On Fri, 25 Dec 2020 12:18:10 -0500
Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 08:53:53AM -0800, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> > On 2020-12-25 10:21, Steve Litt wrote:
> >
> > > Hearing this thread's perplexity, I long for the days of mknod.
> >
> > But that wouldn't have helped with the network interfaces, because
> > (in an un-Unixy way) their names have never been file names on the
> > systems we're discussing now.
>
> I wonder why. Historical accident? Or some deep technical reason?
> and not historical?

Err, because NICs are modern.
IME,early networking was SLIP or PLIP and went via ye olde modem.
Sophisticated was the stat Mux.

Again, IME, NICs came with thin/thick net.
The evolution of TCP/IP?