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

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-09-19 20:57:03 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

> No, it is not...

You can continue to explain this as often as you do and can continue to 
correctly point out the many aspects of DECnet and OSI that are 
technically superior to IP networking, and can certainly continue to 
presume we do not understand any of that, or that we might disagree 
with your statements around the various benefits of DECnet.   We very 
much understand all of which you are pointing to.   I certainly do.   
You are entirely correct about the general superiority of the DECnet 
products, too.

But that doesn't matter.   This due to having utterly missed the 
networking market and a large chunk of the then-increasing Unix market, 
and OSI in particular having turned into one of the more complex 
products to configure and manage on OpenVMS, and with one of the most 
utterly-missed-the-audience user interfaces ever shipped on OpenVMS.   
NCL (and DEC Enterprise Management Architecture) is one of the most 
exceptionally elegant and all-encompassing user interfaces around, and 
one that clearly did not meet the needs of its target market.   Each 
revision did get better and easier to manage, too.  (Integrating 
products with DEC EMA was a whole lot of work, though.  Which is part 
of why that never really happened.)

DECnet Phase IV, IV+, V — and all of the parts of OSI that didn't end 
up getting reused and effectively migrated out of the old OSI model and 
over into IP networking — utterly missed the market, and these products 
are now utter dead ends, insecure, problematic and increasingly limited 
and system-dependent, and spending time on any of this stuff detracts 
from the work necessary to make OpenVMS (more) viable in the current 
and near-term future.

DECnet Phase IV, IV+ and V is not now and never will be the path 
forward, nor will the networking stack arising from the old OSI model.

DEC made the same mistakes that you are repeating here, too.   Thirty 
years ago.   DEC management and development had a firm belief in the 
value of technical superiority products.   Products which took far too 
long to get onto the market, were far too limited in availability, cost 
far too much in terms of system resources (back then), were too limited 
in platform support, and — in aggregate — completely and utterly missed 
the market when the resulting products became available.

Not to mention that DEC came up with a user interface and management 
design that needs more than a little user interface assistance.

If VSI is to spend time and effort dragging any of the networking 
products forward, and better integrating and securing the networking, 
let it be IP and TLS and related support.   The current TCP/IP Services 
stack has problems similar to the DECnet OSI management, though with an 
even more scatter-shot and inexplicably complex configuration and 
management interface than DECnet OSI featured.

The inclusion of DECnet is not going to be a priority in new 
application development work and application overhauls, outside of a 
few specific environments.

For all its ugliness, IPv6 is the path forward.   That IPv6 path might 
or should or will include adding Google's BBR congestion control work 
https://plus.google.com/+SamiLehtinen/posts/PCiCHhFRWTr as well as a 
complete user interface overhaul, integrating TLS and SFTP, and various 
other updates.   OpenVMS has to deal with IPv6.   DECnet?   DECnet is 
useful for legacy code and legacy sites, when security, authentication 
and heterogeneous networking are not requirements.

Your approach and your preference here certainly mirrors DEC 
development and DEC marketing, from most of thirty years ago.   This 
approach did not end well for DEC and DECnet, either.   DEC spent more 
than a little time and effort on developing and marketing and providing 
and supporting OSI, and — when the implosion of OSI in the market 
became something that simply couldn't be ignored, and when the various 
governments walked back from their plans to require OSI support in 
favor of IP support — OpenVMS and IP networking never really recovered 
from this.

VSI has a opportunity to change that IP and IPv6 integration.  But 
nothing VSI can do will ever bring back DECnet Phase IV, IV+ or V.

Keep DECnet around for legacy sites and legacy applications, and for 
folks that have no interest in encryption or authentication, and for 
the foreseeable future.  Beyond that?   Full speed on IPv6...


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