[ih] Why TCP?

[Vint Cerf]

Bob Kahn and I made that decision.

v


On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> Hi Vint,
>
> Wow, a great list of names from the early days.  I know they all supported
> the ARPANET and Internet, especially by directing funding in the right
> direction.   But I was curious about who made the decision to make all of
> the work open and freely available.
>
> There were several companies and organizations back in the 80s developing
> their own way of interconnecting networks - Xerox, IBM, Novell, Banyan,
> etc.  As far as I remember, all of them made it difficult for others to use
> or evolve their technology, with various techniques of secrecy, patents,
> licenses, etc.  They naturally wanted to protect their investment and
> competitive advantage.
>
> The government, and especially the military, with its understandable
> tendency to keep things secret, usually had such work also kept even more
> private for all sorts of reasons.   Development plans of a new fighter jet,
> or the specifications of the capabilities of a new tank, and other such
> technology infrastructure work, was (I think) usually kept very secret.
>
> But in the case of computer networking technology, the work we now know as
> The Internet was (mostly) done in a very open and collaborative fashion,
> much more so than any company or organization I can remember.
>
> I have for a long time wondered who made that decision...IMHO it made a
> huge difference.  I've also wondered if they, or their successors, now
> regret it.
>
> IMHO, networking technology has started regressing from that openness.
> Protocols are less open (so how exactly does Netflix/whatever work...?)
> Core functions are no longer universal and compatible (so many different
> ways to send messages inside various closed gardens of Social Media).  Etc.
> Etc.
>
> It's interesting to look back at the 40 years or so of networks, but it's
> hard to see where it's going, and how the loss of openness will affect
> things.  But that's for internet-future, not internet-history.
>
> /Jack
>
>
> On 08/31/2016 03:35 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org
>> <mailto:jack at 3kitty.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work,
>>     and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the
>>     technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use.  None
>> of
>>     the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO,
>>     etc.) did that.  So when the rest of the world discovered that the
>>     military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their
>>     problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural.
>>
>>
>> Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the
>> deciding parties
>> at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve
>> Lukasic as DARPA
>> Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet.
>>
>> v
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> New postal address:
>> Google
>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>> Reston, VA 20190
>>
>


-- 
New postal address:
Google
1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
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