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Especially those with a list of apps, mashups or what ever the buzzword is today on top of that without links. Make your own decisions. BTW I only count 8.
There is also the printable version
- FileWave
- NetOctopus
- LANrev
- Radmind
- ManageSoft
- LANDesk
- Timbuktu
- NTRsupport

Especially those with a list of apps, mashups or what ever the buzzword is today on top of that without links. Make your own decisions. BTW I only count 8.
There is also the printable version
- FileWave
- NetOctopus
- LANrev
- Radmind
- ManageSoft
- LANDesk
- Timbuktu
- NTRsupport

Not so fast! Apple's systems have been booting from network images and supporting network installation, if memory serves, before such tricks were even possible on the Windows PC due in part to their use of Open Firmware way back when (they use EFI now-a-days). Network boot and install was difficult and unreliable on the Windows PC until quite recently. I was told by various vendors including Dell as recently as two years ago (some of their models worked and some of them didn't) that limitations of the firmware in most PCs were to blame. In private conversations the engineers working on these products admitted that they were basically waiting for the hardware to catch up and that certain models which my client had just purchased (by the many thousands) would probably never work reliably for network booting and network install due to these issues. On the PC platform there were various remote management hacks, uh, initiatives, like WOL and PXE designed to help get around the hurdle of broken-by-design PC firmware. Finally a modern (e.g. extensible and thus as capable as the decades-old Open Firmware platform) firmware for the PC was designed by Intel, the EFI - Extensible Firmware Interface.

On the Macintosh, by contrast, remote booting and remote installation "just worked". For years. Even before the Intel based Macintosh. Yes. It did. No kinda sorta about it. When Windows LAN administrators were wasting bazillions of dollars in the systems integration labs of Fortune 500 and government agencies all over the world, this "just worked" on the Macintosh.

Various products, including some from IBM, are available to assist with remote management of the Macintosh, not to mention the nice built-in stuff like OpenDirectory.

NetBoot and Network Install
NetOctopus
IBM TIvoli Storage Manager

IBM, by the way, makes multiple overlapping (and sometimes competing) software distribution and imaging products. You have, I think, seen one of their other products, the name of which keeps changing to escape it's reputation as being utterly craptastic, but which usually has something like "Remote" in the name. What you (most likely) saw was called (if memory serves) RIM (Remote Installation Manager) and is presently marketed as IBM Remote Deployment Manager part of a product suite called IBM Director. This product doesn't support the Macintosh but that doesn't imply that the Macintosh isn't ready for the enterprise. It might, in fact, imply the opposite -- that Windows isn't really ready for enterprise scale deployment.

There are litterally tens of billions of dollars per year worth of enterprise systems management products on the market which are totally irrelevant to managing an enterprise network of Macintosh computers not because they don't support the Macintosh (which I freely admit most of them do not) but because the Macintosh doesn't need them to be deployed and managed at a large scale. These products largely exist to fix things which are broken in Windows, things which are problems only when you need to deploy and manage lots of machines, things which are not broken in Mac OS X. (I know this because I am an enterprise systems and network architecture consultant, and I help fix scalability problems related to enterprise systems management for Fortune 500 and government clients.)

I wish that I could do a case study comparing two interesting organizations with which I am intimately familiar, but unfortunately I learned this stuff off the record and cannot reveal the organization names.

Maybe you should read up a bit on Mac solutions before you comment- software like Apple Remote Desktop, FileWave, NetOctopus, NetBoot/NetRestore, Radmind, HP OpenView, Deep Freeze and resources like AFP548, Mac Managers, MacOSX Labs, MacEnterprise, and of course Apple itself (I'll leave finding Apple's website as an exercise for the reader ;) make running large Macintosh installations fairly easy. There are plenty of UNIX/CLI tools and scripts out there, and Apple offers professional certifications if you want paper to show a potential employer.

Nobodies safe anymore, not XP, not Linux.

If you have a couple of hundred Macs to update, you not only have to worry about the OS, but also the applications. That's where the third-party file distribution application help you. There is the open source 'rsync' ofcourse, but that doesn't really help you with the packaging of say, the upgrade of Adobe Photoshop 7 to CS, nor the distribution of it. The program I'm most fond of is FileWave http://www.filewave.com/. With this you can distribute any software package, update, document to any number of Macs, with any different number of persons or workgroups. It's quite costly, but if the number of Macs exceeds the hundred and/or you have different, far stretched locations, it could save you a bundle. Once the package is distributed, also to any laptop users, you can set a time in the future to activate the new package, and optionally deactivate the old package. This way you can distribute the software in advance, handy on slow uplinks, but activate it all at the same time.

There is also NetOctopus http://www.netopia.com/software/products/netoctopu s/, but I have no experience with that.

Couple this with ARD for remote support.

Since you asked about something that would phone home I would suggest Timbuktu from Netopia. There was a story a few years ago about how a brother recovered his sister's stolen computer by using its phone home functionality.

