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@MSGID: 1@reader2.panix.com> 4775b4db
@REPLY: <7w7co9ijmc.fsf@junk.nocrew.org> ba9f06fc
@REPLYADDR Dan Cross
<cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net>
@REPLYTO 2:5075/128 Dan Cross
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In article <
7w7co9ijmc.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>,
Lars Brinkhoff <
lars.spam@nocrew.org> wrote:
>Dan Cross writes:
>> This came up on the TUHS list back in 2021 (you were on the
>> thread, Lars). That pointed to this:
>>
>>
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=BBN-Vax-TCP/history
>>
>> Which stronly implies that there was some "NCP" in VAX Unix
>> sometime in 1980. Whether that was the Network Control Protocol
>> or just an affectation for "networking code" (as implied by Noel
>> Chiappa in the TUHS thread) is unknown.
>
>Thanks! Yes, that would be unknow. That is almost an optimum point in
>time for ambiguity as to what NCP means. DECnet, Chaosnet, and IBM also
>picked up the term as roughly equivalent to "network stack". So this
>BBN VAX NCP could be either the old Arpanet NCP, or a new TCP stack.
>
>As per the 1981 Transition book, there were already TCP-only hosts on
>the Arpanet, implying that some sites developed and deployed TCP well
>before that. I get the sense that everyone was aware the switch was
>going to happen and new development was towards TCP. But I don`t know
>the exact timeline.
I, too, find it hard to imagine that a lot of effort would have
been put into a VAX NCP implementation since it was clear that
TCP/IP was coming, but as a stopgap or some special purpose? I
could see it.
I found a copy of the hosts table from 1983:
https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/blob/master/pub/hosts/19830119/HOSTS.TXT
This lists a number of VAX systems that appear to have been
assigned "ARPANET host numbers", but they could also be "RCCnet"
numbers (I don`t think I`ve ever heard of RCCnet).
This:
https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/blob/master/pub/hosts/19820615/SYSHST%3B%20HO
STS%20PRETTY
appears to show at several VAXen on ARPANET (BBNF running VMS at
01/05 and UCLA-SECURITY running Unix at 2/01, among others).
Again, it`s not entirely clear if these are NCP-hosts, possibly
running TCP/IP, or what. I do feel comfortable assuming they`re
not running DECnet (or at least, that`s irrelevant to them being
listed in these host tables).
- Dan C.
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