if you're dialling the same few numbers many times in a week, this becomes a tiresome way of transferring files.

ISDNShare sits in a router - a box that connects your network to another network on request. As ISDNShare routes AppleTalk, and you can select a remote Mac from within the Chooser, so it requires minimal maintenance (no system upgrades, hard disks, and so on), no additional training, and gives pure ease of use.

The problem with doing this in the past has been with some of the AppleTalk services, particularly AppleShare. AppleShare 'chats' almost constantly. In other words, the reason that Mac users have had network plug-and-play for years is that each Mac running AppleShare broadcasts a message across the network to check for other Macs and let them know it's there.

This is fine across a LAN, until you try to route it across ISDN, because

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the chatter keeps the ISDN link alive constantly, therefore rendering an ISDN LAN-to-LAN router unworkable. JPY gets around this problem by using 'spoofing'. When a Mac asks if another Mac is there, ISDNShare lies to it, so the first Mac believes the other Mac is there, even though the router hasn't brought up the ISDN line.

Another increasingly common problem for network administrators is that of software that broadcasts its serial number over the network. JPY has firewalled traffic leaving your LAN so that the router can be set up to only allow PAP (printer) and AppleShare (AFP) protocols to dial up the other LAN. So launching Photoshop will not bring up the ISDN line either.

We tested ISDNShare on a 3Com Worldwide OfficeConnect Remote router, as 3Com is the first company to bring a product to market under licence of JPY. For those not familiar with zoning, the router sets up a local network and a remote network. You can then select AppleShare from your Chooser, pick the remote network that you want to connect to, and then select the name of the remote Mac. After that, it's just a case of entering your user ID and password.

As with any router, you can use a VT emulator to set up the router or use JPY's more Mac-like software. Many network manufacturers such as Farallon with its Netopia router, are providing browser (Netscape or MIE) configuration by using a HTML-driven front-end, which takes out the need for specialist software and deems the router configurable from any computer in the building. This is something for router manufacturers to work at, and JPY should be encouraged to work with the manufacturers in that direction, rather than adding to the network administration software mountain. If a router manufacturer with a dial-up ISDN Internet router adopts this, it will become the default Mac small-office router.

All our tests proved this to be an excellent product which does exactly what you want it to - dial up a remote site only when you really want it.

Whether your servers are remote from your imagesetters, or your company occupies two or more buildings, ISDNShare is a dream network product. If you're a network administrator running AppleTalk, take a close look at this product before you invest in a Mac, a card and peer-to-peer software.