Since you asked about something that would phone home I would suggest Timbuktu from Netopia. There was a story a few years ago about how a brother recovered his sister's stolen computer by using its phone home functionality.

NetOctopus
http://www.netopia.com/software/products/netoctopu s/

Timbuktu

It's not free, but it has Windows and Macintosh versions. And it's like sitting at the computer, at least on a LAN, whereas VNC refreshes very slowly.

Ummm... not true, at least as written. Timbuktu and the like have been responsible for plenty of compromises, and lousy network security and setup has been responsible for others.

The big "advantage" of 9 is that there's really nothing to do once you have remote access. You need a control interface -- either GUI or shell -- and 9 doesn't have one built in.

i wish i could tell you how many lives and how much money but im lazy. here is a sample, washoe county nevada: population 375,000, size 6,608 sware miles. this team rescues about 400 people per year and saves the taxpayers about $500,000 (volunteers). Of course, this is the sierra-nevadas where its eaisyer to get lost than most places but i would guess that nationally, we are talking about 1000's of lives and 100 millions of dollars. I would love to teach teh world to use and read maps. I have personally taught over 200 people. if there were more people out there teaching like me, we wouldn't have the map-illiteracy we have. Fact it, its not working, time to try something new. Further, in america, we almost always choose the technological answer over the simplistic. (no traffic circles, just lights) its a part of our culture. more people will take a key fob with them than sit through a 2 hour map reading course and take a map with them. True that most killed are high-adventurers but even davey crochett got lost for a few days. sech and rescue teams find bodys hanging on rocks better than people wandering lost. let em die you say. sure i guess we could do that. personally, i would like to think that we use our knowlage, money, technology, and intellegence to do something more for our citizens.

I don't install very often because I use a Mac running OSX. When i get a new machine though, here are my top ten:

1) Menu Meters -- I couldn't live without it
2) SQLGrinder -- great DB programming tool
3) SubEthaEdit -- great editor, supports collaborative development via Rendezvous
4) Little Snitch -- lets me know when a program tries to go out on the network on its own.
5) BBEdit -- the ultimate editor. How does anyone ever live without it?
6) Timbuktu -- great for managing all those Macs and PCs remotely.

Timbuktu Pro.

• What's the difference between Webfile and Netfile?
  
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After tossing several routers, I bought a Netopia R910 router. It cost more than the cheap routers, but it actually works and doesn't need periodic resets. Netopia also appears to be a real company with an in-house engineering staff.

Of all the companies selling networking equipment, how many actually design and program their own equipment?

I've used VNC server/client combinations to update and check on remote *nix systems for a little while now. Copies for many different operating systems, including Windows 98, can be checked here. It's simple, but it gets the job done. I like it because I can administer from wherever I need to.

Timbuktu has similar features, but its Windows compatibility is less extensive and its not free (in either way). It does have a more extensive feature set though, so I reccommend at least giving it a look if you look at VNC.

The main issue I've found with these is their use of bandwidth. Even then, quality can be reduced and compression can be increased for responsiveness. Good luck.

University of West Florida does just this-they have a firewall that completely blocks all P2P software ports. Kazaa, gnutella, whatever, it just doesn't work. I think I have the only solution - get Timbuktu installed on my home computer, remotely download files from my cable modem and then upload to my college box. Ta-da!

Apple Remote Desktop ($300/10 licenses) -- You obviously know about this one. It's really more intended for shared-screen teaching and remote administration than extended interaction, but it does work. The pricing is a bit steep for two connections, but the license is good for ten systems. It is also dog slow over anything besides a LAN.

Timbuktu ($180/2 licenses) - This is the long-time cross-platform remote desktop champ. It lets you do anything you would want on the remote machine and is extremely quick and easy to use. The pricing keeps creeping up, but for remote access to the OS X desktop, there really is nothing better.

Obviously, there are other options out there (e.g., X11, VNC). They won't give you access to the full Mac desktop, but they may suffice for your actual needs, and they're certainly a lot cheaper.

If you aren't going to be accessing any *nix boxes you might want to take a look at Timbukto . Its nice for Windows and Mac (including OS/X) and is only about 11 Mb installed. The only downfall I have had using it is that it can suck up bandwidth with multiple connections open.

Word of caution though, and I'm sure you've heard it before. Don't upgrade the firmware unless you are having problems. One time I updated the firmware on one of these routers, and ended up breaking more things than I was trying to fix! I called up Netopia's support line, and apparently this upgrade was a buggy one, it had only been posted on the FTP site for a few hours when they found the bugs. Bad luck for me trying to update during that time though. But hey, those are the breaks.

The old Timbuktu does a decent job. I have a client that's moved a number of their machines over to that to replace pcAnywhere. They feel it's faster and has less impact on the remote machine. I believe it gives you something that pcAnywhere doesn't have: you can have multiple clients connected at once as long as at most one is in Control mode (vs. Observe mode).

Netopia has a multiple idsl unit, upto 576Kbps per unit (4x144kbps). Get 3 of these and combine the bandwidth for 1728kbps worth of bandwidth.

$1200 (3x) Netopia R3100-I
$600 (12x) ISDN line
$2500 ISP data charge

One thing that you should know about the netopia if you have used it is that if you like a command line interface similar to a Cisco router instead of the menu interface you get at first just hit CTRL-N and it will toggle between the menu and command line interface. There is a manual for this command line interface you will need since there is no online help available at http://www.netopia.com/equipment/pdf/manuals/CLI/C LI_49.pdf

In terms of my experience using the netopia R910 and R9100 models they will do pretty much everything you could want from a device at this price range. I setup a VPN with 5 R9100's using IPSEC encrypted with 3DES (Only supported if you add the encryption card) and it works great. Also if you are comfortable with the slightly reduced security of PPTP you can setup a small number of users for VPN using just the normal microsoft PPTP client software included out of the box in Windows98 and up without needing a Windows NT box with RRAS installed.

If you want to serve multiple web sites most of the cheap router/firewalls cannot utilize any more that 1 IP address on the WAN interface which means you can only map port 80 once to an internal server. With the Netopia you are able to map multiple IP's from the WAN port to internal servers. This means that if you want to map port 80 on your second static IP to a different server, you can. The only problem is if you get multiple IP's via DHCP I don't think you can do it, but that's understandable.

Some other features that a power user might like are SNMP manageability, Radius client for configuration logon authentication, PPPoE support, AUX port can be hooked up to a modem for dial backup, optional Appletalk support including AURP for tunneling, DHCP address serving, syslog event logging support, and more!

One of the only areas I personally have found a bit weak is in the routing area. The netopia R series only supports RIP but not any of the more modern protocols like EIGRP or BGP or anything like that so you pretty much need to use RIP which I have always found requires certain prayers and offerings to work, or use static routing. Oh but one nice feature is that you can insert static ARP entries using the command line. This is useful if you are on subnetted ADSL and need to be able to communicate with someone else on the same class C as refered to in this local providers FAQ

I actually currently have a back to back SDSL connection using Net to Net tech equipment. I am currently at ~17k total loop length (from me to the CO is like 2k feet, but from the CO to the ISP is ~15k), and am sync'd at a stable 1536kbps (I was at 2.3mbps, however that dropped several times a day for a few seconds)... Mind you, I'm not actually getting that much bandwidth (I can't afford it), but its cool that I *could* (I was able to verify that when I got the DSL line installed). While it is true you can use back to back Netopia's (tech note on how to do it is Here appearently it only works with R7100/R7171 Netopia routers, meaning if you have an R7200, your out of luck.) I prefer Using a dumb bridge, and letting my gateway do outbound load balancing between my 2 DSL lines anyway (I can do nifty things like policy routing, etc on my gateway that I cant on a Netopia..).

Where 'bonding' doesn't lead to group hugs! >> The Linux Pimp

Where 'bonding' doesn't lead to group hugs! >> The Linux Pimp

I recommend Timbuktu. The enterprise version has extensive security policy management, and a private key system to ensure security over untrusted networks.

Four years ago, I worked at a helpdesk where we rolled out Timbuktu, (like PCAnywhere, but seamlessly cross-platform Mac and PC,) to the whole company. It worked beautifully and resulted in huge increases in employee satisfaction with IT, plus huge time savings on both ends. And that was with only one 70-person office.

As the above poster mentioned, the best solution turned out to be combined phone and remote support. A customer would call, and we'd connect to their machine. We would have them exmplain the problem and show us what they were doing first. If we could just guide and coach them over the phone and watch while they performed the solution, that was always preferable. We only took control of their machine if the solution was complex and not something they would ever need to do themselves.

(BTW, if you have multiple offices, and long-distrance calls are an issue, I believe Timbuktu can even set up IP voice connections to accompany remote connections.)

Just being able to watch their screen passively eliminated all of the communication problems that normally make phone support so difficult, and eliminated people sitting idle waiting for a techie to come to their desk. This type of combination support works better than anything else I've seen.

Security was a big issue with the company, but Timbuktu's extensive security policy management system gave us the flexibility we needed to satisfy our CEO's paranoid fears about being spyed on. Of course, employees had to give permission before we could connect to their machine.

The above post should be modded up above 0 - the information was handy, Timbuktu information can now be found at: Timbuktu Info

And yes, this product seems to work nicely inter-OS.

Thanks for the update, dude...

Pretty much anything related to software development. I mean you get a free (high quality) optimizing compiler, debugger, a whole load of libraries, etc.

Network servers. I hope I don't need to say any more about that.

Remote access. I can log into my computer at work from home, and do everything I could do if I was actually sitting in my office!

Mathematical typesetting. Nothing beats TeX and LaTeX when it comes to this. Sure, there's TeX for Macs, but (AFAIK) you have to buy it.

I admit that if I was building a system purely for free software development or as a network server, I wouldn't think of the Mac first. However, I don't think these are the kind of "applications" the original author had in mind (except maybe mathematical typesetting).