Speaker
Mr
Les Cottrell
(SLAC)
Description
At the inauguration of HEPiX in 1991, mainframes (and HEPVM) were on their way out with their bus & tag cables, channels with 3270 emulators and channel attached Ethernets. DEC/VMS and DECnet were still a major player in the scientific world. Mainframes and to a lesser extent VMS hosts were being replaced by Unix hosts with native TCP stacks running on thin and thicknet shared media, the phone system was still a separate entity, wireless networking was very much a niche. The wide area network consisted of a multitude of networks and protocols such as DECnet, SNA, XNS, Color books, Bitnet/EARN and the emerging (soon to die off) OSI. All these were soon to "pass like tears in rain"* and be displaced by TCP/IP and what we know as the Internet today. We will look back at the evolution of the local area network, home networking and the wide area network over the last 30-40 years in particular noting the state and changes since HEPiX was formed 20 years ago.
* Blade Runner
Author
Mr
Les Cottrell
(SLAC)
