5 Sep
2020
5 Sep
'20
3:46 p.m.
Hi,
I know HECnet "should not be regarded as a serious networking setup, nor should it be
expected to work 24/7" to quote Johnny's web page on the subject. I find it fun
in a 'way back when' sense because way back then, as a student encountering VMS
for the first time, the real DEC VAX 11/780 two-node cluster at the university was
connected together via its CI and to the outside world by KMV X25 devices. The latter
devices only talked the old UK 'Coloured Books' protocols and DECnet wasn't
(officially) allowed over Janet. So you can imagine how underwhelming the output of
various NCP SHOW commands was, even with the addition of a standalone Systime VAX and the
odd departmental MicroVAX to the DECnet, using a mixture of KMVs, asynch DDCMP, eventually
X25 1984 (pink book?) over Ethernet and then unencapsulated DECnet over Ethernet. All this
was around the time of VMS 5.4 I think. Departmentally, we also used CMUTEK TCP/IP
software to talk to the world when UK Academia finally accepted that IP was the way to go
and OSI just wasn't going to happen.
Anyway, the point(s).
It's really nice to be able to see a page full of circuits, nodes, areas etc. as a
result of being connected to the HECnet. In combination with Paul's excellent mapper
joining up geography with connectivity, there's a certain 'warm fuzzy feeling'
being part of a community like this... even if our nodes do more of the talking than we
do. Harking back to the hobbyist bit though, I have to stop myself from being disappointed
when nodes drop off for whatever reason especially long term. I've not seen inbound
links from 29.400 and 29.500 for a while now. I occasionally wonder where area 8 is too -
geographically less than 10 miles away possibly yet I've not seen any of it up and
running on the HECnet during my connection to it.
I'm not complaining about any of this, just wondering... as well as staying as far
away from source-code control topics as possible :)
Keith
5 Sep
5 Sep
5:13 p.m.
Equally or more frustrating is when someone reaches out to get into the fun, we get to a
point where I open a port waiting for a connection, then complete silence! Leaves me
wondering what happened. I am sure you have had the same experience.
---
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet
On Sep 5, 2020, at 9:46 AM, Keith Halewood
<Keith.Halewood at pitbulluk.org> wrote:
Hi,
I know HECnet ?should not be regarded as a serious networking setup, nor should it be
expected to work 24/7? to quote Johnny?s web page on the subject. I find it fun in a ?way
back when? sense because way back then, as a student encountering VMS for the first time,
the real DEC VAX 11/780 two-node cluster at the university was connected together via its
CI and to the outside world by KMV X25 devices. The latter devices only talked the old UK
?Coloured Books? protocols and DECnet wasn?t (officially) allowed over Janet. So you can
imagine how underwhelming the output of various NCP SHOW commands was, even with the
addition of a standalone Systime VAX and the odd departmental MicroVAX to the DECnet,
using a mixture of KMVs, asynch DDCMP, eventually X25 1984 (pink book?) over Ethernet and
then unencapsulated DECnet over Ethernet. All this was around the time of VMS 5.4 I think.
Departmentally, we also used CMUTEK TCP/IP software to talk to the world when UK Academia
finally accepted that IP was the way to go and OSI just wasn?t going to happen.
Anyway, the point(s).
It?s really nice to be able to see a page full of circuits, nodes, areas etc. as a result
of being connected to the HECnet. In combination with Paul?s excellent mapper joining up
geography with connectivity, there?s a certain ?warm fuzzy feeling? being part of a
community like this? even if our nodes do more of the talking than we do. Harking back to
the hobbyist bit though, I have to stop myself from being disappointed when nodes drop off
for whatever reason especially long term. I?ve not seen inbound links from 29.400 and
29.500 for a while now. I occasionally wonder where area 8 is too ? geographically less
than 10 miles away possibly yet I?ve not seen any of it up and running on the HECnet
during my connection to it.
I?m not complaining about any of this, just wondering? as well as staying as far away
from source-code control topics as possible :)
Keith
5:51 p.m.
Yes, it is disappointing, but one has to remember that HECnet is a
'hobby', which usually implies a few things:
1. If you are working with these protocols, then you have a certain
amount of talent.? That means you are in demand to work on other
technical issues.? Like fixing an Office installation...
2. Where the domestic sphere exists, one ignores those requests at
one's peril.
3. Work done here either does not immediately generate revenue or (more
likely) doesn't generate any revenue at all.
4. Job.
So it's completely normal for people to get interrupted for days or even
weeks at a time (or months).
