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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.micro.att
Subject: Re: 3bnet
Message-ID: <2277@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 6-Jun-85 20:54:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2277
Posted: Thu Jun  6 20:54:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Jun-85 02:36:54 EDT
References: <1800@ukma.UUCP> <202@uwvax.UUCP> <283@cuae2.UUCP> <2258@sun.uucp> <327@cuae2.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 31

> > Why not just provide TCP and IP (or XNS protocols, or ISO protocols, or
> > whatever) on top of Ethernet, and serial lines, and Hyperchannel, and the
> > PCL-11, and...? 
> > 	Guy Harris
> 
> ISO protocols are coming! Perhaps you need the proceedings of the Networking
> Sessions from the last UNIFORUM (Jan., 1985).

I knew AT&T had plans to provide the ISO protocols someday (I already read
the proceedings); the question is "why didn't the idea of providing an
implementation of a standard protocol suite for *all* its network
interfaces, and layering things like mail, remote command execution, etc. on
top of that protocol suite, occur to AT&T when it first built its PCL-11
software, or its Hyperchannel software, or its Ethernet software?"  The
Ethergunk provided with the COMMKIT software or whatever it's called isn't
useful except for having one UNIX system talk to another UNIX system; with
TCP or XNS, you can actually talk to non-UNIX systems on the wire (and lots
more).

The fact that it took until S5 for AT&T to provide a screen editor, until
S5R2 for AT&T to provide flexnames, until S5R2V2 to provide demand paging,
and until S5R3 or S5R4 or whatever to provide a network architecture as
opposed to a set of hacks may explain why a lot of UNIX users may be willing
to consider S5 "standard" but not to consider it good enough for their work.
One reason why there are so many flavors of UNIX out there is that lots of
necessary capabilities are not provided with the UNIX that comes from AT&T,
so other vendors have to add them; unfortunately, if you have N people who
want to implement some feature you end up with N+1 implementations.
However, N+1 implementations is frequently better than 0 implementations.

	Guy Harris