ecn-pa:ecn-pb:rick (11/12/82)
Finally, an oportunity to voice my disgust at that paper. The "authors" of the paper in question (Unix networking at Purde as published in IEEE Computer), dont have a damned thing to do with the Engineering Computer Network. Hwang,Wah and Briggs are just some faculty members who are out to write a paper about somebody elses work and get credit for it. I seriously doubt if they understand how it works. Much of the paper was written by George Goble (who got minor credit as the author). If you read the "about the author" section at the back of the article, you will see credit is justly given, but you have to read very closely. The Engineering Computer Network was designed and implemented by Bill Croft (late of SRI, but moving to Sun very soon) and George Goble, still of Purdue. Ben Coates name is mentioned because he is the depatment head of EE. Thats his sole contribution.
ecn-pa:ecn-pb:rick (11/12/82)
Finally, an oportunity to voice my disgust at that paper.
The "authors" of the paper in question (Unix networking at Purdue as
published in IEEE Computer), don't have a damned thing to do with the
Engineering Computer Network.
Hwang,Wah and Briggs are just some faculty members who are out to write
a paper about somebody elses work and get credit for it. I seriously
doubt if they understand how it works. Much of the paper was written
by George Goble (who got minor credit as the author).
If you read the "about the author" section at the back of the article,
you will see credit is justly given, but you have to read very
closely. It really bothers me that IEEE Computer would allow credit to
be unjustly given in that manner. It makes me wonder who really does
the work on other papers I read.
The Engineering Computer Network was designed and implemented by Bill
Croft (late of SRI, but moving to Sun very soon) and George Goble,
still of Purdue. Ben Coates' name is mentioned because he is the
department head of EE. That's his sole contribution, although some
people like to present him as a grand visionary who foresaw that the
future was in networks,etc. I can't believe that it was more than a
happy accident involving the right comment ("Gee, wouldn't it be nice
if all 3 of our computers could share resources") to the right person
(Bill Croft) at the right time. It's always bothered me that Croft
hasn't received his share of the credit for the design of the network.
Now to answer your question, yes it's available. UNC is running it and
a couple of other sites. It's big. I doubt if it will fit on a
non-seperate I/D machine. The smallest I have heard of it running on is
an 11/45. I don't know how overlayed kernals change that. I don't know of
any implementation other than V7 or 4bsd, but Croft was working on a
2.8bsd port of it at one time.
Contact George Goble (pur-ee!ghg) to get a distribution.
For what it's worth, we will probably abandon it in favor of the TCP/IP
network that's coming with 4.2bsd (yes, I know it was on the 4.1a
tape). This is presuming that we can get some flavor of TCP/IP running
on our V7 11/70's. We will probably see how much of Crofts 2.8bsd
TCP/IP we can fit into our V7 kernel.
The opinions expressed above should be taken as my own (even
though they are shared by many,many others here) and not
necessarily representing Purdue University or the Engineering Computer
Network.
Rick Adams