[TUHS] NFS at 40

[Brad Spencer via TUHS]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> writes:

> On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 11:26:55AM -0400, Clem Cole via TUHS wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 11:20???AM Brad Spencer via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> > "Charles H. Sauer via TUHS" <tuhs at tuhs.org> writes:
>> > ....  it came
>> > out that the IP stack in that SVR3.x on the Vax was from Lachman ported
>> > in by DEC.  DEC tossed out the code base, whatever might have existed,
>> > that AT&T provided with the source reference for doing IP related stuff.
>> > This would have been in the 1990s.  The coworker seemed to indicate that
>> > the Lachman code performed better and/or had all of the parts that one
>> > might expect in a IP stack that were missing in the AT&T version.
>> >
>> IIRC, the issue was System V's Streams (TLI) vs. UCB's Sockets.  Most of
>> the code for IP/TCP, particularly UNIX-based, wanted "pure-joy" and hacking
>> the code to TLI was too much trouble.
>
> Lachman's stuff came from Convergent, they wrote the STREAMS based TCP/IP
> stack (I know, I ported it to SVR3 for the ETA-10 project, and then again
> to SCO Unix which was maybe V7 based?  It was pretty primitive.  Might 
> have been SVR3 or R2).
>
> STREAMS just sucked, way more overhead than UCB's sockets.  I've never
> been a huge fan of the UI of sockets, it's clunky, but it was a lot better
> than the STREAMS layering.

I never saw the SVR3.x that may have used STREAMS, but my coworker did
(assuming my memory is correct) and he may have indicated in our
conversations that it performed rather badly (that very much rings a
bell).  The software group we were a part of was pretty well off and I
know that we experimented with different platforms from time to time for
the product and he may have had some experience with one of the
experiments.  The product was huge and complicated and more or less ate
and entire computer to do its job, be it a Vax or later an HP.





-- 
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org