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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!oberon!cit-vax!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!decvax!eagle_snax!geoff
From: geoff@eagle_snax.UUCP ( R.H. coast near the top)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: TCP/UDP/IP Driver Specification
Message-ID: <211@eagle_snax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Oct-87 21:02:16 EST
Article-I.D.: eagle_sn.211
Posted: Sun Oct 25 21:02:16 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 06:41:35 EST
References: <8710191858.AA17934@violet.berkeley.edu>
Lines: 25
Summary: lost opportunity

In article <8710191858.AA17934@violet.berkeley.edu>, gts@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (Greg Small) writes:
> = Why not use the NetBios interface and library calls developed around it?
> 
> Actually Ungermann-Bass has already done this, we have been using it since
> June 1986.  They extended the Netbios interface to include direct access to
> the TCP, UDP, IP and raw Ethernet.  Because these are available at the same
> time, we run PC Network, telnet, ftp, tn3270 and user applications based on
> Netbios or TCP/UDP/IP simultaneously.  Their 4.2 BSD socket library allows
> BSD applications to be ported.

There's been a real lost opportunity here. Back at the beginning of the
TCP/IP-on-Netbios standadrization effort I suggested to U-B and Excelan that
it would be really good to have a parallel convergence on a standard for
talking to a resident TCP/IP system, using a variant of the U-B extended
Netbios interface, so that we could get a BINARY interface standard rather
than relying on more-or-less compatible socket implementations to give us
a rather tenuous source compatibility. Sadly, nobody was willing to
commit to it. If we had, we'd all be happily interoperating these
days (maybe)....

-- 
Geoff Arnold, Sun Microsystems       | "Picture a bright blue ball,
East Coast Division (home of PC-NFS) |  Spinning, spinning free;
UUCP: {ihnp4,decwrl,...}!sun!garnold |  Dizzy with possibility...
ARPA: garnold@sun.com                |  Ashes, ashes, all fall down..."