[Info-vax] [Change topic] Origins of Multinet

[Hunter Goatley]

On 1/15/2021 8:13 AM, Roy Omond wrote:
> On 14/01/2021 23:42, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> [...big snip...]
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Woolongong was a VMS company but I don't think Multinet ever
>> had any connection.  Hunter can probably tell us.  If it came
>> from anywhere prior to VMS I would have thought RSX.
> 
> How quickly we all seem to forget.  Multinet was a product from TGV
> ("Two Guys and a Vax" - I can't quite recall their names any more,
> Ken Adelman and Dave Kashtan ?), 

Yes, those were the two guys.

> founded in January 1988 in Santa Cruz.
> It was rumoured that they would never travel on the same plane together
> so that both would not be lost in the case of a crash.
> 
> As the name suggests, the original Multinet was developed for VMS
> (on Vax), but there was a later version released for Windows, IIRC.
> 
> TGV was acquired by Cisco in January 1996 for $115 million.
> 

The original TCP/IP offering on VMS was from SRI International. Both 
Wollongong WIN/TCP and TGV MultiNet were based on the SRI code base, 
which was, in turn, based on Berkeley TCP/IP. The original SRI code was 
developed as far back as 1982. Ken and Dave worked for SRI before they 
formed TGV.

In 1987, these TCP/IP products were available for OpenVMS:

     MultiNet
     Wollongong WIN/TCP
     CMU-Tek IP/TCP
     TCPware (Process Software)
     Fusion

UCX (ULTRIX Connection) arrived in the fall of 1988. It was definitely 
an afterthought for DEC, which was putting more of its eggs in the OSI 
networking basket. UCX was not really a strong competitor until the 
mid-'90s. It was eventually renamed to TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS.

As Jim said, TCPware was written from scratch in MACRO-32 (and C and 
FORTRAN). CMU-Tek was based on Tektronix code, while UCX, MultiNet, and 
WIN/TCP all derived, ultimately, from Berkeley code.

As others have stated, Cisco bought TGV in 1996, and in 1997, Cisco sold 
MultiNet to Process Software. We've developed and maintained both 
TCPware and MultiNet ever since. For a brief time around 1998, if memory 
serves, we also provided support for UCX while Compaq was busy creating 
what would become the first release of TCP/IP Services. That was done by 
porting the ULTRIX stack, again, if memory serves.

-- 
Hunter
------
Hunter Goatley, Process Software, http://www.process.com/
goathunter at goatley.com   http://hunter.goatley.com/