[ih] Internet addressing history section

[Richard Bennett]

Once upon a time (early 90s IIRC) Excelan tried to push SPX/IPX as an alternative to TCP/IP for the vast global network. They figured it was a solution to address exhaustion and had many other benefits over the rather primitive status quo, such as a directory service that was a lot more sophisticated than the globally-unique address & WKP system. This was after the company had been acquired by Novell. Excelan is also where NETBIOS over TCP (RFCs 1001-2) came from. The PTB were already invested in TCP/IP by then, however. 

Tandem implemented NETBIOS/Netbeui on its Non-Stop (GUARDIAN OS) systems shortly after it was released by IBM for the PC Network in ‘83. Sytek tried to get IEEE 802.3 to endorse PC Network as its low-cost LAN standard, but StarLAN defeated it. That led to 10BASE-T. 

Probably the single greatest achievement in popularizing roll-your-own networking was DataPoint’s ARCNet, made out of bubble gum, baling wire, and IBM 3270 coax transceivers in the early- to mid-‘70s. They had a virtual file system long before any other commercially-significant company did. 

There was actually a lot of good, solid, creative protocol design work before TCP/IP. 

RB

> On Feb 13, 2019, at 8:57 PM, Dave Taht <dave at taht.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> I seem to find myself kind of lonely in wanting to discuss the competing
> impact of netbui and ipx/spx before 2004 or so. I can't be the only one
> who's primary intro to networking was via those protocols? They seem to
> get short shrift today....
> 
> Anyway, although I can add a lot more to the arpanet portion of the
> history section, and probably will, my current working draft of the
> history section of this document is now up here:
> 
> https://github.com/dtaht/ipv4-cleanup/blob/master/rfcs/draft-gilmore-taht-v4uniext.txt#L117
> 
> Feel free to make suggestions for more (or less!) content, comment as to
> my mental state, ancestry, naivety, and overall correctness of the cites
> - I note that the last cite I added today was rfc1925, which really
> should get cited more often.
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—
Richard Bennett
High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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