Tom Perrine made the following keystrokes: > The oldest protocol we're running anywhere is IPv4. > (It had to be said! :-) )
Oh if only that were true... If you take a look at various "official" reports, you'll see that there are plenty of things that are still using old Teletype codex. Ever see the actual weather alerts coming out of the National Weather Service? Limited charater set, line width, formatting, ... One could claim this is policy not protocol, but when you have limits you need to hold onto because someone may not be able to accept anythings newer than the 1950's... When you get into some other .gov spaces you'll see even more limitations on how data is sent around. IT IS NOT SHOUTING WHEN THE ONLY CHARACTERS YOU CAN USE ARE THOSE FROM AN ASR-33. Ascii also existed before IPv4. It may not be a protocol, but it's a convention we are all using, or compatible with. Not everything has moved to utf-8. How many people fire up a "terminal" that is 80x24 or 80x43? Ever wonder where that stuff comes from? Why not use something different today? We are no longer tied to ADM-3a terminals and IBM-periscopes. There are also still devices around that still use dialup modems. Some of those do operate in protocols and speeds that pre-date the internet. Where you are really going to get some interesting results on ancient stuff when in the medical and control systems. About 3 years ago a brand new $500,000 electron microscope was delivered. It's embedded controller from the vendor was running Windows-98. It wasn't going to be updated because it worked. They had hardware that would need to be redesigned to use the interfaces that are no longer supported under XP or W7 or anything else for that matter. They have a tcp-ip stack on it, so they can get data in/out and that's all that really matters. Granted the machine came in infected with some long dead malware, but that's another story. This system is well protected by putting it behind more modern systems but it does exist. Hospitals have lots of machines that run this way. Building control systems as well. Just because a building is all shiney and new does not mean the systems they installed on them are "state of the art" as far as we, (the leading edge) are concerned. They are as current as they need to be do get the job done AND be compatible with as many ancient pieces of cruft they may run into at the facility. It's a real pain if you don't support the 1975 version of some sensor that is embedded throughout the temperature control system in the building. --Gene _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
