List of Archived Posts

2002 Newsgroup Postings (12/18 - 12/31)

misc recent somewhat VM-related threads in other n.g

Linux paging

Linux paging

Vector display systems

Vector display systems

AMP vs SMP

Sci Fi again was: THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

Sci Fi again was: THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

radix sort

computers and alcohol

Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

computers and alcohol

Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?

cost of crossing kernel/user boundary

Difference between AAA and Radius?

Difference between AAA and Radius?

Beyond 8+3

Cost of CPU second

Beyond 8+3

20th anniversary of the internet (fwd)

Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas

Vector display systems

Beyond 8+3

LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?

Beyond 8+3

Origin of XAUTOLOG (x-post)

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

System Hang

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

Star Trek: TNG reference

Star Trek: TNG reference

HASP:

HASP:

HASP:

ibm time machine in new york times?

HASP:

ibm time machine in new york times?

ibm time machine in new york times?

ibm time machine in new york times?

Star Trek: TNG reference

System vs. application programming?

ibm time machine in new york times?

ibm time machine in new york times?

myths about Multics

myths about Multics

myths about Multics

myths about Multics

windows office xp

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

MVS History

cost of crossing kernel/user boundary

misc recent somewhat VM-related threads in other n.g

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: misc recent somewhat VM-related threads in other n.g.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 10:23:04 -0700

misc. recent vm relateds threads in comp.arch and  bit.listserv.ibm-main

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#43 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#56 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#58 AMP  vs  SMP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#59 AMP  vs  SMP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#62 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#64 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary

Linux paging

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux paging
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 03:29:24 GMT

SEYMOUR.J.METZ@CUSTOMS.TREAS.GOV (Shmuel  Metz , Seymour J.) writes:

Maybe Kevin was thinking of a shared saved segment. Contrast I CMS with a
full CMS IPL.

VM has generalized saved memory images (aka "named systems") ... where
it is also possible to specify some number of the segments that have
been saved as "shared" (r/o shared and everybody that "IPL" CMS gets
the image of the saved system ... plus sharing the same segments that
have been specified by everybody that has IPL'ed the same
CMS. Simulated "ipl by device" takes significantly longer ... than
"ipl by name" ...  since the saved image is done at a point after some
amount of the normal ipl operation has been performed. Furthermore (at
least for CMS) some amount of the memory image is already present in
the shared segment image portions.

It is also possible to specify "IPL" of almost any memory image that
has been saved. Back in the days of MVT ... many shops on both CP/67
and later VM/370 ... created MVT saved images ... for fast MVT ipls
(bypassing some amount of the ipl by device processing ... but w/o the
r/o shared segment specification found in CMS).

For release 3 of VM/370 a subset of my generalized virtual memory
management stuff was released as "discontiguous named systems". This
allowed other types of memory images to be saved and loaded into a
process virtual memory on the fly (possibly nothing shared, all
shared, or some mix of shared and non-shared pages). Pretty much all
of the CMS code that I had changed was released for dynamic shared
images (except for the paged mapped file system stuff). Only about
half of the CP code that I had changed was included in the
discontiguous named system support. CMS is able to execute a kernel
API that remaps parts of the virtual machine address space with memory
images that have been saved (along with remapping of segment table
entries to r/o shared page tables as specified in the CP control
information).

The full blown function provided for shared segments to be loaded at
arbritrary and possibly even the same shared segments to be located at
different addresses in different virtual address space. This allowed
more efficient packing of name memory applications in the days of
24bit (16mbyte) virtual addressing. CMS eventually built up a sizeable
number of standard saved memory applications. W/o the ability for a
individual address space to arbritrarily pack applications at any
available address ... resulted in an installation having to choose a
globally unique address for each application ... across the library of
all applications. This actually became impossible as the number of
different named applications got large resulting in some number of
applications having to same virtual addresses. This then resulted in
such applications unable to co-exist at the same time in the same
address space.

The other part of the infrastructure was the paged mapped file system
for CMS ... with virtual memory paging capabiilty supported by (CP)
kernel API. Among other things this allowed CMS to implement all the
functions available in the discontiguous-named-systems functions but
mapped to normal cms files (i.e. the saving and naming of
dicontiguous-named-systems was a cp privileged operation, however the
page mapped file system implementation supported all the same
capability ... but w/o requiring cp privileged operations ... just
normal CMS file system operations).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

In any case ... if there was some "safe-point" after Linux
ipl-by-device ... where it was possible to save some or all of the
linux virtual memory image (say corresponding to a checkpoint kind of
operation ... ala what a lot of installations did with MVT) ... then
it would be possible to IPL by device. Furthermore, if it could be
determine that some large portion of that memory image was r/o ...
never changed ... then segments corresponding to the r/o areas of that
memory image could be specified as "shared". Then all instances of
virtual machines IPL-by-name that save image (with those specified
shared segments) would share common code & data across all virtual
space instances.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Linux paging

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux paging
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 03:53:18 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

It is also possible to specify "IPL" of almost any memory image that
has been saved. Back in the days of MVT ... many shops on both CP/67
and later VM/370 ... created MVT saved images ... for fast MVT ipls
(bypassing some amount of the ipl by device processing ... but w/o the
r/o shared segment specification found in CMS).

it wasn't just mvt ... is was also done for various PCP and MFT
versions also. somebody from union carbide had written a CMS-like
shell that they ran with a "saved" image of PCP (under cp/67)
... writting/reading from PCP's (virtual) operator's console.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Vector display systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Vector display systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 06:19:38 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:

After a couple of episodes where DEC and IBM disqualified themselves
"forever", Prime had a chance; and it helped a lot with the Multics heritage
of the OS, the networking and the aggressiveness of the company.

They did make duds like the 2250; but I'll forgive them for trying
to make a low end effort. . They made it alright up until the crash in
'87, but the next 6 months they went very stale. They went right over
to milking the market. They milked the 9955 far too long. They got
stuck in proprietary networks just when OSI and TCP/IP were battling
for world surpremacy. They went from aggressive entrant to market
milker almost overnight.

i would claim that the mini market was starting to go by 1985. The
following from IDC report on world-wide vax shipments
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

I don't have comparible numbers of compareable mid-range 370s
shipments ... but i believe that they were starting to be similarly
impacted.

Both PC and workstation shipments were starting to significantly
impact the whole mini/midrange market in that period (along with the
movement to less proprietary).

I also frequently take exception with all the OSI statements ...
figment of a whole lot of peoples' imagination. misc. past refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#xtphsp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Vector display systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Vector display systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:15:51 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:

<more topic drift>

Some of us knew we wanted TCP/IP, and betted a career on it. Others
went for OSI and squandered public money on that. You are right, in a
sense OSI never was; it ran best on a 35mm slide projector. Smoke
and mirrors. Some of the smoke made it's way into bids and proposals
though. ISP's ran X.400 servers for a while. Then it died.

</topic drift>

but OSI didn't have an IP layer. It was '85 that the size of the
internet (in large part because of pc, unix & workstation based
implementations) had surpased the size of the internal network
(effectively all mainframes). I've claimed that was because of the
introduction of the IP-layer and gateways with the 1/1/83 switchover
(as well as the protocol on entry level machines) ... see more 20th
anv refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

part of the reason that the internal network had grown so well in the
'70s and the early '80s was it effectively had a sort of gateway
layer support in every node.

OSI was traditional copper point-to-point protocol. The ISO standards
stuff was a facade .... a big issue being ISO standards could be passed
w/o ever having an implementation. Doing some work in both IETF and
ANSI X3S3.3 (us standards body for networking in the area of layers
3&4 of OSI model) on HSP (high speed protocol) ... ANSI statement was
that a protocol for standards work could not be considered that violated
the OSI model aka internet & ip-layer, and related gateways wouldn't be
a ANSI/ISO standard because it violated OSI model.

The other area that internet succeeded was in the area of LAN support.
ISO was somewhat schizo in this area ... with IEEE establishing a
standard and IEEE is ISO-chartered standards body. LAN violates OSI
model by collapsing levels 1, 2 and part of 3 into a single layer. All
the grief we got on HSP in X3S3.3 and ISO about HSP ... which was
bridging the gap between top of layer 4 directly to the top of LAN
interface (aka middle of OSI layer 3).

