[chapter-delegates] How about a World Internet Day?

[Vinton G. Cerf]

It was a big button, don't know about a t-shirt. And, yes, it really was a big deal because a significant fraction of the hosts DID
cut over on that date.

Vint



Vinton Cerf, SVP Technology Strategy, MCI
22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
Ashburn, VA 20147
+1 703 886 1690, +1 703 886 0047 fax 
vinton.g.cerf at mci.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Braden [mailto:braden at ISI.EDU]
> Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 12:32 PM
> To: braden at ISI.EDU; veni at veni.com; fred at cisco.com; delahaut.marie-anne at wallonie-isoc.org;
> rkahn at cnri.reston.va.us
> Cc: apisan at servidor.unam.mx; chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org; andreu at veabaro.info; ramon at isocpr.org;
> vinton.g.cerf at mci.com
> Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] How about a World Internet Day?
> 
>   *>
>   *> Bob,
>   *>
>   *> Actually, to follow the analogy a bit further, the birth may have started
>   *> on 1/1/83, but (depending on your definition of birth) it was a ten year
>   *> gestation period and the birth was not really over until either a few weeks
>   *> or a few months after january 1st. By mid february, 1983 we had about 80%
>   *> of the ARPANET hosts converted from NCP to TCP, and a lot of new LAN based
>   *> "workstation hosts" that used only tcp and not the arpanet host protocol;
>   *> there were also some longer term stragglers on the ARPANET that did not
>   *> take the january date seriously. In reality, I don't think much happened on
>   *> that new years day, and we decided to keep both NCP and TCP protocols
>   *> running in parallel for at least six months to insure continued
>   *> connectivity for everyone.
> 
> Bob,
> 
> This is all true, of course, but those of us protocol hackers who spent
> our New Year's day 1983 hard at work in the office KNEW when the
> swithover was, and what a milestone it was.  The event had been
> orchestrated by Jon; the evidence is still in the RFC series.
> As I recall, Dan Lynch, ops manager at ISI, did not get much sleep on
> Jan 1 or a few days afterwards, as production usage exposed flaws in
> the TCP/IP code on TOPS20 systems at ISI.
> 
> So, even though it did not happen instantly, it was a clearly-defined
> event for its participants.  I think there was a T shirt around with "I
> survived the ARPAnet/Internet transition -- Jan 1, 1983", or something
> like that.
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
>   *>
>   *> bob
>   *>
>   *> At 08:13 PM 5/20/2005, Bob Braden wrote:
>   *>
>   *>
>   *>
>   *> >>There are many milestones so I think an attempt to celebrate a birthday
>   *> >>is hard.
>   *> >>For Internet one might reasonably pick 1/1/1983 as the date the system
>   *> >>was deployed on all of the networks supported by DARPA.
>   *> >>[cut]
>   *> >
>   *> >For those of us involved with making the Internet happen, I expect that
>   *> >Jan 1, 1983 is the true birth of the Internet as a
>   *> >network of networks using TCP/IP, and operational as  opposed to experimental.
>   *> >
>   *> >Bob Braden
>   *>