[IP] Re: VAX Unix and TCP Flag Day

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Michael O'Dell" <mo@ccr.org>
Date: August 20, 2008 12:55:53 AM EDT
To: cak@dimebank.com
Cc: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: VAX Unix and TCP Flag Day

my VAX at LBL-CSAM converted to full TCP *only*
operation almost two months before the Flag Day.

we had been running the RAND/Greep NCP Front-End code which provided
NCP connectivity (after a fashion) for Berekely Unix. our 11/70 was  
gone and nobody wanted to port the Illinois NCP code to the VAX  
knowing how short-lived it would be. While those of us working with  
the NCP/FE code were very grateful to have it, its robustness  
"provided encouragement to move forward at the earliest opportunity".  
so when I got an IMP-11A driver running in 4.1aBSD and established  
that we could talk to the
mail gateways, we cut over to TCP-only. this was not without some
repercussions as 4.1a was no paragon of stability, but by 4.1c
things were pretty solid and the flag day passed with only
modest hysteria in my group.

We too were running Proteon's Pronet-10
hardware between the Unix VAX and a couple of VMS Vaxen and
a PDP-11/34. And one could get packets between external sites
and the internal Pronet ring. along the way, LBL-CSAM was one of
the first sites moved from ARPAnet (10.1.0.34) to MILNET
(26.1.0.34), so lots of things got shaken down pretty thoroughly.

boy - we be geezin' tonight!

	-mo





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