[HECnet] Public Services over DECnet

[Michael Holmes]

Mark, 

  I got exposed to DECnet in college (90-95). In Texas all the state college/universities and some of the larger private schools were on a state-wide network called THEnet (Texas Higher Education network) which ran DECnet as the backbone and supported other protocols too (like JNET for BITnet and UUCP). Most links originally started out as 56K leased lines. 

   Each school was setup as a separate area and naming conventions reflected school characters creativity (or lack thereof) since all names had to be unique.  One school named all systems based on Norse mythology. 

    THEnet had a peer connection to a govt research decnet called SPAN; it was odd in that only 2 nodes (one on each side) could see either network. Had to address everything through the two proxies (DIR THENET::SPAN::endnode:dev[dir]file.ext)

PHONE is a basic chat function. It allowed users to communicate interactively over THEnet. Screen size was the limiting factor, 6 users in chat was the limit. You see each other type in real time.  It was a great way to find other folks/friends at others schools (way before Facebook). 

JNET was an implementation of IBM VM pseudo interactive communication. Allowed vax to talk to the ibm mainframes. TELL would send short text messages to a user/terminal and SEND would send files to users or IBM queues (print and batch). The laser printers of those days were big and expensive and usually hooked up to administrative IBM mainframes so you’d use SEND to shoot your print jobs to the IBM lasers.  SEND was useful to send one or two files to a friend without having to copy files to a public files share ( I.e. [DECNET]) where everyone could see it. 

There were several MUDs and a few BBS that ran over DECNET.  Most that I used were written by CS students that had gotten access to a small departmental vax that wasn’t managed by the central IT depts. I remember a buddy had games on one (Frogger and poker). [sadly most were lost when folks graduated and systems were refreshed over time]. 

PATHWORKS was very popular on many campuses. It allowed Microsoft and Apple networking clients talk to VMS file and print servers. 

There were also come DECnet resources that allowed you to access IBM resources (VM, MVS, CICS) from VT terminals (so we didn’t have to setup those awful IBM terminal in labs). 

THEnet/DECnet also supported many Library Information Systems before the internet became a household resource. Many used GOPHER before eventually moving to http.

I worked at the medical university and it had 4 campuses across the state and used DECNET to connect all the campuses back to the main campus and ran the electronic medical system (records/billing) centrally. (FYI VMS is still used in a lot of large US gov’t healthcare facilities today)

Sadly as TCP/IP became more standard on PCs, schools moved computer programming courses from Vaxclusters to PCs and THEnet  and VMS systems slowly declined and were retired and THEnet and BITnet were shutdown in favor of the internet. 

Enjoy playing with DECnet. 


> On Dec 30, 2017, at 2:35 AM, Mark J.Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
> 
> I come from a mostly-UNIX, mostly-TCP/IP background. I don't understand DECnet well yet, but I want to learn more! Much of my interest in joining HECnet and playing around is because I largely skipped over DECnet in its original airing, and now it seems like a weird foreign land that I feel an irrational need to grok in fullness.
> 
> What are/were the conventions for providing public services over DECnet Phase IV networks, to remote users without their own local user accounts? I.e., let's say that I had a node on a large DECnet-only network back in the before time, and I wanted to share a file repository in a manner comparable to anonymous FTP on a TCP/IP network. How would I have done that? Were there conventions for doing that sort of thing back then, or was that a foreign concept on large DECnet networks at the time?
> 
> Were there any examples of BBS-like servers living on DECnet networks? Online multi-player games such as MUDs? Early DECnet-based examples of "log into the coffee pot to see if the brew is fresh"? DECnet-based analogs to Archie for discovering stuff? DECnet-based USENET-like communities?
> 
> I don't know if any of these concepts even made sense in the DECnet world at the time. In addition to only understanding the networks of the 80s from a UNIX-centric, TCP/IP-centric worldview, I'm also having a hard time un-thinking the newer concepts I'm used to after so many years of steeping in a broth of HTTP and social media. I have somewhat conflicting urges to both learn how to think like a 1980s DECnet user, and to retcon modern concepts into an alternate reality where TCP/IP never took off.
> 
> -- 
> Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
> http://www.nf6x.net/
>