At the time of interop '88 ... there was all sorts of noise about OSI
(as earlier) ... the only real content was tcp/ip based stuff.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#xtphsp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

AMP vs SMP

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AMP  vs  SMP
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:26:29 GMT

broidoj@gti.net (Jeffrey R. Broido) writes:

pointed out that the 360/91 had an active console years earlier, backed by an
embedded 360/40.  They dismissed that by saying that the 360/91 was not a
production system, IBM having only built twenty two of them.
Then, we walked them over to our 370/158 and showed them the console.
They looked.  They blinked.  We said, "so, how about the KI-10 having the first
intelligent, interactive console?"  The answer, "It's IBM.  You can't count IBM."

i ran into something similar when a major lab was claiming that they
had the best performing vm/370 timesharing system in the world. I
pointed out to them that on similar workload and hardware ... their 90
percentile interactive response was twice one of my custom modified
systems at SJR. They said its not fair to include a wheeler system in
the comparison

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Sci Fi again was: THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Sci Fi again was:  THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:06:52 GMT

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

I have encountered very few time-travel stories ever; most are just
plain dumb, or cheesy, or poorly thought out (most common idiocy:  that
the mission is critical, or that a limited amount of time is available,
with no explanation of why another mission couldn't start seconds ahead
and divert the first (known to fail), or why the characters must return
to the same point in time, or the same point plus time spent).

i ahve somewhat the same reaction to the transporter on st ... i've
asserted that possibly hundreds of years before the scanning &
computer technology reached the level of enabling transporter ... that
simpler version of scanning/computers would have made bridge type
configurations obsolete.  use the scanning/computers technology
focused on the brains with various related feedback technology and
hook everybody together ... w/o requiring them all to be in a bridge
configuration required by traditional voice-communication. such
technology application possibly hundreds of years earlier than
transporter capability ... whould have had significant impact on all
forms of human activity. of course from a st entertainment standpoint
for current cultures ... the depiction of such infrastructures would
probably have little or no meaning (or at least little or no
entertainment value).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Big Brother -- Re: National IDs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:24:21 GMT

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

We are far more productive than we were 50 years ago.  Some political
groups like to portray the predominance of housewives at the time as a
form of oppression, but it was really a matter of America being wealthy
enough that one worker could support a family in a comfortable
lifestyle--and on a 40 hour workweek!

What leaves me utterly baffled is that as we've become more productive,
the norm has become two jobs per family, each more than 40 hours, rather
than cutting back  on the number of hours worked per family.

one could also claim that there was some significant amount of capital
accumulation during the 40s ... with a quite a bit of it not being
distributed (aka significant manufacturing plants built for one reason
or another) ... that such accumulated capital could then be lived off
of during the 50s & 60s ... including the part about not re-investing
until quite a bit of the "banked" capital depleated by the 70s with
aging infrastructures.

one of the cases that stick in my mind are reports of various
railroads paying out significant dividends and executive bonuses
during the early '60s ... and then finding in the early 70s that they
had been doing things like deferring yearly track maintenance
operations since the early 50s.

Another assertion is that during the '60s the economy significantly
leveraged the difference in the cost of oil vis-a-vis the price of
oil ... aka the standard of living was significantly enhanced by
being able to buy gasoline which possibly has a value of $10-$15/gal
at $.20/gal.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Sci Fi again was: THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Sci Fi again was:  THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 19:20:45 GMT

"Rupert Pigott" <darkboo-remove-this-ng.@hotmail.com> writes:

Isn't that what the Borg have ? :)

all sorts of implants ... the scanning/computer technology in
transporter w/feedback wouldn't have needed any implants/augmentation
(just sense what the brain wanted ... and communicate it or do it).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Big Brother -- Re: National IDs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 19:32:44 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

Another assertion is that during the '60s the economy significantly
leveraged the difference in the cost of oil vis-a-vis the price of
oil ... aka the standard of living was significantly enhanced by
being able to buy gasoline which possibly has a value of $10-$15/gal
at $.20/gal.

i think there was some sort of gov. economic report in the 99/2000
timeframe that made some statement to the effect that half of all
manufacturing jobs were "subsidized" (aka the value of what employee
produced was less than their salary/benefits) .. and the percentage
was increasing.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

radix sort

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: radix sort
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 15:17:49 GMT

gah@UGCS.CALTECH.EDU (glen herrmannsfeldt) writes:

The best example I always use for radix sort is the algorithm used
on the IBM card sorter, such as:

http://www.users.nwark.com/~rcmahq/jclark/cardsrt.htm

This is what IBM sold before they got into the computer business.
That probably makes it older than quicksort.

-- glen

luther put a lot of thot into radix sort as part of the tree instructions,
course they didn't make it into hardware before the pc

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#2 A new "Remember when?" period happening right now
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#28 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#73 Most complex instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#14 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#18 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

computers and alcohol

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: computers and alcohol
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 20:02:36 GMT

thread cross-ever between mainframes scids and the a.f.c. thread about
computers and food.

back in my undergarduate days when scids (Society for Continuous
Inebriation During Share) was still self-serve bar .... i was taught
to never let scids close w/o having a 5th or two under your coat.

so there was one of these asilomar acm sigcops meetings where one
dinner they served wine (my hazy memory was that it was the first
pressing by some stanford computer people called ridge). Anyway dinner
was big round tables sitting 12 per table and the waiters were
instructed to serve three bottles per table. The algorithm turned out
to be they would open a bottle and when that bottle was empty they
would open another. They would stop when there was three bottles on the
table. Given my SCIDS background .... I was the only one putting empty
bottles under the table (our table finished with 12 empties instead of
three).

Another acm sigops tale ... i remember it as the year that the guys
presented on all the reasons that the 432 couldn't be succesful ... I
used my SCIDS training to get a full case of beer under my coat before
the bar closed.

past scids refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#5 Definition of SHARE & SCIDS Requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#6 Definition of SHARE & SCIDS Requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#20 OT: almost lost LBJ tapes; Dictabelt
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#12 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#20 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#60 IBM-Main Table at Share
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#31 Over-the-shoulder effect

part of a.f.c. thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#24 I'll see your deep-fried mars-bar
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#25 I'll see your deep-fried mars-bar
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#35 I'll see your deep-fried mars-bar

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 04:25:58 GMT

"frickrb" writes:

Forgive me if I'm way off base here as I don't have much experience in this
field.  Maybe you can think of a scenerio that would allow a maximum number
of clients to access services behind a firewall where each of the clients
was using a different filter to validate a trusted relationship between
client and server.  I.e. each client is unique and a filter has been set up
for each client that will allow only that particular client to traverse the
firewall.  Also, I'm assuming that 2 different filters can't be used on the
same port so please let me know if that is a wrong assumption.

in the early days of netscape ... they started with ftp server for
downloading all software ... and began replicated them as the load
increases. They got up to something like 12-15 such servers ftp1,
ftp2, ftp3, ... ftp12, ftp13, etc. this was before firewall/routers
that rotated incoming, load-balancing requests across the backend
servers (one of the first that this was done with was google).

at some point netscape installed a large sequent configuration as
ftp20 ... and shifted all load to that one machine. at the time,
sequent was claiming regular configurations with 20,000 connections.

this was in the days when many implementations still had linear
finwait list implementations ... and some larger web configurations
were experiencing 95% cpu utilization tied up in just running finwait
lists. This wasn't a directly an issue with the number of connections
... this was an issue with the number of dropped connections within
the finwait window (the number of dropped connections on the finwait
list).

the standard scaleup scenario went with rotating multipe-A record dns
... giving multiple ip addresses for firewall/router interfaces
... and the firewall/router interfaces doing load balancing rotation
across all of the backroom servers.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Big Brother -- Re: National IDs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Big Brother -- Re: National IDs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 17:17:21 GMT

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

It may have had that value for a limited number of applications, but at
that price, people certainly wouldn't be able to afford commuting by
car.

