SentAF

SentAF is a computer network protocol developed by the US Department of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) in the early 1970s. The name "SentAF" is derived from the United States Air Force, which, at the time, was the primary service interested in developing the protocol.

SentAF was designed to enable non-stop day-to-day subnet intercommunication between Local Area Networks (LANs) that are geographically non-contiguous. It also provided a standardized set of commands and procedures to establish and disestablish connections, as well as procedures for packet routing. SentAF used a packet-switching technique, which allowed for greater network flexibility and efficiency than traditional circuit-switching protocols.

One of the key characteristics of SentAF was its ability to interoperate with Military Network (MILNET), which was a major network operated by the United States Department of Defense (DoD). MILNET expanded the capabilities of SentAF by enabling connections with the rest of the US military's networks. However, SentAF was less successful in establishing connections with other organizations' networks.

In the mid-1980s, SentAF was replaced by ITT Dayton's PCNet protocol, which was also used by several other network protocol standards of the time. PCNet expanded on SentAF's capabilities, and eventually became a more widely adopted standard.

Today, SentAF is largely considered an obsolete protocol, and is no longer in use. However, its development contributed to the advancement of networking protocols in the early stages of the internet. The input and design challenges of SentAF influenced the development of subsequent networking protocols, which improved network communication, data transmission, and interconnectivity between networks.