Is 4.2BSD a failure?

[Stephen Hemminger]

<47500007 at ccvaxa.UUCP>
>				...  The most significant addition was the
>	support for networking, which may be the last gasp of the
>	networking-inside-the-operating-system approach.

False.  The socket model (or stream I/O system) is necessary for several
reasons.

1) There are other network protocols that often need to be added, would
you prefer each vendor add his/her own system calls?

2) Not all protocols will have smart boards.  How about workstations
where putting a $5K board in to do networking is economic suicide.

3) Even the smart TCP/IP boards don't know how to do IP forwarding so
they won't work on gatways (last I heard anyway).

4) With 4.2Bsd there are fairly clean "object oriented" interface points
to allow hooking up network devices that work at higher levels.