From ian.peter at ianpeter.com Fri Mar 10 13:15:13 2006 From: ian.peter at ianpeter.com (Ian Peter) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 08:15:13 +1100 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Folks, If you are I need of a good laugh, you might like to explore the following site http://ioih.org Which explains the history of an industrial steam driven Internet. I particularly liked the depictation of little children called pings who were employed to travel up and down the steam driven pipes of the Internet to make sure they didn't rust up.(the name arising from the noise they made as the brushes cleaned the pipes). But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping and its use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. All the best, Ian Peter www.nethistory.info -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 9/03/2006 From jsnader at ix.netcom.com Fri Mar 10 14:17:36 2006 From: jsnader at ix.netcom.com (Jon Snader) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:17:36 -0500 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Message-ID: <20060310221736.GB93760@ix.netcom.com> On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 08:15:13AM +1100, Ian Peter wrote: > But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping and its > use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. > Here's the story from the man who invented it: http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html jcs From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Mar 10 16:12:30 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:12:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question Message-ID: <20060311001230.62352872C8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jon Snader > Here's the story from the man who invented it: It's probably useful to point out that the basic "ping" functionality (not sure about the timing aspect), and programs to send them, existed before Mike Muuss did the Unix "ping" command. I don't have the energy to dig through any of my source listings archive from the late-70's'/early-80's, and I don't offhand recall the names those commands went by, but ICMP Echo Request and Echo Reply existed from a fairly early stage (in fact, probably prior to the existence of ICMP as a separate protocol). Maybe someone has the energy to dig through the early RFC's and add more... Noel From perry at piermont.com Sat Mar 11 15:37:33 2006 From: perry at piermont.com (Perry E. Metzger) Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:37:33 -0500 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> (Ian Peter's message of "Sat, 11 Mar 2006 08:15:13 +1100") References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Message-ID: <87k6b0364i.fsf@snark.piermont.com> "Ian Peter" writes: > But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping and its > use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. I don't know who first used it in the internet, but I got the impression "ping" was a sonar term from long before there was an internet. Perry From mills at udel.edu Sun Mar 12 17:53:34 2006 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 01:53:34 +0000 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <20060311001230.62352872C8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060311001230.62352872C8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <4414D09E.8040904@udel.edu> Noel, A little digging through my own archives shows that ping functionality did exist in the Gateway-Gateway Protocol (GGP) implemented by BBN circa 1980 and in the Fuzzball at the same time. It was called GGP Echo and GGP Echo Reply in RFC823 (1982), but that obsoleted earlier IENs that mentioned it. The Fuzzball PING program evolved from the GGP program circa 1980, although I didn't document it until IEN-194 (1981). I do claim first use "Packet InterNet Groper" in RFC889 (1983). Strangely enough, the first Gateway Requirements RFC985, written by my on behalf ot the NSF Network Technical Asdvisory Group (NTAG), didn't cast this in stone until 1986. You might remember a bakeoff in 1985 where Proteon, BBN, (cisco?) and Fuzzball competed for the NSF Phase-I project gateways. Fuzzball won possible not on its own merit, but because it was free. Dave Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Jon Snader > > > Here's the story from the man who invented it: > > It's probably useful to point out that the basic "ping" functionality (not > sure about the timing aspect), and programs to send them, existed > before Mike > Muuss did the Unix "ping" command. > > I don't have the energy to dig through any of my source listings > archive from > the late-70's'/early-80's, and I don't offhand recall the names those > commands went by, but ICMP Echo Request and Echo Reply existed from a > fairly > early stage (in fact, probably prior to the existence of ICMP as a > separate > protocol). > > Maybe someone has the energy to dig through the early RFC's and add > more... > > Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Sun Mar 12 19:44:15 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:44:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question Message-ID: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Interesting: RFC889 (December 1983) says: Among the various measurement packages is the original PING (Packet InterNet Groper) program used over the last six years for numerous tests and measurements of the Internet system and its client nets. This program contains facilities to send various kinds of probe packets, including ICMP Echo messages, process the reply and record elapsed times and other information in a data file, as well as produce real-time snapshot histograms and traces. The date on that RFC is very interesting, because Mike's Ping history page (http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html) says: My original impetus for writing PING for 4.2a BSD UNIX came from an offhand remark in July 1983 by Dr. Dave Mills .. in which he described some work that he had done on his "Fuzzball" LSI-11 systems to measure path latency using timed ICMP Echo packets. In December of 1983 I encountered some odd behavior of the IP network at BRL. Recalling Dr. Mills' comments, I quickly coded up the PING program Presumably the work described in RFC889 predates December 1983 (the date on the RFC); and that material was also what Mike referred to in his mention of "described some work that he had done". So your "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)" program predates Mike's, and your use of the name is at least contemporaneous, and probably pre-dates, Mike's. You don't happen to have any older rough drafts of 889 lying around, do you? If so, that could definitively show your use of the term pre-dating Mike's. Just out of curiousity, I assume you had the sonar analogy in mind when you came up with the backronym (?) "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)"? Do you recall if the term "ping" was already in use in the community at the time, or was that something you introduced? (I just don't recall, alas!) Noel From louie at transsys.com Sun Mar 12 20:21:33 2006 From: louie at transsys.com (Louis Mamakos) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:21:33 -0500 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <4414F34D.9030705@transsys.com> I'm pretty certain that the fuzzball PING existed before the PING that Mike wrote at BRL. I distinctly remember crashing one of their VAXen on the eve of the NCP/TCP transition with PING from one of my fuzzballs. There was a double-free() for the mbuf containing the ICMP echo. I don't recall if they were running the BBN stack, or an early 4.1BSD version. In fact, I crashed it two or three times before I noticed the connection between my testing activities and er, the failure of my tests. This I confirmed in a conversation with Ron Natalie, then of BRL. "Ron, did your VAX just crash? ..uh, yeah, why do you ask?" This might have been BRL-VGR, but I might be imagining that. I also recall testing the ICMP code in the UNIVAC 1100 IP stack Mike Petry and I wrote during the same time, perhaps during 1981 - 1983, with the fuzzball PING command as well. louie Noel Chiappa wrote: > Interesting: RFC889 (December 1983) says: > > Among the various measurement packages is the original PING (Packet > InterNet Groper) program used over the last six years for numerous tests > and measurements of the Internet system and its client nets. This program > contains facilities to send various kinds of probe packets, including ICMP > Echo messages, process the reply and record elapsed times and other > information in a data file, as well as produce real-time snapshot > histograms and traces. > > The date on that RFC is very interesting, because Mike's Ping history page > (http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html) says: > > My original impetus for writing PING for 4.2a BSD UNIX came from an offhand > remark in July 1983 by Dr. Dave Mills .. in which he described some work > that he had done on his "Fuzzball" LSI-11 systems to measure path latency > using timed ICMP Echo packets. > In December of 1983 I encountered some odd behavior of the IP network at > BRL. Recalling Dr. Mills' comments, I quickly coded up the PING program > > Presumably the work described in RFC889 predates December 1983 (the date on > the RFC); and that material was also what Mike referred to in his mention of > "described some work that he had done". > > So your "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)" program predates Mike's, and your use > of the name is at least contemporaneous, and probably pre-dates, Mike's. You > don't happen to have any older rough drafts of 889 lying around, do you? If > so, that could definitively show your use of the term pre-dating Mike's. > > > Just out of curiousity, I assume you had the sonar analogy in mind when you > came up with the backronym (?) "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)"? > > Do you recall if the term "ping" was already in use in the community at the > time, or was that something you introduced? (I just don't recall, alas!) > > Noel > From mills at udel.edu Mon Mar 13 06:59:40 2006 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:59:40 +0000 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <441588DC.2020404@udel.edu> Noel, The only known context about the era is in the COMSAT final report on the DARPA Atlantic SATnet Program, published in 1979, and the SATnet coming-out party at the National Computer Conference in November, 1979. The Fuzzball was prominent in both projects, most notable as the vehicle for demonstrating speech, FAX and messaging between Washington, DC, and London. A ping capability was employed in both projects, but I can't definitively say the ping acronym was used. There were a number of quarterly project reports, Internet monthly project reports and related data still in existence. They are embalmed on eight-inch, double-sided, high-density floppy disks (sic). All drives known to me that can read those disks have joined the IBM 9-track tape drives recording my past lives on the scrap heap. Dave Noel Chiappa wrote: > Interesting: RFC889 (December 1983) says: > > Among the various measurement packages is the original PING (Packet > InterNet Groper) program used over the last six years for numerous tests > and measurements of the Internet system and its client nets. This program > contains facilities to send various kinds of probe packets, including ICMP > Echo messages, process the reply and record elapsed times and other > information in a data file, as well as produce real-time snapshot > histograms and traces. > > The date on that RFC is very interesting, because Mike's Ping history page > (http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html) says: > > My original impetus for writing PING for 4.2a BSD UNIX came from an > offhand > remark in July 1983 by Dr. Dave Mills .. in which he described some work > that he had done on his "Fuzzball" LSI-11 systems to measure path latency > using timed ICMP Echo packets. > In December of 1983 I encountered some odd behavior of the IP network at > BRL. Recalling Dr. Mills' comments, I quickly coded up the PING program > > Presumably the work described in RFC889 predates December 1983 (the > date on > the RFC); and that material was also what Mike referred to in his > mention of > "described some work that he had done". > > So your "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)" program predates Mike's, and > your use > of the name is at least contemporaneous, and probably pre-dates, > Mike's. You > don't happen to have any older rough drafts of 889 lying around, do > you? If > so, that could definitively show your use of the term pre-dating Mike's. > > > Just out of curiousity, I assume you had the sonar analogy in mind > when you > came up with the backronym (?) "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)"? > > Do you recall if the term "ping" was already in use in the community > at the > time, or was that something you introduced? (I just don't recall, alas!) > > Noel From mills at udel.edu Mon Mar 13 07:15:16 2006 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:15:16 +0000 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <4414F34D.9030705@transsys.com> References: <20060313034415.22EF0872DF@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <4414F34D.9030705@transsys.com> Message-ID: <44158C84.7040105@udel.edu> Louis, One of my enduring war stories with the Fuzzball was during the checkout of the GGP program written by Ginny Strazisar at BBN. I started the Fuzzball program with GGP running and noticed that first the gateway I was talking to crashed, then each of the other GGP gateways crashed in turn. I later discovered that my GGP update was flawed and that each GGP gateway that received it copied its neighbors and then expired. Funny thing is the same kind of problem brought down the entire AT&T network in January 1990. Took them ten hours to fix the problem and bring the network back up. Problem was a misplaced "}" in one of the 3B2 computer programs. An overloaded ESS switch in Manhattan rebooted and sent out a recovery message that rebooted its neighbor and the dance was on for all 114 switches in the network. Dave Louis Mamakos wrote: > I'm pretty certain that the fuzzball PING existed before the PING that > Mike wrote at BRL. I distinctly remember crashing one of their VAXen on > the eve of the NCP/TCP transition with PING from one of my fuzzballs. > There was a double-free() for the mbuf containing the ICMP echo. I > don't recall if they were running the BBN stack, or an early 4.1BSD > version. > > In fact, I crashed it two or three times before I noticed the connection > between my testing activities and er, the failure of my tests. This I > confirmed in a conversation with Ron Natalie, then of BRL. "Ron, did > your VAX just crash? ..uh, yeah, why do you ask?" This might have been > BRL-VGR, but I might be imagining that. > > I also recall testing the ICMP code in the UNIVAC 1100 IP stack Mike > Petry and I wrote during the same time, perhaps during 1981 - 1983, with > the fuzzball PING command as well. > > louie > > > Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> Interesting: RFC889 (December 1983) says: >> >> Among the various measurement packages is the original PING (Packet >> InterNet Groper) program used over the last six years for numerous tests >> and measurements of the Internet system and its client nets. This program >> contains facilities to send various kinds of probe packets, including >> ICMP >> Echo messages, process the reply and record elapsed times and other >> information in a data file, as well as produce real-time snapshot >> histograms and traces. >> >> The date on that RFC is very interesting, because Mike's Ping history >> page >> (http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html) says: >> >> My original impetus for writing PING for 4.2a BSD UNIX came from an >> offhand >> remark in July 1983 by Dr. Dave Mills .. in which he described some work >> that he had done on his "Fuzzball" LSI-11 systems to measure path latency >> using timed ICMP Echo packets. >> In December of 1983 I encountered some odd behavior of the IP network at >> BRL. Recalling Dr. Mills' comments, I quickly coded up the PING program >> >> Presumably the work described in RFC889 predates December 1983 (the >> date on >> the RFC); and that material was also what Mike referred to in his >> mention of >> "described some work that he had done". >> >> So your "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)" program predates Mike's, and >> your use >> of the name is at least contemporaneous, and probably pre-dates, >> Mike's. You >> don't happen to have any older rough drafts of 889 lying around, do >> you? If >> so, that could definitively show your use of the term pre-dating Mike's. >> >> >> Just out of curiousity, I assume you had the sonar analogy in mind >> when you >> came up with the backronym (?) "PING (Packet InterNet Groper)"? >> >> Do you recall if the term "ping" was already in use in the community >> at the >> time, or was that something you introduced? (I just don't recall, alas!) >> >> Noel >> From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Mar 13 07:17:56 2006 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 07:17:56 -0800 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <4414D09E.8040904@udel.edu> References: <20060311001230.62352872C8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <4414D09E.8040904@udel.edu> Message-ID: <44158D24.9010604@dcrocker.net> > Fuzzball won > possible not on its own merit, but because it was free. Althought adequacy/competence might be a higher priority than price, free definitely counts as merit. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking From braden at ISI.EDU Mon Mar 13 09:54:05 2006 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:54:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 Message-ID: <200603131754.JAA12568@gra.isi.edu> Mike Muuss performed an invaluable service in writing the original Unix Ping program, but he did not "invent" the ping function. For example, a simple grep for "Ping" in the online IENs finds the following quote from IEN 145, "Internet Meeting Notes 14,15 May 1980", 29 May 1980, written by Jon Postel: "V. GATEWAY PROTOCOLS AND HOSTS Jim Mathis presented his procedure for routing. The main points are first pick any gateway, second refine the chance to the best gateway and third detect the failure of that gateway should it occur. o Pick a Prime gateway o Poll it at a slow rate o Send to the Prime gateway o Accept and act on a Redirect message o Ping gateway in use if higher level protocol complains o Periodically change the Prime gateway Does this procedure get unstable in high load? IENs 109 and 131 should be reviewed by host IP implementors." Note that "Ping" was apparently a synonym for "poll" here. So the term was already in use in 1980. Unfortunately, I don't remember when it first arose. One more minor correction: Dave Mills did indeed supply the mnemonic expansion of PING, but it was "Packet INternet Groper" (groper, as in, a person who can't keep his hands to himself! ;-), not grouper.) Bob Braden From dpreed at reed.com Mon Mar 13 14:12:17 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:12:17 -0500 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <200603131754.JAA12568@gra.isi.edu> References: <200603131754.JAA12568@gra.isi.edu> Message-ID: <4415EE41.40302@reed.com> If I were a betting man, the term "ping" came from it's use in sonar contexts, to refer to a signal intended to be echoed. I have no direct evidence or memory of the first use, but the fact that BBNers were in an acoustics-centric technical milieu suggests that "ping" made a perfect analogy for probing via echoes. I wouldn't be surprised if the term ping was used for probing via echoes in NCP and PARC's PUP protocols (predecessors of Internet Protocol and ICMP). Bob Braden wrote: > Mike Muuss performed an invaluable service in writing the original > Unix Ping program, but he did not "invent" the ping function. > > For example, a simple grep for "Ping" in the online IENs finds the > following quote from IEN 145, "Internet Meeting Notes 14,15 May 1980", > 29 May 1980, written by Jon Postel: > > "V. GATEWAY PROTOCOLS AND HOSTS > > Jim Mathis presented his procedure for routing. The main points are > first pick any gateway, second refine the chance to the best gateway > and third detect the failure of that gateway should it occur. > > o Pick a Prime gateway > o Poll it at a slow rate > o Send to the Prime gateway > o Accept and act on a Redirect message > o Ping gateway in use if higher level protocol complains > o Periodically change the Prime gateway > > Does this procedure get unstable in high load? > > IENs 109 and 131 should be reviewed by host IP implementors." > > Note that "Ping" was apparently a synonym for "poll" here. So the > term was already in use in 1980. Unfortunately, I don't remember > when it first arose. > > One more minor correction: Dave Mills did indeed supply the mnemonic > expansion of PING, but it was "Packet INternet Groper" (groper, as in, > a person who can't keep his hands to himself! ;-), not grouper.) > > Bob Braden > > > > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Mar 13 15:39:38 2006 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:39:38 -0800 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: <200603131754.JAA12568@gra.isi.edu> References: <200603131754.JAA12568@gra.isi.edu> Message-ID: <441602BA.2010405@dcrocker.net> > Mike Muuss performed an invaluable service in writing the original > Unix Ping program, but he did not "invent" the ping function. Indeed the value of (finally) packaging earlier invention(s) into a usable -- or, more importantly, successful -- system is rather substantial and frequently under-rated. The Web and Unix are often cited as other examples. Packaging into a usable system is its own brand of invention, and the earlier, more basic, work tends to be useless without it. Look at how long the web's constructs languished after invention, until brought together with the right mixture of power and ease of use. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking From ian.peter at ianpeter.com Fri Mar 17 16:22:18 2006 From: ian.peter at ianpeter.com (Ian Peter) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 11:22:18 +1100 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200603180022.k2I0MHBu044179@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Thanks everyone for the range of responses re the origins of ping. To summarise: Yes, the origins were sonar. The definitive reference would be http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html. Although earlier origins can be traced to the work of Mike Muss, Dave Crocker makes a good point that the act of packaging, releasing and popularising should not be underestimated (otherwise we had better reevaluate our history of web, internet protocols and just about everything!). Thanks for the responses! Ian Peter Senior Partner Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd P.O Box 10670 Adelaide St Brisbane 4000 Australia Tel +614 1966 7772 Email ian.peter at ianpeter.com www.ianpeter.com www.internetmark2.org www.nethistory.info (Winner, Top100 Sites Award, PCMagazine Spring 2005) > -----Original Message----- > From: internet-history-bounces at postel.org > [mailto:internet-history-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of > internet-history-request at postel.org > Sent: Wednesday, 15 March 2006 7:00 AM > To: internet-history at postel.org > Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 4 > > Send internet-history mailing list submissions to > internet-history at postel.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > internet-history-request at postel.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > internet-history-owner at postel.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more > specific than "Re: Contents of internet-history digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 (David P. Reed) > 2. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 (Dave Crocker) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:12:17 -0500 > From: "David P. Reed" > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 > To: Bob Braden > Cc: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <4415EE41.40302 at reed.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > If I were a betting man, the term "ping" came from it's use > in sonar contexts, to refer to a signal intended to be echoed. > > I have no direct evidence or memory of the first use, but the > fact that BBNers were in an acoustics-centric technical > milieu suggests that "ping" made a perfect analogy for > probing via echoes. > > I wouldn't be surprised if the term ping was used for probing > via echoes in NCP and PARC's PUP protocols (predecessors of > Internet Protocol and ICMP). > > Bob Braden wrote: > > Mike Muuss performed an invaluable service in writing the original > > Unix Ping program, but he did not "invent" the ping function. > > > > For example, a simple grep for "Ping" in the online IENs finds the > > following quote from IEN 145, "Internet Meeting Notes 14,15 > May 1980", > > 29 May 1980, written by Jon Postel: > > > > "V. GATEWAY PROTOCOLS AND HOSTS > > > > Jim Mathis presented his procedure for routing. The > main points are > > first pick any gateway, second refine the chance to > the best gateway > > and third detect the failure of that gateway should it occur. > > > > o Pick a Prime gateway > > o Poll it at a slow rate > > o Send to the Prime gateway > > o Accept and act on a Redirect message > > o Ping gateway in use if higher level protocol complains > > o Periodically change the Prime gateway > > > > Does this procedure get unstable in high load? > > > > IENs 109 and 131 should be reviewed by host IP implementors." > > > > Note that "Ping" was apparently a synonym for "poll" here. So the > > term was already in use in 1980. Unfortunately, I don't > remember when > > it first arose. > > > > One more minor correction: Dave Mills did indeed supply the > mnemonic > > expansion of PING, but it was "Packet INternet Groper" (groper, as > > in, a person who can't keep his hands to himself! ;-), not grouper.) > > > > Bob Braden > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:39:38 -0800 > From: Dave Crocker > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 1 > To: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <441602BA.2010405 at dcrocker.