It sadly happens; that's today's life.? Even assuming 3. or 4. were not
of any concern, 1. & 2. can blow a lot of time.? I'm thankful for what I
can do, but not finishing things IS annoying...
On 9/5/20 11:13 AM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
Equally or more frustrating is when someone reaches
out to get into
the fun, we get to a point where I open a port waiting for a
connection, then complete silence! Leaves me wondering what happened.
I am sure you have had the same experience.
---
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet <http://www.update.uu.se/~bqt/hecnet.html>
On Sep 5, 2020, at 9:46 AM, Keith Halewood
<Keith.Halewood at pitbulluk.org <mailto:Keith.Halewood at pitbulluk.org>>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I know HECnet ?should not be regarded as a serious networking setup,
> nor should it be expected to work 24/7? to quote Johnny?s web page on
> the subject. I find it fun in a ?way back when? sense because way
> back then, as a student encountering VMS for the first time, the real
> DEC VAX 11/780 two-node cluster at the university was connected
> together via its CI and to the outside world by KMV X25 devices. The
> latter devices only talked the old UK ?Coloured Books? protocols and
> DECnet wasn?t (officially) allowed over Janet. So you can imagine how
> underwhelming the output of various NCP SHOW commands was, even with
> the addition of a standalone Systime VAX and the odd departmental
> MicroVAX to the DECnet, using a mixture of KMVs, asynch DDCMP,
> eventually X25 1984 (pink book?) over Ethernet and then
> unencapsulated DECnet over Ethernet. All this was around the time of
> VMS 5.4 I think. Departmentally, we also used CMUTEK TCP/IP software
> to talk to the world when UK Academia finally accepted that IP was
> the way to go and OSI just wasn?t going to happen.
>
> Anyway, the point(s).
>
> It?s really nice to be able to see a page full of circuits, nodes,
> areas etc. as a result of being connected to the HECnet. In
> combination with Paul?s excellent mapper joining up geography with
> connectivity, there?s a certain ?warm fuzzy feeling? being part of a
> community like this? even if our nodes do more of the talking than we
> do. Harking back to the hobbyist bit though, I have to stop myself
> from being disappointed when nodes drop off for whatever reason
> especially long term. I?ve not seen inbound links from 29.400 and
> 29.500 for a while now. I occasionally wonder where area 8 is too ?
> geographically less than 10 miles away possibly yet I?ve not seen any
> of it up and running on the HECnet during my connection to it.
>
> I?m not complaining about any of this, just wondering? as well as
> staying as far away from source-code control topics as possible :)
>
> Keith
>
9:18 p.m.
I just got connected for the first time yesterday, thanks to Johnny and Robert (YAY!!!).
I'm now squatting on the 2.600-2.699 range (which is WAY larger than I expect to fill
up!), with HUSKY being my "most likely to be turned on and connected" node since
it's a simh emulation on the same Linux box where my PyDECnet router runs. If area 2
ever starves for node addresses, I could easily give up at least half of that chunk.
But unfortunately, I'll be connected only intermittently for now, and probably down
for extended periods when my front-burner focus drifts away from DEC-related things. I
have awful internet connectivity at home, so even when I'm connected, the link will
bounce like a superball. If and when I can solve my internet last-mile problem I will
hopefully be persistently connected to HECnet even when my attention is elsewhere.
My pipe dream would be to create some sort of fun service(s) for other HECnet users to
connect to. It's really neat to be able to network like it's the 1980s again, but
I gather that there's not a lot of regular user activity on HECnet yet? If my
attention span was long enough, I'd consider writing a VMS-native MUD in order to
learn VMS innards (I'm totally a UNIX guy; VMS is still a very strange place to me).
Then I'd put it on HECnet so y'all could get an hour or so of passing enjoyment
out of my year of effort! :)
Anyway, I just thought I should chime in about why my nodes will usually not be reachable.
It'll be mostly because of my choice to live in a rural area, with a side effect of
having very substandard internet connectivity.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
10:13 p.m.
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency,
or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
To solve the Internet problem I found a friend about 6 miles away in the local village
area that could get fibre. We set him up with shiny new Gbps service and run a dual
polarised 5.8 GHz link with 2' dishes that gives me 400 Mbps downloads and a 1ms
typical ping times.
Reasonable civil works needing 4" galvanised support pipes being placed to hold the
antennas. At my end the link is then hooked to a Cisco metro Ethernet switch with a
further 5.8 GHz link to another neighbour. Finally we installed a small UPS at each site
to carry over the occasional brownouts.
