[HECnet] Multinet alternatives ...

[Paul Koning]

> On Feb 25, 2020, at 9:42 AM, Robert Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
> 
>    What are the alternatives for bridging DECnet systems across the Internet that don’t require any special hardware and can be self hosted on OpenVMS/VAX?
>  
>   I’m aware of Paul’s Python router, but I didn’t think it ran on a VAX.  Am I wrong about that?  Is there a Python for OpenVMS/VAX?  I believe there’s a port for AXP but I didn’t know about one for VAX.

There was, but I think Python recently dropped VMS support due to lack of a maintainer.  It may well be that it could be resurrected; I don't know what that would involve.  Python is a large package but easy to build, so one might hope this could be done.  Note that PyDECnet requires Python 3, version 3.3 or later.  It doesn't work with Python 2 and can't reasonably be backported to that version.
 
>   And I saw Rob mentioned his user mode DECnet router.  Same questions – what environment does that require?   And I saw mention it being both Multinet and simh DDCMp compatible – will it talk to a simh KS10/TOPS10/DMR ?
>  
> Bob

DMR is DMR, so a PDP10 with a DMR should work.  TOPS-10 is Phase IV, right?  Any of the common DECnet implementations should talk to that.

If you have TOPS-20 with Phase II, that's more difficult.  PyDECnet does talk to Phase II directly, but I know of no other Phase IV that does so, and Phase III nodes are not easy to find either.

	paul