Editing Xerox Network Systems (section)

===Impact===
Last used by Xerox for communication with the [[DocuTech]] 135 Publishing System, XNS is no longer in use, due to the ubiquity of IP. However, it played an important role in the development of networking technology in the 1980s, by influencing software and hardware vendors to seriously consider the need for computing platforms to support more than one network protocol stack simultaneously.

A wide variety of proprietary networking systems were directly based on XNS or offered minor variations on the theme. Among these were Net/One, 3+,{{sfn|Stephens|1989|p=15}} [[Banyan VINES]]<ref>[http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Banyan_VINES Banyan VINES], cisco</ref> and Novell's [[IPX/SPX]].<ref>[http://www.cisco.com/cpress/cc/td/cpress/fund/ith2nd/it2431.htm NetWare Protocols], cisco</ref> These systems added their own concepts on top of the XNS addressing and routing system; VINES added a [[directory service]] among other services, while [[Novell NetWare]] added a number of user-facing services like printing and file sharing. [[AppleTalk]] used XNS-like routing, but had incompatible addresses using shorter numbers.

XNS also helped to validate the design of the [[BSD|4.2BSD]] network subsystem by providing a second protocol suite, one which was significantly different from the Internet protocols; by implementing both stacks in the same kernel, [[UC Berkeley College of Engineering#Research units|Berkeley researchers]] demonstrated that the design was suitable for more than just IP.<ref>{{cite web
| title = On the performance of Courier Remote Procedure Calls under 4.1c BSD
| first=James
| last=Larus
| publisher=UC Berkeley ECE Department
| url = http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1983/CSD-83-123.pdf
| year = 1983
| access-date = 2013-07-05}}</ref>  Additional BSD modifications were eventually necessary to support the full range of [[Open Systems Interconnection]] (OSI) protocols.