Gateway Services for Netware is installed on an NT server. GSNW chief advantage is that you can avoid having to install Client Services for NetWare (CSNW) on every NT workstation needing access to Netware file and print services. GSNW uses a single Netware license for the gateway function. CSNW also uses a single Netware license for each workstation it is installed on. One should install CSNW on workstations needing heavy and frequent access to Netware services and those users with infrequent access needs can all use the NT server's GSNW gateway.

The other side of the licensing issue is performance. Gateway services are significantly slower than client services since the NT server is acting as gateway between the client requests and the Netware services. The nt account running GSNW must have the appropriate access rights to Netware services and it must be a member of the group NTGATEWAY on the Netware file server.

A potential gotcha! for NT users is long file name support. To use long file names, the Netware server with bindery services has to have an OS/2 name space on the Netware volumes that will store the long file names. Othewise, only 8.3 DOS FAT convention is supported. Netware 4+ servers support the Long Name Space option.

If you are considering or planning a conversion.