[HN Gopher] Remembering the LAN (2020)
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Remembering the LAN (2020)
Author : udev4096
Score : 148 points
Date : 2024-06-23 09:26 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tailscale.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tailscale.com)
| layoric wrote:
| Nice write up, took me back to running LANded NT in the same neck
| of the woods as the author up in Darwin :) Small world!
| croon wrote:
| I started reading it out of remembrance of the LANs I went to in
| the 90s, but kept reading because of the experience of core logic
| having much less overhead then very much mirroring my own. Good
| writing and astute observations.
| sgarland wrote:
| I also fondly remember IPX from when I was a kid. Red Alert 2 and
| Age of Empires II supported it, and it was truly zero-config on a
| small LAN. Then, eventually it died off, and I had to learn TCP.
|
| The author's point about so much not being necessary today, while
| simultaneously having more drudge work is interesting. I've often
| thought the former, but hadn't connected it to the latter. For
| example, I commandeered my family's two PCs (a Celeron 333 MHz
| and a Pentium III 550 MHz - what a screamer!) at night to run
| distcc on, so that Gentoo builds would finish in a somewhat
| reasonable amount of time. This is simply not necessary anymore.
| Firefox, which used to be an overnight job, now compiles in 10-20
| minutes for most modern CPUs.
|
| On the one hand, this is wonderful - faster feedback loops, more
| time to tinker. On the other hand, getting distcc set up back
| then was a fairly large undertaking for a kid, and taught you a
| good deal about a wide range of topics. Also, since the pain
| level of failure was so high, you were more careful to get it
| right the first time, lest you awaken to disappointment.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I also fondly remember IPX from when I was a kid. Red Alert 2
| and Age of Empires II supported it, and it was truly zero-
| config on a small LAN.
|
| Interestingly, I recall Red Alert 2 _only_ supporting IPX, and
| that causing tons of trouble for us at one LAN party when we
| tried to play it. Of course I may be remembering this wrong due
| to the passage of time and the fact that my technical skills
| were rudimentary at the time.
| nortonsdad wrote:
| I can't comment on Red Alert 2 in particular, but many early
| network multiplayer games predate widespread adoption of the
| internet so TCP/IP wasn't an option. Early online gaming
| services like Kali were almost a product built around a
| TCP/IP wrapper for IPX that allowed internet multiplayer on a
| platform it wasn't initially designed for. But it wasn't long
| before most people probably didn't even have the IPX protocol
| installed anymore.
| swozey wrote:
| Yeah I had basically the same system (Celeron 300a
| overclocked to a blazing 504mhz) and trying to play the same
| games with my dad over IPX was a huge problem. I don't
| remember why, just frustration and never wanting to use ipx.
|
| Definitely had problems with one of the Warcrafts, I assume 1
| but maybe 2
| cyberax wrote:
| If you used pure DOS with a network driver, it
| JustWorked(tm)(r)(c). However, Windows 95 had its own
| implementation of IPX, and it sometimes had issues.
| Aqua_Geek wrote:
| Warcraft 2 definitely used IPX for multiplayer. I remember
| struggling to get an IPX driver installed on our family
| computers so we could play.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Red Alert 2 in retrospect feels like an absolute "perfect
| storm" of bad luck that still produced a fantastic game
|
| RA2 runs on the same engine as Tiberian Sun (with minor
| modifications)
|
| Tiberian Sun was Westwood's first engine in C++
|
| It was also two years behind schedule _and_ pushed out barely
| functional after EA bought Westwood out in the late 1990 's
|
| While Westwood was busy putting itself back together under EA
| they spun off "Westwood Pacific" and tasked them to make Red
| Alert 2 using this same engine
|
| Red Alert 2's engine is the most cantankerous, buggy piece of
| junk that ran what I would strongly argue was the pinnacle of
| the RTS genre. Getting it running on modern systems is an
| exercise in "what directdraw wrapper actually works?" and
| hoping that the UDP patch doesn't cause random game desyncs,
| even on a modern LAN
| dcist wrote:
| AOE2 is the pinnacle of the RTS genre. With the Definitive
| Edition released in 2019, it's still extremely popular
| today. In my opinion, no RTS title has surpassed AOE2
| before or since in terms of gameplay (and, in my subjective
| opinion, graphics -- I LOVE the detailed pixel graphics
| much more than polygons).
