[ih] X.25

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Wed Oct 1 17:19:11 PDT 2025


On 10/1/2025 5:12 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) via 
Internet-history wrote:
> Didn't ISODE beat them to it?  I had the ISODE tape around 1987,
> but I can't remember if there was an X.400 implementation at that
> time.  But I'd be surprised if there wasn't, given how often Steve
> Kille's name shows up on X.400-related RFCs.
>
> I know by 1996 Isode's (now the company) X.400 system was very
> mature and running at many eites.  At Esys, we licensed and sold
> their X.500 product on a number of UNIX platforms.  I was the lucky
> guy who had to package and support that beast.


Drat.  I screwed up.  Wollongong took the ISODE package, not UBC's 
though I still do believe UBC's was first.

I think we did look at the UDC code but decided it would not work for us.

I was running the Engineering department, and doing no coding, but one 
day, after we brought the ISODE package in to start working on, one of 
the engineers came in and asking me whether I was also working for the 
ISODE folk.

This was quite an odd question, so I asked why they would think that and 
they said my name was all over their code.

ISODE's package was based on the MMDF system I built at the University 
of Delaware.  It was built for Arpanet, and I did the initial 
implementation to support SMTP and TCP, but left before putting it into 
production.  The UK folks did massive enhancement, to add X.400 
support.  But apparently they had retained much of the core mechanics 
that I had written...


d/


-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
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