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > > > Mike Muuss performed an invaluable service in writing the original > > Unix Ping program, but he did not "invent" the ping function. > > > Indeed the value of (finally) packaging earlier invention(s) > into a usable -- or, more importantly, successful -- system > is rather substantial and frequently under-rated. > > The Web and Unix are often cited as other examples. > > Packaging into a usable system is its own brand of invention, > and the earlier, more basic, work tends to be useless without > it. Look at how long the web's constructs languished after > invention, until brought together with the right mixture of > power and ease of use. > > d/ > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > internet-history mailing list > internet-history at postel.org > http://www.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > > > End of internet-history Digest, Vol 13, Issue 4 > *********************************************** > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.2/280 - Release > Date: 13/03/2006 > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006 From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Mar 21 22:23:20 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:23:20 -0800 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Message-ID: <1143008600.4477.54.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> P.I.N.G. = Packet InterNet Groper (not Grouper) From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Mar 21 22:21:57 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:21:57 -0800 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> Message-ID: <1143008517.4477.52.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Ian et al, My organic archives are getting fuzzier every day, but my first memory of the word "ping" applied to the Internet was at some meeting back in the early 80s, probably an ICCB meeting (which later was renamed to be called IAB). Dave Mills was reporting on his group's experiments with fuzzballs torturing the toddler Internet. I was PI for the BBN projects at the time which were implementing various TCPs and deploying the "core" gateways. Dave was herding a gaggle of fuzzballs which were poking and prodding the neonatal Internet. In fact, I think I remember him characterizing it as a "big fuzzy pink thing" which you could poke and prod and observe interesting behaviors, like turning green. Wonderful imagery. Anyway, Dave reported that the most useful tool was "pinging". This was before "the Unix implementation" which most people equate to the Berkeley code. I know because I wrote the first Unix TCP implementation on a poor little PDP-11/40 based on Jim Mathis' LSI-11 code, and I hadn't had the insight to write any ping program, and the Berkeley code didn't exist yet. We all had various ways of doing "ping" experiments - e.g., create a packet in memory using DDT and call the packet-output routine. Dave used to perform the most interesting experiments and find new ways to make our gateway code keel over. Ping, source-routing, etc. were the tools of the trade, but may not have yet been called by those names at that time. We could launch a new gateway software release into the dark alleys of the Internet, and Dave's minions (his army of fuzzy ones) would find it pretty quickly and test its mettle. But I credit Dave with first applying the term "ping" to the Internet. At least that's where I first recall hearing the term. Much of this lore was unfortunately not contained in the RFCs, which typically came much later and documented history. The intense "discussions" that I remember all happened on mailing lists, e.g., the tcp-ip, internet-headers, header-people (email), etc. which were maintained at ISI. I wonder if those old email archives are still around. If so, they would be a fascinating insight into the maelstrom that was the Internet's crucible. By the way, does anyone remember what PING stood for? Of course, at the time everything was an acronym, and Dave had one for P.I.N.G. [My recollection of the answer in the next message to avoid spoiling the fun....] /Jack Haverty On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 08:15 +1100, Ian Peter wrote: > Folks, > > If you are I need of a good laugh, you might like to explore the following > site > > http://ioih.org > > Which explains the history of an industrial steam driven Internet. I > particularly liked the depictation of little children called pings who were > employed to travel up and down the steam driven pipes of the Internet to > make sure they didn't rust up.(the name arising from the noise they made as > the brushes cleaned the pipes). > > But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping and its > use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. > > All the best, > > > Ian Peter > www.nethistory.info > > > > From mills at udel.edu Wed Mar 22 18:22:58 2006 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 02:22:58 +0000 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <1143008517.4477.52.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> <1143008517.4477.52.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Message-ID: <44220682.10502@udel.edu> Jack, Packet InterNet Groper. Fuzzballs did Cross Net Debugger (XNET), too, considered the first Internet Ambulance Service. As I recall, ISI machines archived on 9-track magnetic tape. It's just possible those tapes might have survived. I even have my really old personal archives on that media. Dave Jack Haverty wrote: > Ian et al, > > My organic archives are getting fuzzier every day, but my first memory > of the word "ping" applied to the Internet was at some meeting back in > the early 80s, probably an ICCB meeting (which later was renamed to be > called IAB). Dave Mills was reporting on his group's experiments with > fuzzballs torturing the toddler Internet. I was PI for the BBN > projects at the time which were implementing various TCPs and deploying > the "core" gateways. Dave was herding a gaggle of fuzzballs which were > poking and prodding the neonatal Internet. In fact, I think I remember > him characterizing it as a "big fuzzy pink thing" which you could poke > and prod and observe interesting behaviors, like turning green. > Wonderful imagery. > > Anyway, Dave reported that the most useful tool was "pinging". This was > before "the Unix implementation" which most people equate to the > Berkeley code. I know because I wrote the first Unix TCP implementation > on a poor little PDP-11/40 based on Jim Mathis' LSI-11 code, and I > hadn't had the insight to write any ping program, and the Berkeley code > didn't exist yet. We all had various ways of doing "ping" experiments - > e.g., create a packet in memory using DDT and call the packet-output > routine. > > Dave used to perform the most interesting experiments and find new ways > to make our gateway code keel over. Ping, source-routing, etc. were the > tools of the trade, but may not have yet been called by those names at > that time. We could launch a new gateway software release into the dark > alleys of the Internet, and Dave's minions (his army of fuzzy ones) > would find it pretty quickly and test its mettle. > > But I credit Dave with first applying the term "ping" to the Internet. > At least that's where I first recall hearing the term. > > Much of this lore was unfortunately not contained in the RFCs, which > typically came much later and documented history. The intense > "discussions" that I remember all happened on mailing lists, e.g., the > tcp-ip, internet-headers, header-people (email), etc. which were > maintained at ISI. I wonder if those old email archives are still > around. If so, they would be a fascinating insight into the maelstrom > that was the Internet's crucible. > > By the way, does anyone remember what PING stood for? Of course, at the > time everything was an acronym, and Dave had one for P.I.N.G. > > [My recollection of the answer in the next message to avoid spoiling the > fun....] > > /Jack Haverty > > > > On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 08:15 +1100, Ian Peter wrote: > >> Folks, >> >> If you are I need of a good laugh, you might like to explore the >> following >> site >> >> http://ioih.org >> >> Which explains the history of an industrial steam driven Internet. I >> particularly liked the depictation of little children called pings >> who were >> employed to travel up and down the steam driven pipes of the Internet to >> make sure they didn't rust up.(the name arising from the noise they >> made as >> the brushes cleaned the pipes). >> >> But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping >> and its >> use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. >> >> All the best, >> >> >> Ian Peter >> www.nethistory.info >> >> >> >> From touch at ISI.EDU Mon Mar 27 07:19:12 2006 From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:19:12 -0800 Subject: [ih] A laugh and a question In-Reply-To: <44220682.10502@udel.edu> References: <200603102115.k2ALFEiC008499@squirrel.dmpriest.net.uk> <1143008517.4477.52.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> <44220682.10502@udel.edu> Message-ID: <44280270.3020105@isi.edu> David L. Mills wrote: > Jack, > > Packet InterNet Groper. > > Fuzzballs did Cross Net Debugger (XNET), too, considered the first > Internet Ambulance Service. > > As I recall, ISI machines archived on 9-track magnetic tape. It's just > possible those tapes might have survived. I even have my really old > personal archives on that media. FYI, I had looked for those tapes on the 20th anniversary of TCP, to look for Jon's transition announcement message. Unfortunately, they were disposed of (backups = windows into the past sufficient for expected restorations; archives are something else, and were not considered unfortunately). I had moved my files through 9-track, diskettes, 4mm tapes, NeXT MOs, hard drives, and DVDs over the years; it paid off when my 1985 undergraduate thesis code was sought (as recently as two weeks ago). That sort of diligence is unfortunately required - even if the media survive, the readers often don't. Joe > > Dave > > Jack Haverty wrote: > >> Ian et al, >> >> My organic archives are getting fuzzier every day, but my first memory >> of the word "ping" applied to the Internet was at some meeting back in >> the early 80s, probably an ICCB meeting (which later was renamed to be >> called IAB). Dave Mills was reporting on his group's experiments with >> fuzzballs torturing the toddler Internet. I was PI for the BBN >> projects at the time which were implementing various TCPs and deploying >> the "core" gateways. Dave was herding a gaggle of fuzzballs which were >> poking and prodding the neonatal Internet. In fact, I think I remember >> him characterizing it as a "big fuzzy pink thing" which you could poke >> and prod and observe interesting behaviors, like turning green. >> Wonderful imagery. >> >> Anyway, Dave reported that the most useful tool was "pinging". This was >> before "the Unix implementation" which most people equate to the >> Berkeley code. I know because I wrote the first Unix TCP implementation >> on a poor little PDP-11/40 based on Jim Mathis' LSI-11 code, and I >> hadn't had the insight to write any ping program, and the Berkeley code >> didn't exist yet. We all had various ways of doing "ping" experiments - >> e.g., create a packet in memory using DDT and call the packet-output >> routine. >> >> Dave used to perform the most interesting experiments and find new ways >> to make our gateway code keel over. Ping, source-routing, etc. were the >> tools of the trade, but may not have yet been called by those names at >> that time. We could launch a new gateway software release into the dark >> alleys of the Internet, and Dave's minions (his army of fuzzy ones) >> would find it pretty quickly and test its mettle. >> >> But I credit Dave with first applying the term "ping" to the Internet. >> At least that's where I first recall hearing the term. >> >> Much of this lore was unfortunately not contained in the RFCs, which >> typically came much later and documented history. The intense >> "discussions" that I remember all happened on mailing lists, e.g., the >> tcp-ip, internet-headers, header-people (email), etc. which were >> maintained at ISI. I wonder if those old email archives are still >> around. If so, they would be a fascinating insight into the maelstrom >> that was the Internet's crucible. >> >> By the way, does anyone remember what PING stood for? Of course, at the >> time everything was an acronym, and Dave had one for P.I.N.G. >> >> [My recollection of the answer in the next message to avoid spoiling the >> fun....] >> >> /Jack Haverty >> >> >> >> On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 08:15 +1100, Ian Peter wrote: >> >>> Folks, >>> >>> If you are I need of a good laugh, you might like to explore the >>> following >>> site >>> >>> http://ioih.org >>> >>> Which explains the history of an industrial steam driven Internet. I >>> particularly liked the depictation of little children called pings >>> who were >>> employed to travel up and down the steam driven pipes of the Internet to >>> make sure they didn't rust up.