[HN Gopher] How engineers at Digital Equipment Corp. saved Ethernet
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How engineers at Digital Equipment Corp. saved Ethernet
Author : hasheddan
Score : 98 points
Date : 2024-04-08 10:52 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| gumby wrote:
| What a great story. The spanning tree algo is under appreciated:
| this allowed people who didn't understand networking to plug
| networks together the way you would plug extension power cables
| together,* making networking simple ( or alternatively insanely
| broken, when people had 400 computers on a single LAN with a
| rat's nest of bridges and hubs...but unlike the extension cord
| case, nothing would catch literal fire).
|
| * don't try this at home or work!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > but unlike the extension cord case, nothing would catch
| literal fire
|
| Somewhere, out there, is a story of an overburdened network
| setup literally catching fire, and it's hopefully making its
| way to us.
| genericone wrote:
| C'mon HN, I'm counting on you...
| jeramey wrote:
| Occasionally people don't understand how to plug extension
| power cables together, either, especially during times of high
| stress and low sleep.
|
| Once upon a time, when I was in IT support, I got a call from
| someone in a satellite office across town saying that their
| computer wouldn't turn on. A new production had begun and
| everyone was a bit frantic, so this was an urgent request.
| After asking them to hold the power switch in for a few seconds
| and try to turn it on again, I asked them to make sure the
| power cable was secure and that the computer was plugged in. It
| was, of course, but the computer still wouldn't turn on, so it
| was time to jump on the bicycle and ride across town with a new
| power supply in tow, figuring it would be a quick fix.
|
| When I arrive, I see that, indeed, the computer was plugged in
| to a power strip. And that power strip was plugged in to
| itself. From then on, I always made sure to ask, "Is the
| computer plugged _into the wall_? " Saved myself a few bicycle
| trips that way.
| freedomben wrote:
| heh, with power strips that have very long cables, I've seen
| them plugged into themselves a few times as well.
| Arrath wrote:
| Like tying a shoelace: the long grey cord goes around the
| backside of the desk, turns and comes around the front, and
| back into its own powerstrip.
|
| ..Wait why won't it turn on?
| firecall wrote:
| I was really hoping for some never before known knowledge of
| how to connect Extension Cables and Power Boards together!
|
| But no, turns out someone didnt even manage the basics! LOL
|
| There's a reason the IT Crowd have the running joke of 'have
| you tried turning it off and on again...'! :-)
| jeramey wrote:
| In all fairness, the person had obviously been awake for
| over 24 hours and was on their 1,001st cup of coffee. And
| since earlier in the summer I had crashed the entire ticket
| scanner network the night before the opening of the weekend
| festival we had put on by creating a network loop between a
| couple of non-spanning-tree-speaking network devices, I
| didn't feel I was in a place to be snarky about it!
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Not recommended but these bad boys make a lot of things work,
| and cause a lot of damage! https://m.media-
| amazon.com/images/I/61A5WvzcgsL._AC_UL960_QL...
| spintin wrote:
| We need to scrap IPv6 and just add a byte to IPv4 for the
| internal 192.168.1.XXX address.
| eej71 wrote:
| I think the great architectural challenge would be - how does
| one add that byte to the IP header in a non-breaking way?
| themerone wrote:
| There's a surprising number of people who think you could
| magically expand the IPv4 address space in a backwards
| compatible manner.
| eej71 wrote:
| It would be great if its true! Perhaps its really there and
| we're all just blind to it? Unlikely, but I'm willing to be
| surprised.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unfortunately none of those people have explained how it
| could be done in enough detail that I could try it. Most
| walk away when pressed but a few press on telling me it
| is easy so shut up and do it .
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Similar to how it has been done with phone numbers. I saw
| this done in Brazil for example. You add a digit to the
| front and put all existing address on 0.*. Short number
| dials are assumed to be 0.*. Update OS and hardware. Then
| you allocate across the new digit much later as time goes
| on.
|
| The thing with phone infrastructure though is that it is
| centralized. So may happen in a reasonably coordinated
| rollout. Global internet is a lot more distributed so it
| would take a very long time.
|
| The open question is, would it take longer than IP6 has?
| Maybe not. Part of the reason I didn't care to use it
| early was because of the long addresses. If we could get
| a five byte address written in hex it would be somewhat
| user friendly.
| kemotep wrote:
| Well I don't see how you could do it without upgrading
| equipment and software to support it. And then to start
| using the new ip scheme.
|
| Which starts to sound an awful lot like an IPV6
| migration.
| rini17 wrote:
| But this was what literally happened. All routers today
| support NAT and most of them actively use it. Isn't it a
| magical form of extended IPv4 address space? Could have
| been easily done in less band-aid fashion instead of
| chasing IPv6.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| How?
| firecall wrote:
| Has IPv6 been a failure?
|
| All I know is that IPv4 is still around.
|
| And without knowing the IP Addresses of devices on my LAN, by
| home network would be harder to manage!
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