Re: [TUHS] networking on unix before uucp

On Fri, 22 Aug 2014, Cory Smelosky wrote: I have read most (if not all) of the berknet docs and a lot of the code. The docs and code referenced a rcs, rcsq, and rcslog as some tools that could be ran without a personal account on a remote system. I didn't recognize rcsq, but also these references pre-dated Tichy's alternative to SCCS by a year or so. Then I realized this is "remote computer system link" used something like: rcsq to see queued jobs no sent yet for CDC 6400; rcslog to see history of jobs sent that day; and rcsrm to delete a job not sent yet. Basic concepts similar to berknet (netq, netlog, netrm). (The clue I found was in http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1979/ERL-79-16.pdf) I know the Cyber 6400 was used there (some of my interviewees told me about it). Does anyone know if Berknet's design was inspired by this "rcs"? Where can I learn more about it? (as searching for "rcs" is difficult) I don't see any ethernet code in Berknet. The author had a summer job at XEROX PARC I think in the middle of his Berknet project and discussed the low-level network concepts with Boggs. Later, they considered an LNI, an early token ring (if I understand correctly), device, and DMC-11 link, but I don't think berknet was ever extended for those or used using ethernet. Note that extending Berknet probably didn't make sense. It was all batched with all the systems known to each system hardcoded, compiled in. Smallest jobs sent first from the queue to neighboring system which would send the job to next as if it was queued locally until it arrived to desired system. So retrieving an email (box) or doing a remote copy, you would have to wait for the jobs to get ran. The speed on the 1200 baud links was only around 50 characters per second. (I think at best on 9600 baud links was around 600 characters per second but normally 350 cps.) In addition, berknet had hardcoded restrictions limiting 100,000 characters per single job. (It was later extended to 500,000 characters for some machines, then all machines while still limiting only 200,000 characters max size jobs during day time.) (I never used berknet only read code and docs and did some interviews with users.) It was quite limited compared to the new real-time tools and near 3Mb network that started being developed and used there a couple years later. By the way, the early berknet had a symlink to the batch remote copy netcp called "rcp" which predated Joy's real-time remote file copy, rcp, by a few years. The early version also included a trivial "sendmail" to remotely send mail over the batch berknet to another berknet system (by running "mail" on the remote system later). It predated Allman's unrelated intelligent mailer by around two years. The Berknet tool was replaced and renamed with "sendberkmail".