As I've continued to play around with retro computing environments, based largely in virtual labs built with various incarnations of Qemu, I've run into some situations where I either needed or wanted to route some native Appletalk servers over IP networks, where Appletalk routers don't exist in between - or, at the very least, the routers don't have Appletalk services enabled, and I am not in control of the routers. It's also possible that I'm trying to contain my ancient computing environments enough that I both don't expose my overall environment to needless risk, and that I keep an InfoSec team happy that my activities are not doing that. So, how is one to overcome the obstacles of Layer 3 segmentation and Appletalk routing in 2025?
Simple: Linux. Okay, of course Linux - that's obvious, let's get more specific.
The biggest item you'll need - running on Linux, of course - is Netatalk. Netatalk is an open source Apple compatibility software suite for Linux, specializing in supporting some of the older Mac technologies, most notably the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP). In fact, version 3.x and 4.x of Netatalk really only support AFP. However, if you go back to the 2.x release, which still has some level of active maintenance on it (git code was updated in October 2024), you'll find it supports quite a wide range of Apple services - beyond AFP, it also supports printing (PAP), time synchronization (timelord), and, the one we're most interested in, Appletalk (atalk). Appletalk was a network protocol similar to Internet Protocol (IP) and IPX/SPX, and included features like network and node addressing that allowed it to inter-connect Apple systems over a wide range of networks, distances, media types, etc.
Several vendors included Appletalk routing in their products, as well. Cisco routers had it built in for years - and may still have the feature present (I haven't been on a Cisco router in a decade or more, so I'm not sure about that). Also, notably, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server had a service that could be installed called "Services for Macintosh," which included, among other things (more on those in a future post), the capability to set up Windows to create Appletalk Zones (the equivalent of IP subnets) and route between them. Ultimately IP won out over the likes of Appletalk (and IPX/SPX, and a few others), but not before many organizations built out rather large Appletalk networks connecting Macintosh as well as other Apple platforms together with this protocol.