(the name arising from the noise they >>> made as >>> the brushes cleaned the pipes). >>> >>> But it did lead me to think - what was the origin of the word ping >>> and its >>> use in Internet? If anyone has some clues I'd be interested to hear. >>> >>> All the best, >>> >>> >>> Ian Peter >>> www.nethistory.info >>> >>> >>> >>> From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Tue Mar 28 18:27:22 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:27:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060329022722.BCFF086AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Michiel Leenaars (Michiel at staff.isoc.nl) is trying to find the exact birth-date of what we now call IPv4 My sense is that if we could find out the exact date of the Internet Working Group (INWG) meeting at which they hashed out what looked basically like the eventual IPv4 (I think it was IP 3.1, if I have the version number right), that would be "the" birthdate. This, alas, predates me slightly, and I have the history somewhatl muddled in my head. Also, even more problematically, many of the relevant IEN's are not available online, which makes it difficult to research... Anyway, there were two major predecessor steps shortly before IP firmed up: - TCP and IP were split - Variable length addresses were removed, leaving fixed 4-byte addresses I am not 100% positive which happened first (or if they happened at the same time), although I have become fairly sure that the split happened first, with the removal of variable-length addresses later... And then there's the issue of version numbers: there are 2, 2.5, 3, 3.1 and 4. What I hear is that 2.5 was a "implementation split", in which the unified single header remained, but the code was split into two. 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split (and included "protocol numbers" to identify which transport protocol was being used - see list below), but my guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an editorial cleanup of 3.1 So: - Is that the right order for the split, and variable-length address removal? - Can we identify the version numbers (2.5, 3, 3.1, etc) which go with each version? - Can anyone identify the INWG meeting at which the latter happened? ---- Additional data: To help refresh memories, here's a list, from the minutes of the 15 August, '77 Internet Meeting Notes, of planned future INWG meetings. Ones which eventually seemed to happen (as evidenced by minutes in the IEN series) are marked with a '*', and the relevant IEN number (although I have no idea if they happened at the place listed): 15 Aug 77 - Internet meeting at ISI 13-14 Oct 77 - TCP meeting at SRI* [66] 3 Nov 77 - Internet meeting at BBN 30-31 Jan 78 - TCP meeting at ISI* [67] 3 Feb 78 - Internet meeting at UCLA* [22 - 1 Feb] 20-21 Apr 78 - TCP meeting at BBN 1- 2 May 78 - Internet meeting at UCL* [33] 13-14 Jul 78 - TCP meeting at PARC 2- 3 Aug 78 - Internet meeting at LL* [53] 12-13 Oct 78 - TCP meeting at LCS 2- 3 Nov 78 - Internet meeting at SRI and the following meetings for which IEN minutes (numbers in []'s) exist, but aren't in the above list, also occurred: 15-16 Jun 78 - TCP [68] 18-19 Sep 78 - TCP [69] 30-31 Oct 78 - Internet [63] 4 Dec 78 - TCP [70] Alas, none of these minutes are online. To further help jog memories, here are the listings for all the seemingly relevant early IEN's: 5 Cerf Mar-77 TCP Version 2 Specification 21 Cerf Jan-78 TCP 3 Specification 26 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposed New Internet Header Format 27 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format 28 Postel Feb-78 Draft Internetwork Protocol 40 Postel Jun-78 Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Protocol - Version 4 41 Postel Jun-78 Internetwork Protocol Specification - Version 4 and finally, some other stuff: RFC-750 contains the following numbers for protocol type (some extraneous ones deleted): Decimal Octal Format References ------- ----- ------ ---------- 0 0 Reserved 1 1 raw internet [42] 2 2 TCP-3 [36] 5 5 TCP-3.1 [45] 6 6 TCP-4 [46] And there's also a table of IP header version numbers: Decimal Octal Version References ------- ----- ------- ---------- 0 0 March 1977 version [35] 1 1 January 1978 version [36] 2 2 February 1978 version A [42] 3 3 February 1978 version B [43] 4 4 September 1978 version 4 [44] [35] Cerf, V. "Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program -- TCP (version 2)," March 1977. [36] Cerf, V. and J. Postel, "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Program -- TCP Version 3," USC-Information Sciences Institute, January 1978. [42] Postel, J. "Draft Internetwork Protocol Specification -- Version 2," USC-Information Sciences Institute, February 1978. [43] Cerf, V. "A Proposed New Internet Header Format," Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978. [44] Postel, J. "Internetwork Protocol Specification -- Version 4," IEN-54, USC-Information Sciences Institute, September 1978. [45] Cerf, V. "A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format," Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978. [46] Postel, J. "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control Protocol -- Version 4," IEN-55, USC-Information Sciences Institute, September 1978. Note that both ref 43 and 45 claim to be IEN 26! The second should probably be IEN 27. ref 42 might be IEN 28. (I'm CC'ing this to the Internet-History list so that any responses will be archived for future historical use; apologies to anyone who gets two copies as a result.) Noel From jeanjour at comcast.net Tue Mar 28 19:28:47 2006 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:28:47 -0500 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329022722.BCFF086AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060329022722.BCFF086AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: I thought INWG was IFIP WG6.1 The International Network Working Group. I am thinking of something else? John At 21:27 -0500 2006/03/28, Noel Chiappa wrote: >Michiel Leenaars (Michiel at staff.isoc.nl) is trying to find the exact >birth-date of what we now call IPv4 > >My sense is that if we could find out the exact date of the Internet Working >Group (INWG) meeting at which they hashed out what looked basically like the >eventual IPv4 (I think it was IP 3.1, if I have the version number right), >that would be "the" birthdate. > > >This, alas, predates me slightly, and I have the history somewhatl muddled in >my head. Also, even more problematically, many of the relevant IEN's are not >available online, which makes it difficult to research... Anyway, there were >two major predecessor steps shortly before IP firmed up: > >- TCP and IP were split >- Variable length addresses were removed, leaving fixed 4-byte addresses > >I am not 100% positive which happened first (or if they happened at the same >time), although I have become fairly sure that the split happened first, with >the removal of variable-length addresses later... > >And then there's the issue of version numbers: there are 2, 2.5, 3, 3.1 and >4. What I hear is that 2.5 was a "implementation split", in which the unified >single header remained, but the code was split into two. 3 was the first >version that had the headers fully split (and included "protocol numbers" to >identify which transport protocol was being used - see list below), but my >guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall that >3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an editorial cleanup >of 3.1 > >So: > >- Is that the right order for the split, and variable-length address > removal? >- Can we identify the version numbers (2.5, 3, 3.1, etc) which go with > each version? >- Can anyone identify the INWG meeting at which the latter happened? > > >---- > > >Additional data: > >To help refresh memories, here's a list, from the minutes of the 15 August, >'77 Internet Meeting Notes, of planned future INWG meetings. Ones which >eventually seemed to happen (as evidenced by minutes in the IEN series) are >marked with a '*', and the relevant IEN number (although I have no idea if >they happened at the place listed): > > 15 Aug 77 - Internet meeting at ISI > 13-14 Oct 77 - TCP meeting at SRI* [66] > 3 Nov 77 - Internet meeting at BBN > 30-31 Jan 78 - TCP meeting at ISI* [67] > 3 Feb 78 - Internet meeting at UCLA* [22 - 1 Feb] > 20-21 Apr 78 - TCP meeting at BBN > 1- 2 May 78 - Internet meeting at UCL* [33] > 13-14 Jul 78 - TCP meeting at PARC > 2- 3 Aug 78 - Internet meeting at LL* [53] > 12-13 Oct 78 - TCP meeting at LCS > 2- 3 Nov 78 - Internet meeting at SRI > >and the following meetings for which IEN minutes (numbers in []'s) exist, but >aren't in the above list, also occurred: > > 15-16 Jun 78 - TCP [68] > 18-19 Sep 78 - TCP [69] > 30-31 Oct 78 - Internet [63] > 4 Dec 78 - TCP [70] > >Alas, none of these minutes are online. To further help jog memories, here are >the listings for all the seemingly relevant early IEN's: > > 5 Cerf Mar-77 TCP Version 2 Specification > 21 Cerf Jan-78 TCP 3 Specification > 26 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposed New Internet Header Format > 27 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format > 28 Postel Feb-78 Draft Internetwork Protocol > 40 Postel Jun-78 Specification of Internetwork >Transmission Control Protocol > - Version 4 > 41 Postel Jun-78 Internetwork Protocol Specification - Version 4 > >and finally, some other stuff: RFC-750 contains the following numbers for >protocol type (some extraneous ones deleted): > > Decimal Octal Format References > ------- ----- ------ ---------- > 0 0 Reserved > 1 1 raw internet [42] > 2 2 TCP-3 [36] > 5 5 TCP-3.1 [45] > 6 6 TCP-4 [46] > >And there's also a table of IP header version numbers: > > Decimal Octal Version References > ------- ----- ------- ---------- > 0 0 March 1977 version [35] > 1 1 January 1978 version [36] > 2 2 February 1978 version A [42] > 3 3 February 1978 version B [43] > 4 4 September 1978 version 4 [44] > > [35] Cerf, V. "Specification of Internet Transmission Control > Program -- TCP (version 2)," March 1977. > [36] Cerf, V. and J. Postel, "Specification of Internetwork > Transmission Control Program -- TCP Version 3," > USC-Information Sciences Institute, January 1978. > > [42] Postel, J. "Draft Internetwork Protocol Specification -- > Version 2," USC-Information Sciences Institute, February 1978. > [43] Cerf, V. "A Proposed New Internet Header Format," Advanced > Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978. > [44] Postel, J. "Internetwork Protocol Specification -- Version 4," > IEN-54, USC-Information Sciences Institute, September 1978. > [45] Cerf, V. "A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format," > Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978. > [46] Postel, J. "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control > Protocol -- Version 4," IEN-55, USC-Information Sciences > Institute, September 1978. > >Note that both ref 43 and 45 claim to be IEN 26! The second should probably be >IEN 27. ref 42 might be IEN 28. > > >(I'm CC'ing this to the Internet-History list so that any responses will be >archived for future historical use; apologies to anyone who gets two copies >as a result.) > > Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Tue Mar 28 19:55:27 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:55:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: John Day >> the Internet Working Group (INWG) meeting > I thought INWG was IFIP WG6.1 The International Network Working Group. > I am thinking of something else? Ah, those are two completely different groups (although the acronym is confusingly identical). The "Internet Working Group" was the name given to the group working on TCP/IP in the '78 time frame: see, for example, IEN-60, "Boston Area Meeting of the Internet Working Group to Discuss Interactions with Gateways" (Davidson, 17-Oct-78). I don't know if INWG was the "official" acronym for that group, but I do remember seeing it used to refer to the group that met regularly to work on TCP/IP. Noel From jeanjour at comcast.net Tue Mar 28 20:22:41 2006 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:22:41 -0500 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: I don't doubt you, but it is weird because the "other:" INWG was very active with many of the same people at the same time. INWG #96 was issued in Feb 78 with authors Cerf, McKenzie, Scantlebury, and Zimmermann. Take care John At 22:55 -0500 2006/03/28, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: John Day > > >> the Internet Working Group (INWG) meeting > > > I thought INWG was IFIP WG6.1 The International Network Working Group. > > I am thinking of something else? > >Ah, those are two completely different groups (although the acronym is >confusingly identical). > >The "Internet Working Group" was the name given to the group working on >TCP/IP in the '78 time frame: see, for example, IEN-60, "Boston Area Meeting >of the Internet Working Group to Discuss Interactions with Gateways" >(Davidson, 17-Oct-78). > >I don't know if INWG was the "official" acronym for that group, but I do >remember seeing it used to refer to the group that met regularly to work >on TCP/IP. > > Noel From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Mar 28 21:29:22 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 21:29:22 -0800 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143610162.22771.70.