[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop?

[Dirk Munk]

John E. Malmberg wrote:
> On 9/18/2016 3:35 AM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>
>> First of all, which DECnet do you mean?  DECnet Phase IV should have
>> been abandoned years ago, DECnet Phase V has been the successor for
>> years now, but many DECnet users are just to plain lazy to learn how it
>> works. They took a look at the UI, concluded that is was very different
>> from the NCP commands of Phase IV, and just gave up. Or are they too
>> stupid to understand it?
>
> The last time this thread came up, I asked for an on-line resource that
> could be used for a hobbyist to get a simple DECNET Phase V network
> running.

There is a configuration manual, it's really just a simple commandfile 
you have to run. It takes about 5 minutes.

>
> I got no answers at all.  It was like my post went into the bit-bucket.
> Or maybe some posts to the news groups are not making into the info-vax
> mailing list.
>
> You can not simply translate NCP commands to NCL.  Too many commonly
> used NCP commands do not translate to NCL.  And many times there is no
> documented way to translate them.

True, what you need is a picture with all the OSI layers and their NCL 
objects. That is quite essential, and certainly when you start with NCL. 
The you can work your way up from the NIC to the upper layers.

>
> In some cases it involves knowing some Decnet V name for something that
> NCL is not smart enough to default to the only way it is set on the
> system and the NCL help will not provide you with enough prompting to
> find out what it wants to construct the command.  And no way to know
> which Phase V manual might possibly have the answer.
>
> I can get DECNET IV running simply by running a script and passing some
> simple information.  I should be able to do that with the successor.

That can be done!

>
> Now I have spent a bit of time with Phase V, and converted all my
> network object scripts to work with it.  At one time my entire VMS
> network was Phase V.
>
> And I still am having far more trouble with it for a simple setup.  I
> have also worked with other OSI protocols on VMS.  I have seen the fall
> out of many OSI protocol changes as they evolved.
>
> I have had so much trouble with Phase V debugging that I decided it was
> not worth the hassle and have been removing it as I update my home
> systems, since I never see the need to tunnel it over TCP/IP.

It is *NOT* a tunnel. You replace DECnet Phase IV or OSI names by IP DNS 
names. Unlike MultiNet that is using a tunnel.

>
> And I forget exactly what issue I was trying to do as it was well over
> 16 years ago, but one of the things I wanted to script with NCL was only
> documented to be done through a DECWindows Utility.  I could find no
> documentation anywhere on how to use NCL to extract the same
> information.  The same operation was trivial to do with Decnet IV.
>
> As far as a UI or documentation, Phase V was a major jump backwards.
>
> I do not see Phase V replacing TCP/IP for communication with non-VMS
> hosts.

Of course not, no one is claiming that. Once again, DECnet is for VMS <> 
VMS communication. with DECnet over IP you can do it ona IP-only 
network. That's it.

> Without that, IMHO, Phase V is pretty much in the same boat as
> Phase IV.  I think I can still get Phase IV clients for non-VMS, or at
> least get the source for them.
>
> Regards,
> -John
> wb8tyw at qsl_network
>