[TUHS] Windows roots and Unix influence (was Re: Happy birthday, Ken Thompson!)

[wobblygong@gmail.com (Wesley Parish)]

MS/PC/DR DOS networks used Novell Netware's IPX/SPX suite iirc. Then
IBM and Microsoft came up with NetBIOS and its development NetBEUI, a
simple peer-to-peer network, and MS Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
standardized on that, which meant that most small/er networks
defaulted to NetBEUI.

Then the Internet took off and TCP/IP took over the networking;
NetBEUI survived in the form of Samba as a protocol suite for printer
sharing.

Microsoft had thought it would take over from other public computer
networks like Compuserve with its MSN, but the Internet made all of
them subnets to itself.

Wesley Parish

On 2/8/18, Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:
> Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> [...] But much VMS, whatever HP minicomputer stuff was floating around
>> (MPE?) and all VM/CMS (I guess it was actually VM/ESA by that time)
>> disappeared; VAXstations, serial terminals and 3179G's were all replaced
>> by PCs running Windows and the users were replaced by these smiling
>> robots. It was weird.
>>
>> Somehow, most of the Unix people managed to escape. I wonder why? [...]
>>
>> I wonder, too, if Unix networking didn't play a major role. I have this
>> dim
>> sense that NT was designed for a world in which it was still assumed that
>> the OSI suite was going to win the networking wars. [...]
>
> I was in my late teens around that time but I got the impression that in
> the early to mid 1990s when this shift was happening, networking was
> moving to IP and all the IP software was Unix - certainly it was the only
> option if you wanted to run network services at the scale of a University
> or ISP. At the same time Windows was all about workgroup-scale office
> networking. I don't think their network protocols were OSI but Exchange
> was based on X.400 and to this day still only does Internet mail
> grudgingly.
>
> Tony.
> --
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