All three of us are radio amateurs.
HECnet round trip ping time to Legato:: is about 200ms from here, that includes a 24ms
ping to the relay at my work (via Cisco VPN and another OpenVMS 7.3 emulation which
actually has the MultiNet link to Bob's area router 2.1023).
73, John
On 6/09/2020, at 07:23, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at
nf6x.net> wrote:
?I just got connected for the first time yesterday, thanks to Johnny and Robert (YAY!!!).
I'm now squatting on the 2.600-2.699 range (which is WAY larger than I expect to fill
up!), with HUSKY being my "most likely to be turned on and connected" node since
it's a simh emulation on the same Linux box where my PyDECnet router runs. If area 2
ever starves for node addresses, I could easily give up at least half of that chunk.
But unfortunately, I'll be connected only intermittently for now, and probably down
for extended periods when my front-burner focus drifts away from DEC-related things. I
have awful internet connectivity at home, so even when I'm connected, the link will
bounce like a superball. If and when I can solve my internet last-mile problem I will
hopefully be persistently connected to HECnet even when my attention is elsewhere.
My pipe dream would be to create some sort of fun service(s) for other HECnet users to
connect to. It's really neat to be able to network like it's the 1980s again, but
I gather that there's not a lot of regular user activity on HECnet yet? If my
attention span was long enough, I'd consider writing a VMS-native MUD in order to
learn VMS innards (I'm totally a UNIX guy; VMS is still a very strange place to me).
Then I'd put it on HECnet so y'all could get an hour or so of passing enjoyment
out of my year of effort! :)
Anyway, I just thought I should chime in about why my nodes will usually not be
reachable. It'll be mostly because of my choice to live in a rural area, with a side
effect of having very substandard internet connectivity.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
10:33 p.m.
On Sep 5, 2020, at 1:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy at
xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency,
or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
Your internet options are slightly better than mine... best ADSL I could get is about
3Mbps down, with frequent service interruptions and poor customer support! I connect over
a cellular tether, but all three major carriers here have poor cellular coverage in my
area. My connectivity is sometimes fast, but very unreliable.
To solve the Internet problem I found a friend about 6
miles away in the local village area that could get fibre. We set him up with shiny new
Gbps service and run a dual polarised 5.8 GHz link with 2' dishes that gives me 400
Mbps downloads and a 1ms typical ping times.
I'm trying to come up with a similar scheme. The trouble so far is finding an
accomplice with a clear line of sight and good internet service. I'm considering
sending letters to random strangers in a nearby neighborhood that has cable service. The
nearest home with modern internet access is a mere 540 meters from my house.
My parents have similarly poor internet options, and they live 3 miles away with a clear
line of sight. Once we get better connectivity at either home, we'll put in a
microwave link so we can share it. If I could come up with a business plan that lets me go
into business for myself instead of being a wage slave, you can bet that my company would
be located somewhere with a clear line of sight to either my home or my parents' home.
I've identified three candidate business parks in Riverside.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
10:52 p.m.
Good luck with your project Mark.
I didn't mention that one advantage of sharing is the cost split. The 1Gbps fibre
connection is reasonably expensive at $110 per month but split three ways that's
cheaper than any other plan and of course way faster. It's not so much the actual
speed as the low latency. With ADSL the latency was around 20ms, the rural 700MHz LTE was
about 30 ms, satellite is off the chart at 300ms or so, but the fiber was <1ms with
some additional delays from the Ubiquity link and Cisco switch bring it to <2ms at my
PC (all ping times measured to the same ping host).
The latency is important because while you might think that's not much of a delay for
a web page, it actually all adds up because one web page often involves dozens of DNS
resolution requests and HTTP gets and so the latency times rapidly add up to slow the
loading.
A nice letter to candidate locations setting out what you're trying to achieve might
work, give it a go!
You might want to look for some low cost public liability insurance to reassure anyone you
co-locate with. I carry $2m of such insurance in case stock wanders on the road or someone
hurts themselves on our property. It's quite cheap insurance compared to house
insurance.
73, John
ZL4JY
On 6/09/2020, at 08:33, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at
nf6x.net> wrote:
?
On Sep 5, 2020, at 1:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy
at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency,
or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
Your internet options are slightly better than mine... best ADSL I could get is about
3Mbps down, with frequent service interruptions and poor customer support! I connect over
a cellular tether, but all three major carriers here have poor cellular coverage in my
area. My connectivity is sometimes fast, but very unreliable.
