Banyan VINES

Banyan VINES was a computer network operating system and the set of computer network protocols it used to connect to client machines on the network. The name was an acronym for Virtual Integrated Network Service. Banyan Systems ran as a collection of services on top of AT&T UNIX System V, and based its core network protocols on the archetypical Xerox XNS stack. VINES was one of a group of XNS-based systems that also included Novell NetWare. It has since disappeared from the market, along with Banyan Systems.

James Allchin, who later worked as Group Vice President for Platforms at Microsoft Corporation until his retirement on January 30, 2007, was the chief architect of Banyan VINES.

VINES technology

VINES ran on a low-level protocol known as VIP—the VINES Internetwork Protocol—that was essentially identical to the lower layers of XNS. Addresses consisted of a 32-bit address and a 16-bit subnet that mapped to the 48-bit Ethernet address to route to machines. This meant that, like other XNS-based systems, VINES could only support a two-level internet.