Banyan VINES
Encyclopedia
Banyan VINES was a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 network operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 and the set of computer network protocols it used to talk to client machines on the network. The Banyan
Banyan (company)
Banyan Systems, Inc. was founded in 1983 by David C. Mahoney, a software engineer and mid-level manager at Data General, Larry Floryan and Anand Jagannathan. The company's distinctive logo, a Banyan tree, and the logo's allegorical representation of Banyan's product suite, VINES, were conceived by...

 company based the VINES operating system on Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

, and the network protocols on the archetypical Xerox XNS stack. VINES formed one of a group of XNS-based systems which also included Novell NetWare
Novell NetWare
NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack....

 and ARCNET
ARCNET
ARCNET is a local area network protocol, similar in purpose to Ethernet or Token Ring. ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers and became popular in the 1980s for office automation tasks...

; like most of these earlier products it has since disappeared from the market, Banyan along with it.

James Allchin
James Allchin
James "Jim" Edward Allchin is a former executive at Microsoft, where he was responsible for many of the platform components from Microsoft including Microsoft Windows, Windows Server, server products such as SQL Server, and developer technologies. He may be most known for building Microsoft's...

, who has since worked as Group Vice President for Platforms at Microsoft Corporation until his retirement at January 30, 2007, worked as the chief architect of Banyan VINES.

VINES technology

VINES ran on a low-level protocol known as VIP, the VINES Internetwork Protocol: essentially identical to the lower layers of XNS. Addresses consisted of a 32-bit address and a 16-bit subnet which mapped onto the 48-bit Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

 address in order to route to machines. This meant that, like other XNS-based systems, VINES could only support a two-level internet.

A set of routing algorithms, however, set VINES apart from other XNS systems at this level. The key differentiator, ARP (Address Resolution Protocol), allowed VINES clients to automatically set up their own network addresses. When a client first booted up it broadcast a request on the subnet asking for servers, which would respond with suggested addresses. The client would use the first to respond, although the servers could hand off "better" routing
Routing
Routing is the process of selecting paths in a network along which to send network traffic. Routing is performed for many kinds of networks, including the telephone network , electronic data networks , and transportation networks...

 instructions to the client if the network changed. The overall concept very much resembled AppleTalk
AppleTalk
AppleTalk is a proprietary suite of protocols developed by Apple Inc. for networking computers. It was included in the original Macintosh released in 1984, but is now unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009 in favor of TCP/IP networking...

's AARP system, with the exception that VINES required at least one server, whereas AARP functioned completely "headlessly". Like AARP, VINES required an inherently "chatty" network, sending updates about the status of clients to other servers on the internetwork.

Rounding out its lower-level system, VINES used RTP (the Routing Table Protocol), a low-overhead message system for passing around information about changes to the routing, and ARP to determine the address of other nodes on the system. These closely resembled the similar systems used in other XNS-based protocols. VINES also included ICP (the Internet Control Protocol), which it used to pass error-messages and metrics.

At the middle layer level, VINES used fairly standard software. The unreliable datagram service and data-stream service operated essentially identically to UDP
User Datagram Protocol
The User Datagram Protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network without requiring...

 and TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...

 on top of IP
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

. However VINES also added a reliable message service as well, a sort of hybrid of the two that offered guaranteed delivery of a single packet.

At the topmost layer, VINES provided the standard file and print services, as well as the unique StreetTalk, likely the first truly practical globally consistent name-service for an entire internetwork. Using a globally distributed, partially replicated database, StreetTalk could meld multiple widely separated networks into a single network that allowed seamless resource-sharing. It accomplished this through its rigidly hierarchical naming-scheme; entries in the directory always had the form item@group@organization. This applied to user accounts as well as to resources like printer
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...

s and file server
File server
In computing, a file server is a computer attached to a network that has the primary purpose of providing a location for shared disk access, i.e. shared storage of computer files that can be accessed by the workstations that are attached to the computer network...

s.

VINES client software

VINES client-software ran on most PC-based operating systems, including MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

 and earlier versions of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It was fairly light-weight on the client, and hence remained in use during the later half of the 1990s, on many machines not up to the task of running other networking stacks then in widespread use. This occurred on the server side as well, as VINES generally offered good performance even from mediocre hardware.

