[HECnet] Cisco DECnet routers and NML

[Jesper Christensen]

On Mon, 04 May 2020, Dave McGuire wrote:
> 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.
> 

I think it should still be supported. One of the servers here at Update
is running 9.11.5-P4 and is serving up a few CHAOS zones, and I couldn't
find anything mentioning support for it being removed in newer versions.

565 > dig @psilocybe.update.uu.se +short -c ch -t a up.update.uu.se
CH-ADDR.NET. 3143
566 > dig @psilocybe.update.uu.se +short -c ch -t hinfo up.update.uu.se
"KLH10" "ITS"

I think the CHAOS zones has to go under a separate view, though.

>   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.
> 

567 > dig @psilocybe.update.uu.se +short -c ch -t txt version.bind
"Wouldn't you like to know? (Try asking for other Chaos things!)"
568 > dig @psilocybe.update.uu.se +short -c ch -t txt hostname.bind
"Well you should know, you sent me the query? (Try asking for other
Chaos things!)"

:)

/Jesper