[Info-vax] DSW41/42 option

[John Wallace]

On Oct 14, 12:43 am, "Tim E. Sneddon" <tim.sned... at bigpond.com> wrote:
> Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> > John Wallace wrote:
> >> On Oct 12, 6:46 pm, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderh... at telia.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>> Volker Halle wrote:
> >>>> A DSW41/42 is a SYNCHRONOUS WAN device. You can't configure this
> >>>> device with standard OpenVMS drivers, you need to install the VAX WAN
> >>>> Device Drivers kit.
> >>>> Volker.
>
> >> And, what are you supposed to actualy *do* with it ?
>
> >> You can talk DECnet (specifically, DDCMP iirc) to a compatible DECnet
> >> box, or X.25 to the outside world, typically.
>
> > OK, right. What I ment was maybe more something like, what are
> > you supposed to actualy do with it *today* ?
>
> > I do know what it was used for 20 yrs ago...
>
> There's probably someone around who still uses X.25.  It was only a
> few years ago that Ford Australia switched off their X.25 service
> and moved to IP.  Of course, they were still using Burroughs at the
> time too.  It's entirely possible that they still are.
>
> Tim.

I would imagine Y2K got rid of quite a few X.25-based setups. I worked
with at least one significant comms supplier whose various customers
around the world had various sets of distributed kit interconnected by
low speed X.25 links for supervision purposes. They threw all the X.25
stuff away for Y2K, not because it had a Y2K problem, but because no
legally convenient vendor chitty was available to assert that the long-
obsolete older stuff in the field didn't have a Y2K problem, and the
lack of legal paperwork outranked the technical people's confidence in
their system, at least wrt Y2K "issues" as far as the Board of
Directors were concerned (Y2K compliance being a board-level issue).

So out went tried tested and multi-year proven but chitty-free X.25
kit, and in came brand new untested software to support the brand new
untested comms architecture, and new comms hardware from a trendy but
new to the team network vendor, and almost no extended testing in the
two or three months between the final decision to make a changeover
and 1/1/2000. Afaik the switchover went without issue, but the
supplier in question has subsequently gone under.