| sgarland wrote:
| AOE2 is the best-balanced, IMO. I don't know that it's
| necessarily the most fun, though. I love it, but I also
| love RA2. Agree on the graphics comment: I'll take the
| isometric view any day over 3D RTS.
|
| RA2 has some grossly OP units that you can crank out en
| masse and dominate with. A small army of Apocalypse Tanks
| is game over for the enemy, unless they're France and
| have turtled with a bunch of Grand Cannons.
|
| Or in Yuri's Revenge, load Battle Fortresses with a
| Chrono Legionnaire or two, a Sniper (assuming British),
| and some GIs.
|
| These, and the overall frenetic pace of RA2 makes it more
| like junk food than the fine dining experience of AOE2.
| Yes, it's not the best thing ever, but man is it fun
| while it lasts.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I would say that Dawn of War 1 is the pinnacle of the RTS
| genre. Still has never been topped by any game I've
| played, even its sequels. DoW 2 was a dumpster fire that
| removed most of the RTS elements and cut armies down to
| 1/3 of the size they used to be. DoW 3 was a step back in
| the right direction, but still was not really at the
| lofty heights the first game hit.
|
| I used to dream that Blizzard would put Jay Wilson (who
| was the D3 lead while he was with them, but more
| importantly was the DoW1 lead before that) onto a
| Warcraft 4. I would've loved to see that. Alas, after D3
| had a fairly chilly reception (and Wilson himself sparked
| outrage through unwise social media posting), Blizzard
| quietly demoted him (and he eventually left). So it was
| not to be. But I still wish it had happened.
| loire280 wrote:
| I really enjoyed DoW2 as an action RPG but share your
| disappointment with it as a sequel to DoW1. I think it
| would have been received better with a different title.
| bombcar wrote:
| IPX on DOS was amazing and easy; IPX on Windows 95 was all
| sorts of fun configuration hell if it didn't "just work".
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I also fondly remember IPX from when I was a kid.
|
| IPX is the network layer and SPX was the transport layer on
| top. IPX can be used directly like UDP or the SPX protocol used
| when you need a guaranteed in-order byte pipe like TCP. Uses
| the MAC address as the machine address and was pretty light
| weight to the point where it out-performed IP in some cases.
|
| As a silly hobby project I want to take a stab at writing a
| user space IPX/SPX stack on Plan 9 and model it after ip(3).
| The stack would mount itself after /net providing /net/ipx and
| /net/spx, then you bind it to one or more Ethernet adapters.
| Programs wanting to listen or dial on IPX or SPX just put
| ipx!address!service instead of tcp!address!port for their dial
| strings. Then you could easily build IPX networks again and
| even easily tunnel them over whatever using 9P by mounting the
| stack on other machines.
| sgarland wrote:
| Ahhh, right. Networking is the area of tech where I learned
| enough to do what I needed, and then stopped. I keep meaning
| to get better at it. Your proposed project sounds like a fun
| way to do so!
| bombcar wrote:
| distcc (for Gentoo!) still makes sense when you have some beast
| machines and a bunch of Raspberry Pis or similar.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I remember getting sent off to a site (back when I was the
| young superhero dev) to troubleshoot something Implementation
| wasn't able to figure out. The something? Instead of TCP/IP the
| site was running over IPX (this was a large facility with the
| data center located tens of stories above, running IPX for non-
| Novell systems?).
|
| Somehow because of how the sales contract was written we were
| required to support running on IPX instead of just switching to
| TCIP/IP (which they also ran on their network but at this point
| everyone was in too deep for anything other than 'just get it
| working as is' as everyone's good will was burnt). That was a
| fun weekend.
|
| Luckily we had an old Novel accounting box on IPX/SPX that I
| helped maintain out of curiosity. Sometimes I miss being the
| super hero. But then I remember it resulting in me crumbling.
| Still was fun in the moment and I got put up in Chelsea and got
| to eat out in New York on an expense account. So much amazing
| food and such a great city especially filled on the adrenalin
| of the trip.