To solve the Internet problem I found a friend
about 6 miles away in the local village area that could get fibre. We set him up with
shiny new Gbps service and run a dual polarised 5.8 GHz link with 2' dishes that gives
me 400 Mbps downloads and a 1ms typical ping times.
I'm trying to come up with a similar scheme. The trouble so far is finding an
accomplice with a clear line of sight and good internet service. I'm considering
sending letters to random strangers in a nearby neighborhood that has cable service. The
nearest home with modern internet access is a mere 540 meters from my house.
My parents have similarly poor internet options, and they live 3 miles away with a clear
line of sight. Once we get better connectivity at either home, we'll put in a
microwave link so we can share it. If I could come up with a business plan that lets me go
into business for myself instead of being a wage slave, you can bet that my company would
be located somewhere with a clear line of sight to either my home or my parents' home.
I've identified three candidate business parks in Riverside.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
11:10 p.m.
On 9/5/20 4:52 PM, John Yaldwyn wrote:
A nice letter to candidate locations setting out what
you're trying to achieve might work, give it a go!
You might want to look for some low cost public liability insurance to reassure anyone
you co-locate with. I carry $2m of such insurance in case stock wanders on the road or
someone hurts themselves on our property. It's quite cheap insurance compared to house
insurance.
The problem that's likely to arise here is nontechnical people not
understanding things. You'll get "Ohhhh, I dunno, I don't think we're
supposed to do that!" type of responses, from sheep who are accustomed
to being told what to do by their service providers.
Some gentle education can usually get past this if there's enough
gray matter present. But we now live in a world in which people are so
clueless that there are office buildings with ~100 suites each with
separate network connections, bought and paid for separately...and the
providers are all too happy to perpetuate it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
10:43 p.m.
On Sep 5, 2020, at 4:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy at
xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency,
or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
That's not so bad.
I remember when DEC's internal "Engineering Net" first extended to the UK
(Reading, near London). I'm pretty sure it wasn't what was then called a
"high speed link" so most likely that was a 2400 baud link. High speed, for us,
meant 9600 baud.
Yes, a few organizations with big budgets, like ARPAnet, had a super fast backbone -- 56
kbps.
I remember how boggled my mind was when Ethernet first appeared, with 10 Mbps wires and
network interface cards capable of running at a fair fraction of that speed. DEUNA
couldn't do wire rate, I'm pretty sure, but it came respectably close. QNA was
even faster, when it worked.
paul
10:58 p.m.
Hi Paul,
The whole of New Zealand was originally connected to Arpanet at 9600 bps via the
University of Waikato in the 80's when our work email was updated twice daily using
UUCP.
At that time "high speed" local computing access was a 3274 controller connected
via 2400 bps leased line to a local computer centre and we booked access to the four
shared terminal in hourly blocks.
You can imagine how we all felt when the luxury of a shiny new 780 arrived with terminals
for everyone that wanted one.
John
On 6/09/2020, at 08:45, Paul Koning <paulkoning at
comcast.net> wrote:
?
On Sep 5, 2020, at 4:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy
at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with horrendous latency,
or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
That's not so bad.
I remember when DEC's internal "Engineering Net" first extended to the UK
(Reading, near London). I'm pretty sure it wasn't what was then called a
"high speed link" so most likely that was a 2400 baud link. High speed, for us,
meant 9600 baud.
Yes, a few organizations with big budgets, like ARPAnet, had a super fast backbone -- 56
kbps.
I remember how boggled my mind was when Ethernet first appeared, with 10 Mbps wires and
network interface cards capable of running at a fair fraction of that speed. DEUNA
couldn't do wire rate, I'm pretty sure, but it came respectably close. QNA was
even faster, when it worked.
paul
11:26 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE <owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE> On
Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: 05 September 2020 21:43
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] Here there be dragons...
for us,
On Sep 5, 2020, at 4:13 PM, John Yaldwyn <jy
at xtra.co.nz> wrote:
Hi Mike,
I live in a rural area here in New Zealand.
The best internet on offer is 5Mbps/500kbps ADSL, slow satellite with
horrendous
latency, or rural broadband on 700 MHz LTE.
That's not so bad.
I remember when DEC's internal "Engineering Net" first extended to the UK
(Reading, near London). I'm pretty sure it wasn't what was then called a
"high speed link" so most likely that was a 2400 baud link. High speed,
meant 9600 baud.
DECs internal Network seemed odd. In the late 1990's I worked in DEC
Warrington where we had a 64K link to Reading where much of the kit was.
