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An open-source distributed operating system developed at the Bell Labs Computer Sciences Research Center , Plan 9 is used primarily as a vehicle for research and is aimed at providing a workstation-independent working environment through the use of 9P protocols . Prior to its inception , the Bell Labs Computer Science Research Center was making primary use of Unix in managing its research projects . By the mid 1980s there was an internal desire to integrate a graphic interface and networking

features , but within a UNIX-like framework that the researchers had become accustomed to (Raymond 464-465

Plan 9 was developed by the same group at Bell Labs that developed UNIX and C , under the leadership of Rob Pike , Ken Thompson , Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom , with some support provided by programming language guru Dennis Ritchie , head of the Computing Techniques Research Department . Over the years , it has seen further development under such contributors as computer graphics technician Tom Duff , mathematician Doug McIlroy and computer engineering professor Bjarne Stroustrup

Part of the reason behind Plan 9 's development was that the paradigm of research science was moving away from centralized computing and towards networks of smaller machines . It was determined that there was a greater amount of work efficiency to be had from eliminating the management hassles of time-sharing a large mainframe , despite the compromise in computational power for each user . Dorward , et al observe that rapid gains in computational power have helped offset this trade-off and as such , networked computing remains popular

As noted above , Plan 9 operates on a UNIX-like framework . This is because Plan 9 was born from the problems inherent in trying to manage networked personal workstations on a system like UNIX that was fundamentally developed around time-shared computing . Prior to Plan 9 attempts to incorporate graphics and networking into UNIX were poorly handled . Additionally , it became evident that UNIX was not suited to the networked workstation paradigm . As such , Plan 9 is an attempt at a system that makes use of central administration to make the most out of cheaper and less powerful microcomputers in ways that UNIX couldn 't . As Raymond (464 ) puts it , Plan 9 was an attempt to do Unix over again better

The most crucial part of Plan 9 is 9P or the Plan 9 system Protocol , which is the means by which the components of a Plan 9 system The 9P is a type of network protocol which represents the windows network connections , processes and effectively anything else in the operating system . Unlike the Sun Microsystems NFS or Network System , 9P makes use of caching and synthetic s

The latter trait is significant , because it offers a greater deal of flexibility by permitting customization of a user 's computing environment and facilitates ease of access to the maintenance of service-oriented architectures commonly used by businesses . In practice this means that many of the ad hoc interfaces used to handle different functions are...