[HECnet] Next retro comms project?

[Bob Armstrong]

re: 2.11bsd DECnet
Performance will be horrible, and it will also probably be very problematic

  Not clear whether you mean that in general, or just about the entirely
userspace version.

  I don't think a completely user space DECnet implementation is even
possible on a PDP-11 but I don't see why a kernel-integrated version
couldn't be done.   2.11bsd already has TCP/IP networking that works
perfectly well.   It's not super fast, but then a PDP-11 (at least if we're
talking about real ones) isn't a super fast machine either.   The TCP/IP
speed is on a par with the performance of the rest of the system.   We'd
probably have to replace the TCP/IP networking in the kernel with DECnet
because of address space limitations, so it'd be a kernel build choice for
either TCP/IP networking OR DECnet, but I think most people could live with
that.

Bob