[TUHS] Re: Research Datakit notes

[Anthony Martin <ality@pbrane.org>]

Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl> once said:
> Wanted to post my notes as plain text, but the bullets / sub-bullets get lost.
>
> Here is a 2 page PDF with my notes on Research Datakit:
>
> https://www.jslite.net/notes/rdk.pdf

Really nice outline. I felt some déjà vu when opening the document: I
remember reading your notes in April of 2020.

Would you happen to know where I can find copies of these three
papers?

A. G. Fraser, "Datakit - A Modular Network for Synchronous and
Asynchronous Traffic", Proc. ICC 79, June 1979, Boston, Ma.,
pp.20.1.1-20.1.3

G. L. Chesson, "Datakit Software Architecture", Proc. ICC 79, June
1979, Boston Ma., pp.20.2.1-20.2.5

G. L. Chesson and A. G. Fraser, "Datakit Network Architecture," Proc.
Compcon 80, February 1980, San Fransisco CA., pp.59-61

> A secondary takeaway is that Research Datakit eventually settled on a
> three-level ascii namespace: “area/trunk/switch”. On each switch, the
> hosts would be known by name, and each connection request had a
> service name as parameter. In an alternate reality we would maybe have
> used “ca/stclara/mtnview!google!www” to do a search.

To connect to one of the Plan 9 cpu servers at Bell Labs, you would
dial "nj/astro/helix!9fs". I do wonder how the relative hierarchical
naming would have evolved to encompass the entire Internet. Would
it have been more like "com/google/search!http"? Who knows? ☺

Thanks,
  Anthony