| drpossum wrote:
| > Learning how to store passwords or add OAuth2 to your toy web
| site is not fun
|
| Hard disagree. OAuth2 is a neat technology and every personal
| thunk you run across or find yourself asking "why the heck do I
| need to do this? why can't I just do _x_?) trying to implement it
| is an important part of security and instructive on how to build
| a secure system where you can only trust components to do a
| minimal thing. Storing passwords (or really salted password
| hashes) is similar.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| You have not convinced me this is "fun."
| ralferoo wrote:
| It's just Stockholm syndrome...
| superkuh wrote:
| OAuth 2 is definitely a "technology" and not a program. It is a
| tool for large corporations to create proprietary incompatible
| "OAuth" implementations. Whereas OAuth (1) was actually a
| program and it did what it said and was compatible. OAuth 2 is
| terrible corporate crapware. It is "open"auth like "open"ai is
| open.
|
| As for LANs, my home LAN is still going strong, no flakey
| wireless for me. My childhood friends group did stop having in-
| person LAN parties around 2009; mostly because we all moved to
| different regions. We still do occasionally set up a VPN to
| play some old non-internet game but it's mostly over the
| internet now (with self-hosted voice chat).
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > It is "open"auth like "open"ai is open.
|
| OAuth2 and OIDC are fully open specifications: anyone can
| join a working-group (there's no membership gatekeeping); and
| they both have plenty of fully open-source implementations.
| Not like OpenAI at all.
| hot_gril wrote:
| It's been a long time since I've used Oauth2, and I don't
| remember how it works, I only remember pain.
| hot_gril wrote:
| And I pronounce it "oath" in my head, as in, I'm gonna utter
| a lot of oaths trying to use it.
| contingencies wrote:
| IPX broadcast talk was fun. Forget the command.
|
| '90s Hong Kong! Anyone remember that warez market in Mongkok?
| ahar083 wrote:
| I remember heading to HK on a high school trip and we all ended
| up in that building, many people grabbing loads of CDs. Felt
| like Christmas! (I was too worried about customs in my home
| country checking my bags on arrival though!)
| ralferoo wrote:
| I suspect you're thinking of upstairs in the Golden computer
| arcade in ShamShuiPo. It's still there, but it was already
| "cleaned up" and respectable when I went back in 1999, having
| shifted focus almost entirely to business needs. I went back
| again a few years ago, and maybe it's just because I'm older or
| maybe it's because I've discovered HQB in Shenzhen, but it
| feels really boring now. You can at least still find the latest
| half-a-billion-in-one NES emulators downstairs, so that's
| always a good thing.
|
| When I went in 1992, it was crazy. CDs didn't have much
| adoption for computers by then, so the market was still
| floppies - IIRC HK$10 per disk and another HK$10 for a
| photocopied manual. They'd take your money and phone up some
| guy and tell them the four digit code and 10 minutes later
| someone would hand you a stack of disks. It felt weird that it
| was so blatant, but the first time I went by myself, I couldn't
| find it and asked a policeman for directions. He said in
| English, "Oh, the copied stuff? Over there!" and pointed to it!
|
| That said, I only ever bought 3 disks from there - partly
| because I didn't have much money, but mostly because I found
| the programming books downstairs even more interesting. They
| were translations of all the English programming books, for
| about HK$30 each. The text may have been all Chinese, but the
| source code wasn't, so I bought a couple of books just for the
| diagrams and the source code.
| contingencies wrote:
| Cool that it's still there. I sort of recall visiting in
| '0-something and being disappointed. For a long time there
| was a larger spiritual successor in Bangkok, Pratunam Mall,
| but I'm pretty sure that's also scaled down these days. In
| some ways I guess they were the cultural equivalent of record
| shops. Probably many former soviet countries had them too.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I was a permanent resident there in the '90s, and this was a
| piece of nostalgia I didn't expect to stumble across today.
| blueflow wrote:
| I don't get it. Is it gone? The author doesn't tell what happened
| since then. Aside from newer machines and modern software, things
| in the LAN haven't changed much, right?
