Later Digital ported it to Ultrix, OSF/1 (later Tru64) as well as Apple Macintosh and IBM PC running variants of DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows under the name PATHWORKS, allowing these systems to connect to DECnet networks of VAX machines as terminal nodes.
[3] DECnet code in the Linux kernel was marked as orphaned on February 18, 2010[4][5] and removed August 22, 2022.
DIGITAL published its first DNA specification at about the same time that IBM announced its Systems Network Architecture (SNA).
Since that time, development of DNA has evolved through the following phases: Phase I (1974) Support limited to two PDP-11s running the RSX-11 operating system, or a small number of PDP-8s running the RTS-8 operating system, with communication over point-to-point (DDCMP) links between nodes.
Implementations expanded to include RSTS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20 and VAX/VMS[8] with communications between processors still limited to point-to-point links only.
Phase IV was released initially to RSX-11 and VMS systems, later TOPS-20, TOPS-10, ULTRIX, VAXELN, and RSTS/E gained support.
Support for networks of up to 64,449 nodes (63 areas of 1023 nodes) with 16-bit addresses, datalink capabilities expanded beyond DDCMP to include Ethernet local area network support as the datalink of choice, expanded adaptive routing capability to include hierarchical routing (areas, level 1 and level 2 routers), VMScluster support (cluster alias) and host services (CTERM).
Since the OSI standards were not yet fully developed at the time, many of the Phase IV protocols remained proprietary.
The initial implementations released were for VAX/VMS and RSX-11, later this expanded to virtually every operating system DIGITAL ever shipped with the notable exception of RT-11.
Move from a proprietary network to an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) by integration of ISO standards to provide multi-vendor connectivity and compatibility with DNA Phase IV, the last two features resulted in a hybrid network architecture (DNA and OSI) with separate "towers" sharing an integrated transport layer.
A key benefit was the sharing of systems software developed by the operations staff at the various sites, all of which were using a variety of DEC computers.