Also, after adjusting for inflation, gas prices are about the same now
as then.  Add on increased real wages, and they may be significantly
lower.

my assertions is that it has that value ... independent of the
application; however some people may squander it for random
recreational uses (because the price and the value are so different)
... aka some people only place high value on things that cost a lot.

so one claim would be that significant portion of current lifestyles
are based on the big difference between the value and the price
... and if the price was changed to reflect the value ... there would
be significant adjustments that would need to be made.

also during the period ... one could claim that oil &/or oil-based
technologies significantly change the ratio of food production workers
(farmers, packaging, transportion, etc). I think there was some
statement that between 1900 and 1950 the percentage of people involved
in food production dropped significantly from half(?) to one out of
50.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

computers and alcohol

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: computers and alcohol
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 00:18:37 GMT

cbh@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) writes:

Never mix alcohol, work and youth.  In fact keep beery establishments
as far away from places of work as possible (maybe this explains a few
things about organisations which may not be named, which have bars on
the premises)  Maybe "drunk whilst in charge of a computer" should also
be an offence, but I suppose I'm older and wiser now anyway!

first floor of 545 tech sq had both brkfst/lunch operation and
lounge/bar. science center data center was on the 2nd floor; other
things were on 3rd & 4th floor ... and multics was on upper floors.

thread drift is reckless operation of unsafe computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#27 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#28 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#29 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#30 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#31 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#27 Secure you PC or get kicked off the net?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 21:10:32 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

in the early days of netscape ... they started with ftp server for
downloading all software ... and began replicated them as the load
increases. They got up to something like 12-15 such servers ftp1,
ftp2, ftp3, ... ftp12, ftp13, etc. this was before firewall/routers
that rotated incoming, load-balancing requests across the backend
servers (one of the first that this was done with was google).

sorry, brain check, /google/yahoo/ ... yahoo was the first big load
balancing project that i knew of.

and for a little trivia ... 20th anv of internet ref at:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

cost of crossing kernel/user boundary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.programming.threads
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:58:45 GMT

"Andy Glew" writes:

Lynn: will you ever write a book? Please?!?

that sounds too much like hard work.

at one time i had accumulated large number of draft research reports
.... working with professional tech writer and it was very painful
process. making it even more painful we would periodically submit them
to company approval process (approving that they could be subbmitted
for publication) and get turned down. finally after a number of years
the tech writer retired and sent me all of his files of stuff we had
been working on. there was some conjecture that i wasn't getting
approval for publication because of some impression that i had been
associated with something called tandem memos. random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#6 New IBM history book out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#7 New IBM history book out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#31 Title Inflation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#39 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#73 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells

some years later .... an executive told me that they could forgive me
for being wrong but they could never forgive me for being right.

and for something completely different (but similar):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316881465/qid%3D1037135329/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/104-1355456-9727942
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
internet trivia 20th anv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Difference between AAA and Radius?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Difference between AAA and Radius?
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 16:14:06 GMT

des_riv@hotmail.com (Desmond Rivet) writes:

I have been attempting to get up to speed on these two technologies
(Radius and AAA), but I haven't had much luck. I know what a Radius
server does, more or less, but I'm less sure about an AAA server. And
how exactly do the two operate together? What is the mechanism? I see
AAA/Radius servers advertised all the time. What protocol is actually
being sent over the wires?

I know you're all busy, but any clarification on the matter would be
much appreciated :) Thanks.

RFCs are radius standard. start with
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

and under RFCs listed by select Term (term->RFC#)

then select RADIUS in the Acronym fastpath

i.e:

remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS )
see also authentication , network access server , network services
3162 2882 2869 2868 2867 2866 2865 2809 2621 2620 2619 2618 2548 2139
2138 2059 2058

then scroll back towards the top of the same term frame to:

Authentication, Authorization and Accounting
see also accounting , authentication , authorization
3127 2989 2977 2906 2905 2904 2903

Clicking on the various RFC numbers will bring up a summary of each
RFC. Clicking on the "txt=" field in the RFC summary will fetch the
actual RFC.

RADIUS started out as a product of livingston for their modem terminal
concentrator .... would handle users dialing into the system. it was
introduced as IETF standard and was picked up by large number of other
vendors and is used now for all types of network oriented
userid/password operations (and not just dial-in modems). It also
supports other authentication protocols like challenge/response in
addition to password. In addition to routers and terminal
concentrators it is possible to do things like hook webserver
authentication stubs for RADIUS protocol ... and use the same
infrastructure for network connectivity authentication as well as
webserver (and other types of) authentication. The choice of the
authentication function can be done on a account by account basis
... and there are additional features that can provide authorization
information in addition to authentication.

Within IETF ... AAA is basically involved with more generalization
of such infrastures ... as the referenced RFCs will explain.

also see work at
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#radius


Another IETF AAA technology is kerberos (as above, scroll to kerberos
in the TERM frame:

kerberos
see also authentication , security
3244 3129 2942 2712 2623 1964 1510 1411

which is found in a number of products but is somewhat more oriented
towards internal/campus distributed type operation as opposed to
external internet connection operation.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
internet trivia 20th anv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Difference between AAA and Radius?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Difference between AAA and Radius?
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 16:28:46 GMT

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#17 Difference between AAA and Radius?

raise your hand if you've configured radius on real livingston box.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Beyond 8+3

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Beyond 8+3 ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 19:34:49 GMT

Pete Fenelon writes:

Standard Pascal is unusable for anything other than trivial pegagogical
exercises, or writing Standard Pascal compilers.

For 99.999% of systems programming tasks, I'd take a good macro-assembler
over a (standard) Pascal compiler any time. Standard Pascal's a toy
language, with no real modularity, lousy I/O, objectionable syntax,
no well-defined interface to the OS, no hope, no escape.

The more a programming task resembles a CS101 exercise, the more
suitable it starts to look for implementing in (standard) Pascal. And
even then, back in my day we only did CS assessments in Pascal because
it was mandated - most of us were teaching ourselves useful languages on
the side.

This does not apply to people who've extended Pascal and made it useful -
DEC, for example, or even Borland. Hell, even Wirth with the
Modula/Oberon families.

I once had the opportunity to port a 60,000 statement vs/pascal (on
aix) application to another platform. It was a daunting task ... made
more so by the vendor having outsourced their pascal support to
someplace that was close to the opposite side of the planet.

vs/pascal had started out as pascal/iup on cms by pickens & weber at
the los gatos VLSI lab ... having made heavy use of metaware's tws
(which was written in pascal). it had all sorts of extensions by the
time it was also available on the 6000.

I got the strong opinion that no other vendor had a pascal that had
ever before been used with something like a 60,000 statement
production program.

random metaware:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#66 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History

random pascal:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#22 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#29 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#34 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#213 Why is Pascal no longer a leading development Language?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#15 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#42 Why are Suns so slow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#30 perceived forced conversion from cp/m to ms-dos in late 80's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#35 How Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Systems make society vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#31 High Level Language Systems was Re: computer books/authors (Re: FA:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#76 Stoopidest Hardware Repair Call?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#63 First Workstation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#4 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#25 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#18 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#39 Why Use - ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#54 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#28 computers and stuff
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#52 Microsoft's innovations [was:the rtf format]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#66 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#76 (old) list of (old) books

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Cost of CPU second

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cost of CPU second
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 22:08:24 GMT

Bob.Richards@SUNTRUST.COM (Richards.Bob) writes:

I hate asking this, but does anyone have a metric or ROT for the cost of a
CPU second for a z900 or for service units on same?

issue is whether they are attempting to recover fully loaded capital,
expense, head-count, licenses, hardware software, power, space,
profit, etc ... just based on CPU-sec pricing. basically take the
fully loaded annual/monthly costs possibly plus factor for profit
.... and divide it by the expected billable cpu-seconds for the
revenue period.

the price paid for the processor might represent less than ten percent
of an operation's fully loaded costs and the number of expected
billable cpu-seconds could be less than a 1/4th the total number of
seconds available in the revenue period.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler   | lynn@garlic.com -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Beyond 8+3

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Beyond 8+3 ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 00:30:41 GMT

ararghNOSPAM writes:

Way back, when I was designing an OS, I (re?)invented the idea of
storing very short files (up to 63 bytes) actually in the inode, in
the area where file block numbers are usually stored.  However, I n
never got much beyond the boot loader stage.

in cms it was called the MFD & hyperblocks. i did similar things in
cms filesystem in the early to mid 70s when i did the mapping for cms
filesystem to page mapped layer.

