A Hobbyist DECnet Network

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: A Hobbyist DECnet Network
>   From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>
>   Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:07:33 -0500
>     To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Robert Armstrong wrote:
>>>How would you protect these older systems against abuse from 
>>>the random crackers?  VMS is probably tolerably safe in 
>>>current versions, if properly managed, but I'm betting there 
>>>are problems with other OSes. You could do vpns, I suppose.
>> 
>> 
>>   Depends on what you mean.   Ordinary ("ordinary" :-) people who don't have
>> a VAX running Multinet and join the "network" wouldn't be able to get in to
>> any of the DECnet machines.
>> 
>>   However, it is true that the Multinet DECnet virtual circuit over IP has
>> virtually no security.  It would be easy, if you knew a little bit about
>> DECnet and were so motivated, to sniff or spoof the traffic.  Probably there
>> just aren't many hackers out there who know enough about DECnet to worry
>> about, and they have better targets for their efforts.
>> 
>>   Yes, you could solve the problem with VPNs.  Multinet v5.1 seems to have
>> the ability to do IPSEC, but I have no experience with that feature.  If
>> it's anything like IPSEC on a PC, it's a lot of overhead for a poor VAX.
>
>Ciscos will do DECnet Phase IV secure tunnels over IP too.  So will IBM 
>Mainframes.
>
>Peace...  Sridhar

At one time DECnet was the routing protocal for other tunneled protocals.

Allison