[HECnet] Re: Hecnet addition

[Johnny Billquist]

gerry77 at mail.com wrote:
On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:04:57 +0200, you wrote:
Definitely. So, why did you pick area numbers that were already used in HEcnet? :-)
We started as a group of people with some DEC hardware, not ever thinking that
some day we would have a working DECnet. Many systems hadn't DECnet loaded and
others had addresses like 1.1, 1.2, and so on just to play with some local
link. Johnny bridge didn't existed and we didn't knew anything about Multinet.

I think a lot of places have used area 1 at one time or another... So an area change is sometimes needed. No way of avoiding that. :-)

When we first heard about HECnet it was running with some homemade hardware
and there was Magica online! :-) We were not able to do that and stopped.

Hmm. As far as I know, HECnet have never made use of any homemade hardware. However, the first links I used, were over serial ports talking DDCMP, that I tunneled. I could still do that, if needed. It's even simpler than bridging ethernet. The only "problem" is that asynch serial DECnet don't go any faster than 9600 bps. Atleast under RSX.
Another problem is that as far as I can tell, only RSX and VMS supports that.

Anyway, at that point it should have been obvious that you had a node number clash if you ever wanted to connect to HECnet. :-)

The addressing scheme was enforced but not changed and we ended with the
actual setup. Once we thought about changing our area number from 1 to 39
(because +39 is the international dialling prefix for Italy), but we didn't
need such a change so it's still only an almost forgotten idea. :-)

It would definitely be great if you were to do the number change, and then connect to the rest of us. That should be pretty easy, and shouldn't have to take that much time.

	Johnny