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DECnet Isn't Dead

Posted by timothy on from the it's-living-with-disco dept.

Ronald Dumsfeld writes "The odds of folks under the age of 25 on Slashdot having heard of DECnet are pretty slim. This article over at Datamation gives some insight into people who've not given up on it. Poke around and find the documentation for the OSI-compliant version, or download the Linux version of the older DECnet IV and bask in the Security Through Obscurity."

2 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Actually... by CyberBill · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It is dead.

    And has been for a very very very very long time.

    Just like IRC :-/

    --
    -Bill
  2. Re:Of course it isn't dead! by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    I'd trust my 25 year old VAX cluster over any PC-based system or cluster any day.

    I wouldn't. You're running hardware nearly 17 "Moore generations" old; a similarly sized cluster of decent new servers should get you in the neighborhood of 100,000 times the throughput. If you can get a day's worth of processing on the old system done in less than a second, you can dedicate the new cluster to reliability (say, 10x redundancy and only 10,000 times the performance) and still come out with a clearly better system.

    I love old tech, but I don't think you can decisively say it's "better". I have no doubt that it has huge error tolerances, but there are other ways to get that sort of robustness now.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?