[email protected] (Tony Harminc) writes: > For many years (decades, actually) there have been other products (IBM > and non-IBM) that talk the NJE protocols. Most notably, IBM's RSCS on > VM uses an overlapping subset of the same protocol, and is > interoperable. There have been NJE implementations for UNIX and other > operating systems over the years, long predating NJE over TCP/IP. One > popular product in the 1980s was JNET, from Joiner Associates, which > ran on the DEC VAX.
NJE originated as HASP networking at customer (source col. fields 68-71 use to carry "TUCC"). It defined nodes in the unused entries in the 255 table of psuedo (unit record) devices ... so number of nodes was typically limited to 160-180. It also had designed that it tossed traffic when it didn't recognize the original or destination nodes. The internal network had relatively early passed 255 nodes (the internal network was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime late '85 or early '86) some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet and so NJE nodes couldn't be trusted except as edge nodes (since they were prone to tossing traffic). NJE also was relatively dirty implementation ... intermixing network and job control fields ... as a result NJE systems at different release levels exchanging traffic had habit of crashing the host (MVS). By comparison, RSCS was very clean layered network design ... done by coworker at the science center ... some past science center posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks it didn't have the number of nodes limitations, didn't toss traffic when it didn't understand the origin ... and it's clean layered design was straight-forward to have drivers that understood other protocols ... useful in supporting JES/MVS as edge nodes. In fact, as the number of nodes exploded around the world ... and all JES/MVS systems couldn't be kept at the same release levels ... involving JES/MVS systems in one part of the world crashing MVS systems in other parts of the world ... a library of RSCS NJE drivers grew up that translated NJE header fields to canonical form ... and then a specific RSCS NJE driver would be used to convert any NJE fields to the appropriate format required by the NJE system at the other end of the link (as countermeasure to traffic crashing the host MVS system) ... there was the famous case of traffic from san jose (gpd) mvs system crashing mvs system in hursley ... and it being blamed on the hursley vm/rscs people for not having the correct vm/rscs nje driver started (to keep mvs from crashing). VM/RSCS was also the basis for IBM-sponsored BITNET for educational institutions (where this ibm-mailing list originated) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet internal politics eventually stopped the shipping of native RSCS drivers, just the NJE drivers ... even though they continued to be used on the internal network, in part because they werre more efficient ahd had much higher throughput. then later, internal politics forced the move of the internal network to SNA/VTAM, at a time when it would have been much more cost effective to have moved to tcp/ip ... which BITNET did. Some old internal network related email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet including this reference to a little of the internal politics behind moving to sna/vtam http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/20011.html#email870306 it was in the same time period that they were spreading misinformation internally that the NSFNET backbone (precursor to modern internet) could be done on sna/vtam ... somebody had collected a lot of the internal misinformation and forwarded it to us ... heavily snipped and redacted to protect the guilty http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109 other old NSF related email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet past posts mentioning hasp, jes, and/or nje http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp one of the other early NJE issues was they couldn't find a valid business case to ship the product ... the standard internal process resulted in price much higher than customers would pay i.e. IBM still adjusting to having to charge for software (after the unbundling announcement). Eventually they came up with the hack that they would announce a joint vm/rscs and JES2/NJE product ... business case where they combined the costs & revenue for the two products (pricing vm/rsc the same as jes2/nje ... where vm/rscs revenue was used to cover the jes2/nje costs... and eventually eliminating shipping native vm/rscs drivers helped with the facade). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