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Hi Noel et al, Have the "TCP Meeting Notes" that Jon Postel distributed after each quarterly meeting survived in electronic form? These documented in pretty good detail the gyrations of TCP 2.5, 3, and 4 over the 1977-1978 period. E.G., there was a "Proposal for TCP 3" by Ray Tomlinson distributed at the 21 Oct 77 meeting of the TCP Working Group. My recollection is that there were three implementations over the range 2.5-4 in simultaneous development. TCP 2.5 (and variants: + epsilon, +2epsilon, -epsilon, etc. depending on which features were not yet implemented) was the actual working implementation first tested in cross-platform connections at the "TCP Bakeoff" on 27 Jan 1979. The bakeoff served to nail down some details of the spec -- e.g., I remember that the exact detail of the checksumming was cast in stone by the first two dissimilar implementations that managed to agree on checksums (Tenex and Multics? I forget...); we all just changed our other implementations to do what they did. TCP 3 was a paper specification driven by the experience gained from running TCP 2.5s. It was very shortlived (as I remember there was only one implementation by DTI, which had to implement TCP 3 due to contractual constraints, and didn't have any other implementation to play with, since all the rest of us skipped ahead to 4). TCP 3's design was debugged by myriad email discussions and supplanted by TCP4 which actually got implemented by the prior 2.5 implementors. The 18-19 September 1978 meeting notes list the schedule for "TCP 4's ready for testing": SRI: 1 Oct (Mathis) UCLA: now (Braden) Bob and his 360! Go Bob! BBN Unix: 9 Oct (Haverty) BBN Unix: 1 Nov (Wingfield) MIT-Multics: 16 Oct (Clark) BBN-Tenex: ? (Plummer) Prior to that, the TCP Meeting Notes of the 15-16 June 1978 meeting include: "Vint presented his goals for the meeting... ... The format of the TCP and INTERNET headers is to be firmly decided at this meeting ... " and later in the minutes: "The format of the headers was decided. [See "Latest Header Formats" IEN 44.]" This almost certainly happened on the second day - 16 June 1978. Of course, any "decision" in that timeframe has to be viewed in the context of the philosophy of "rough consensus and running code". So, depending on whether you're interested in the birthday of the specification or of the actual working implementation... somewhere in summer-fall 1978 would make sense to me at least. I'd vote for 16 June 1978 - the day "the format of the headers was decided". Of course, we all expected that the next version - after TCP 4 - would follow shortly, sometime in 1979, to address the long list of unsolved issues that was always on the blackboard at each meeting. Boy, got that wrong.... All of these messages/notes were emailed to [ISIE]TCP-INTERNET.List and made available for FTP as TCP-MEETING-NOTES.TXT on ISIE. Perhaps they live still on some moldy backup tapes somewhere... I don't have electronic copies, but I do have some cellulose-based ones, and the ink hasn't quite bled so far yet as to make them illegible. Good nostalgia leafing through.... PS - as I remember, for a time there were TWO working groups - the TCP Working Group, and the Internet Working Group, each focused on the obvious part of the design. The joke was that the TCP group kept concluding at their meetings that changes were needed in the Internet design, and vice versa. So Vint declared that they be merged, and wonder of wonders ... not long thereafter the headers merged as well. If I remember correctly, in the same timeframe there was work ongoing to create the ISO equivalents, e.g., TP0, TP4, etc. in venues such as the INWG. They did a lot better job at creating specs and papers than the TCPIP crowd, who mostly liked to just write code..... /Jack Haverty http://3kitty.org On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 22:55 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: John Day > > >> the Internet Working Group (INWG) meeting > > > I thought INWG was IFIP WG6.1 The International Network Working Group. > > I am thinking of something else? > > Ah, those are two completely different groups (although the acronym is > confusingly identical). > > The "Internet Working Group" was the name given to the group working on > TCP/IP in the '78 time frame: see, for example, IEN-60, "Boston Area Meeting > of the Internet Working Group to Discuss Interactions with Gateways" > (Davidson, 17-Oct-78). > > I don't know if INWG was the "official" acronym for that group, but I do > remember seeing it used to refer to the group that met regularly to work > on TCP/IP. > > Noel > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Mar 29 06:13:14 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:13:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jack Haverty > Have the "TCP Meeting Notes" that Jon Postel distributed after each > quarterly meeting survived in electronic form? These documented in > pretty good detail the gyrations of TCP 2.5, 3, and 4 over the 1977-1978 > period. Would these be the same as these IEN's, I assume? 64 Sunshine 12-Mar-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 12 March 1977 65 Postel 5-Aug-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 14 & 15 July 1977 66 Postel 21-Oct-77 TCP Meeting Notes - 13 & 14 October 1977 67 Postel 8-Feb-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 30 & 31 January 1978 68 Postel 27-Jun-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 15 & 16 June 1978 69 Postel 9-Oct-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 18 & 19 September 1978 70 Postel 15-Dec-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978 As far as I know, none are available on the web... > E.G., there was a "Proposal for TCP 3" by Ray Tomlinson distributed at > the 21 Oct 77 meeting of the TCP Working Group. That doesn't appear in the IEN Index, and a web search doesn't turn it up either. However, searching for it turned up something valuable this site: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/fool/cs370/ and in particular a link to this site (which I knew of, actually, but had forgotten about): http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/digital_archive.html which contains a number of otherwise-unobtainable IEN's. So, for instance, it has a copy of IEN-21, "TCP 3 Specification" from January, '78, which allows us to see that TCP/IP 3 had: - Separate IP and TCP headers - Variable length IP addresses - There are smaller differeces (e.g IP - no checksum, no fragmentation support; TCP - 32 bit ports, support for segments), but in general the rest of it looks moderately similar to TCP/IP-4 So it looks as if my prior take: >> 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split (and included >> "protocol numbers" to identify which transport protocol was being used >> ..) but my guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem >> to recall that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was >> an editorial cleanup of 3.1 is likely accurate (although I wish we could recover a 3.1 spec to be sure). (Note: the field called "Format" in the IP3 header is what we now call the "protocol number".) > TCP 3 was a paper specification driven by the experience gained from > running TCP 2.5s. Ah, interesting. Do you concur with the position that TCP 2.5 (which is, apparently, undocumented - except perhaps in those minutes) was basically the same *protocol* as TCP 2 (which had fixed-length addresses, BTW), but with the *implementation* split up into separate IP and TCP layers? > It was very shortlived (as I remember there was only one implementation > .. all the rest of us skipped ahead to 4). Most interesting... > TCP 3's design was debugged by myriad email discussions and supplanted > by TCP4 which actually got implemented by the prior 2.5 implementors. > The 18-19 September 1978 meeting notes list the schedule for "TCP 4's > ready for testing": Ah! I don't have those minutes, but it sounds like TCP/IP-4 was done before then, then... > Prior to that, the TCP Meeting Notes of the 15-16 June 1978 meeting > include: > "Vint presented his goals for the meeting... > The format of the TCP and INTERNET headers is to be firmly decided at > this meeting ... " Well, not to cast too wary a glance at this (potentially valuable) data, but no doubt the same thing had been said on other occasions... :-) > Of course, any "decision" in that timeframe has to be viewed in the > context of the philosophy of "rough consensus and running code". Also a good point. > and later in the minutes: > "The format of the headers was decided. [See "Latest Header Formats" > IEN 44.]" Indeed, IEN-44, Postel, June, 78, "Latest Header Formats"... > This almost certainly happened on the second day - 16 June 1978. > ... > So, depending on whether you're interested in the birthday of the > specification or of the actual working implementation... somewhere in > summer-fall 1978 would make sense to me at least. I'd vote for 16 June > 1978 - the day "the format of the headers was decided". That sounds like a good date to me, too - and I think the balance of the evidence is that that is indeed the day the final TCP/IP-4 headers were thrashed out. > All of these messages/notes were emailed to > [ISIE]TCP-INTERNET.List and made available for FTP as > TCP-MEETING-NOTES.TXT on ISIE. Perhaps they live > still on some moldy backup tapes somewhere... Hardcopy of all the IEN's was scanned in at some point at ISI, but they haven't yet made it online (even as scans). Probably easier to go that way, than try and find old machine-readable copies... > as I remember, for a time there were TWO working groups - the TCP > Working Group, and the Internet Working Group .. > The joke was that the TCP group kept concluding at their meetings that > changes were needed in the Internet design, and vice versa. So Vint > declared that they be merged, and wonder of wonders ... not long > thereafter the headers merged as well. ?? But the headers are separate - are you talking about before TCP-2? Thanks for the reply - I think we've got it mostly worked out, now... Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Mar 29 07:06:35 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:06:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] IEN-19 - Shoch Message-ID: <20060329150635.8EB1C872C5@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> While I'm thinking about IEN's, a while back I scanned/OCR's/proof-read the oft-cited and not-online IEN-19, "A note on Inter-Network Naming, Addressing, and Routing", by John F. Shoch. I see it hasn't received distribution yet, so I thought I let everyone here know about it, and provide a link to the copy on the Web server at MIT. I've put it online at: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/ien/ien19.txt I have attempted to match the original formatting, but it's otherwise pure ASCII text. The lines are justified, but the justification does not match that in the original, since the latter is in variable-width fonts. I ran across a number of typos in the original text, which I have marked with "[sic]". For those who want to see the original page images, they can be found here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/ien/Shoch_IEN19_p1.jpg through http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/ien/Shoch_IEN19_p9.jpg I can't guarantee that it will be at this location forever, but I have no plans to move and/or remove it. Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Mar 29 08:16:18 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 11:16:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060329161618.88D6C872C8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: "Vint Cerf" > does jkrey at isi.edu have the IENS? Or has Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan got > them at univ texas at austin? I discussed this issue with Bob Braden and Chris some months ago, when I was looking for IEN-19. The short answer is that ISI has a set of hardcopies, and someone scanned them in, but the scanning had some problems, and they are hard to read. (You can see one such scan here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/ien/ien26.pdf to see what it looks like.) I don't think that anyone has made those scans publicly available; I think Chris has copies of the scans, because I got this one from her. There shouldn't be any problem locating complete hardcopy sets of IEN's to scan in; in addition to the set at ISI, the Charles Babbage Institute has a set, as part of the "Alex McKenzie Collection of Computer Networking Development Records, 1969-1990 (CBI 123)": http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/inv/cbi00123.html > The june 16, 1978 date for final header design for TCP-4 fits my > recollection also. > Vint Ah, good! Noel From dpreed at reed.com Wed Mar 29 11:18:09 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:18:09 -0500 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <442ADD71.9040709@reed.com> The TCP/IP header split was agreed to at a late fall or early winter meeting in Marina del Rey when I was still the MIT rep to that working group (perhaps that is the Jan 30-31, 1978 meeting, but my memory places it in 1977 for a good reason - it was not that close to the "blizzard of '78") . Clark took over my role in this group sometime in the spring of 1978, as I recall - which is when I was bearing down to complete my Ph.D. thesis and interviewing for jobs, so I had to disengage. There was a significant difference between the prototype implementations that Tomlinson and others were testing (prelim code) and the specs that were being revised in the meetings on whiteboards, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lag of months, but not years between agreements reached in meetings and docs relating to coded tests. The meetings included reports from implementors on implementation issues, but also explorations of issues that went beyond implementation. Jon's meeting notes would be helpful. I somehow doubt that any one "birthday" makes sense to capture a process that was (in typical Internet style) an evolutionary, experimental, and creative process. Lots of loose ends were being sorted out. Fragmentation, for example, kept floating in and out of discussions and specs as the IP layer formed up after being separated from TCP (which had fragmentation from the start). But the issue was *very* real and considered very important at the time, because nets with small packets were expected to be common (e.g. X.25 was enjoying huge hype). (that did not turn out to be as big an issue as people thought). Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Jack Haverty > > > Have the "TCP Meeting Notes" that Jon Postel distributed after each > > quarterly meeting survived in electronic form? These documented in > > pretty good detail the gyrations of TCP 2.5, 3, and 4 over the 1977-1978 > > period. > > Would these be the same as these IEN's, I assume? > > 64 Sunshine 12-Mar-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 12 March 1977 > 65 Postel 5-Aug-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 14 & 15 July 1977 > 66 Postel 21-Oct-77 TCP Meeting Notes - 13 & 14 October 1977 > 67 Postel 8-Feb-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 30 & 31 January 1978 > 68 Postel 27-Jun-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 15 & 16 June 1978 > 69 Postel 9-Oct-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 18 & 19 September 1978 > 70 Postel 15-Dec-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978 > > As far as I know, none are available on the web... > > > E.G., there was a "Proposal for TCP 3" by Ray Tomlinson distributed at > > the 21 Oct 77 meeting of the TCP Working Group. > > That doesn't appear in the IEN Index, and a web search doesn't turn it up either. > > > However, searching for it turned up something valuable this site: > > http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/fool/cs370/ > > and in particular a link to this site (which I knew of, actually, but had > forgotten about): > > http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/digital_archive.html > > which contains a number of otherwise-unobtainable IEN's. > > So, for instance, it has a copy of IEN-21, "TCP 3 Specification" from January, > '78, which allows us to see that TCP/IP 3 had: > > - Separate IP and TCP headers > - Variable length IP addresses > > - There are smaller differeces (e.g IP - no checksum, no fragmentation > support; TCP - 32 bit ports, support for segments), but in general the rest > of it looks moderately similar to TCP/IP-4 > > So it looks as if my prior take: > > >> 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split (and included > >> "protocol numbers" to identify which transport protocol was being used > >> ..) but my guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem > >> to recall that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was > >> an editorial cleanup of 3.1 > > is likely accurate (although I wish we could recover a 3.1 spec to be sure). > (Note: the field called "Format" in the IP3 header is what we now call the > "protocol number".) > > > > TCP 3 was a paper specification driven by the experience gained from > > running TCP 2.5s. > > Ah, interesting. Do you concur with the position that TCP 2.5 (which is, > apparently, undocumented - except perhaps in those minutes) was basically the > same *protocol* as TCP 2 (which had fixed-length addresses, BTW), but with the > *implementation* split up into separate IP and TCP layers? > > > It was very shortlived (as I remember there was only one implementation > > .. all the rest of us skipped ahead to 4). > > Most interesting... > > > TCP 3's design was debugged by myriad email discussions and supplanted > > by TCP4 which actually got implemented by the prior 2.5 implementors. > > The 18-19 September 1978 meeting notes list the schedule for "TCP 4's > > ready for testing": > > Ah! I don't have those minutes, but it sounds like TCP/IP-4 was done before > then, then... > > > Prior to that, the TCP Meeting Notes of the 15-16 June 1978 meeting > > include: > > "Vint presented his goals for the meeting... > > The format of the TCP and INTERNET headers is to be firmly decided at > > this meeting ... " > > Well, not to cast too wary a glance at this (potentially valuable) data, but > no doubt the same thing had been said on other occasions... :-) > > > Of course, any "decision" in that timeframe has to be viewed in the > > context of the philosophy of "rough consensus and running code". > > Also a good point. > > > and later in the minutes: > > "The format of the headers was decided. [See "Latest Header Formats" > > IEN 44.]" > > Indeed, IEN-44, Postel, June, 78, "Latest Header Formats"... > > > This almost certainly happened on the second day - 16 June 1978. > > ... > > So, depending on whether you're interested in the birthday of the > > specification or of the actual working implementation... somewhere in > > summer-fall 1978 would make sense to me at least. I'd vote for 16 June > > 1978 - the day "the format of the headers was decided". > > That sounds like a good date to me, too - and I think the balance of the > evidence is that that is indeed the day the final TCP/IP-4 headers were > thrashed out. > > > > All of these messages/notes were emailed to > > [ISIE]TCP-INTERNET.List and made available for FTP as > > TCP-MEETING-NOTES.TXT on ISIE. Perhaps they live > > still on some moldy backup tapes somewhere... > > Hardcopy of all the IEN's was scanned in at some point at ISI, but they > haven't yet made it online (even as scans). Probably easier to go that way, > than try and find old machine-readable copies... > > > as I remember, for a time there were TWO working groups - the TCP > > Working Group, and the Internet Working Group .. > > The joke was that the TCP group kept concluding at their meetings that > > changes were needed in the Internet design, and vice versa. So Vint > > declared that they be merged, and wonder of wonders ... not long > > thereafter the headers merged as well. > > ?? But the headers are separate - are you talking about before TCP-2? > > > Thanks for the reply - I think we've got it mostly worked out, now... > > Noel > > > From touch at ISI.EDU Wed Mar 29 13:04:17 2006 From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:04:17 -0800 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <1143610162.22771.70.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> References: <20060329035527.4CADA86AFD@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <1143610162.22771.70.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Message-ID: <442AF651.5090405@isi.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jack Haverty wrote: > Hi Noel et al, > > Have the "TCP Meeting Notes" that Jon Postel distributed after each > quarterly meeting survived in electronic form? Unfortunately this is unlikely. I had tried to fish out his post announcing the NCP/TCP switchover (the flag day post), but found that the backup tapes had been discarded (since they weren't backing up an active system). I.e., backup != archive, at least not here ;-( Joe -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEKvZRE5f5cImnZrsRAif/AKDACtC8iCeLEdKftILaYvGe1og6bgCeL3N3 FOuBe8ozYtVZQ6F2g/hByxQ= =13dl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From braden at ISI.EDU Wed Mar 29 14:13:42 2006 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:13:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <200603292213.OAA18197@gra.isi.edu> *> *> This, alas, predates me slightly, and I have the history somewhatl muddled in *> my head. Noel, Don't worry about it. I was there, and my memory is somewhat muddled. *> *> And then there's the issue of version numbers: there are 2, 2.5, 3, 3.1 and *> 4. What I hear is that 2.5 was a "implementation split", in which the unified *> single header remained, but the code was split into two. That is correct. Curiously, you are the first person besides me who remembers it this way (I remember it vividly, splitting my IBM OS/360 TCP/IP code.) 3 was the first *> version that had the headers fully split (and included "protocol numbers" to *> identify which transport protocol was being used - see list below), but my *> guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall that My memory is that no defined version contained variable length addresses. Jon Postel and Danny Cohen, especially, argued forcibly for VL addresses, and the rest of us might have gone along, but Vint over-ruled this. His argument was that to make TCP/IP acceptable to the DoD (which meant, insulate TCP/IP from being swallowed by OSI) it had to be simple and straightforward to implement in hosts and routers, and to him that meant FL addresses. *> 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an editorial cleanup *> of 3.1 *> *> So: *> *> - Is that the right order for the split, and variable-length address *> removal? *> - Can we identify the version numbers (2.5, 3, 3.1, etc) which go with *> each version? *> - Can anyone identify the INWG meeting at which the latter happened? *> *> I can perhaps do so, when I have time. But as research progresses, things are not always so clear cut. Bob Braden From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Mar 29 22:02:33 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:02:33 -0800 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143698553.22771.200.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 09:13 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > So it looks as if my prior take: > > >> 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split (and > included > >> "protocol numbers" to identify which transport protocol was > being used > >> ..) but my guess is that it included variable-length addresses. > I seem > >> to recall that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, > and 4 was > >> an editorial cleanup of 3.1 > > is likely accurate (although I wish we could recover a 3.1 spec to be > sure). > (Note: the field called "Format" in the IP3 header is what we now call > the > "protocol number".) > > > > TCP 3 was a paper specification driven by the experience gained > from > > running TCP 2.5s. > > Ah, interesting. Do you concur with the position that TCP 2.5 (which > is, > apparently, undocumented - except perhaps in those minutes) was > basically the > same *protocol* as TCP 2 (which had fixed-length addresses, BTW), but > with the > *implementation* split up into separate IP and TCP layers? > Hmmm....precede everything I say with "If I remember correctly...", since 28 years is a long time. I think it's difficult to understand the history of "the Internet", without considering other things that were happening in the same timeframes. The TCP2.5->3->4 timeframe was also the period in which the Internet was being pretty forcefully pulled from a research project toward being an operational system. For example, some of the changes in the 3/3.1 timeframe related to adding fields for use by Autodin-II to implement security and precedence functionality. All of this eventually led to the January 1983 flag-day when Arpanet became a TCP-only net, as well as the DDN being TCP-based. I don't think it's quite so clean to say that 2.5 was the same as 2 but for the implementation split. There were quite a few minor tweaks going on continuously at the time, with functions such as URGENT, Rubber EOLs, and maybe even the state diagram (more states in the closing interactions). Some, maybe most, of these probably didn't affect the headers (except for new options), but did affect the behavior of the state machines. At the time, documentation was usually one of those things that you (or, even better, someone else) did after everything worked. Before that point, email and FTP ruled. So the TCP 2-morph-to-2.5+epsilon evolution was documented unfortunately mostly in emails and a file or two that you could FTP from ISI, and captured every 3 months in the working group, at least on the blackboard. One of Jon's emails lamented the fact that packet formats and especially state diagrams were so hard to create in ascii text. Also, it wasn't clear exactly *how* to specify a protocol with enough precision to guarantee interoperability but enough flexibility to permit a wide range of implementations in the many operating systems of that day (there wasn't even agreement on how many bits were in a byte...hence TCP's use of "octet"). The January 1979 "bakeoff" was where everything really got nailed down - we didn't get to leave the building until the different implementations could talk to each other. I have an email from Jon sent prior to the bakeoff, presenting a proposed new format for specifying TCP. The subject was "TCP pseudo-program" sent 8 Jan 1979 to a bunch of