| neilalexander wrote:
| Of course it's not gone, although I suspect there's a very
| large number of people who would be surprised to learn either
| that their Wi-Fi network at home is actually a LAN or that a
| LAN has utility outside of just providing access to the
| Internet.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Yeah that was my first thought seeing the title - what
| 'remembering,' I'm on a LAN right now, it's nothing special.
| foobarian wrote:
| The meaning probably includes having at least a few
| computers talking to each other at home, instead of the sad
| clone army of NATed web browsers.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| My thoughts after reading the article is that the author
| compares learning networks and computers isolated on a LAN
| vs. in the modern world of connected SaaS and the like.
| That the subject matter is different, less exciting.
|
| It's like comparing a company in its startup phase to its
| soulless corporate behemoth phase.
|
| And, it's a tailscale blog so it segues to their business.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Huh? I am using it rather than remembering it. Since my router
| only allows specific hosts and ports to be accessed from
| Internet, there is no need for security between my laptop and my
| 3D printer, can just upload and print the model / watch it on
| camera by typing a URL.
| tcdent wrote:
| You are using the Internet. He is speaking in reference to
| applications which are hosted and used locally (Local Area
| Network).
|
| Your 3D printer, assuming it truly doesn't need an Internet
| connection to function, is an anomaly today. Remotely hosted
| assets, data & logic have become the norm.
| kemotep wrote:
| > Could a part-time programmer like my father write small-
| business software today? Could he make it as safe and productive
| as our LAN was? Maybe. If he was canny, and stuck to old-
| fashioned desktops of the 90s and physically isolated the
| machines from the internet. But there is no chance you could get
| the records onto a modern phone safely (or even legally under
| HIPAA) with the hours my father gave the project.
|
| Their father's software likely was not HIPAA compliant or safe,
| just isolated. They speak earlier in the post about it being a
| permission-less file based database any computer could access,
| including his personal one. And that any innocuous command could
| potentially bring the whole thing down.
|
| Certainly looking back with rose colored glasses to the
| situation. It probably did work great for his father's needs but
| "safe and compliant with modern medical data protection laws" is
| was not.
|
| I do think that a simpler approach to small business software
| like this example is not a bad goal. This was a great read. Thank
| you for sharing.
| l7l wrote:
| Nice read. Love how it evoked the memories from the golden days
| where everything was exciting, new and fun :)
| eddieroger wrote:
| I know that this article was basically an ad for Tailscale, which
| happens to be a product I've really grown to love, but it still
| struck a chord in me. I share the yearning for the "good old
| days" when we could just do stuff on the Internet and it felt
| limitless. The spirit of build over buy felt different then, too.
| While I don't have a parent who wrote practice management
| software, I remember a particular niche music store we'd go to
| using Fox Pro to manage their inventory and catalog. I wish I saw
| more of that today.
|
| As it happens, I was thinking of whipping up a Rails app to help
| my wife with a particular task she's got, and it occurred to me I
| can host it in our basement if I install Tailscale on her phone
| and computer, and it will just work, particularly if they can get
| identity integrated beyond joining a tailnet. So maybe the
| author's point is valid but overstated, and it still exists
| somewhat, just less often.
| crawshaw wrote:
| Author here. I realize it reads as an ad for Tailscale, but I
| actually wrote it earlier in 2019 while doing some of the very
| early product development. In a sense it is more a PRD than
| anything.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Well, my apologies. It was a very enjoyable read. Keep doing
| what you're doing! And thank you all for being cool to
| headscale - I would love more family-as-enterprise pricing,
| and am thankful that headscale is developed and exists.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I remember those days. I feel the same way as the author.
|
| But I think the right place to find that same joy in programming
| today, is by building stuff with embedded systems. You can do a
| lot of fun stuff as a kid with an arduino, some components, and
| instructions from the Internet.
| ehPReth wrote:
| is there a way to give a 'tailscale IP address' to dumber devices
| on your network? effectively serving 'tailnet addresses' via
| DHCP? say to a printer, other lower powered devices, etc. could
| have sworn i saw an article about this at some point but can't
| find it
| johnnyballgame wrote:
| Brought back frightening memories of running a 10BASE2 network on
| LANtastic. Any one bad connection and the whole network came
| down. So much fun to troubleshoot.
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