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

20th anniversary of the internet (fwd)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 20th anniversary of the internet (fwd)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 03:47:57 GMT

TCP/IP Digests from google

First TCP/IP Digest after the cut-over because of "mail difficulties"

Vol2#1 26 Feb 1983
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.brl-bmd.517&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

previous TCP/IP Digest

Vol1#28 17 Dec 1982
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.brl-bmd.493&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

vol1#27 5 Dec 1982
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.brl-bmd.479&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

other things on google around that time:

List of Currently Active (USENET) Newsgroups (20 Jan 1983)
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.alice.1412&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

The USENET Corporation (30 Dec 1982)
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.crystal.149&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

LIST-OF-LISTS (10 Feb 1983)
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.unc.4615&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cdc,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 04:53:38 GMT

jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:

For archival purposes, this is certainly true; OTOH, if you're talking about
a tape (or DASD, in Hercules) image you're using on a regular basis,
compression has two benefits:

i was picking around in vmshare looking for something else and
found in:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=HISTORY&ft=MEMO

Append on 09/13/94 at 13:12 by David Boyes ( dboyes@vma.cc.nd.edu, 219 631 9448

Update on the 360/67:

Since I'm no longer in Houston, I'm not able to work much on it. I bumped into
one of the support people from NASA JSC (in the grocery store, of all places)
and she mentioned that NASA still had copies of the OS/360 distribution in
permanent storage as part of the moon shot material. So, a few phone calls
later, I was down at JSC (wearing my "I Like HASP" button) with an armload
of blank tapes and a pocket full of dimes copying install instructions and
tapes. The JSC folks were kind enough to let me copy the distribution tapes
(after all, it's for educational purposes, right?), and we did the install
a few nights before Share in Boston. The machine runs the final release of
OS/360 with the JSC HASP mods.

According to Dick Newsom and Larry Chace (at SCIDS), this is the first
new OS/360 install in 30+ years. I wonder what would happen if I tried to
call the support center? ...8-). (I did resist the urge to run up and down
the hall yelling "It's Alive!", though... Gene Wilder would have been
disappointed in me.)

Sigh. It was a neat project.

 APPENDED 09/13/94 13:12:16 BY UDM/DBOYES

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Vector display systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Vector display systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 05:06:12 GMT

also  picking around in
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse?fn=HISTORY&ft=MEMO

Append on 05/16/94 at 12:36 by Gabe Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc.:

Ah, the University of Grenoble. One of my first VM/370 tasks was
converting their support for the IBM 2250 display from CP/67 CMS to
VM/370 CMS. The documentation and code comments were in French; my
high school French (somewhat studied in a French chemistry textbook)
was of limited help. But we got it working, and Mitre flew many miles
of air traffic control simulations using it. And several other sites
eventually used the VM/370 support.

I never connected with anyone there to properly thank them;
they clearly did great things with VM.

 APPENDED 05/16/94 12:36:24 BY +GG/GABE

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Beyond 8+3

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Beyond 8+3 ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 14:37:02 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:

If the contents of file is stored in the disk accounting areas
(where accounting implies the specs of the OS filesystem and
physical disk device layouts), weren't there problems with
tranferring files from one computer system to another?  Even
with homogeneous soft/hardware platforms, not all blocking
factors were alike.  I vaguely recall TW worrying about this
when he also considered storing the file contents that way
(to "save" disk space).  I think he finally punted the idea.

the backup/transfer supported this. the original CMS filesystem from
mid-60s was designed with 800byte (logical) fixed block for everything
(even tho mapped to 2311 ckd device). the transfer/backup format could
handle different sized files into & out of the filesystem (except for
disk image backup, which wasn't a file based operation but a physical
block operation of all disk blocks).

in the mid-70s, support was added in cms for EDF (aka extended)
filesystem (which co-existed with the "regular" filesystem). EDF had
support for 1k, 2k, & 4k logical fixed blocks ... and file level
operations worked between EDF filesystems in different sized format.

I remapped but the regular CMS filesystem (with its nominal 800byte
logical fixed block records) to page mapped format (handling the
necessary stuff to figure out 4k logical block size instead of
800byte) as well as 4k-EDF (which was much easier task since the block
sizes were the same).

One of the big differences touted for EDF against regular CMS file
system from the mid-60s was the way it updated the master disk
record. In the old CMS file system this was always physical record 4
on the disk. In EDF, this alternated between record 4 & 5. The issue
was that the CKD disks of the period had a peculiar failure mode that
if power failed exactly as a record was being written ... it was
possible that the record was corrupted and you would loose the
filesystem. The regular CMS filesystem used effectively shadow changes
and then careful replace of record 4. Nominally a fatal interruption
could occur at any moment and on recovery you would always see a
consistent view ... either before the update or after the update. The
exception was if a power outage happened to occur just as record 4 was
being rewritten to switch from the before image to the after image.
EDF fixed this failure mode by alternating rewritting record 4 and
record 5 (and effectively keeping version number in the record).

random old stuff on cms filesystem:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#53 Internet and/or ARPANET?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#75 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#36 Optimal replacement Algorithm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#15 IBM Model Numbers (was: First video terminal?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#76 Unix hard links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#23 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#9 Theo Alkema
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#20 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#56 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#57 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#58 Contiguous file system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#37 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#46 hollow files in unix filesystems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#47 School Help
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#62 TOPS-10 logins (Was Re: HP-2000F - want to know more about it)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#5 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#31 2 questions: diag 68 and calling convention
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#49 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#50 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#35 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#89 How secure is SSH ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#53 wrt code first, document later
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#76 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#76 (old) list of (old) books
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#21 Beyond 8+3

I also did the first couple version of an internal backup/archive
system (deployed at a number of internal data centers). Which then
evolved into WDSF (workstation datasave facility) product ... and then
into ADSM (adstar storage manager) ... and finally has been renamed
TSM (tivoli storage manager).

misc. backup/etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: LISTSERV Discussion List For USS Questions?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 15:51:50 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ISHAM-RESEARCH.COM (Phil Payne) writes:

Just like VS/PC ..

which was originally going to be called PCO ... until somebody did
some checking around various countries in europe.

the vs/pc group tied the cms development in knots for possible six
months or more.  they had a couple people that had implemented a
performance model of "vs/pc" and would run it for various kinds of
workloads .... claiming that the performance of vs/pc was going to be
ten times the (then) vm370/cms performance.

the vm370/cms group were then required to duplicate these modeled
workloads with real live benchmarks. the models and the benchmarks
performance tended to turn out to be similar. when vs/pc finally
shipped it was something like 1/10th the performance of the model (and
1/10th the performance of vm370/cms compareable workload .... a long
ways from the claims that it would be ten times the performance of
vm370/cms; aka claims off by two orders of magnitude).

vs/pc was low/mid range product ... and when the low/mid range did the
microcode assists ... as well as the vm handshaking for the guest
operating systems ... that pretty much put any further justification
for vs/pc to rest. the initial marketing/product strategry for the
m'code assists and handshaking ... was that the low/mid range would
always ship with vm (&cms) as part of the box ... in much the same
that LPAR currently ships.

misc. past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#1 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#51 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?

related:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360mcode

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Beyond 8+3

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Beyond 8+3 ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 20:21:31 GMT

Dave Daniels writes:

One manufacturer of PBXs wrote all of the PBX software in Pascal.
This was a large PBX with all the mid-1990s bells and whistles
in the software too. I never saw the code, but I should imagine
that there were a few tens of thousands of lines of it.

Changing the subject slightly, wasn't the original version of the
IBM TCP/IP stack for VM written in Pascal?

same vs/pascal.

i did rfc1044 for the original product. standard offering used a 8232
(basically a pc/at with an ibm channel interface card) and got about
44kbytes/sec consuming nearly a full 3090 engine. i was able to hit
ibm channel thruput (1mbyte/sec) testing between a 4341 clone and a
cray at cray research with rfc1044 support.

it used some cp api "diagnose" instructions. for the port to MVS
... basically it was the same code with a stub layer that emulated the
necessary CP API on MVS.

there was a later version for MVS that implemented tcp/ip support
inside of VTAM. The initially cut had tcp thruput significantly faster
thru VTAM than LU6.2 thruput thru VTAM. That was fixed prior to
release as product (and is one of those out-of-school stories).

random 1044 &/or 8232 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#14 mainframe tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15 tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#59 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#4 Sv: First video terminal?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#52 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#45 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#31 general networking is: DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Origin of XAUTOLOG (x-post)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Origin of XAUTOLOG (x-post)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 15:20:10 GMT

lots of automated benchmarks were done over period of year or two
leading up to the three month period (mentioned in x-post) involving
2000 benchmarks for validating and calibrating the resource manager
prior to release.

and of course my favorite "performance envelope" person (although
he applied to things like training fighter pilots and the design
of the f15, f16, f18, etc):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#boyd

from vmeesa-l

I don't know about XAUTOLOG ... but I did AUTOLOG internally on a
VM370 Release 2 system for the automated bench marking process ... and
then CSC adapted it for production operation. It then was made
available in release 3 (along with subset of virtual memory management
for discontinuous shared segments and misc. other stuff).