Initial market release

With the low bandwidth requirements inherent in the efficient StreetTalk model, global companies and governments that grasped the inherent advantages of worldwide directory services seamlessly spanning multiple time zones caught on to the technological edge that VINES brought to the IT table. Gas and oil companies, power companies, public utilities, and U.S. Government agencies including the State Department, Treasury Department, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Defense implemented VINES in worldwide operations. The U.S. State Department, for example, was an early adopter of the VINES technology. Able to take advantage of the then high-speed 56k modems for telephonic connectivity of the developed world to the limited telephone modem speeds of 300 baud over bad analog telephone systems in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

, VINES was able to link embassies around the world. VINES also came with built-in point-to-point and group chat capability that was useful for basic communication over secure lines.

Defense Department adoption

By the late 1980s the US Marine Corps was in search of simple off-the-shelf worldwide network connectivity with rich built-in email, file, and print features. By 1988 the Marine Corps had standardized on VINES as both its garrison (base) and forward-deployed ground-based battlefield email-centric network operating system. Using both ground-based secure radio channels and satellite and military tactical phone switches the Marine Corps was ready for its first big test of VINES, the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Units were able to seamlessly coordinate ground, naval, and air strikes across military boundaries by using the chat function to pass target lists and adjust naval gun fire on the fly. Ground fire support coordination agencies used VINES up and down command channels from Battalion-to-Regiment through Division-to-Corps and Squadron-to-Group to Aircraft Wing-to-Corps, as well as in peer-to-peer unit communication.

VINES competitors

For fully one decade Banyan's OS competitors, Novell and Microsoft, dismissed the utility of directory services. Thus VINES virtually dominated what would come to be called the "directory services" space from 1985 to 1995. While seeming to ignore VINES, Novell and eventually Microsoft – companies with a flat server- or domain-based network model – came to realize the strategic value of the directory services model. With little warning Novell went from playing down the value of directory services to announcing its own flavor, NetWare Directory Services, or NDS (eventually Novell would change their term NDS to mean Novell Directory Services, and then changed it again to eDirectory).

Microsoft had gone through its own round of operating system development, initially partnering with IBM to develop an Intel-based disk operating system
Disk operating system
Disk Operating System and disk operating system , most often abbreviated as DOS, refers to an operating system software used in most computers that provides the abstraction and management of secondary storage devices and the information on them...

 called PCDOS and its Microsoft twin, MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

, and eventually by sharing true network operating system development with IBM LAN Manager and its Microsoft twin, Microsoft LAN Manager. Microsoft parted company with IBM and continued its development of LAN Manager into what would become known as Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

, essentially its OS 4.0. NT was originally a flat server or domain-based operating system with none of the advantages of either VINES or NDS.

For Windows NT 5.0 (released as Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

) however, Microsoft included Active Directory
Active Directory
Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems. Server computers on which Active Directory is running are called domain controllers....

, an LDAP directory service based on the directory from its Exchange mail server. Active Directory was as robust as and, in several key ways, superior to VINES. While VINES was limited to a three-part name, user.company.org, like Novell's NDS structure, Active Directory was not bound at all to such a limiting naming convention. Active Directory had developed an additional capability that both NDS and VINES lacked, its "forest and trees" organizational model. The combination of a better architecture and a marketing company the size of Microsoft signaled doom for StreetTalk, VINES as an OS, and finally Banyan itself.

Decline

By the late 1990s, VINES' once-touted StreetTalk Services' non-flat, non-domain model with its built in messaging, efficiency and onetime performance edge had lost ground to newer technology.

Banyan was unable to market its product far beyond its initial base of multi-national and government entities. Because Banyan was unable to quickly develop an OS to take advantage of newer hardware and failed to understand that it was the StreetTalk directory services, rather than the shrink-wrapped OS, that was the prime value added, the company lost ground in the networking market. VINES sales rapidly dried up, both because of these problems and because of the rapid rise of Windows NT
Windows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

. Banyan increasingly turned to StreetTalk as a differentiator, eventually porting it to NT as a stand-alone product and offering it as an interface to LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network...

 systems.

Dropping the Banyan brand for ePresence in 1999, as a general Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 services company, the firm sold its services division to Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...

in late 2003 and liquidated its remaining holdings in its Switchboard.com subsidiary.
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