Banyan VINES

Banyan VINES (for Virtual Integrated NEtwork Service) was a computer network operating system and the set of computer network protocols it used to talk to client machines on the network. The Banyan company based the VINES operating system on Unix, 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 and ARCNET; like most of these earlier products it has since disappeared from the market, Banyan along with it.

James Allchin, 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 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 instructions to the client if the network changed. The overall concept very much resembled AppleTalk'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 and TCP on top of IP. 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 printers and file servers.

VINES client software

VINES client-software ran on most PC-based operating systems, including MS-DOS and earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. It was fairly light-weight on the client, and hence remained in use during the later half of the 1990s, when 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, 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, first with IBM by initially partnering with them to develop an Intel-based disk operating system PCDOS and its Microsoft twin, MS-DOS, and eventually by sharing true network operating system development with IBM LAN Manager and its Microsoft twin, Microsoft LAN Manager. had parted company with IBM and continued its development of LAN Manager into what would become known as Windows NT, essentially its OS 4.0. NT was an 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), however, Microsoft included Active Directory, 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, always a technology-driven and not a sales-driven company, 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. 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 systems.

Dropping the Banyan brand for ePresence in 1999, as a general Internet services company, the firm sold its services division to Unisys in late 2003 and liquidated its remaining holdings in its Switchboard.com subsidiary, which had been based in the StreetTalk technology.