
A Short History of Chaosnet (2018) - whocansay
https://twobithistory.org/2018/09/30/chaosnet.html
======
segfaultbuserr
Its quite interesting to observe that the trace of Chaosnet can be found in
Richard Stallman's original GNU Manifesto, written in 1985. Though it's not a
surprise since he worked extensively at the MIT AI Lab at that time.

> _GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix.
> [...] We will try to support UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for
> communication._

[https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html)

The mention of UUCP at a separate protocol in parallel to IP was also
interesting. Since the 90s, UUCP is running on top of TCP/IP which runs the
Usenet, but in the 80s, UUCP was used on point-to-point dialup links.

~~~
icedchai
I was around during that time period. UUCP was used over dialups well into the
90's. Many early ISPs offered UUCP email and news feeds.

------
cpr
While the LispMs designers might have originally intended a network-based file
system over Chaosnet and a network-based shared terminal configuration, in the
end the LispMs each had sufficient local storage for standalone operation, and
dedicated displays. (Though using long cables so that the machines could be in
a machine room.)

 _Moon wrote that the Chaosnet routing scheme “is predicated on the assumption
that the network geometry is simple, there are few multiple paths, and the
length of any path is quite short. This makes more sophisticated schemes
unnecessary.”_

In the end, the whole network at MIT was effectively a single physical run (I
managed the EECS portion) of the old-style thick coax. What a nightmare to
manage and debug across a whole campus! (Memories of crawling in ceiling
cavities with a TDR...)

------
lukeh
Did anyone actually deploy Hesiod? I haven't heard about it for a long time. I
remember implementing experimental support for it in lookupd when I was an
intern at Apple in 1998 ;)

------
teddyh
Oddly, absolutely no mention of the current use of the CH class in DNS: The
“version.bind.” CH TXT query, which often gives the server version of the Bind
DNS server.

------
a893754
This was previously discussed at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18107136)

