[ih] IETF relevance (was Memories of Flag Day?)

[Dave Crocker]

On 8/30/2023 6:38 PM, vinton cerf wrote:
> official DEC fought like hell but research DEC got TCP somehow for 
> KL-10s/-20s.
> Don't know whether they used the TENEX version or made their own? VAX 
> was probably a different

Research DEC did all sorts of odd stuff.  They did a Unix mainframe that 
was way more powerful than the official top of the line and it was 
canceled because it didn't run VMS.

When i joined, it was to do tech transfer to help DEC adopt TCP. Many 
project were delighted.  Others not so much.

The Unix workstation my group had -- developed at DEC West, of course -- 
was oddly crippled in terms of peripherals.  Apparently stupid choices.  
Turns out it was intentional, to make sure the East Coast did not notice 
it was now the most powerful computer DEC sold...

It was awhile before DEC finally supported TCP natively on VMS. By then, 
really, DEC was in decline.

There were other stories.  The Customer (Field) service folk had a small 
project to production the public SNMP management station. It was killed 
because it did not fit into strategic plans for the all singing all 
dancing management station being developed.  And so on...

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social