Happy 40th anniversary RFC 791!

Wed Sep 1 20:00:34 UTC 2021

On 9/1/21 12:26 PM, Mel Beckman wrote:
> I still have a slew on Lantronix terminal servers :)

A few years back I was shocked to hear that the original OS that I wrote 
-- called whimsically Punix for Puny Unix -- which was used by Lantronix 
was still being sold. I mean, that's over 30 years ago. I doubt our IP 
and TCP drivers changed much in that time. One of the cute things I did 
was pump out most of the character IO in the null job so that it didn't 
have to do interrupt based IO for the most part, which kept the costs 
low (= no DMA silicon, cheaper processors).

It still amazes me that we built the internet basically without the 
internet. I came >.< close to driving up to ISI to attend an IETF 
meeting around 1987 or maybe 88 to complain about the shitty LPR 
interface on Unix and what could be done about it. I'm not sure whether 
it would have fallen on receptive ears, but I was totally naive about 
how new this all was.

Mike