[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 63, Issue 3

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

could internet history be a bit more embellished with a bit more
elucidation on/of the "*even barbed wire*" of the underlying technologies
reference pretty please🤔

On Sun, Feb 2, 2025 at 11:20 AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> In the Interop show net during the late 1980s and into the 1990s we used
> routers from Cisco, Wellfleet, Proteon, and 3-Com.  It was fairly common
> for us to do several code updates a day because we tended to push the
> gear harder than the developers did.  And we found plenty of dissonances
> - such as different interpretations of what a directed broadcast meant
> to Ciscos and Wellfleets - we ended up with some 100% load infinite
> traffic loops because of that one.
>
> We routed IP, Decnet, Netware/IPX, and ISO CLNP.  We did both unicast
> and multicast.
>
> As for routing protocols I remember mostly OSPF in the unicast area and
> DVMRP and PIM in the multicast space.  External was always "unique"
> until BGP settled down.
>
> We used underlying technologies ranging from yellow hose ethernet, IBM
> Token ring, to FDDI rings, T-1<and higher>, microwave, urban lasers, to
> even barbed wire.  During that era some people used DIX Ethernet and
> others used 802 SNAP - that was "fun".
>
> We kinda pushed things, such as when we did a RAID array composed of USB
> thumb drives driven by iSCSI over wifi.
>
> (Or show net typologies were far from simple hierarchies - we had plenty
> of path options, and our external was to at least two different providers.)
>
>         --karl--
>
>
> On 2/2/25 9:28 AM, John Shoch via Internet-history wrote:
>
> > OK, so this has provoked me to ask a trivia question, especially for all
> of
> > you who know more about Cisco than I do:
> > "In the early days, how many networks or protocols were handled by
> Cisco's
> > multi-protocol routers?"
> > I certainly don't know.  But as a starting point, the Computer History
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True