On Wed 17 Mar, 1999, sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:

On 03/17/99 20:57:20 you wrote:

...

On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Alex French wrote:

...

Here's one for the obscurities wishlist: our NetCaches don't recognise integer representations of IPs. Instead of interpreting 3263497985 as 194.133.7.1, for example, they look for www.3263497985.com.

Hmmm...

That's kinda interesting seeing as I'm sure NetApp claim to be using a BSD TCP/IP stack...

1. When did they claim that?
2. I suspect they meant *compatible* stack... there are surely some changes.
3. The translation of decimals to octets isn't really the "stack" IMHO.

I don't think they claim it as such.

However, it is believed that they started out with NetBSD and then hacked and slashed and tweaked and slowly but surely DOT was born from the ashes.

Check out the standard BSD 'Regents of the University of California' boilerplate in the manuals. There's also an entry for Chris Demetriou and CMU for their work in NetBSD (specifically).

This shows the worth of the BSD license over the GPL - if NetApp wanted to, for example, build the same embedded kernel style OS out of Linux, they'd have had to decided whether to make their proprietary code public, giving away competitive advantage at a critical time in their company's life, or to make their code run as application-layer stuff over a trimmed down Linux kernel.

Either way wouldn't have been as satisfactory IMHO.

Anyway, enough digression. It seems likely that, at least at one time, the network stack owed a great deal to the BSD stack. Whether, in 5.2.* this holds true anymore is only known to NetApp folk.

Bruce

-- End of excerpt from sirbruce@ix.netcom.com