AppleTalk was a local-area networking protocol stack created by Apple Computer. It was built into every Macintosh, and also for a long time in practically every PostScript printer, whether sold by Apple or anybody else.
Absolutely minimal configuration. All network addresses were dynamically assigned, so machines could simply be plugged into the LAN and switched on, and they had full network functionality. Only routers required any actual configuration.
No need to worry about network addresses at all. Network services were accessed, not by their addresses, but by user-assigned names.
No centralized name servers. Each machine kept its own track of the names it had registered.
Names referred to services, not to machines. This meant that a service could be moved from one machine to another, and provided it kept the same name, users didn't even need to be told this had happened. Compare CNAMEs in the DNS, which are a bit of a kludge because you have to keep telling people to use the CNAME, not the actual machine name, otherwise the scheme doesn't work.
Browseability. Instead of having to type in any service names, you could simply query the network for all services of the desired type, and display them in a list to choose from.
Printer Access Protocol (PAP). This was created for the Apple LaserWriter, which was the first popular PostScript printer, and a key part of the original Desktop Publishing industry that the Macintosh spearheaded. The early LaserWriters were considered too expensive to be connected to just one machine, and since the early Macs didn't have enough grunt to run printer-sharing services while serving desktop users, the logical thing was to build the pritner-sharing service into the printer itself.
Machine addresses were only 24 bits. Socket numbers (the equivalent of TCP/IP port numbers) were only 8 bits.
Didn't really scale very well beyond the LAN environment.
Some sysadmin types, more used to TCP/IP, claimed that AppleTalk was too "chatty" (used too much network bandwidth maintaining its automatic lookups etc).
2 pages link to AppleTalk:
