OS/2 Warp was designed and maintained by IBM in an era when online security and the need for tight encryption even on the local network was considerably different than today. IBM’s SMB (Server Message Block), which was to become the cornerstone for Windows networking today, while robust for its time, cannot be used securely in modern environments.
By leveraging open standards for security and networking, such as Kerberos and Samba, porting those technologies to the OS/2 platform, and then designing and building “shim” components so that they fit as established applications expect, Arca Noae has moved OS/2 into the current decade.
No longer must enterprises maintain a separate, isolated network infrastructure to support their installed OS/2 stations. Instead, these systems may peacefully coexist with all other modern platforms on the same network segments, participating in the same network authentication scheme as everything else in the enterprise. No longer are separate practices and procedures necessary to keep these systems running, or to ensure that their network segments do not touch sensitive areas of the topology. OS/2 is able to authenticate securely via Kerberos, the native authentication mechanism in Windows server since 2000, and transfer files using Samba, with the latest protocols in use through Windows Server 2016.
Still have IPX on the wire? No problem. OS/2 still fully supports a wide range of networking protocols, and handles those just as it always has, performing exceptionally well, due in no small part to its meager (by today’s standards) memory footprint.
New network interface adapter drivers developed by Arca Noae allow the platform to be installed on modern hardware and take advantage of performance enhancements afforded by wider network bandwidths, too.
Concerned about local file integrity? Don’t be. ArcaOS – Arca Noae’s modern OS/2 distribution – utilizes a native JFS (Journalling File System) implementation, developed by IBM, and used by a wide range of large scale Unix-like operating systems.
Let Arca Noae show you just how viable a robust, 32-bit operating system can be in today’s computing environments, maintaining data integrity and security for sensitive information both stored locally and during transport to remote servers.