[HECnet] Hooking up DECUSERVE / EISNER to HECnet?

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-09-26 14:16, Sampsa Laine wrote:

While I did have an account on Deathrow, I was not all that familiar with
the users thereof.


The encourage security research, it attracts a certain type of person that I don't want on my LAN (trust me, I used to be a penetration tester :) )

The problem is that if you want to be paranoid, then you should not be connected to HECnet at all.

DECnet is a very bad protocol when it comes to network security.

EISNER (the DECUServe machine named after the late Dan Eisner) has many
users who have been long time DECUS members -- some more than 30 years
members.   The NOTES conferences there maintain a wealth of information
going back in excess of 25 years.


Which is exactly why it'd be so awesome to have them be part of HECnet. It's a great system, very active, lots of smart users.

Like I said before. I certainly don't mind if EISNER were to be connected to HECnet, but I really can't say that it would actually benefit HECnet (or EISNER) much in the general sense. Most people on EISNER would probably not care at all about the fact that there was DECnet connectivity to a bunch of other machines which they know nothing about, and would do even less with.
And most of the time, the people on HECnet wouldn't really be all over EISNER either.

So it's not that it would make either side super more good in any sense. But for the odd person, it could be a nice and useful addition.

The notes conferences on EISNER is a really good resource. But you do not have to be on HECnet to access that, and in most cases it probably makes more sense to not use HECnet for that.

When HECnet is really useful (in my mind) is when you want to copy files around, test or get access to different machines running DECnet, potentially with different OSes, and just the general contact with other people running these kind of things. I don't expect most users on EISNER to care much about any of these things, and the people on HECnet already an access notes on EISNER, even though they need to use TCP/IP and (maybe) a web browser.

The single fact that there are lots of active users on EISNER is not something that I see as either positive or negative from a HECnet point of view. Numbers by themself means very little.

	Johnny