Overview | Features/Benefits | Specifications | System Requirements
Top Honors | Efficiency for End Users

With everyone claiming the best NFS performance, how do you evaluate the differences? Any NFSsoftware worth considering supports NFS v3 and delivers comparable performance statistics.Once you sort out the competing performance claims, the real differences come down to InterDrive Client's unmatched reliability, superior management features, and ease of use for administrators and end users. Plus, there's the cost advantage of buying a standalone NFS solution, rather than more expensive, bundled products.

Unmatched Reliability

What good is performance without high reliability? NetManage's award-winning InterDrive products have long been recognized for their outstanding reliability and performance, especially on high-traffic networks. Almost any NFS product will performwell in low-traffic environments. InterDrive Client continues to perform where other NFS products fail. In fact, the client has been tested using over 5,000 simultaneous connections.

Integration and Manageability

InterDrive Client is clearly ahead of the rest. It's totally integrated with Windows 95, Windows 98,  and Windows NT operating systems and user interfaces. You can set up and configure everything - NFS connections, passwords, global or individual connection properties, and tuning options - from Windows Explorer or Network Neighborhood. Individual user settings can be set up and maintained for situations where multiple users work on the same PC. Right mouse button support linked to Properties menus makes it easy to set operational parameters.

Automatically and Dynamically Set Efficiencies

InterDrive Client's autotuning feature optimizes performance under constantly changing network conditions. For example, autotuning adjusts read and write sizes based on the number of packet retransmissions that might occur due to network collisions or hardware problems. This autotuning feature is optional and can be selected as required.

Peak Local and Network Performance

InterDrive Client uses the Windows 95 Cache Manager (VCache) and its own internal cache mechanism to store information about network files and folders locally. Caching improves the performance of any application using network files. VCache support provides unlimited dynamically allocated memory. InterDrive Client also takes advantage of the many features of the NFS v3 protocol that enhance performance, including efficient directory lookups - now executed in a single transaction - plus both read and write caching and larger read and write data sizes.

InterDrive Client is a 32-bit, multi-threaded, kernel-space implementation that works at the same level of priority as the operating system to ensure optimum network performance.

Create a Direct Path to NFS Servers

For faster NFS file connections, InterDrive Client gives users the option to establish a direct path to NFS servers in Windows Explorer. This Direct NFS drive is used to avoid connection conflicts with other network clients in multiprotocol environments. Ordinarily, when connecting to network resources in Network Neighborhood or Windows Explorer, Windows sends connections through its Multiple Provider Router (MPR) infrastructure. With Direct NFS, instead of time-consuming routing through multiple protocols to make connections, the mapped Direct NFS drive searches for or connects to only NFS servers. This unique InterDrive Client feature shortens connection time and improves reliability by avoiding operating system collisions and eliminating "failure to connect" messages caused by competing network protocols.

Direct NFS also extends the Microsoft Universal Naming Convention (UNC) capability by recognizing \\$InterDrive\$Net as a direct pointer to the NFS infrastructure, thus avoiding collisions and improving performance for both graphical and command-line applications. Direct NFS also expands the networking capabilities of 16-bit Windows and DOS applications running in 32-bit environments that do not support the Microsoft  UNC to allow these applications to browse network file servers.

NFS Simplified

Making connections is easy with InterDrive Client. Users select network drives, directories, files, printers, and other devices in the same way that they select them on the Windows desktop.

InterDrive Client also enables shortcuts to network resources using aliasing. A shorthand name or alias can be assigned to the long network path that was previously required to reach NFS resources. These resources now appear in the Network Neighborhood with common names for designated hosts. Aliases can have their own settings for security, performance, and permissions - or can use system or host defaults.

InterDrive Client includes Network Information System (NIS) Automap integration within Windows Explorer. This integration provides a centralized directory service that graphically displays remote NIS automount maps and the configured resources available to NFS Clients. Users only need to know the appropriate NIS server to find listings of available resources.

Right mouse button support throughout InterDrive Client allows changes to be made "on-the-fly" to network connections, including file permissions and performance settings, without disconnecting services. Users can also save time and effort by remapping exported file systems and subdirectories. Instead of navigating through a complex directory hierarchy, users can assign a drive letter for direct access to a folder.
File locking/sharing maintains file integrity by preventing more than one user from opening and changing a file at any time.

InterDrive Client provides user authentication for file and print sharing with NIS or PCNFSD protocols. These security features help protect sensitive data residing on network servers.

With InterDrive Client, users can check disk quotas simply by clicking on "My Computer" and viewing the properties of a networked drive. The UNIX remote quota daemon and InterDrive Client are used to retrieve and to report on disk quotas. This unique feature allows users to plan and modify disk utilization before it becomes a problem. No other NFS product has this capability.