The automated bench marking used synthetic workload ... and for the
resource manager .... defined a suite of approx. 2000 benchmarks that
took something like 3 months elapsed time to run. These were run on
CSC's 370/155 ... mostly on weekends and 2nd/3rd shift. The first
several hundred automated benchmarks were pretty static, predefined
.... selecting workload, configuration, and system parameters
(including system rebuild) and would automatically reboot between each
benchmark, run the benchmark, collect the data, select the next
benchmark perform the necessary operations and then reboot
again. After we established the overall operational data points across
what we believe to be a fairly complete operational envelope (varying
workload, configuration, and system parameters) when the selection of
further benchmarks was automated with an APL program.

People at CSC were also responsible for the performance predictor that
was available to the field on HONE (CSC had pioneered a lot of the
work turning performance modeling and tuning into capacity
planning). A variation of this APL program was used to look at all the
previous benchmarks datapoints (in approximately six space envelope,
aka benchmark characterized by six major axis) and select the next
benchmark point in the operational space.

>From the original data collection and modeling work ... the initial
several hundred benchmarks were defined to be along the surface of the
observed operational envelopes along with distributed sample of points
within the six-space sphere of observed real operational data. After
the initial operational characteristics were established by the
initial several hundred benchmarks ... the APL program was modified to
start searching the operational space for places where the resource
manager might behave in anomalous manner.

There were also several benchmarks defined that lay well outside any
observed real operational environment ... primarily extremely heavily
loaded characteristics. When the whole process was initially started
... there were numerous benchmarks that would reliably crash the
system because of various timing related failures. Eventually, I
rewrote the whole internal serialization functions in order to
eliminate all such instances of system failure. This was included as
part of the resource manager (not only did it eliminate all observed
system failures ... but also all instances of hung/zombie users).

past autolog posting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question

misc. recent thread on virtual memory management functions that went into release 3:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#25 Early computer games
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#1 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#2 Linux paging

misc postings on benchmarking, workload profile, and capacity planning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bench

misc. HONE or APL related postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 16:20:32 GMT

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff Nor Lisa) writes:

We added the "Power" spooling system to our S/360-40 DOS.  It was pretty
easy to install and the productivity gain was enormous.  Basically, our
computer was limited by the "slow" speeds of the printer and card
reader, you could watch the panel and see the CPU WAIT light on most
of the time.  The printer and reader seemed to a human to be operating
very fast at 1,000 units per minute, but it was actually slow.

our university went thru a transation. it had 709 (tubes) & 1401. The
1401 was used primarily for unit-record<->tape front-end for the 709.
student fortran jobs go card->tape .... the tape moved over to the 709
and executed there, producing output on tape, that tape moved back
to 1401, and the output printed.

360/30 was initially brought in and ran in 1401 emulation mode doing
the same thing. I got my first programming job .... redoing the 1401
ur<->tape program in 360. All in assembler, I got to design & write my
own monitor, interrupt handlers, device drivers, console interface,
etc (I had to handle a lot of column binary).

The 30/709 was replaced with 360/67 (running mostly in 360/65 with
OS/360). The student fortran workload was disaster ... the 360/65 was
spending most of its time handling (effectively synchronous) unit
record. Thruput went from a couple a second on the 709 to maybe one
per minute on the 360/65.

Helping save the day was first HASP (houston spooling) that changed
unit record from synchronous to asynchronous ... which got the thruput
up to about two per minute. I then did a bunch of os/360 optimizations
and got it up to maybe six per minute. The thing that saved the day
was watfor. With HASP, the thruput limit of vanilla fortran g compile,
link-edit, and go changed from unit-record to effectively spending all
its time in the job scheduler and program loading. With watfor,
workload basically executed the job scheduler and watfor program load
once ... and then it would process 30-60 student programs in one batch
(basically having its own submonitor). This finally got student
workload thruput back up to level of the 709.

Also, during this period ... the people from CSC came out and
installed CP/67 the end of january '68 (we were the first "outside"
installation after csc itself and lincoln labs). There was still a lot
of work needed on CP/67 and the university let me play with it on
weekends .... while still be responsible for production OS/360 during
the week.

One of the things I did on HASP .... was inside HASP implement 2741 &
TTY terminal support and the CMS editor command syntax ... for method
of terminal job input.

random mpio, hasp, job scheduler, & watfor references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#2 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#15 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#17 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#23 MTS & LLMPS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#2 Schedulers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#20 CP/67 & OS MFT14
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#22 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#23 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#24 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#25 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#29 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#30 CP spooling & programming technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#33 short CICS story
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#53 How Do the Old Mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#7 Who built the Internet? (was: Linux/AXP.. Reliable?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#9 cics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#12 IBM song
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#21 IBM 1401's claim to fame
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#25 Early RJE Terminals (was Re: First Network?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#28 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#9  Old Vintage Operating Systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#15 S/360 operating systems geneaology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#21 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#29 Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#33 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#58 When did IBM go object only
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#59 Living legends
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#76 Mainframes at Universities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#77 Are mainframes relevant ??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#92 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#93 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#94 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#109 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#113 OS/360 names and error codes (was: Humorous and/or Interesting Opcodes)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#117 OS390 bundling and version numbers -Reply
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#130 early hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#175 amusing source code comments (was Re: Testing job applicants)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#209 Core (word usage) was anti-equipment etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#55 OS/360 JCL: The DD statement and DCBs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#76 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#79 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#10 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#11 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#18 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#20 IBM 1460
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#34 Assembly language formatting on IBM systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#36 Assembly language formatting on IBM systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#44 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#45 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#46 Charging for time-share CPU time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#50 Navy orders supercomputer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#14 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#58 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#68 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#71 HASP vs. "Straight OS," not vs. ASP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#11 IBM 1142 reader/punch (Re: First video terminal?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#26 Disk caching and file systems.  Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#52 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#22 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#27 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#6 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#7 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#12 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#2 Mysterious Prefixes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#26 Price of core memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#20 Golden Era of Compilers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#22 Golden Era of Compilers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#48 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#12 checking some myths.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#60 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#33 Waterloo Interpreters (was Re: RAX (was RE: IBM OS Timeline?))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#4 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#31 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#37 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#11 OCO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#12 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#37 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#60 CMS FILEDEF DISK and CONCAT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#31 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#13 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#15 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#53 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#56 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#57 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#4 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#45 cp/67 addenda (cross-post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#50 Swapper was Re: History of Login Names
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#25 Crazy idea: has it been done?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#37 Playing Cards was Re: looking for information on the IBM 7090
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#38 Playing Cards was Re: looking for information on the IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#47 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#48 How Long have you worked with MF's ? (poll)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#53 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#54 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#1 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#14 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#20 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#23 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#3 The problem with installable operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#29 why does wait state exist?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#53 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#60 Follklore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#19 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#24 IBM Selectric as printer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#16 myths about Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#23 Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

System Hang

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: System Hang
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals,comp.arch
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 16:31:19 GMT

Maneesh Singhal writes:

Just got the following doubt ----

. How can we define that system is hung ??

. If at all system is hung , how can it be
detected (through software / and through hardware
support) ?

standard for HA configurations for a long time has been heartbeats.

note that HAs have had additional constraints regarding exactly what
is actually is preventing the heartbeat and in take-over situations
how to shoot the offending processor .... or at least fence it off ...
(in the event that it was some temporary suspension and all of a
sudden it comes back to life). the failure scenarios have been assume
that the processor is just suspended on something like a critical I/O
write instruction ... and then wakes up (after take-over); and will
the write succeed or not.

hardware support for fencing may be more important than for sensing.

random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 23:39:06 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:

> (I'll bet you didn't work on the clutch mechanism on the 2540 very
> often, or you would have remembered that it wasn't a helical-spring
> type.)  In my recollection, the number of non-PM service calls on a
> 2540 was in direct proportion to the number of paper-clips someone had
> tried to feed through them.

i do remember that operators (&/or I) had to take the mechanism for
both punch and reader sides apart once a shift and clean the brushes
and then put it all back together. It got to be a habit with me that
the first thing I'd do when they would turn the machine over to me was
clean all the tape drives and clean the reader/punch brushes.

