[ih] question re "F" in RFC 819 name/address example

[David L. Mills]

Gretchen,

Simple. There were several Digital Equipment Corp. PDP10/TENEX systems
at Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC in Marina del Rey, CA.
They were identified as ISIA through ISIF depending on clientele. Thus,
ISIA was mostly for DARPA program managers and ISIE was for Internet
scruffians such as me. Besides, ISIE had an awesome game of Zork which
my kids played on weekends. There was no significance in the suffix
letters, just to designate the different mainframes.

The Marina del Rey Hotel had an awesome Captain's Breakfast and the
Mexican restaurant on the Marina was simply awesome. Crackers never
found out the root password was the name of that restaurant.

Dave

gfscho at wm.edu wrote:
> 
> Dear Internet historians:
> 
> Question:
> 
> In RFC 819, Jon Postel explains the difference between the
> ARPANET naming convention and the proposed Internet naming
> convention (the DNS) using this address comparison -
> 
> ARPANET Convention:   Fred at ISIF
> Internet Convention:  Fred at F.ISI.ARPA
> 
> What does the "F" stand for in these addresses?
> 
> And, less important but also of interest to me, did "Fred"
> refer to anyone in particular or was Postel just using a
> generic name here?
> 
> Many thanks if anyone can answer these questions.
> 
> Best,
> Gretchen Schoel
> American Studies Program
> College of William and Mary
> Virginia