[HECnet] VAX/VMS 1.50

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-04-08 23:36, Clem Cole wrote:

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se
<mailto:bqt at softjar.se>> wrote:

      The flag day for TCP/IP was 1 Jan 1983, so I wouldn't expect you
      were running much TCP/IP before that point. (Yes, I know experiments
      and development was going on, but the number of implementations were
      few, still had issues, and was very much work still in progress


Johnny it was TCP/IP.   Remember, I'm one of the implementors of the
original IP/TCP for the VMS (along with Stan Smith) in >>1979<<.   I was
also 3Com first customer at the same time (another but related story).
Most people do not realize the first product 3Com sold was >>software<<
- UNET a TCP/IP implementation for UNIX/V7 (PDP11 and Vax) - we took
deliver on Dec >>32<< 1979 because 3Com had a funding thing with their
VCs that they would ship before the end of 1979.

The annoying things here is that no information of this can be found. I'd be happy if you can help me with some references and pointers.

I would hardly call IP/TCP a work in progress. Yes, it was young, but it
was well defined.     Most of the major sites had switched and the US Gov
had a spent a bunch to make sure it was implemented.     We had it running
on a number of interesting and different systems at the time.   If I had
the time and can actually read the tapes, at one time I >>had<< the bits
on 9-track for many of them in my basement (I still have the tapes - but
who knows).

Well defined? RFC 791, which *is* the definition of IP is dated September 1981.
The predecessor, RFC 760, which is slightly incompatible with 791, is from January 1980. (For example, ICMP didn't exist then, instead you had IP options that were used to indicate errors.)
What specifications did you use for a TCP/IP implementation that you had running in 1979? And I'd say that any such implementation would work very badly, if at all, with any TCP/IP based on RFC 791.

FYI: the original IP/TCP for 4.1BSD was not written at Berkeley, it was
written at BBN and used the MIT Chaos-Net hacks to slide in the 4.1BSD
kernel (by Rob Gerawitzs & Rob Walsh).   Remember, BBN had the contract
from ARPA to develop the different IP/TCP implementations.   In fact, the
mbuf code that Rob G created was because he needed a memory handler that
was OS kernel independent, so it could be stuffed into a number of a
different kernels.         Eric Cooper was the grad student that put the
"portable BBN IP/TCP" into 4.1 at UCB to replace the BerkNet and Eric
Schmidt (yes the Google one) made the mailer talk to it.     Berkeley had
a contract to support the base UNIX kernel for ARPA.     So as part of
that, wnj would create "sockets" for 4.1A (as a response to the
Accent/Mach "port" concept) and then re-stuff the BBN code into his
socket layer.   Then he, Sam, et al start to hack it.     Van would take it
up the hill to LBL and start to hack further.   Eventually 4.2BSD would
be released as we know it as part of the UCB ARPA contract and most
sites picked up the code from that release not the BBN release.

I assume you mean Rob Guruwitz. This TCP/IP implementation became "live" 18 Nov 1981, with a more general distribution planned for 1982.
(See RFC 801, page 18)

That RFC is also a good reference for the status of various TCP/IP implementation at the time (November 1981), and many implementations are still in development, and many based on each other.

DEC all of these release along the way and Fred Canter, Armando
Stettner, and the whole "TIG" (telephone industries group) in Merrimack
were doing their thing for AT&T, the Universities and any UNIX licensee
that wanted it. TIG would begat the Ultrix team.

Not trying to come down on you, but "I was there" and very much "mixed
up" in it all.

I know. You keep pointing that out. And I still can't reconcile your statements with all the published information that is around. (Nor can I find your name anywhere in those places I look.) So I'd like to find better sources of information than the RFCs, if you please could share them.

As for when MOP was released for the UNIX flavors, I really can not
remember.   It was all around the same time, but as I said, those bits in
my brain are stale and I was not part of any LAT/MOP etc (directly or
indirectly) so their is no real reason for me to remember some of the
specifics.

Yeah, me neither. MOP on Ultrix is not something I can nail down with enough precision.
However, we can tell for sure that it wasn't before 1984, since LAT actually didn't come around until that year (just checked that one up, so the original question about LAT on VMS 3.5 is a "no" I would say, based on this. My guess is that it might have been introduced in VMS 3.7, but that is purely a guess on my part.)

	Johnny


Clem



-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol