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

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-05-31 23:27:00 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
> 
> As is so often the case in these types of discussions, running Decnet 
> Phase V over IP is conveniently forgotten.


If by "conveniently forgotten", you mean a DEC-legacy networking 
implementation that requires extra steps or additional bespoke 
development to achieve basic connection encryption or the acquisition 
and configuration of encrypting bridges, and that is not secure by 
default, and that lacks client-to-client authentication capabilities, 
and that makes no distinction between secure and insecure links, and 
that features a UI that was found far too complex even for its time and 
that has subsequently missed out a quarter-century of very necessary 
improvements to simplify and to automate the stack and the whole 
implementation, and that would require a substantial investment to 
resolve the various issues while inevitably still remaining as an 
isolated and backwater protocol that is every year yet less likely to 
be accepted across app developers and heterogeneous platforms, sure.

OSI turned out to be a huge waste of time and effort and market and a 
hole that more than a few vendors dumped vast sums of time and effort 
and money into.

OSI utterly failed at the one thing that really mattered.  Market acceptance.

Any investment that might be available for networking enhancements can 
better go into remote record-level access over IP, whether a 
DECnet-style connection into an sftp or SMB server, or a file share 
into SMB, or (maybe) a WebDAV server.  Or into updates and frameworks 
for better integrating OpenVMS into IPv4 and IPv6 networks.  Because we 
are not going back to the era of DECnet and OSI.

Making any sort of an investment in updating DECnet on OSI or 
otherwise, beyond a basic functional port to x86-64 and plans for 
product retirement?  Don't bother.  Just have yourself a bonfire.  With 
wads of burning cash.

DECnet and OSI are dead.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC