DECnet and other dead technologies (was: Linux for "cloud computing")

Jon 'maddog' Hall maddog at li.org
Sat Mar 6 21:22:18 EST 2010


Ben,

One other comment:

>I think widespread adoption of IP has tended to eliminate less-used
>network transports. Why go with something weird, proprietary, and
>expensive when you could go with what everybody is using, for free?

I agree.  But I also remember that in 1984 DEC was still waiting for BSD
4.x to deliver us TCP/IP.  DEC released DECnet in 1975, and by 1982 it
was rolling along.  LAT boxes were already in place, and DECnet had an
Apple client and a DOS/Windows client.  And DEC had published its
protocols so there were other implementations of DECnet, not just DEC's.

So IP was "the new kid on the block" at that time, and many VMS
networking people grumbled about IP the same way you are grumbling about
old protocols now.

md



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