Fuzzball

The Fuzzball was a PDP-11 operating system by David Mills. Although it was originally designed as an investigative tool and prototyping work-bench, it saw extensive use in early Internet work as a backbone router for the NSFNET.

Operating System

This operating system was built atop of RT-11, where RT-11 would boot, then directly jump into a virtual Fuzzball machine. If you needed to change something on the underlying host, you needed to reboot the machine.

Examples of routers

• DCN1: lsi-11/23 (256k), kwv11, rx02, rl02, dlv11, interlan ether

• DCN2: lsi-11/73 (256k), kwv11, rx02, rl02, dlv11, interlan ether

• DCN4: lsi-11/73 (2048k), rx02, mscp, dlv11, dmv11

• DCN6: lsi-11/73 (2048k), rx02, mscp, dlv11, dmv11, etc

• udel7: lsi-11/23 (256k), rx02, rl02, dlv11

• wwvb.isi.edu: lsi-11/73 (256k), kwv11, rx02, rl02, dlv11, interlan ether

• backfuzz.pa.dec.com: lsi-11/23 (512k), kwv11, mscp, dlv11, deqna ether

• timer.nta.no: lsi-11/23 (256k), kwv11, rx02, rl02, dlv11, interlan ether

See also

• Fuzzball config files
• Fuzzball build notes

External links

• Fuzzball information by David Mills
• Archived source code
• The Fuzzball
• The NSFNET Backbone Network