[HECnet] Cisco DECnet routers and NML

[Dave McGuire]

On 5/4/20 7:24 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> Second, some issues with MAIL-11 and DECnet SMTP on Tops-20 have
>> caused me to believe that one solution would be to expand the DNS
>> service (CHIVES) to handle A and MX records for DECnet.  That's not
>> actually that big a stretch; the DNS specification has 16 bit data
>> types for CHAOS, which would be trivially re-usable for Phase IV
>> DECnet.  However, I'm finding the current documentation to be a chore
>> to wade through.  The source code incomplete in certain functionality.
> 
> I seriously doubt you'd ever get this to play. Not only do I think that
> CHAOS, even though it technically exists, are tested or supported by any
> name server today. I also can't really see how you think adding DNS
> would solve any problems you might have with MAIL11.

  I've made extensive use of CHAOS class records in the past.  Not for
CHAOSnet, but for other stuff when I was running very large nameservers
at an ISP.  But tonight I tried to put a CHAOS class record into my
current nameserver, and it appears that BIND no longer recognizes this
class.  I'm running 9.12.1-P2.  I was surprised to see this, though it
has been probably 25 years since I'd used CHAOS.  I wonder when support
for this was removed.

  There is an "internal" special record type supported by BIND, class
CHAOS, type TXT, name version.bind, that returns the version number of
the BIND software, but this is not tied to zone files and I don't
believe (though I've not verified this) that it supports arbitrary data
 of the CHAOS class.

            -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA