
Chaosnet - scandox
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6353/AIM-628.pdf?sequence=2
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cybel
Here's a better copy: [http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/AIM-628_chaosn...](http://bitsavers.trailing-
edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/AIM-628_chaosnet.pdf)

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mini890
Thanks. Really helpful. It was hard to trying to make sense of some words.

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wDcBKgt66V8WDs
This is "IoT" and "the cloud", circa 44 years ago

> Chaosnet was originally developed in 1975

> The Lisp Machine system is a multi-processor in which each active user is
> assigned a "personal" computer consisting of a medium-scale processor, a
> suitable amount of memory, and a swapping disk. Files are stored in a
> central file-system accessed through Chaosnet. This shared file-system
> retains the traditional advantages of a time-sharing system, namely inter-
> user communication, shared programs, and centralized backup and maintenance.
> At the same time, by giving each active user his own processor, the Lisp
> Machine system is much more capable than a time-sharing system at executing
> Lisp programs several million words in size efficiently and with rapid
> interactive response. Because Chaosnet is taking the place of the file disk
> in a conventional system, it must be fast (both in response and in
> throughput), it must be reliable (this is the reason why there is no
> centralized control), and it must allow connection of several dozen
> machines. However, it does not need to operate over long distances. Chaosnet
> is used to access other shared resources in addition to the file system;
> these include printers, tape drives, and one-of-a-kind specialized
> processors and I/O devices.

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i_am_proteus
NB: from 1981

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jdright
(PDF) please?

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msla
The actual URL (stripped of parameters) even ends in .pdf.

The code to add the PDF tag must be very, very simple.

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thom_nic
Beyond the Abstract, can anyone give a TL;DR on novel or interesting things
covered in this paper?

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gumby
Nothing really these days. It was a thicknet (10BASE5) LAN similar to PUP with
service names (strings) rather than port numbers. We used it at MIT pretty
much only inbetween the AI and LCS machines (which were all in the same
machine room and building) but was never really commercialized except that
early machines from Symbolics and LMI were just CADRs which had chaosnet
interfaces in them so if you had any of those early lispms you needed chaosnet
to talk to them.

There were other experimental LAN systems around as well, some commercial some
not.

It was all superseded in the mid-late 80s by IEEE ethernet.

It's a little bit of a nostalgia trip for me but if you never used it there's
not much to learn in retrospect.

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dfrage
It was used way beyond the 9th floor of 545 Tech Square. To the west, the
longest cable run was to the NW16 Plasma Science and Fusion Center, I think
there were only 2 taps on that cable, it was marginal. To the far south the
Mathematics Department in Building 2, and it went east to Building 20 at
minimum.

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gumby
True, I'd forgotten that it went to Building 20, but Building 2? Someone
wanted to use MACSYMA?

In any case by 83 or so they were building out Athena which was ethernet
based.

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dfrage
> but Building 2? Someone wanted to use MACSYMA?

As I understand it, they just wanted to be connected to the rest of the world,
which their RJE connection to NCARs' supercomputers didn't accomplish.

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grifball
the end of each page washes out and isnt readable

