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> IBM RISC machines iirc were deployed at the DS3 upgrade You recall correctly. Info/pictures here[0]. 0 - https://www.rcsri.org/collection/nsfnet-t3/ https:/

> IBM RISC machines iirc were deployed at the DS3 upgrade You recall correctly. Info/pictures here[0]. 0 - https://www.rcsri.org/collection/nsfnet-t3/ https://www.rcsri.org/collection/nsfnet-t3/

sillywalk 2y ago
Interesting, thanks for the link. Do you know anything more about the router cards? It says they had intel i960s that ran AIX, but I wonder if it was just the RS/6000 that ran AIX, and the boards ran some custom firmware.
- marcus0x62 2y ago
  There isn't much published information about these systems to my knowledge. This[0] report from ANS-Net[1], though, indicates to me that AIX was very much directly involved in the forwarding part of the router architecture: AIX Kernel Radix Trie problem 3+ overlapping routes with different masks abc.def/8 abc.def.0/10 abc.def.0/12 Fixed in AIX build coming within two weeks While it would certainly be possible (and is a common router architecture now) to have a central forwarding database and distributed line cards, it doesn't really make any sense to use a kernel trie to store routes for such an architecture, and if the central rs/6000 was switching every packet, it wouldn't - at the time - have been able to support a single t3, let alone the kind of port density described in the original article. So, I guess in summary, I can't point you to definitive proof that those boards were running AIX, but it seems extremely likely to me. 0 - https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/29/ops/netstat.becker.slides.html https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/29/ops/netstat.becker.slide... 1 - A network operator that was subsequently purchased by AOL.
- kev009 2y ago
  The i960 cards ran an independent AIX kernel as well, housed in a POWER RS6k running AIX.
  - sillywalk 2y ago
    Not really knowing anything about software portability between different computer architectures or the intricacies of high-speed networking, at first I thought that was kind of strange. But I checked and it looks like by the time these cards we created, AIX had already been ported to the IBM's ROMP, 370, and POWER processors, plus the 386, so AIX would seem to be fairly portable. I guess it would be easier to port it to the i960, than to do something from scratch. From marcus0x62's link, it looks like very few ( < 100?) of these boards were made.
    - kev009 2y ago
      AIX was for a time IBM's brand name for UNIX environments so it covers some rather distinct products. The version that runs on ROMP is very distinct (one of the earlier commercial microkernels) from the S/370 and i386 version (which, for a time were similar, then there was an ESA/390 version that is not at all), which are both very far removed from the version that continues today on POWER. Sauer was heavily involved in the stuff before POWER and is authoritative on the early history https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-.... I can extrapolate a bit more if necessary. I am unsure of what exact kernel strain wound up on the i960 cards, suffice to say any of them could have been called into this service since a well contained UNIX port is something that can be done by relatively few people. IBM provided the IBM RT with special cards as the T1 implementation for NSFNet, and then the RS/6000s were used later and especially for higher speed T3 and FDDI nodes. While the original NSFnet nodes and cards would be rare indeed, IBM commercialized this all as the 6611 Network Processor family.. which ranged from tiny PowerPC-only machines (based on the 7011) to custom chassis complete with the i960 cards. These sold from the early 1990s to mid-late 1990s and were not uncommon. Vanilla RS/6000s were also common in that era as networking multitools and were plenty good at it. * https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_rp/8/ENUS8Q1518/index.html https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ss... * http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL%20PDF/sg245000.pdf http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL%20PDF/sg245000.pdf * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/6611/ http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/6611/

> IBM RISC machines iirc were deployed at the DS3 upgrade You recall correctly. Info/pictures here[0]. 0 - https://www.rcsri.org/collection/nsfnet-t3/ https://www.rcsri.org/collection/nsfnet-t3/

sillywalk 2y ago

Interesting, thanks for the link. Do you know anything more about the router cards? It says they had intel i960s that ran AIX, but I wonder if it was just the RS/6000 that ran AIX, and the boards ran some custom firmware.

marcus0x62 2y ago
There isn't much published information about these systems to my knowledge. This[0] report from ANS-Net[1], though, indicates to me that AIX was very much directly involved in the forwarding part of the router architecture: AIX Kernel Radix Trie problem 3+ overlapping routes with different masks abc.def/8 abc.def.0/10 abc.def.0/12 Fixed in AIX build coming within two weeks While it would certainly be possible (and is a common router architecture now) to have a central forwarding database and distributed line cards, it doesn't really make any sense to use a kernel trie to store routes for such an architecture, and if the central rs/6000 was switching every packet, it wouldn't - at the time - have been able to support a single t3, let alone the kind of port density described in the original article. So, I guess in summary, I can't point you to definitive proof that those boards were running AIX, but it seems extremely likely to me. 0 - https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/29/ops/netstat.becker.slides.html https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/29/ops/netstat.becker.slide... 1 - A network operator that was subsequently purchased by AOL.
kev009 2y ago
The i960 cards ran an independent AIX kernel as well, housed in a POWER RS6k running AIX.
- sillywalk 2y ago
  Not really knowing anything about software portability between different computer architectures or the intricacies of high-speed networking, at first I thought that was kind of strange. But I checked and it looks like by the time these cards we created, AIX had already been ported to the IBM's ROMP, 370, and POWER processors, plus the 386, so AIX would seem to be fairly portable. I guess it would be easier to port it to the i960, than to do something from scratch. From marcus0x62's link, it looks like very few ( < 100?) of these boards were made.
  - kev009 2y ago
    AIX was for a time IBM's brand name for UNIX environments so it covers some rather distinct products. The version that runs on ROMP is very distinct (one of the earlier commercial microkernels) from the S/370 and i386 version (which, for a time were similar, then there was an ESA/390 version that is not at all), which are both very far removed from the version that continues today on POWER. Sauer was heavily involved in the stuff before POWER and is authoritative on the early history https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/ https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-.... I can extrapolate a bit more if necessary. I am unsure of what exact kernel strain wound up on the i960 cards, suffice to say any of them could have been called into this service since a well contained UNIX port is something that can be done by relatively few people. IBM provided the IBM RT with special cards as the T1 implementation for NSFNet, and then the RS/6000s were used later and especially for higher speed T3 and FDDI nodes. While the original NSFnet nodes and cards would be rare indeed, IBM commercialized this all as the 6611 Network Processor family.. which ranged from tiny PowerPC-only machines (based on the 7011) to custom chassis complete with the i960 cards. These sold from the early 1990s to mid-late 1990s and were not uncommon. Vanilla RS/6000s were also common in that era as networking multitools and were plenty good at it. * https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_rp/8/ENUS8Q1518/index.html https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ss... * http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL%20PDF/sg245000.pdf http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL%20PDF/sg245000.pdf * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/6611/ http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/6611/