[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select 38" (OpenSSL on VMS)

[Dirk Munk]

Marc Van Dyck wrote:
> Paul Sture laid this down on his screen :
>> On 2016-09-17, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'd be seriously tempted to announce the deprecation and eventual
>>>> removal of DECnet, for that matter.
>>>
>>> Booo!  Hisssss!
>>>
>>> Ok, we know it's not secure.  Run at your own risk.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing that DECnet users use it only in house, for FAL and
>>> such, so if the  in house environment is secure, then security isn't
>>> an issue for DECnet.
>>>
>>> If it's not going to take up time and effort, then why kill it off?
>>>
>>> I personally find it can be useful.
>>>
>>> It sure is handy when you need to shutdown and re-start TCP/IP on a
>>> remote (but  in house) system.
>>
>> I'd certainly miss one or two things that DECnet does:
>>
>> o - the ability to do a SET HOST 0 /LOG= to get a log / audit trail of
>> software     installations and configuration sessions.   Yes, many
>> terminal emulators can     do logging, but those logs aren't on the
>> target system.
>>
>> o - using DECnet as a means of placing BACKUP savesets on another
>> node, and
>>     restoring them from other nodes (where 'other' can be either local or
>>     remote).
>>     o - DECnet tasks.  Useful but I haven't seen many customers use
>> these.
>>
>> o - FAL
>
> The important is not to hurt applications... Moving to DECnet over IP
> is totally harmless to them. So if development resources become scarce,
> I'd say keep the top layers only, with IP transport, and ditch the
> rest.

What "rest" do you mean? The OSI transport layers? They don't change and 
are part of kit. If you don't use them, they will not bother you.

> The systems I'm responsible for are still using FAL and task-to-task
> thousand times per day, and there are no plans to change that.
> Abandoning them is unthinkable in my opinion.
>