Banyan VINES resurrection

Banyan VINES is a network operating system developed by Banyan Systems for computers running on top of AT&T's UNIX System V. It's an early network infrastructure for small/medium business, education/libraries and computer labs in the DOS and Windows 3.1/95/98 days.

They started before the days of TCP/IP and DHCP so everything was proprietary, non-standard protocols. They were "easier" than NetWare IPX networks and cheaper than Ethernet networks. Since DHCP didn't exist, adding a computer on the network wasn't as easy as plugging it in.

Most servers were under support contracts and the software allowed for a fully-remote-managed network. They used this a lot since the underlying UNIX is restricted from system administrators. Banyan could access it to help you, if you paid them for every hour on a support call. Also you can't just install the software on any OS, you need dongles, client and platform keys.