25 Mar
2017
25 Mar
'17
11:26 p.m.
On 2017 Mar 25, 03:55, ron minnich wrote:
On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 4:56 PM Josh Good
<pepe(a)naleco.com> wrote:
Which brings up a question I have: why
didn't UNIX implement ethernet
network interfaces as file names in the filesystem? Was that "novelty"
a BDS development straying away from AT&T UNIX?
See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc681, section 4j:
FILEDES = OPEN( "/DEV/NET/HARV",2 );
People were thinking about it. There was no shortage of people at
the time who were struggling to find a way to make the Unix model
work for networking (not me, I had no clue; I was just an interested
observer). It didn't quite work out and as a result we were left with
the non-unix-like socket interface we have today, and a feeling among
many of us that we'd missed an opportunity. It's really hard to get this stuff right, and the
approach outlined
in the RFC is not really what you want. Rob had a nice talk 20+ years
ago about the right and wrong way to do this; I can't find it and he
can't find it, and I keep hoping it'll appear.
It's a shame that Unix did not get a Unix-like
model for networking,
but maybe it was just too soon.
Thank you Ron for your very informative answer. I too would like to read
that Rob's paper if it ever resurfaces.
By the way, that RFC-681 you point to, has these two very interesting
paragraphs:
RELIABILITY
AS OF THIS WRITING, NETWORK UNIX HAS BEEN RUNNING ON A FULL
TIME BASIS FOR ABOUT FOUR WEEKS. DURING THAT PERIOD, THERE WERE
BETWEEN THREE AND FOUR CRASHES A DAY. THIS IS NOT A VALID
INDICATOR BECAUSE MANY OF THE FAILURES WERE DUE TO HARDWARE
COMPLICATIONS. MORE RECENTLY THE HARDWARE HAS BEEN RE-CONFIGURED
TO IMPROVE RELIABILITY AND THE CRASH RATE HAS BEEN REDUCED TO ONE
A DAY WITH A DOWN TIME OF 2-3 MINS. THIS IS EXPECTED TO
CONTINUE, BUT THE SAMPLING PERIOD HASNT BEEN LONG ENOUGH FOR ANY
DEPENDABLE ANALYSIS.
AVAILABILITY
ALTHOUGH THE UNIX NETWORK SOFTWARE WAS DEVELOPED WITHOUT ARPA
SUPPORT, THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED COMPUTATION IS WILLING TO
PROVIDE IT GRATIS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE ARPA COMMUNITY.
HOWEVER BELL LABORATORIES MUST BE CONTACTED FOR A LISCENSE TO
THE BASE SYSTEM ITSELF. BELL'S POLICY IN THE PAST HAS BEEN TO
LISCENSE THE SYSTEM TO UNIVERSITIES FOR A NOMINAL FEE,
$150.00, AND UNFORTUNATELY FOR A COST OF $20,000.00 TO
"NONUNIVERSITY" INSTITUTIONS.
Those are truly delicious historical tidbits about UNIX: how the
beginnings were on humble/unreliable hardware (like Linux was on PC
hardware in the early '90s), and how as early as 1975 the licensing from
big AT&T much differed from the customs in the nascent Arpa/Internet
community.
The "licenses war" was latent in UNIX from the very beginning.
And as a side note: that RFC-681 shows case sensitivity was not a
particular cause of concern back in the day. Why then was UNIX, born in
those days, so particularly case-sensitive?
--
Josh Good