Text 13786, 127 rader
Skriven 2011-01-28 10:40:12 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: FidoNews 28:04 [02/05]: General Articles
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Hello Robert,

On Tuesday January 25 2011 10:47, you wrote to me:

 MV>> Does it support IPv6?

 RB> Who knows? I haven't looked.

Then you should and if it doesn't pester them about it. As I wrote in my
article(s) IPv6 is coming and if you do mot jump on the train, you will be left
behind.

 MV>> That is a standard question I ask when I consider buying new
 MV>> products. If the answer is anything other then a clear "yes". I
 MV>> move on. Buying new network stuff that does not support IPv6 yet,
 MV>> is buying a car that has no way to refill the tank when it is
 MV>> empty.

 RB> An OS is not just "network stuff". You can develop drivers and
 RB> programs for it.

In the old DOS days, network drivers were add-ons that could be added or left
out at will. Now they are called network stacks and they are deeply embedded in
the OS. If OS/2 only has a version 4 TCP/IP stack, the user can not just
replace it by a v4+v6 dual stack. You need to recompile the OS and for that you
need the source code.

 MV>> I have been running OS/2 for quit some time, but I ditched it when
 MV>> I could not make it talk to my other machine running Novell
 MV>> Personal Netware. In the meantime I also dumped Personal Netware.
 MV>> I never go back to things I dumped...

 RB> ;-) You _are_ good - I would have kept OS/2 and ditched Novell.

For me that was not an option at the time.

 RB> Or was that back in the good old DOS days, where there wasn't much
 RB> choice for DOS networking?

Indeed it was. Microsoft was enetering the game with Windows for Workgroups but
Novell was Market Leader and IPX was the game. My hone was Microsoft free. My
FidoNet system was running Novell DOS 7 on a 286. It was Rock Stable. Novell's
IPX network drivers (cleinet+server) were so compact that I could run hem
together with my Fisonet system. So my FidoNet system was the main server for
my home network too. We didn't have things like home routers and switches back
then. Dis not need them either. IPX does stateless autoconfiguration. A feature
that has returned in TCP/IP version 6 or short IPv6. So you do not need a DHCP
server. The physical layer was thin ethernet. That is coax. No hubs, just one
coax cable running along all the nodes.

With 20/20 hindsight I probably held on too long to DOS. But as i said, my
FidoNet system was running Rock Solid and I did not want to fix what wasn't
broken.

Anyway, some years later, with Windows 98, I took the "Microsoft free home"
sign from my house. And with that went IPX because TCP/IP was the game
Microsoft was playing. There was a TCP/IP stack for DOS, but it was too large
to run alongside my FidoNet sofware even with the motherboard replaced by one
with a 386. Who was that again that said 640K ought to be enough for anybody?
;-)

I seem to have a talent for making the wrong choices. 12 years ago there were
two competing systems for the new 13 pin connectors ro hook up trailers to a
car. There war Multicon that was downward compatible with the old 7 pin
connector and there was Jaeger which was nit compatible. I choose Multicon.
Now, 12 years later Jaeger is coming out as the winner.

The list of my wrong choices is longer. I think however that my choice to part
with OS/2 does not belong on that list. I see OS/2 as a dead end. I know it is
popular among FidoNet sysop. Probably becuase of its stability and modest
hardware requirements. My home once was Microsoft free, but I got tired of
swimming against the stream...

 MV>> My RC takes the same position. He says it is too much to convert
 MV>> his Fido system to another OS, so when for some reason or
 MV>> another, he can npo longer use OS/2, he will leave FidoNet.

 RB> A pity, and I hope it won't come to that. But I can understand him.

So can I. I may have been in the same postion if I had not dumped OS/2 in the
late 90ties.

 RB> I once had a Linux system running with at least a message editor
 RB> (GoldED and MsgED), but that wasn't really a happy time for me, and
 RB> the constant work to try and understand what was going on got on my
 RB> nerves.

Maybe I should have tried Linux when I still had the drive and energy to really
dive into it.

 RB> As for a Windows system... who knows? I still don't consider even
 RB> WinXP stable enough for month-long running without supervision,
 RB> as can be done with OS/2. My hub, Tobias Burchchardt, uses XP and a VM
 RB> for his system, and that works pretty well. No idea what he uses as a
 RB> guest OS, though.

I find it stable enough. It is not as stable a my old 286 running Novell Dos
but it is stable enough to go on holiday and leave it on the autopilot for a
couple of weeks. I also take a little moder relaxed postion to my FidoNet
comittments than ten years ago. Now I say, 'it is only a hobby, if my system
goes doen while I am away, they will just have to do without me until I
return".

 MV>> But I wonder if when push cmes to shove, the blood will no be
 MV>> thicker than water after all en he will convert anyway. Anyone who
 MV>> is still here after all these years is a real die hard and so may
 MV>> change his mind. Even you.. ;-)

 RB> Absolutely no idea, Michiel. The time may come when we have some kind
 RB> of Internet forum called "fidonet". At this point, everything's
 RB> possible.

If it comes to that, I think the cohesion will crumble very fast. We had
something similar with net 500. Net 500 (Hcc Fidonet) was sponsored by the HCC
(Hobby Computer Club). When they became ISP (HccNet) the sponsoring for net 500
was dropped and almost all sysops, points and users went to usenet. ... And
then we found out that we did not have all that much to say to each other. Our
common interest was Fidonet and when that was gone, we found ourselves in the
position of people meeting at a school reunion. Sometimes it is fun to see the
old mates again and sometimes it is not. But the point is that it is only fun
for a day at most. The you run out of things to talk about.


Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
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