I got better access at home because I had 64K ISDN which dialled directly to
Reading....
Dave
Yes, a few organizations with big budgets, like ARPAnet, had a super fast
backbone -- 56 kbps.
I remember how boggled my mind was when Ethernet first appeared, with
10 Mbps wires and network interface cards capable of running at a fair
fraction of that speed. DEUNA couldn't do wire rate, I'm pretty sure, but
it
came respectably close. QNA was even faster, when it
worked.
paul
6 Sep
6 Sep
12:14 a.m.
so most likely that was a 2400 baud link.
Got my first "personal" VAX, a VAXstation-2000, around 1990 and I had a
dial up, 2400bps asynchronous DECnet DDCMP link to the machines at work.
Even managed to run DECwindows over that, although it took a lot of
patience.
Bob
5 Sep
5 Sep
9:21 p.m.
It is great being part of hecnet, it is quite unique.
My interest in the technology waxes and wanes over the years depending on
family, other hobbies, the weather, all sorts of parameters. I have seen
the same in others.
It is an very niche hobby.
Mark
On Sat, 5 Sep 2020, 16:52 Thomas DeBellis, <tommytimesharing at gmail.com>
wrote:
Yes, it is disappointing, but one has to remember that
HECnet is a
'hobby', which usually implies a few things:
1. If you are working with these protocols, then you have a certain
amount of talent. That means you are in demand to work on other technical
issues. Like fixing an Office installation...
2. Where the domestic sphere exists, one ignores those requests at
one's peril.
3. Work done here either does not immediately generate revenue or
(more likely) doesn't generate any revenue at all.
4. Job.
So it's completely normal for people to get interrupted for days or even
weeks at a time (or months).
It sadly happens; that's today's life. Even assuming 3. or 4. were not of
any concern, 1. & 2. can blow a lot of time. I'm thankful for what I can
do, but not finishing things IS annoying...
On 9/5/20 11:13 AM, Supratim Sanyal wrote:
Equally or more frustrating is when someone reaches out to get into the
fun, we get to a point where I open a port waiting for a connection, then
complete silence! Leaves me wondering what happened. I am sure you have had
the same experience.
---
Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT
39.19151 N, 77.23432 W
QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet <http://www.update.uu.se/~bqt/hecnet.html>
On Sep 5, 2020, at 9:46 AM, Keith Halewood <Keith.Halewood at pitbulluk.org>
wrote:
Hi,
I know HECnet ?should not be regarded as a serious networking setup, nor
should it be expected to work 24/7? to quote Johnny?s web page on the
subject. I find it fun in a ?way back when? sense because way back then, as
a student encountering VMS for the first time, the real DEC VAX 11/780
two-node cluster at the university was connected together via its CI and to
the outside world by KMV X25 devices. The latter devices only talked the
old UK ?Coloured Books? protocols and DECnet wasn?t (officially) allowed
over Janet. So you can imagine how underwhelming the output of various NCP
SHOW commands was, even with the addition of a standalone Systime VAX and
the odd departmental MicroVAX to the DECnet, using a mixture of KMVs,
asynch DDCMP, eventually X25 1984 (pink book?) over Ethernet and then
unencapsulated DECnet over Ethernet. All this was around the time of VMS
5.4 I think. Departmentally, we also used CMUTEK TCP/IP software to talk to
the world when UK Academia finally accepted that IP was the way to go and
OSI just wasn?t going to happen.
Anyway, the point(s).
It?s really nice to be able to see a page full of circuits, nodes, areas
etc. as a result of being connected to the HECnet. In combination with
Paul?s excellent mapper joining up geography with connectivity, there?s a
certain ?warm fuzzy feeling? being part of a community like this? even if
our nodes do more of the talking than we do. Harking back to the hobbyist
bit though, I have to stop myself from being disappointed when nodes drop
off for whatever reason especially long term. I?ve not seen inbound links
from 29.400 and 29.500 for a while now. I occasionally wonder where area 8
is too ? geographically less than 10 miles away possibly yet I?ve not seen
any of it up and running on the HECnet during my connection to it.
I?m not complaining about any of this, just wondering? as well as staying
as far away from source-code control topics as possible :)
Keith
1350
days inactive
1350
days old
12 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
bob＠jfcl.com -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
jy＠xtra.co.nz -
Keith.Halewood＠pitbulluk.org -
mark＠wickensonline.co.uk -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
nf6x＠nf6x.net -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
supratim＠riseup.net -
tommytimesharing＠gmail.com