Introduction:
Happy New Year! Unigroup is starting out our 1998 season with a meeting on NFS (the Network File System), the de-facto standard for Unix Networked filesystems. This meeting is one in a series of meetings we are planning on Unix to Non-Unix integration and connectivity. In the past, we have seen presentations on Unix-based NFS implementations, this month we will be looking at the opposite side of the issue, in particular an NFS client and server implementation for MS-Windows (particularly 95 and NT) based systems and how this implementation interacts with NFS running under Unix. Products exist for Unix which will make a Unix system emulate NT server protocols (eg. Samba and SCO's Advanced File and Print Server), just as products exist which will allow a Windows system to be an NFS client and/or server (eg. Hummingbird's NFS Maestro, Sun's PC-NFS). Our speaker, Fred Whiteside, is the co-founder of Beame & Whiteside Software (now part of Hummingbird Communications) and has been implementing the TCP/IP and NFS client/server protocols on DOS/Windows platforms for over a decade.
Description of Talk:
Our speaker will discuss of the issues involved in implementing NFS on Microsoft operating systems. Emphasis will be placed on the particular challenges of interfacing filesystems with different semantics. Information covering how to optimize NFS servers for use with PC environments in terms of network bandwidth will be provided and file solution architectures will also be discussed.
Bio of Speaker: Fred Whiteside
Armed with degrees in computer science and physics from McMaster University, Whiteside was teaching at the university when he met Carl Beame, an employee of the campus computing centre. Together, they successfully undertook the challenge of creating terminal emulation and TCP/IP software. And the rest, as they say, was software history.
In September, 1986, Whiteside and Beame created their own company, Beame & Whiteside, and began their rise to the top of the TCP/IP and NFS connectivity software market. By 1993, there were 15 Beame & Whiteside employees working out of Beame's home office over the garage on his 15-acre property in Caledonia, Ontario.
While the two partners continued their work in Caledonia, the company moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. The majority of our customers were in the U.S. and Raleigh offered a highly skilled workforce.
Beame & Whiteside continued to succeed.
Since its beginning, Beame & Whiteside's TCP/IP stack was used by Hummingbird for development purposes, so the two companies worked closely together. Beame & Whiteside benefited from Hummingbird's international reseller channels and marketing strategies. And in April, 1995 Hummingbird bought Beame & Whiteside. By combining Hummingbird's PC X server products and X development tools with Beame & Whiteside TCP/IP and NFS products, Hummingbird broadened its portfolio of PC-to-UNIX/X connectivity products, and was able to provide solutions to a wider spectrum of customers. Now customers would benefit by being able to procure leading TCP/IP and X Windows products from one source, in a better integrated and streamlined fashion.
Beame & Whiteside's Raleigh facility has become the center of Hummingbird's TCP/IP networking software operations. NFS development was eventually moved to the North York headquarters.
Whiteside took on his position in Hummingbird's Research and Development Department, with no regrets.
Description of Hummingbird Communications:
Hummingbird Communications Ltd. specializes in the development of enterprise connectivity software products and document distribution solutions that provide high performance access to internetwork-based information and applications. Hummingbird is best known for their PC based X-Server product called "Exceed". Years ago, Hummingbird made a couple of presentations on their technology to Unigroup. We are pleased to have them back again.
Refreshments will be served.
Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!
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