[Info-vax] implementing IPv6 on the internet

[Dirk Munk]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 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.

How we got here is indeed an interesting question. VSI was working on a 
new IP stack, it should have been ready by now. Was that a completely 
new stack, and what happened to it? Or were they negotiating with 
Process Software all the time?

>
> 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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