At 9:52 AM -0700 6/17/04, Blue Boar wrote: >ljknews wrote: >> A significant difference from DECnet is that with TCP/IP any user on the >> system can open up a channel (to use a neutral term) to receive incoming >> traffic, potentially providing a capability to the outside world without >> the least bit of authentication. With DECnet (Phase IV or Phase V) on >> VMS such actions require getting a special privilege from the system >> manager (potentially granted to a specific program rather than to the >> programmer). > >Hm? You mean they had to have privs on VMS to allocate a listening port? What does that matter? DECNet doesn't only run on VMS.
But the vast majority of current DECnet usage is on VMS. > Years ago, I used to be a network admin at a place that had thousands of Win95 and Mac boxes running DECNet. No such restriction, there. Had it been DECNet/OSI that won instead of IP, I don't believe there would be any significant difference. I don't know the OSI protocol stack, but the NCP side retains the restriction. Given the security-mindedness of DEC's implementors the OSI stack might also.
