In many facilities, NIS is the only really cross-platform authentication means out there. Netinfo is *extremely* proprietary.
I have wrestled with NIS on MacOSX for a while. It works, but only under ideal conditions. NIS on the mac has a mountain of bugs and incompatibilies. There is a website that has detailed information on how to do an NIS setup on a client machine. I don't have it right here. But in this messageboard, someone had posted the very URL to this site. Look for it from about 2-3 months ago.
This site goes into the bugs / problems with NIS on the mac. It also has suggestions for troubleshooting the setup.
bob..