> Actually, the software that made the reader-clutch chatter a lot on the 2540
> was OS/360, when it was interpretting JCL. It read SYSIN datastreams at a
> smooth 1000 cps, but the intervening JCL would slow things right down. The
> main exception was in systems running HASP for spooling. That was because
> HASP put the cards (JCL and all) into its own spool files, and then
> interpreted JCL when it read the jobs back off the disk. The interpretation
> of them was just as slow, but users were less aware of how slow it was
> because the disk-drive didn't have a chattering clutch. The speed-up caused
> by HASP was largely an illusion. One of our customers (the USDA) actually
> proved this in a benchmark, and refused to install HASP, despite the
> recommendations of the SE's from the Marketing branch. Most software-support
> CE's knew this about HASP, too, but got shouted down by the marketing folks.
> It was a case of showmanship vs. actual throughput.

speed-up from hasp was both on the input side reading the cards
... but also on the output side printing .... allowing both card input
and print output to not be synchronous with job execution. at least for
the university workload on a vanilla system ... this doubled the
thuput. I then got another three times thruput increase by heavy
optimization of data layout on disk (six times total increase in input
with combination of disk arm optimization and hasp ... which wouldn't
have been possible w/o either). When we got WATFOR ... for student
JOBs ... a combination of WATFOR and HASP almost made the student
workload disappear. WATFOR processed (on the 360/65) at something like
20,000 "cards" per minute ... aka student job card input & print
output could be overlapped essentially for free with standard workload
(using HASP) and the actually (WATFOR) program processing/execution
became essentially inconsequential.

The issue was that a lot of workloads tended to intermix periods of
unit record intensive operation followed by little or no unit record
utilization. W/o hasp the unit record intensive periods would
serialize the actual workload processing. W/HASP it allowed unit
record intensive periods to be overlapped with periods that were less
unit record intensive. For instance, intensive print output periods
didn't have to slow down the processing of other work (the job could
finish and the printing could proceed asynchronously with other
workload activity).

> Us software-support CE's hated HASP because it was a really ugly hack. It
> installed itself in a manner that would have been described as a "virus"
> except that computer viruses hadn't been invented yet.

it started out by stealing the svc new psw (unprotected supervisor
storage) and creating a intercept for various types of operating
system I/O operations. Later when os/360 added storage protection ...
hasp needed a special type1 svc (i.e. hasp svc routine given system
privilege) which would hook the interrupt handler (somewhat analogous
to bios int13 intercept).

> In MVS, the viral aspects of HASP had been exorcised, and it was renamed
> "JES2".

Simpson, crabtree & hasp were main stay of share user group meetings
... and the thursday night hasp songfest at scids (and the hasp song
book). I have a copy of "SHARE" songbook .... but with an image of a
lock "hasp".

group was created in gburg ... and they consolidated both HASP and ASP
there .... HASP being renamed JES2 and ASP being renamed JES3. I'm not
sure Simpson was ever part of the group ... he went to Harrison and
the white plains data center and worked on RASP ... and then left and
became a Amdahl fellow in Dallas. Crabtree ("crabby") was one of the
people that went to gburg (my wife worked for them for awhile ... when
she had part of the responsibility for being the "JES3" catcher for
ASP being thrown over the wall). Unger was another in the gburg group
... I ran into him a couple months ago when I gave a talk at YKT
research on the hardware token I've been doing some work on.

The majority of JES2 stayed as is .... down to JES2 messages still
using the HASP message prefix. Also the original JES2 NJE/NJI
networking support still was all HASP design&implementation .... down
to there possibly still being "TUCC" in cols 68-71 (aka some amount of
the original network code was the HASP changes made by triangle
university computing center). The whole HASP design was based on
psuedo/virtual (unit record) devices ... and HASP had a table of 255
possible entries (one byte index implementation). The TUCC
implementation defined network nodes in the unused psuedo unit record
device table.

This carried over into the official JES2 NJE/NJI networking support
... and was one of the reasons that MVS/JES2 had such a peripherial
role in the IBM internal network. A standard MVS/JES2 environment
tended to have something like 60-80 psuedo devices defined leaving
less than 200 entries for network node definitions. The internal
network quickly exceeded 256 nodes .... making it so that no MVS/JES2
system was able to have a definition of the whole network.
Furthermore, JES2 would trash any network traffic that it didn't have
both the origin and destination nodes defined (if JES2 was an
intermediate node and had the destination node defined and could
deliver the traffic ... but didn't have the original origin node in
its table ... it would still trash the traffic).

The other big mistake that JES2 networking support made was that it
really confused the JES2 header ... intermixing networking layer
related stuff, transport layer related stuff, and application layer
related stuff. It was entirely possible to upgrade one JES2 in a
network which had slightly different header definition and the traffic
between JES2 nodes at different release levels would result in
crashing the MVS system.

For the internal network ... that met that everything but peripherial
nodes had to be VM-based. Not only were VM-based nodes were the only
ones to handle the complete network definition ... but VM-based
networking implementation had correctly separated network, transport,
and application issues. In fact, what tended to happen was a whole
family of VM-based NJE drivers evolved. A NJE line driver would be
started that corresponded to the release level of the JES2 on the
other end of the line. It was the responsibility of the VM-based NJE
line driver to provide canonical header field translation to prevent
JES2 systems at different release levels from crashing each others MVS
operating systems (while in theory ... it was possible for a JES2
system to network directly to another JES2 system .... the
shortcomings in the networking implementation frequently required that
there be an intermediate VM node just to keep them from crashing each
other systems).

random simpson, crabtree, jes, & rasp references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#58 When did IBM go object only
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#92 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#13 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#76 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#78 Mainframe operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#37 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#68 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#70 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#41 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#69 Wheeler and Wheeler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#2 Mysterious Prefixes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#44 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#48 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#11 OCO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#83 CM-5 Thinking Machines, Supercomputers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#25 Crazy idea: has it been done?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#48 MVS 3.8J and NJE via CTC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#19 Help! Good protocol for national ID card?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#37 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes

random tucc, nje references.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#7 Who built the Internet? (was: Linux/AXP.. Reliable?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#29 The first "internet" companies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#14 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#15 internet preceeds Gore in office.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#12 Blame it all on Microsoft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#48 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#7 YKYGOW...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#45 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#11 OCO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#12 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#53 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#2 DISK PL/I Program
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#64 vm marketing (cross post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#20 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#23 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#42 MVS 3.8J and NJE via CTC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#48 MVS 3.8J and NJE via CTC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#49 MVS 3.8J and NJE via CTC

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 01:16:53 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:

Well, I was addressing the period (during and after OS Release 15/16) when
MFT II was available, as well as MVT, and spooling was built in to the core
operating system.  HASP could outperform "naked OZ" at spooling when the
default DCB parameters were used, and both input and Sysout spool datasets
were unblocked.  This could be cured by simple JCL changes in the stored
procedures. HASP itself owed much of its relative speed to the use of
interleaved record formatting of its spooling tracks. But even more speedup
could be accomplished by simple use of FB blocking on both input and output.
To be sure, the interleaved output technique was a significant contribution.
I don't know how often it might have been used before. (Well, I guess you
could call the optimizing assembler for the 650 to be an example of DASD
interleaving, eh?)

HASP made a lot more sense when the system lacking spooling facilities of
its own. As I understand it, the program was created at the request of NASA
to fill the gap until OS could do proper spooling. When that was added, it
could have either killed HASP, or HASP could have been properly integrated
into the OS without all the unnatural acts. Instead, it took on a separate
life of its own, partly because of the cult-like culture being built around
it by Mssrs S&C, and partly because of the NIH attitude shown by people in
P'keepsie.

I first installed HASP with os/370 release 11, mft ... didn't have it
at time of 9.5 (and i wasn't responsible for the university's system
at that moment).

One might claim that operating system native spooling was too little
too late. I installed HASP on MFT 11 (as in os/370 release 11, not
MFT-2), MFT 14, MVT 15/16 and then MVT 18. First to market can have
lasting effect ... even when less than optimal. The other was that
HASP was real source distribution (i.e. many installations actually
assembled all the source as part of standard HASP build). This
contributed to to lots of customer enhancements (like the TUCC
networking support).

