I'm traveling so can not offer a good answer at the moment.  But pre-BSD networking was the the MIT-Chaosnet code which Ron is alluding.   Putting devices names in the UNIX space was done.   Why Joy decided to abandon it will never know without asking him.  Maybe it was because RIG and Accent (Mach's predecessors) had not and Bill was definitely trying to add features that those systems had.

Anyway, when I get back I can try to answer some questions about it.  I think it was recently recovered.

Side note to Dan - I just quick looked at you post -- it seems excellent, I want some time to digest.

Clem

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 5:55 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:


On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 4:56 PM Josh Good <pepe@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?



 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. 

ron