🚀 go-pugleaf

DSTO has completed the internal migration from the domain dsto.oz.au to
dsto.gov.au. This ends our 4.5 year association with ACSnet. The domain
has been terminated.


History time .. (80+ lines to follow from fading memory for the interested...)

        Following a long association with office-1.arpa (yes, a wonderful
        DECsystem-10 runing TENEX ?) connecting to it using X.25 (real-quick
        mode!), DSTO became addicted to the Internet. Then we received this
        message:
--
Date: 29 Aug 88 16:16 PDT
From: LMP.MDC@OFFICE-1.ARPA
Subject: Goodbye To All
To: SYSTEM@OFFICE-1.ARPA
Message-ID: <MDC-LMP-EC8TL@OFFICE-1>

      Effective 1 October 1988 McDonnell Douglas Augmentation Systems Division
will no longer be in the business of providing commercial computer access,
electronic mail services, or application support.  All contracts will expire on
or before 1 October 1988 and will not be extended beyond that date.
--

Our access to office-1.arpa was being sponsored by the US govt under
some contract at the time.

Months before (since we did have an idea office-1 would go), DSTO
decided to purchase the incredible computing power of a MicroVAX II
with 9MB RAM, 300MB of disk running Ultrix V2.2. ACSnet was installed
and fang.dsto.oz was operational. Connectivity to the world was via
a 1200bps dial-up modem, hourly dialup to augean.ua.oz, a *real* VAX
(11/780 running 4.2BSD).

Following 2 months sendmail hacking internally, and strange
ACSnet to DECnet mods to allow the VAXen to talk, fang soon had more
messages/day than the 1200bps modem could handle. In a forward (backward
to many) leap, we decided to use the X.25 pad on our Micom. The caller
was modified and we happily connected into the Adelaide Uni Micom
and across to augean. Speed ? our Austpac link was only 4800bps, and
on a good day we could get about 3000bps out of it ! (usually 1300bps)

With all this increased bandwidth, we decided to complete the example
of how *not* to to run an ACSnet system. Yes, we started the newsfeed.
fang was turned into an NNTP server (in the days when you could keep
20 days of news in a 150MB /var/spool partition!). Then the quarterly
Austpac bill arrived..

From memory, a single quarter bill was less than the OTC charges to connect
to office-1.arpa, but considering we were only connecting to a system
less than 20kms away, Austpac was not the network we should have been
using ! After nearly 2yrs of operating in this manner, transferring
over 230MB of news/e-mail a month, I think we hit the justification
of 1 months X.25 charges paid for the 9600 DMS leased link for a year !

The link was quickly installed, and ACSnet tuned. With the changeover,
we decided to connect to the speed of sirius.ua.oz.au (Sun 4/260).
augean was getting a little slow and unreliable. During 1990, DSTO was
pretty satisfied with the speed of this setup, but fang was now the
limiting factor. (more memory, more disk, more grunt were the cries!).

Things changed again when we joined AARNet as an affiliate. ACSnet was
still being overworked while we spent considerable effort in migrating
to our "real" class-b. Following a long transition, having to use our
VAXes as nameservers, and nntp-servers (thanks to TGV MultiNet!) we
eventually replaced fang with a DECsystem 5000/240 with over 3GB of disk.
(we try to keep 1 month of news + archive online). fang.dsto.gov.au was born.
Along with foxhound.dsto.gov.au (a DS500/200) and kaos.cis.dsto.gov.au
(a RS/6000 530), DSTO is happy again, and connected to AARNet at the SA and
VIC hubs. Things are certainly better than the X.25 office-1.arpa days of
not so long ago, but our 2x48kbps links are keeping warm...(cries for more
bandwidth already!)

The MicroVAX II was sent back to the land of artificial-reefs on 31-June-1992.
Adelaide Uni kindly (after years of spool abuse) provided an ACSnet to SMTP
gateway while we fixed the systems this end. More than enough warning (6 months)
was given to move from dsto.oz.au to dsto.gov.au, but we managed to catch a
few people last week when the gateway was removed.

Thanks go out to Mike Liebelt, Mark Prior, Simon Hackett for all their help
over the years with ACSnet. Thanks must also go to kre and munnari, since
80% of our e-mail was going overseas, we must have been one of the biggest
abusers of this box !  ("Typical Warmongers" as Mark would say :-)

A big howdy to ex-DSTO Richard Siggs (somewhere in ANU), who would remember
most of the ACSnet horrors with that Micom. (yes, the M6600 still works !)

Cheers
Andrew
(at least I didnt mention the ACSnet feed to 2 Unison's...)
--
Andrew Walton
Information Technology Services              E-mail: awalton@cis.dsto.gov.au
Corporate Information Systems                 Phone: +61 8 259 5321
Defence Science & Technology Organisation       Fax: +61 8 259 5537