I don't know of customer that ever did a from scratch os/360 system
build by assembling all the source.  I've even heard of one rumor
about some agency's request to get ALL the exact source for a
specific system ... so they could. After supposedly spending $5m on
researching the issue ... the answer came back as not possible
(presumably so difficult to not be pactical).

Also, the NIH isn't unusual. something similar happened in
database. STL totally rejected relational somewhat resulting in an
almost religious schism. system/r did technology transfer from
bldg. 28 to endicott for sql/ds ... and it wasn't until sql/ds (and
other relational products) were making headway in the industry that
there was a technology transfer of sql/ds back to stl (sjr/28 and
stl/90 are maybe ten miles distant) for DB2.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Star Trek: TNG reference

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Star Trek: TNG reference
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 01:41:55 GMT

cbh@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk (Chris Hedley) writes:

Given the "concepts of management" that they seem to teach
today's managers, it sounds like a positive advantage to
remain uncontaminated by such concepts.  Rather Captain Kirk
than Captain David Brent (the latter of whom is quite tame
when it comes to genuinely bad managers)

and of course my favorite is boyd's somewhat parady title

The Organic Design for Command and Control

some slightly tongue in cheek about concepts of management. part of
the thesis was that major management techniques from at least the 80s
onward were the army officers from WW-11 coming of age as corporate
executives. the thesis was that the management training that was
instilled in these people at an early age as part of WW-11 ... is that
the vast majority of the people are untrained and the major issue is
establishing an extremely rigid, top-down, management/control
infrastructure (to leverage the skills of the extremely few skilled
individuals available ... but that basic permise may have gotten lost
in the fog of the years ... and only the methodology/paradigm
survived).  one claim was that this was the result of vast increasem
from extremely small standing army (and little civilian skill base).

one of boyd's counter-examples was Guderian's verbal orders only for
the blizkrieg (aka the person on the spot was suppose to make the
decision and not worry that some post-battle auditor would go around
assigning blame for things that aren't perfect). In any situation that
has the possibility of the unexpected (i.e. it isn't exactly the same
thing you've done day-in, day-out, for the past 30 years) ... things
aren't going to be perfect (aka the only people that never make
mistakes are the people that never do anything). The issue was that
person on the spot was the best to make the decisions (Guderian had
large cadre of trained people) and they shouldn't be worried about
being punished if things weren't perfect.

misc. Guderian refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#29 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#36 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#38 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

and of course the standard boyd refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Star Trek: TNG reference

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Star Trek: TNG reference
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:21:22 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

and of course my favorite is boyd's somewhat parady title

The Organic Design for Command and Control

and the punch line on the very last foil was something about doesn't
it seem that instead of command and control that it would
be more appropriate

leadership and appreciation

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP:

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP:
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 06:05:16 GMT

nospam@nowhere.com   (Steve Myers) writes:

Another point.  The development of NJE.

ASP - The systems had to be JES3 and at exactly the same level.
The second generation NJE hacked the JES2 code into JES3.  And
JES3 still needs an expensive helper product (BDT) to play NJE
and RJE in a big boy (e.g., VTAM) network.

TUCC NJE - There was an attempt to eliminate the ASP problem, but
I understand it was not entirely successful

VM RSCS - I remember looking at some of that code, and it looked
to me like it had been hacked from JES2 RJE.  For a long time,
HASP supported stuff - like multiple readers and printers on
one connection - that RSCS was very late to support,

JES2 NJE - I cannot argue that there are some problems with the
job headers.  As for comments about some of the information, I want
remind folks that JES2 NJE was originally for bisync only networks,
and JES2 was trying to stick stuff in to play like the future
big boys.  In a big boy only network, JES2 is now wrong, but the
situation was awfully fluid in the late 70s and early 80s.

JES2 and RSCS incompatibilities - I suspect the real problem was an
unwillingness to sit down and hash out, and follow, standards in the
early days of NJE.  The Wheelers are VM bigots, too, and they are
reluctant to admit VM can be wrong.  Of course, I'm an OS/360 / MVS /
z/OS person, and I'm reluctant to admit we're wrong!

RJE and NJE counts - JES2 was too hung up on numbers in its routing
tables.  A one byte number is 255, and for a long time, JES2 used a two
byte routing code, one byte for a numeric node ID, and one byte for
an RJE ID.  It's fixed now, but this is one area where JES2 screwed up.
And, don't forget I'm a JES2 person.

actually i did lots of work on HASP and OS/360.

My wife never worked on VM ... she was in the JES group and then jimmy
con'ed her into going to pok to be responsible for loosely-coupled
architecture.  at that time ... ricky baum had tightly-coupled
architecture and ricky and my wife reported to the same manager. While
in charge of loosely-coupled architecture she originated peer-coupled
shared data ... which was the basis for IMS hotstandby and later
sysplex (sysplex also drew on a project called system memory & lock
memory that was going on in ykt research). You can't hardly get more
mainstream POK & MVS than that.

VM networking had its whole own set of infrastructure and line driver
protocol that had nothing at all to do with NJE ... VMB, VMT, VMX, etc
and was much more efficient that NJE with a lot of other kinds of
operational characteristics. There was also a FDX line driver that
could drive a full-duplex telco link in full-duplex mode instead of
traditional IBM half-duplex operation (it achieved concurrent media
limit thruput in both directions .... instead of NJE traditional
aggregate thruput that was some fraction of single direction
bandwidth).

There was once an attempt at a load sharing project between STL and
Hursley .... over a high bandwidth satellite link (since peek
workload tended to be 1st shift correlated ... and 1st shifts at STL
and Hursley were off-shift). They tried to bring up the link with
JES2/NJE on both ends and it couldn't establish a connection (but had
no descriptive diagnostics). Somebody suggested that they then try and
bring up both ends using a native VM line drivers because it had much
better diagnostic messages. The link was brought up with VM networking
and VM native drivers .... with no errors. This somewhat dumbfounded
the JES2 people.  It turns out that VM native drivers could
dynamically adapt to the double hop satellite delay between west coast
US and england ... while the NJE drivers weren't able to.

The VM networking NJE drivers were indeed originally adopted kludge
code from some version of HASP. It was obvious that JES2/NJE was
totally incapable of speaking any other protocol than JES2/NJE
... even to the situation that different versions of JES2/NJE couldn't
even communicate with each other ... and could even result in the
crashing of the other's MVS system. The only way to provide reasonable
wide-area networking for JES2/NJE ... was to kludge a (non-native) NJE
driver into VM .... even to the extent of evolving families of such
kludged NJE drivers that would compensate for the fact that different
JES2/NJE systems had difficult time interoperating.

The interesting thing was that the actual JES2/NJE got things wrong
more wrong than (arpanet) NCP .... in terms of requiring a homogenous
environment. The peculiar thing about VM network support is that it
did (correctly) differentiate the link, routing, transport, and
application layers from the start ... with the ability to effectively
gateway (internet getting this in the NCP/IP cut-over on 1/1/83, see
20th anv reference). An example of being able to gateway was the
actual ability to have a (non-VM native) NJE line driver and provide
routing & gateway functions to (non-VM native) JES2/NJE hosts.

All of this was primarily internal networking related. However, I do
know that the original JES2/NJE product announcement was also
roadblocked and it appeared that it was never going to happen until it
got the assistance from VM networking people .... along with kludged
non-native VM NJE driver in VM. This resulted in the announcement of
NJE as a joint JES2/VM product offering (aka the original NJE product
announcement was not a JES2 announcement it was NJE as a joint JES2/VM
product announcement). During this period the guy responsible for VM
networking and getting around the JES2/NJE announcement roadblock
... also had extensive discussions with the NJE people about how wrong
the homogeneous (totally messed up & confusing header fields) network
requirement and the server node limit actually was. The constant
refain from the JES2 group was that no real customer would ever have
more than a couple nodes (the size of the corporate internal network
was a total fluke and would never be repeated any place else).

To the extent that JES2 enhanced their JES2-based NJE drivers ... and
such enhancements lagged in the (non-VM native) versions of NJE
drivers is a corporate resource priority issue. While there was
possible some resistance & NIH to JES2 along the way ... they didn't
have to contend with the workers being constantly told that the
current release of VM is the absolute last ... and if you ever want to
get a promotion or raise in the IBM company you had to transfer to
some "mainstream" product activity; aka the issue of the features and
support level of the NJE line driver inside of VM was something that
was primarily a JES2 issue ... not a native VM networking issue.

