maybe if interest, i have a copy of an article by sandy fraser, “early experiments with
time division networks” from ieee networks, jan 1993, pp12-26.
this is a high level paper and describes spider, datakit, incon.
it may have little new but i felt it had a lot of good background and a useful references
list.
i am wary of scanning it as its the ieee...
-Steve
On 15 Feb 2020, at 2:00 am,
tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
Send TUHS mailing list submissions to
tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
tuhs-request(a)minnie.tuhs.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
tuhs-owner(a)minnie.tuhs.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of TUHS digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Datakit early end-to-end protocol(s) (Paul Ruizendaal)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:22:37 +0100
From: Paul Ruizendaal <pnr(a)planet.nl>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Datakit early end-to-end protocol(s)
Message-ID: <7128AB08-C99E-490E-BD81-7D62503FF676(a)planet.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
I’m looking for the end-to-end datakit network protocol as it existed in 7th Edition.
Context is as follows:
- The Spider network guaranteed reliable, in-order delivery of packets at the TIU
interface. There does not seem to have been a standard host end-to-end protocol, although
applications did of course contain sanity checks (see for instance the ‘nfs’ source here:
http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/Spider/tree?ci=tip)
- Datakit dropped the reliable delivery part (although it did retain the in-order
guarantee) and moved this responsibility to the host. It is the (early) evolution of the
related protocol that I’m trying to dig up.
- 7th Edition appears to have had a (serial line based) Datakit connection. Datakit
drivers are not in the distributed files, but its tty.h file has defines for several
Datakit related constants. Also, as the first Datakit switches became operational at
Murray Hill in ’78 or ’79, it seems a reasonable assumption that the Research code base
included drivers & protocols for it around that time.
- After that the trail continues with the 8th edition which has a stream filter (dkp.c)
for the “New Datakit Protocol”:
http://chiselapp.com/user/pnr/repository/v8unix/artifact/01b4f6f05733aba5 This suggests
that there was an “Old Datakit Protocol” as well - if so, this may have been the protocol
in use at the time of 7th Edition.
The “New Datakit Protocol” appears to be (more or less) the same as what was later called
URP (Universal Receiver Protocol). At the time of Plan9 its IL/IP protocol appears to have
been designed as an equivalent for URP/Datakit. The early protocols where apparently
(co-)designed by Greg Chesson and maybe also stood at the base of his later XTP protocol
work.
Any recollections about the early history and evolution of this Datakit protocol are much
appreciated. Also, if the source to the 7th Edition Datakit network stack survived I’d
love to hear.
Paul
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
TUHS mailing list
TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
------------------------------
End of TUHS Digest, Vol 51, Issue 18
************************************