Now, you have due permission to beat me with a dried haddock if I'm being naive (I'm not a programmer, just a user observing a conversation that's 50% over my head) but... Wouldn't a kernel-agnostic DECnet implementation be a better shot? I mean if you can skim DECnet packets using libpcap (which is kernel agnostic as far as I can tell, hell it even works on Windows :)) and use that to handle DECnet for the bridge or SimH what's stopping it being used for a full DECnet comms package? It might not be very *fast* and it's sure as hell not secure but it'd work, right? With the fast pace of kernel change and the dropping of kernel support (and OSs like Ubuntu update the kernel regularly which will break things) for DECnet in the 3.x kernel it may be that kernel-based support is no longer practicable on modern Linux. Just a thought... -- Mark Benson http://DECtec.info Twitter: @DECtecInfo HECnet: STAR69::MARK Online Resource & Mailing List for DEC Enthusiasts.