<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:14pt"><div><span>Dave,</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 18.6667px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 18.6667px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Of course ARPA wanted to know whether the network delivered to them met the performance specs of the RFP, so they gave UCLA a contract to measure network performance and for that UCLA needed an IMP. But if you read the ARPA RFP, or Larry Roberts' first paper presented at the 1970 SJCC, you will see very little about doing research on networking and a great deal about wanting a network to support the computer science research ARPA was already funding
at places like SRI, Utah, BBN, MIT, Lincoln Lab, Rand SDC, Harvard, UCSB, Carnegie, etc. As soon as the network began carrying user traffic there was considerable tension between the Network Measurement Center at UCLA, which wanted to conduct tests to see what types and levels of traffic would break the network, and the Network Operation Center at BBN, which wanted the network to be perceived by its users as being as reliable as at the electric service. As manager of the NOC, I was in the middle of a lot of that tension. ARPA's orders to me were generally "keep it running". Of course ARPA may have given conflicting orders to UCLA - I don't know.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 18.6667px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 18.6667px; font-family: times new roman,new
york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Cheers,</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 18.6667px; font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Alex</span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> <div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Dave Crocker <dhc2@dcrocker.net><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> internet-history@postel.org <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sunday, August 31, 2014 7:19 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [ih] Why did congestion happen at all? Re: why did CC happen at all?<br> </font>
</div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><br clear="none">> The ARPANET was never intended as a network for doing research on<br clear="none">> networks. It was intended as a production network to facilitate other<br clear="none">> research. BBN was very limited in how much experimentation was possible<br clear="none">> and in what it could try.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">So they put the first IMP into UCLA, where the Network Measurement<br clear="none">Center was -- Kleinrock, and all that -- on a whim?<br clear="none"><br clear="none">My understanding is that the primary goal was experimentation, but in<br clear="none">the form of monitoring use and trying different algorithms, rather than<br clear="none">by conducting artificial traffic exercises. One might think of this as<br clear="none">networking as a very different kind of social experiment than we think<br clear="none">of today...<br
clear="none"><br clear="none">My other understanding is that the extent of the direct benefit to users<br clear="none">wasn't quite anticipated, which made it increasingly difficult to make<br clear="none">changes to the net that could bring it down. So it was a few years<br clear="none">before they had to start explicitly scheduling time slots for experiments.<div class="qtdSeparateBR"><br><br></div><div class="yqt6664424722" id="yqtfd65102"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">d/</div><br clear="none"><br clear="none">-- <br clear="none">Dave Crocker<br clear="none">Brandenburg InternetWorking<br clear="none">bbiw.net<div class="yqt6664424722" id="yqtfd14950"><br clear="none"></div><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>