From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Datakit is a virtual circuit-switched network layer computer networking protocol similar to X.25, developed at Bell Labs^[1] for both local-area and wide-area networks^[2], and in widespread deployment by the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs)^[3]. It supports file transfers, remote login, remote printing, and remote command execution. At the physical layer, it can operate over multiple media, from slow speed EIA-232 to 500Mbit fiber optic links (called FIBERKIT)^[4].

Datakit Virtual Circuit Switch (VCS) nodes connect to the Datakit network with a Datakit interface (IOA)^[5]. Most of Bell Laboratories was trunked together on Datakit. On top of DK transport service, several operating systems (including UNIX) implemented UUCP for electronic mail and dkcu for remote login^[6].

Datakit offers a packet-switched protocol called Universal Receiver Protocol (URP) that spreads PDU overhead across multiple packets and performs immediate packet processing. However, URP assumes that packets arrive in order. On a network with misordering, packets would have to be reordered before processing, which means that for this situation immediate packet processing is no longer possible^[7]. TCP/IP is also run over Datakit links.

ISN is the version of Datakit that was supported by AT&T Information Systems.

References

1. ^ Datakit, from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
2. ^ http://techreports.lib.berkeley.edu/accessPages/CSD-88-474.html
3. ^ Network Dictionary By Javvin
4. ^ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel2/717/971/00025918.pdf?arnumber=25918
5. ^ http://stratadoc.stratus.com/vos/15.1.1/r307-00/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm?context=r307-00&file=ch5r307-00d.html
6. ^ http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=18&id=9#article
7. ^ http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5583859.html

See also

• X.25