Of course! Charles
-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Knutson, Samuel Sent: Monday, January 13, 2020 8:40 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: What is a mainframe? In my opinion IBM helped to save the mainframe when they included a built-in highly performant TCP/IP stack in the operating system. Making the mainframe a more mainstream hardware server and more importantly a mainstream software server that communications, API implementations and development practices as any other makes it viable for another 50 years. The alternative path was for it to become a truly niche isolated platform or for this core capability to be supplied by third party software. We saw that same evolution on other platforms if anyone remembers "Trumpet Winsock"😊 The mainframe remains the most securable platform today. z/OS in particular handles TCP/IP in a securable way allowing very granular controls of which application containers can connect to which ports. IBM has a published integrity policy which is applicable to the entire OS including TCP/IP. The most concerning security problems on the mainframe are not caused by TCP/IP but by Apathy, laziness, false confidence and ignorance. OEM TCP/IP stacks would have provided this capability and already were when IBM introduced TCP/IP in z/OS. You can make a reasoned argument that by incorporating TCP/IP as part of the operating system IBM has insured it has security and integrity equal to the balance of the operating system. Best Regards, Sam Knutson ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
