Sam Peterson wrote:
Appletalk is Apple's old home networking protocol. It's not used very much anymore.
It is actually, but most Mac networks. These days it's encapsulated in TCP/IP [summer@bilby log]$ grep -w 548 /etc/services afpovertcp 548/tcp # AFP over TCP afpovertcp 548/udp # AFP over TCP [summer@bilby log]$
You can still get a brace of Apples and wire them together without a server and start sharing files, music, photos, video and what have you. No DHCP or DNS required. As far as I can see it's much easier to use than Windows networks: Windows uses DNS to find a domain controller from which it can find printers etc whereas the Apples running OS (including the latest OS X) just find them.
If you have Apple's wireless, just being in range of the Airport's enough, depending on whether (and how) it's configured.
Read up on Zeroconf, Rendezvous and Bonjour. Some of it's in Linux, but it needs spit and polish applied. Lots of spit and polish.