[Info-vax] tcpip

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 11/3/2010 4:56 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>
>> Easier said than done! My first experience with TCP/IP was with
>> version 2.7 of UCX. It didn't work where we most needed it! Neither
>> did v3.0, V3.1, V3.2, nor V3.3. V3.3 worked more or less as it was
>> supposed to but only after ECOs 1,2,3,4,....13 were applied.
>>
>> The relationship between the software and the manuals was, to say the
>> least, strained! One could almost call the documentation a work of
>> fiction!
>>
>> DEC *finally* published a TCP/IP package that actually worked. They
>> abandoned the VMS version and ported the UCX (Ultrix) version to VMS.
>> ISTR that this was called V5.0. It sort of worked most of the time.
>
> All that shows how much DEC must have despised their customers.
> No need to blame marketing for their demise,
> the product speaks for itself.
>

I wouldn't go so far as to accuse DEC of despising their customers. 
They were working very hard to implement a foreign network protocol 
(TCP/IP) when virtually all their experience was with DECnet!

Karol Zielonko (DEC UCX Engineering) was one of the heroes of those 
days.  It was largely due to his efforts that TCP/IP Mail works with VMS 
today.

DNS didn't work very well either, at least if you were trying to install 
and operate your own server.  What little documentation existed, was 
mostly wrong!  AIRC a gentleman named Smiley Smith had a good deal to do 
with making the DNS server work.  I don't know if Smiley was in 
Engineering or in "butt kicking" but we got a working DNS server.