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Welcome to the Netatalk wiki - Open Source file sharing for the Apple Macintosh since 1990! Here you can find and contribute to collaborative articles covering topics regarding Netatalk features as well as Mac and Apple II file sharing and networking.

What is Netatalk?

Netatalk is a cross-platform open source implementation of AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), the protocol used for file sharing on Apple II, Classic Mac OS, and Mac OS X. At the time of writing, AFP is one of several file sharing protocols with client support in macOS.

Architecture

Netatalk implements AFP over TCP. The session layer used to carry AFP over TCP is called DSI. The complete stack looks like this:

          AFP
           |
          DSI
           |
           | (port:548)
           |
   -+---------------------------+- (kernel boundary)
    |         Socket            |
    +------------+--------------+
    |     TCP    |    UDP       |
    +------------+--------------+
    |       IP v4 or v6         |
    +---------------------------+
    |     Network Interface     |
    +---------------------------+

When Netatalk is built with AFP over AppleTalk for very old Macs, the complete network stack looks like this on a *BSD system:

    AFP                          AFP
     |                            |
    ASP    PAP                   DSI
      \   /                       |
       ATP RTMP NBP ZIP AEP       | (port:548)
        |    |   |   |   |        |
   -+---------------------------------------------------+- (kernel boundary)
    |                    Socket                         |
    +-----------------------+------------+--------------+
    |                       |     TCP    |    UDP       |
    |          DDP          +------------+--------------+
    |                       |       IP v4 or v6         |
    +-----------------------+---------------------------+
    |                Network Interface                  |
    +---------------------------------------------------+

See the DEVELOPER readme for descriptions of the AppleTalk family of protocols.

External Links

See Netatalk Links