[ih] DEC Ethernet packet capture box

[Brian E Carpenter]

Sounds like a protocol analyzer from a third party to me. Tektronix?
I can't really remember who was building analyzers in those days, maybe
HP already had one too. They certainly did by 1987:

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=938

   Brian


On 19/03/2015 12:26, Craig Partridge wrote:
> 
> To try to job memories more, here's what I remember.
> 
> There was a relatively expensive standalone box that printed
> out packets.  It was exhibited at whatever the annual DEC product
> conference was (DECUS?) shortly after I joined BBN (so late 1983 at
> the earliest and probably more like 1984 or 1985) and the story that came back
> was that Ken Oleson looked at the demo, saw passwords appearing on
> the screen, and said something akin to "I'm not sure I like this."
> 
> My recollection was, ironically, that this was a DEC product.  But perhaps
> it was a third party box?  I do remember it was expensive for the time
> and a standalone device.  It led to great interest in figuring out how
> to use regular boxes to capture packets off shared media networks like the
> Ethernets of the 1980s.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Craig
> 
>> On 3/18/2015 3:14 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>>> what i know from 1988 is that i wanted an ethernet capture box for DEC
>>> WRL, and i had to buy a whitebox PC and install FTP Software's LANWatch
>>> product on it, because there was nothing available in the product
>>> catalog. so, i'm very interested in any information anyone might turn up
>>> as to what ethernet capture box DEC may have been selling in 1984.
>>
>>
>> oh boy.
>>
>> In 1986 we put TCP/IP on the Ungermann-Bass 'smart' Ethernet card and
>> during the project I discovered someone had done an ethernet capture
>> module, which symbolic display of the UB XNS packets.  So I re-coded it
>> to interpret TCP/IP.  As far as I could tell, it kept of with ethernet
>> flows adequately.
>>
>> When I moved to Wollongong in 1987, I had an equivalent product built,
>> using regular (3Com, or whatever) cards.  It performed adequately too.
>>
>> d/
>>
>> -- 
>> Dave Crocker
>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>> bbiw.net
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> ********************
> Craig Partridge
> Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
> E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
> Phone: +1 517 324 3425
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