Chaosnet

CHAOSnet was the name for both an internetworking protocol family, and an early LAN technology, both invented at the MIT AI Laboratory; the latter was the LAN on which the protocol first ran.

The LAN was a CSMA-CD system modeled on the Xerox PARC 3 megabit/second Ethernet, running over cable TV cable. The protocol was later made to run over standard 10 megabit/second Ethernet, which largely supplanted the CHAOSnet hardware.

The protocol provided a reliable byte stream service, but also had a datagram mode.

Implementations

• Lisp machines
• ITS
• TOPS-20
• Foonex (TENEX)
• VAX/VMS
• BSD Unix
• MINITS
• PDP-11 Unix V7
• Linux.

External links

• Lisp Machine Chaosnet documentation Includes chapters on ITS, TOPS-20, Lisp Machine, and Unix implementations.