As opposed to one assigned on the basis of a self-declared MAC address? I find it much more odd -- if not surprising, particularly in the pager era -- that the

As opposed to one assigned on the basis of a self-declared MAC address? I find it much more odd -- if not surprising, particularly in the pager era -- that the whole thing, every component of it, was completely locked in to one vendor. Not just the VAX cluster and the PCs, but even the network protocol. This was not unusual decades ago, but it was always insane.