On February 22, 2019 at 10:50 bjorn@mork.no (Bjørn Mork) wrote:
bzs@theworld.com writes:
The predecessor to sendmail was delivermail, 1979, also written by Eric Allman.
Damn. Now you made me read RFC801 and wonder why we didn't have an updated version for the IPv6 transition. Or: Where would the Internet have been today without that very explicit "complete switch over" goal?
Not sure what you mean but reasonably late-model sendmail works with IPv6, it's a compile option which is on by default. Or do you mean the NCP->TCP transition? The internet was a lot smaller and one could actually get all the ducks in a line back then. And almost everyone (if not everyone) was connected via IMPs rather than CPE routers and the IMPs were more or less centrally managed or if you managed one you accepted responsibility to work in concert with the others. I don't know the high-water mark for the number of IMPs or more specifically how many existed on the NCP->TCP flag day but I'm pretty sure the theoretical maximum was 256 tho no doubt someone had a way to extend that. But, w/o extensive changes, 256, probably 254, not sure 0 or 255 could be an IMP number, whatever! Largely because your IMP was identified by the last octet of an IP address (I think that's right) so Boston University was 10.4.0.44 which meant port 4 on IMP 44 (which sat at MIT on the 9th floor of 545 tech square.) Of course to speak to the net via your IMP connection your computer(s) also had to switch over to TCP. But, again, these were usually just one or a few big machines per site likely all in the same room or same administration group anyhow. Life was much simpler back then. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*