The corporate decision to stop shipping the VM networking offering
with native line drivers .... and only ship with NJE driver(s)
.... could be realisticly construed as eliminating any comparison
about how poorly NJE compared to the "native" line drivers.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP:

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP:
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 15:58:21 GMT

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#35 HASP

and "why was nge announced as a joint JES2/VM product?" somebody asks.

HINT 1:

for some reason I/resource-manager was chosen to be the guinea pig
(aka first) for SCP priced/charged-for products. I got to spend six
months or so with business people establishing the rules/criteria for
charging for SCP software.
2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

HINT 2:

a possible price for a charged for SCP software product had to (at
least) meet the criteria that the price times all of people willing to
buy the product at that price exceeded the total product development
costs

HINT 3:

some number of SCP products got caught in the transition from free SCP
products (or at least not charged for) to priced SCP products ... aka
for some there was no possible price that met the criteria in HINT2.

HINT 4:

The part time for the person that did the NGE driver for VM networking
and the part time for the person that did all the rest of VM
networking were considered essentially negligible costs by JES2 NGE
development cost standards.

HINT 5:

it wasn't the only time this sort of thing happened to VM.

answer in some future edition.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP:

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP:
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 16:02:01 GMT

oh, and i forgot

HINT 6:

it involved a very large number of vm networking sales

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ibm time machine in new york times?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: ibm time machine in new york times?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main,comp.protocols.time.ntp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.sci.time-travel
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 13:57:24 GMT

"Kevin Koehler" writes:

I don't know if those who wrote the previous post will read this. I saw
something about IBM Plant site San Jose - I'm not trying to spoil anyones
fun or jepardize any matter of national security. But I used to deliver mail
on that plant site and had access to just about every room on the site to
deliver mail. You know I don't think that plant site has a single building
on that it with a basement. Nor does the research center. There was a
freight elevator that had a cool bumper sticker I snagged one day after
seeing it for nearly two years that said "You are Now Entering the Twilight
Zone!"! Maybe someone here knows different and can prove me wrong.

it was a parody probably 20 some years ago .... sort of the reverse of
the NYT thing .... that there were decisions being made that would
only be logical if they knew they had a time machine and were able to
go back and change things (as opposed to making wrong decisions
... then going back and changing the decisions). originally claimed
for basement of bldg 12. can't remember if it was in the context
of tandem memos or not.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#16 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary

during seismic refit of bldg 12 .... most of it was emptied ... except
for the wireless stuff on the top ... and some stuff in the basement.
employee credit union was also in the basement of bldg 12 ... until moved
to bldg just south for a while (i think that bldg is now orchard
supply hardware hdqtrs?) ... and then to current location on blossom.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#55 ibm time machine in new york times

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

HASP:

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HASP:
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:20:32 GMT

"Russ Holsclaw" writes:

Well, I dunno much about DEC software, but perhaps it made a
PDP-10 act as a HASP Remote Job Entry workstation. Seems like a
reasonable guess.

... aka 2780. lots of things simulated 2780.

when i put the 2741 & tty support into HASP along with cms editor
syntax ... i deleted the 2780 support (at the university, which wasn't
using it) since it picked up some addressability and kept hasp kernel
size smaller (one of the advantages of complete source distribution &
source build).

course it wasn't nearly as difficult as what we did at the university
with the interdata/3 to get it to emulate control unit (we had to
build our own channel attach card) ... claiming to have originate the
360 PCM controller business:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

random 2780 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#2 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#15 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#2 Schedulers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#25 Early RJE Terminals (was Re: First Network?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#76 Mainframes at Universities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#77 Are mainframes relevant ??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#71 HASP vs. "Straight OS," not vs. ASP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#30 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#20 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#52 Microsoft's innovations [was:the rtf format]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary

misc. early RJE-related RFCs:
 88 NETRJS: A third level protocol for Remote Job Entry.
105 Network Specifications for Remote Job Entry and Remote Job Output
217 Specifications changes for OLS, RJE/RJOR, and SMFS
283 NETRJT: Remote Job Service Protocol for TIPS
307 Using network Remote Job Entry
324 RJE Protocol meeting
325 Network Remote Job Entry program - NETRJS
338 EBCDIC/ASCII Mapping for Network RJE
360 Proposed Remote Job Entry Protocol
368 Comments on "Proposed Remote Job Entry Protocol"
407 Remote Job Entry Protocol
477 Remote Job Service at UCSB
499 Harvard's network RJE
725 RJE protocol for a resource sharing network

... for URL index of RFCs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ibm time machine in new york times?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: ibm time machine in new york times?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main,comp.protocols.time.ntp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.sci.time-travel
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 15:56:46 GMT

the other scenario was a report that seemed to involve head-to-head
comparison of 16mbit t/r against 3mbit ethernet ... claiming something
like ten to fifteen times more aggregate thruput for t/r.

this was somewhat after paper in acm sigcomm proceedings (88) that for
30 station ethernet lan ... in low-level loop constantly sending
minimum sized packets that effective aggregate thruput dropped off to
8.5mbits/sec (for 10mbit/sec ethernet media).

the only place that it seemed to be able to do such an actual head-to-head
comparison was against very early ethernet that operated at 3mbits/sec
and didn't do listen before transmit.

some number of reports showed that peak aggregate thruput of 16mbit
t/r lan was about fifty percent of media because of token rotation
delays.

the other report was from the austin pc/rt people. they had done a
high perforance 4mbit t/r adapter card for the pc/rt ... but weren't
allowed to do a similar project for 16mbit t/r adapter card. they
showed that the sustained adatper thruput of their 4mbit t/r adapter
was twice that of the 16mbit t/r adapter card that they were forced to
accept.

This isn't so much an issue in a 100-300 station lan using t/r
adapters for terminal emulation to mainframe ... however it became
significant issue for typical workstation client/server environment
with highly asymmetric traffic flows .... aka server lan station is
either the sender or receiver for majority of all traffic on the
lan. If the server was limited to 1mbit aggregate thruput (or less)
.... then it hardly mattered what the raw media thruput of the lan
was.

... so there was some comment that the only rational for doing a
16mbit t/r head-to-head comparison against 3mbit ethernet ... was if
you had a time machine and could take the 16mbit t/r adapters back in
time and sell them in competition against 3mbit ethernet.

Part of the technical issue was that 16mbit t/r with SNA .... doesn't
have network layer and routers .... so you have 100 stations sharing
16mbits. A typical 100 station ethernet configuration with 16 10mbit
subnets and routers was about the same as T/R configuration.

no. machines         100                  100
adapters/machine     1                    1
no. adapters         100                  100
cost/adapter         $900                 $300
total adapter        $90,000              $30,000
router               -                    $70,000
total cost           $90,000              $100,000

no. LANs             1                    16
router thruput       -                    200mbit
avail. bandwidth     16mbit               160mbit
machines/LAN         100                  6.25
avg bw/machine       .16mbit              1.6mbit

$/LAN                $90,000              $6,250
$/mbit               $5625                $625

For asymmetric (client/server &/or 3-tier) traffic flow it was
possible to do one or more dedicated ethernet, FDDI, channel and/or
escon interfaces to the router. Above doesn't take into account that
actual effective 16mbit t/r thruput is closer to 8mbits ... and that
worst case per ethernet aggregate effective is 8.5mbits.

Anyway above was from something where we introduced 3-tiered
architecture (at a presentation to the CIO council of very large
multi-national corporation ... which was in the habit of configuring
300 stations per 16mbit T/R).

We got hammered by the 16mbit t/r people as well as SNA and SAA people
(i.e. SAA was basically trying to put the client/server genie back in
the box .... and here we were coming up with 3-tiered architecture).

past 3tier & saa refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

and of course high speed data transport refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hsdt

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ibm time machine in new york times?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: ibm time machine in new york times?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,bit.listserv.ibm-main,comp.protocols.time.ntp,rec.arts.sf.science,alt.sci.time-travel
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 16:50:29 GMT

from the previous ref ... while the elevator in bldg. 12 may have said
that the floor with the credit union and the mail room was "1" .... if
you