I have found a video by Sandy Fraser from 1994 which discusses the Spider network (but not
the related Unix software). The first 30 min or so are about Spider and the ideas behind
it, then it moves on to Datakit and ATM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojRtJ1U6Qzw
Although the thinking behind them is very different, the "switch" on the Spider
network seems to have been somewhat similar to an Arpanet IMP.
Paul
==
On page 3 of the Research Unix reader (
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf)
"Sandy (A. G.) Fraser devised the Spider local-area ring (v6) and the Datakit switch
(v7) that have served in the lab for over a decade. Special services on Spider included a
central network file store, nfs, and a communication package, ufs."
I do not recall ever seeing any SPIDER related code in the public V6 source tree. Was it
ever released outside Bell Labs?
From a bit of Googling I understand that SPIDER was a ATDM ring network with a supervisor
allocating virtual circuits. Apparently there was only ever one SPIDER loop with 11 hosts
connected, although Fraser reportedly intended to create multiple connected loops as part
of his research.
The papers that Fraser wrote are hard to find: lots of citations, but no copies, not even
behind pay walls. The base report seems to be:
A. G. FRASER, " SPIDER-a data communication experiment", Tech Report 23 , Bell
Lab, 1974.
Is that tech report available online somewhere?
Tanks!
Paul