[Info-vax] implementing IPv6 on the internet

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-09-21 23:01:51 +0000, Robert A. Brooks said:

> On 9/21/2016 4:16 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2016-09-21 19:24:29 +0000, Kerry Main said:
>> 
>>> Well, not if you have been running Multinet.
>>> 
>>> And now with today's new TCPIP stack announcement, VSI OpenVMS just 
>>> made a major jump forward into the current world.
>> 
>> Ayup.   Migrating from the vendor-licensed and supported IP stack to an 
>> extra-cost third-party IP stack is forward progress, oddly enough.
> 
> I'm not sure how "extra-cost" is relevant here, since it isn't an extra 
> cost to the customer.

Would it have been better if I had added a "what was an extra-cost..."? 
   It was intended to be a comment on how we got here.

We can use the vendor-provided HPE IP stack with its problems and 
limitations, and with its endemic third-party software support.

There are presently better add-on extra-cost IP stacks from a 
third-party, and that constrains software support from various 
third-party software package providers.   (I rarely end up testing 
networking code on the Process stacks, and I suspect I'm not the only 
one.)

Going forward, there'll be some new stack based on Process IP stacks, 
integrated in some unspecified fashion (and I'd vote for a complete 
overhaul of all related management UIs, both DEC-legacy and 
Process-legacy, and for the inclusion of Apache and other modern web 
services into the result, as well as starting down a path to embed TLS 
communications and related security and preferably with an application 
API that is somewhat independent of the the APIs of the underlying TLS 
library) and (presumably? apparently?) this new VSI with "IP networking 
powered by Process" configuration will now be included in the cost of 
OpenVMS itself; it'll parallel the present pricing.

Why "apparently"?   While I didn't read the presser in detail and would 
tend to expect the cost of IP to be integrated, this is also enterprise 
software and I expect to see weird fees and inexplicably complex and 
baroque licensing.

For folks currently with HPE licenses and support, getting to the VSI 
licenses will cost, at least with the OpenVMS base license.   That's 
certainly good news for the future of VSI, though.   Doing this 
integration right (for now and for the future of networking and 
security on OpenVMS) may well encourage more of the existing HPE sites 
forward to V8.next, too.  This is another hunk of work that'll pull 
more folks forward, beyond the folks that wanted or needed Poulson or 
that wanted off of HPE for whatever reason.

Pulling folks forward hasn't happened in a long time.






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