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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!sgi!rigden.wpd.sgi.com!rpw3 From: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Funding 4.4BSD Development Message-ID: <mke280k@sgi.sgi.com> Date: 28 Jun 92 12:01:19 GMT Sender: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA Lines: 76 vixie@pa.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) writes: +--------------- | UUNET took the 4.3-Tahoe release and gutted it of any files that had AT&T code | in them and put the remainder up for anonymous FTP (and uucp to their existing | customers or users of their 900-number UUCP service). The result was later | cleaned up and released as the "Berkeley Networking Tape", which was the | first partial-but-free Berkeley release. +--------------- Hmmm... That's not the way I remember history, Paul (but I could be wrong). As I recall, the BSD Net-1 tape [1987] was a *pre*-release of the networking portions of Tahoe [1988], put out early because of the importance of the changes in the net code. From sys/README: This is the description of a release of updated networking software for the 4.3BSD distribution from the University of California, Berkeley. Not 4.3-Tahoe. The major changes in this release are in the TCP send policy. Because the improvements in the send policy could significantly reduce congestion on the ARPANET and the NSFNET, all sites with direct or indirect connections to long-haul nets are urged to upgrade as quickly as possible. Vendors supplying TCP products based on 4.2BSD or 4.3BSD are strongly urged to update as quickly as possible. Vendors using other TCP implementations should consider the use of the new algorithms as well, and may find the current Berkeley source code useful as a guide to their implementation. ... The first file, tcp.tar, contains sources for the current version of TCP, including the slow start algorithm and other work by Van Jacobson of LBL and a retransmission timer algorithm suggested by Phil Karn. It is designed to replace the 4.3BSD TCP, although it also has #ifdef's for installation in a 4.2-based system (including SunOS versions up to 3.6). The changes made since the release of 4.3 dramatically improve performance over slow and/or lossy networks such as the ARPANET/Milnet ....which was having *serious* congestion problems at the time... and Satnet, and also reduce the number of unnecessary retransmissions nearly to zero. Performance on fast, local-area networks is also somewhat improved, especially on faster processors when larger buffers are used. Several new bug fixes have also been made. The file TCP_INSTALL contains some hints on configuring TCP for systems other than standard 4.3BSD and 4.2BSD. Noticing how much of the system was Unix-free, at the next USENIX meeting there were various groups of people (including John Gilmore, and myself) who began talking up the idea of extracting *all* the non-Unix-encumbered bits and making a "Radio Free Berkeley" tape [Philip Dick's "R.F.A." had just come out]. We were looking for volunteers to scan the BSD code to screen which modules were "black", "gray", or "white". The "RFB" Project didn't really go anywhere, but it let Berkeley know there was real interest, and lo & behold, it finally happened! By then CSRG had began making a more formal differentiation in style in the copyright headers of each file, to make it easier to tell. For a while, there were three styles of copyright notice: "definitely Unix" (black), "we don't know yet, so assume Unix" (gray), and "definitely Berkeley-only" (white). I forget exactly what the magic template was for each style. Maybe a CSRG person can say more. Then at some people, there was this list of 1500 "white" files that was posted on UUNET, and after *that* the actual files began to be available for FTP'ing from UUNET. At least, that's how I remember it... -Rob ----- Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)390-1673 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043