[Info-vax] DECnet use in today's world, was: Re: Tangent about DECnet versions.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-05-19 21:32:57 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2018-05-19, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> 
>> There is ample evidence of production use of DECnet Phase IV+ and Phase 
>>  V around.
>> 
>> Phase IV and earlier are point-to-point or multipoint and predate  
>> Ethernet support, so those do tend to be somewhat more rare.  Though  
>> undoubtedly a few installations do still exist.
> 
> AA-N149A-TC (DIGITAL Network Architecture (Phase IV), General 
> Description) just calls it DECnet Phase IV, but also includes the 
> description of the Ethernet support in DECnet Phase IV.

Yes; I'm aware that the distinction between Phase IV and Phase IV+ was 
dropped in many contexts, and it's so old now that many of the 
contemporary references have long since disappeared.

"Eventually a number of enhancements were made to DECnet Phase IV. 
These enchancements become known as DECnet Phase IV+. DECnet Phase IV+ 
systems were completely interoperable with DECnet Phase IV. In fact 
most DECnet Phase IV systems are actually DECnet Phase IV+ systems. 
Most of the enhancements were performance improvements such as the 
addition of path splitting in Routing and the addition of delayed ACKs 
and a out of order cache in NSP. There was, however, one significant 
new functional enhancement: the addition of proxies in Session Control."

IIRC, Phase IV+ and Ethernet support and some other related bits all 
arrived around the same time; in the mid VAX/VMS V3 range.

http://www.bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/AA-X440A-TK%20DECnet%20Digital%20Network%20Architecture%20Phase%20IV%20Ethernet%20Node%20Product%20Architecture%20Specification.pdf 



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