5 Aug
2022
5 Aug
'22
1:59 a.m.
While looking for something else, I found this:
VAX-UNIX Networking Support Project Implementation Description
Robert F. Gurwitz; January, 1981
https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien168.txt
in a somewhat obscure location. I have no idea if it's already widely known
or not, but here it is anyway.
Hi Noel,
Thank you for highlighting this document. I had seen it before and the implementation (as
found on the tapes from CSRG and now on THUS) follows the plan outlined in IEN168 quite
closely. The first snapshot of the code is just a few months after this document.
In a way it is modeled after the UoI Arpanet Unix implementation (and thank you again for
finding that source!), with a separate (kernel) process for network activity. In my
experiments I have found that it is not all that easy to get smooth network data flow as
this network process is difficult to schedule just right. I now better understand why Joy
moved to "software interrupts” to get better scheduling of kernel network
operations.
Wbr,
Paul