[Info-vax] Rethinking DECNET ?

[Dirk Munk]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 14-09-01 19:41, Dirk Munk wrote:
>
>> decades ago. You can still use Decnet 4 if you like, but JF is now
>> asking to overhaul Decnet 4 to use it over IP (IPv4 and IPv6?). Decnet 5
>> can be used over IPv4 and IPv6,
>
> I don't care about decnet protocol itself, whether 4 or 5. I care about
> the integration of decnet within the operating system/file system.
>
> aka: everywhere you can have node::  (at DCL, application etc).
>
> I mention DECNET 4 because it has NCP which defines network objects,
> and AUTHORIZE has the proxy database.
>
> So if there were a way to port various network objects such as FAL to
> become native on IP instead of DECNET, it would allow one to continue to
> support the same functionality provided by the node:: in many places
> used by the user, without needing an actual DECNET network stack since
> the objects would be native to IP.

I get your point JF, but what your are describing here is not Decnet 
over IP but adding functionality to the IP stack. FAL functionality 
would get a separate IP port number. But Decnet FAL will also do file 
conversions if necessary. That is because it was designed for operating 
systems that know file types, various types of sequential files, 
relative files, indexed and so on. Unix doesn't have that, a Unix file 
is just a load of bytes. Unix and IP are far more primitive in that 
respect. FTP for instance will do a 'file conversion' with ascii files. 
If you use ascii FTP to copy a file from Windows to Unix, the <cr><lf> 
end-of-record terminators will be replaced by <lf>, but that is about 
it. You will have to tell FTP that it is an ascii file if the file type 
is unknown (not .txt for instance).

>
> (so tunneling DECNET 5 over IP is not the same as having FAL be native
> on IP).

It is >>not<< tunneling. Decnet 5 uses TCP+IP as transport layer instead 
of OSI. Decnet 5 hosts have IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresses and BIND DNS 
names, not OSI addresses in this case. In fact Decnet 5 is doing exactly 
what you're asking from a redesigned Decnet 4 stack, however it is using 
only one TCP port, port number 102.

>
> Or in other words: by porting all the common decnet objects to be native
> to IP, it would allow one to maintain full functionality without needing
> a DECNET networking stack, and NCP would simply be the object definition
> database. (much simpler than anything in DECNET 5).
>
> And this isn't too "different" since Apple did the same with Appleshare
> when it maved it from being native on Appletalk to being IP native.
>