the TCP implementors, to review for discussion at the bakeoff meeting. It's a pseudo-program written in, as Jon puts it. "an obscure language (L10), and will be converted to a well known language before general circulation" This "proposed spec" was a file EVENT-ACTION.NLS.15 on ISIE. So, part of why all these versions weren't documented is probably that we didn't know quite how to do it. Errr, ummm, well, actually we were probably more inclined to write code.... I believe the TCP 3 specification attempted to capture the current snapshot of thinking for the next release, when the current running TCPs were all some variant of TCP 2. This was driven by the government's need to have a formal spec for regular contractors (not us research-weirdos-wearing-sandals) to implement as part of other "real world" projects such as Autodin-II. There was also a strong pressure to move the TCP technology into an operational environment (i.e., for government programs' use, not part of the research projects), in order to show that all of that research funding was actually producing some potentially useful results. I remember lots of muttering and protests (many from me at least) that "it's not ready yet" and "we have to figure out how to do xxx" Funny, the same thing happens in the commercial world when you need to hit a product ship deadline. But us researchers in those days didn't think that way and Vint had to beat us up a bit. So, I don't really remember much about the TCP3/3.1 from a specification point of view, since I don't think any of the "research" projects were implementing it. TCP 2 was the working base, and there were lots of discussions ongoing at meetings and especially email until key decision points like that June 1978 decision on the header formats. When it finally settled down and the implementations converged, TCP3 was already spoken for, so the new implementations were TCP4. Remember, at the time TCP was a research program which was supposed to be supplanted by the "real" technology from CCITT or ISO or whomever, which would of course use the experiences from the research community to influence the design of "the real thing". Everybody in the "real world" was working on their own Internetting technology which was of course going to be the ultimate unique winner - IBM, CCITT, ISO, Xerox, DEC, etc. etc. etc. Perhaps the TCP spec could be useful to prop up a leg on a wobbly desk or something...while the real internet design is being polished off. So, TCP 3 was specified, and contracts were awarded, and teams were formed to implement the beast. But, probably because TCP 3 was specified before it was implemented, there were some problems... So TCP 4 came into being, and that's what we all implemented for the Jan 1979 bakeoff. I remember at some meeting a discussion with one of the "real world" contractors (perhaps Gary Grossman at DTI?) who was lamenting the fact that his TCP was version 3, and he couldn't talk to anyone else, and couldn't change to TCP4 because of contractual constraints. I think TCP4 would have actually been TCP3, except that TCP3 was prematurely cast into specification and contracts without the now-traditional Internet rule of getting it to work first (aka "rough consensus and running code"). I don't think it's right to think of 4 as an "editorial cleanup" of 3. TCP 4 was the one that worked as the successor to TCP2.5, and to my mind it was actually finalized at the January 1979 bakeoff (we kept changing our individual implementations until it all worked and we could go get dinner). I don't think that the header formats changed much if at all from the June 1978 decision, but rather behavioral details were worked out - in particular I remember checksumming was a real nightmare to get right, given the "pseudo headers". I think the implementation atructural reworking had more to do with the demands of outside projects (e.g., voice) to be able to access the Internet as a datagram service rather than the TCP byte-stream service. So there was a need to make sure implementations provided user API access to IP packet functionality, not just TCP. Some people also had ideas of doing things like running TCP over X.25 (or other protocol), or running TP4 over IP, and other such fun. There were also various projects trying different implementation approached, such as putting TCP and/or IP in an outboard front-end processor (akin to the IBM 3270 approach I believe). Of course, TCP and IP are on-the-wire protocols, so it shouldn't matter at all how an implementation is architected, as long as the on-the-wire formats and behavior are correct. I remember a "manual TCP" that I used for debugging. A packet came in, and a DDT breakpoint fired. I looked at the packet in the buffer, looked at the spec and decided how to respond, patched the appropriate data into an output buffer, and executed the packet-send routine in DDT. Perfectly legal implementation. Great for debugging, but of course you had to set retransmission timeouts really long..... So, people may have been re-architecting their code at the time, but I don't think it was because of the evolution of the spec per se, since the spec shouldn't dictate implementation architecture. More likely is that the various packet-voice projects that Bob Kahn was expecially interested in was driving the need to access IP without TCP. Also, with TCP and IP separated, it just made sense to restructure an implementation so it was easier to debug one piece at a time. I have a listing of my Unix TCP4 from December 1978, and it also has the TCP and IP code split into different modules. But it was all assembler code and everything ran in a single process with common data areas so I think I split it purely for organizational reasons. I wonder when UDP came into being (i.e., implementation, not specification) to define a way of accessing that IP datagram functionality. I remember it happening at some meeting (was almost a no-brainer), but can't remember when. By the way, one last comment on the specification frenzy. TCP/IP was, and is, very permissive in terms of implementations. Jon's mantra of "be flexible in what you receive, be precise in what you send" (or something like that) led to some problems when specs went to implementation. For example, since IP datagrams can arrive in any order or be lost and retransmitted, a TCP implementation could be very very primitive and still "meet the spec". One implementation I encountered years ago used a minimalist approach - if the datagram you get isn't the next one you want in the sequence space, just discard it since it will get retransmitted anyway. Writing a spec, and awarding a contract, while avoiding such poor-quality products, was a pretty difficult problem..... Enough, my brain hurts. Hope this was interesting. /Jack From casner at acm.org Thu Mar 30 00:10:29 2006 From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:10:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060330000939.R87992@oak.packetdesign.com> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Jack Haverty wrote: > I wonder when UDP came into being (i.e., implementation, not > specification) to define a way of accessing that IP datagram > functionality. I remember it happening at some meeting (was almost a > no-brainer), but can't remember when. I remember this being a meeting at ISI, but I couldn't name a date. -- Steve From dpreed at reed.com Thu Mar 30 05:55:09 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:55:09 -0500 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060329233031.N87992@oak.packetdesign.com> References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <1143698553.22771.200.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> <20060329233031.N87992@oak.packetdesign.com> Message-ID: <442BE33D.90209@reed.com> UDP came into being at the same ISI (Marina del Rey) meeting where we split IP and TCP. They were part of the same argument, which was due to the demand from several of us to have "connectionless" datagrams for non-stream communications. I remember drawing on the board the IP packet and then the two alternative payload formats for TCP/IP and UDP/IP underneath them, and the common field layouts. We even talked at that meeting about the "virtual header" that would be included logical sharing in the TCP or UDP payload, because one of my personal agenda items was preserving the option to implement my officmate Steve Kent's proposal to do end-to-end encryption that he had submitted (and been shut down on including in TCP because of NSA's fear of crypto becoming common [Vint and Bob Kahn tell me that NSA would have killed the Internet program had they insisted]). Note that the virtual header was interesting, because stricter layer separation might have led to TCP using globally unique process port identifiers (as I argued for and implemented in DSP, the internetworking protocol I did at MIT in the summer of 1976), and the transport layer using addresses that named one or the other interface of a multi-home machine. Thus the virtual header was a compromise that entangled interface IDs with process identity, creating two possible identifiers for the same process port - one of many inelegancies that traded off efficiency (header size) for architectural simplicity. Stephen Casner wrote: > On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Jack Haverty wrote: > >> I wonder when UDP came into being (i.e., implementation, not >> specification) to define a way of accessing that IP datagram >> functionality. I remember it happening at some meeting (was almost a >> no-brainer), but can't remember when. >> > > I remember this being a meeting at ISI, but I couldn't name a date. > > -- Steve > > > From dpreed at reed.com Thu Mar 30 15:40:21 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:40:21 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another birthday? In-Reply-To: <442ADD71.9040709@reed.com> References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <442ADD71.9040709@reed.com> Message-ID: <442C6C65.6050809@reed.com> http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2006/anniversary/032706-routerman.html I'm not sure it's certain that Bill Yeager created the first multiprotocol router (so many things were going on at other places than Stanford), but in any case, Network World is doing "history" here. Anyone know what else was going on? From craig at aland.bbn.com Thu Mar 30 16:14:03 2006 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:14:03 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another birthday? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:40:21 EST." <442C6C65.6050809@reed.com> Message-ID: <20060331001403.2126F67@aland.bbn.com> Dunno about Yeager's router, but the first IP router (Ginny Strazisar's) came up in late 1976 -- so we're getting close to 30 years of routers. (This one ran TCP of course -- the IP-TCP split came later). Craig In message <442C6C65.6050809 at reed.com>, "David P. Reed" writes: >http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2006/anniversary/032706-routerman.html > >I'm not sure it's certain that Bill Yeager created the first >multiprotocol router (so many things were going on at other places than >Stanford), but in any case, Network World is doing "history" here. >Anyone know what else was going on? > > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Mar 30 16:35:53 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:35:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Another birthday? Message-ID: <20060331003553.49D6286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: "David P. Reed" > I'm not sure it's certain that Bill Yeager created the first > multiprotocol router It turns out that a reporter (a good one) from the San Jose Mercury, a guy called Pete Carey, did some lengthy research into this issue, which both Bill Yeager and I helped him with. Bill and I talked on the phone several times, trying to work out who did what when, but we were both kind of handicapped by the lack of much in the way of written stuff to jog out memories. I don't have the time/energy to give the whole song and dance now, but the basic concept is that Bill and I apparently came up with the idea for the multi-protocol router independently, at roughly the same time. I may have been slightly in advance of him (since I had a single-protocol router running before him, in March of '80 - no date is known for the first operation of my multi-protocol router, but it was around the end of that year), but it's very close. I have a file of a lot of email back and forth between the three of us (and some other people, like Mark Crispin and Jeff Mogul) during this effort, but I don't want to release any of it without permission. Peter never did get the space to do the whole story about the genesis of multi-protocol routing (which he kind of backed into, his real interest was in deflating some of Cisco's claims), but he did do a story which took on Cisco. I'm not sure if it mentioned that Proteon started selling MIT-derived multi-protocol routers in January of '86, some time before Cisco's' claimed first router sales. > but in any case, Network World is doing "history" here. Thanks for the tip. I'll drop them a line. > Anyone know what else was going on? I'd love to hear about any other multi-protocol router (i.e. a single box which handled multiple protocols in parallel - so-called "Ships in the Night" - *not* wrapping, which was already a common idea, with the X.25 stuff) work in the '80-'81 timeframe. Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Mar 30 16:41:48 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:41:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Another birthday? Message-ID: <20060331004148.2007586AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Craig Partridge > Dunno about Yeager's router Yeager's was in '81, IIRC. In any event, that's not what's special about Yeager's and mine - ours were notable as the first *multi-protocol* routers. (It's a somewhat dated notion now, because everyone just runs TCP/IP, but multi-protocol routers were an important stepping-stone to widespread network deployment back when there were lots of competing protocols (IP, CHAOS, XNS, etc) - multi-protocol routers meant you didn't have to have separate infrastructure for each protocol.) > the first IP router (Ginny Strazisar's) came up in late 1976 > so we're getting close to 30 years of routers. Yes, another important milestone. I wonder what the exact date was! Maybe a quarterly report pins it down? Noel From casner at acm.org Thu Mar 30 17:18:44 2006 From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:18:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] Another birthday? In-Reply-To: <20060331003553.49D6286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331003553.49D6286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <20060330171145.R98792@ash.packetdesign.com> On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Noel Chiappa wrote: > I'd love to hear about any other multi-protocol router (i.e. a single box > which handled multiple protocols in parallel - so-called "Ships in the Night" > - *not* wrapping, which was already a common idea, with the X.25 stuff) work > in the '80-'81 timeframe. Does ST (Stream Protocol, identified as 5 in the same bit positions as the IP version) count? That was done in 1981 for packet speech work on the Wideband Satellite Network. -- Steve From jack at 3kitty.org Thu Mar 30 18:48:47 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:48:47 -0800 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <442BE33D.90209@reed.com> References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <1143698553.22771.200.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> <20060329233031.N87992@oak.packetdesign.com> <442BE33D.90209@reed.com> Message-ID: <1143773327.22771.234.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Dave, Thanks for the pointer - I looked into the Meeting Notes for the ISI-hosted TCP meetings and the one on 30-31 January 1978 is probably where it happened or at least started. That was also where fragmentation was moved from TCP into IP. This is also when the TCP3 Draft Specification was out for comments, and a lot of the agenda looks like it focused on issues brought up by the spec, e.g., "Sequence Counting and Rubber Everythings" as one of the working groups, whose work eventually led to the TCP 4 that got implemented later in 1978. The agenda includes: " Multidestination Addressing, Broadcast, Datagrams, and Emission Control Mode - Cerf Discuss the multidestination and broadcast topic, set up a working group on it, and introduce the issue of incorporating a datagram mode and an emmission control mode of operation into TCP " Alas, the minutes only say: "Vint led a general discussion of these topics which turned up a lot of questions and few answers." I bet the UDP layout happened in that working group. The more I look through these minutes, the more good stuff I find. I'm going to try to scan them in and put them somewhere online if no one finds them before I get to it. On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 08:55 -0500, David P. Reed wrote: > UDP came into being at the same ISI (Marina del Rey) meeting where we > split IP and TCP. They were part of the same argument, which was due > to the demand from several of us to have "connectionless" datagrams for > non-stream communications. I remember drawing on the board the IP > packet and then the two alternative payload formats for TCP/IP and > UDP/IP underneath them, and the common field layouts. We even talked > at that meeting about the "virtual header" that would be included > logical sharing in the TCP or UDP payload, because one of my personal > agenda items was preserving the option to implement my officmate Steve > Kent's proposal to do end-to-end encryption that he had submitted (and > been shut down on including in TCP because of NSA's fear of crypto > becoming common [Vint and Bob Kahn tell me that NSA would have killed > the Internet program had they insisted]). Yes, the security issues and related projects are a good example of the "other things going on at the same time" that influenced the TCP architecture. > > Note that the virtual header was interesting, because stricter layer > separation might have led to TCP using globally unique process port > identifiers (as I argued for and implemented in DSP, the internetworking > protocol I did at MIT in the summer of 1976), and the transport layer > using addresses that named one or the other interface of a multi-home > machine. Thus the virtual header was a compromise that entangled > interface IDs with process identity, creating two possible identifiers > for the same process port - one of many inelegancies that traded off > efficiency (header size) for architectural simplicity. Yep, I agree. Efficiency was a big issue. I remember some meeting where we laid out in excruciating detail how TCP would affect the efficiency of those expensive leased lines that interconnected all the Arpanet IMPs. Much of the traffic on the Arpanet was people using Telnet to read their mail, or compose replies. Character-at-a-time remote-echo operation was a major downer. After you added up the TCP header, the IP header, options and the like, and adjusted for the fact that long-haul leased lines had to be operated at less than 50% utilization to avoid queueing delays, something like 98-99% of the line was overhead. So that $3000/month leased line was "wasting" $2950/month in the eyes of beancounters. I remember also being somewhat disturbed at the similar inelegance of the checksumming algorithm, which didn't protect much at all against common failures. But a better algorithm needed much more computer power, and we didn't have all that much to start with....not to mention memory for more code. Computer technology was different then. Well, maybe not, now that everyone seems to want to move movies and such all over the planet and those OC-xx lines start to look pretty tiny, and my 3 GHz machine seems as slow as my old <1MHz PDP-11. I think that lots of TCP architectural decisions were driven by such pragmatic concerns, with the expectation of "doing it right" in the next version, which has taken far longer than anyone probably guessed. I'm truly astonished at how long TCP has served and how big the Internet has grown. > > > Stephen Casner wrote: > > On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Jack Haverty wrote: > > > >> I wonder when UDP came into being (i.e., implementation, not > >> specification) to define a way of accessing that IP datagram > >> functionality. I remember it happening at some meeting (was almost a > >> no-brainer), but can't remember when. > >> > > > > I remember this being a meeting at ISI, but I couldn't name a date. > > > > -- Steve > > > > > > > > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Mar 30 19:06:36 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:06:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration) Message-ID: <20060331030636.9B3F286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Stephen Casner >> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Jack Haverty wrote: >> I wonder when UDP came into being (i.e., implementation, not >> specification) to define a way of accessing that IP datagram >> functionality. I remember it happening at some meeting (was >> almost a no-brainer), but can't remember when. > I remember this being a meeting at ISI, but I couldn't name a date. Hmm, I seem to recall actually being there for that one, because I seem to recall the details of UDP being hashed out at a meeting, shortly after which Dave Reed did the spec. I think it must have been the first ISI meeting I was at - I wish I could say which one that was! (I seem to recall my first ISI meeting was a late-fall or winter meeting...) Looking at the IEN list, the UDP spec is: 71 Reed 21-Jan-79 User Datagram Protocol So, assuming that the meeting at which that happened was slightly before then, and looking at the list of meeting minutes dates in the fall of 1978 in the IEN Index, I think it was likely either the 18-19 September TCP meeting, the 30-31 October Internet meeting, or the 4 December TCP meeting - can any confirm that one of those meetings was at ISI? (And I wish we had an accurate list of the meeting dates/locations! One more thing to try and crank out sometime...) Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Mar 30 19:16:39 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:16:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration) Message-ID: <20060331031639.D0B1486AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: "David P. Reed" > UDP came into being at the same ISI (Marina del Rey) meeting where we > split IP and TCP. ... I remember drawing on the board the IP packet and > then the two alternative payload formats for TCP/IP and UDP/IP > underneath them, and the common field layouts. We even talked at that > meeting about the "virtual header" that would be included logical > sharing in the TCP or UDP payload, because one of my personal agenda > items was preserving the option to implement my officmate Steve Kent's > proposal to do end-to-end encryption that he had submitted David, I wonder, are you conflating two different meetings in your memory? As far as I can tell, TCP and IP were split sometime at the end of '77, because the TCP-3 spec (in which they were separated) came out in January 1978 (IEN-21, Cerf, Jan-78 "TCP 3 Specification"). However, the UDP spec didn't come out until January 1979 (IEN-71, Reed, 21-Jan-79, "User Datagram Protocol") - over a year later. Also, I do seem to recall the final format for UDP being hashed out at a meeting I was at, shortly before you published the spec. Is it possible that the *basic concept* of UDP was worked out at one meeting (at the time of the split), and the final *details* of the protocol were hashed out at a much later meeting (shortly before the spec was published)? Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Mar 30 19:34:03 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:34:03 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration Message-ID: <20060331033403.BEF5B86AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jack Haverty >> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 09:13 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> So it looks as if my prior take: >>> 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split ... but my >>> guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall >>> that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an >>> editorial cleanup of 3.1 .>> is likely accurate (although I wish we could recover a 3.1 spec to be >> sure). > I don't think it's right to think of 4 as an "editorial cleanup" of 3. Ah, I didn't say it was a cleanup of 3, I said it was a cleanup of 3.1! The two were (I'm fairly sure) very different - TCP/IP-3 had variable-length addresses, and I'm pretty sure that 3.1 had the fixed-length 4-byte addresses. TCP/IP 3 really did have variable-length addresses. Here's an excerpt from IEN-21, "TCP 3 Specification" (which also contains the IP specification); it says, in section 4.3.1 "Internetwork Packet Format": An address is a variable length quantity (in multiples of octets). It is intended for the first octet of an address to be interpreted as a network identifier, and that the rest of the address identifies a host within that network. ... DAL: 4 bits Destination Address Length in octets. SAL: 4 bits Source Address Length in octets. Destination: variable The destination address, DAL octets in length. Source: variable The source address, SAL octets in length. Figure 4.3-1 in that document shows this all too. Noel From jack at 3kitty.org Thu Mar 30 21:57:04 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 21:57:04 -0800 Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration) In-Reply-To: <20060331030636.9B3F286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331030636.9B3F286AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143784624.22771.248.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 22:06 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > (And I wish we had an accurate list of the meeting dates/locations! > One more > thing to try and crank out sometime...) >From Jon's TCP Meeting Reports: 14-15 July 1977 - MIT-LCS 13-14 Oct 1977 - SRI 30-31 January 1978 - ISI 15-16 June 1978 - MIT-LCS 18-19 Sep 1978 - SRI 4-5 Dec 1978 - ARPA(12/4) & DCEC(12/5) for the first interoperability demonstrations between dissimilar implementations, with less than stellar results, motivating the "bakeoff" in January. 27&29-30 January 1979 - ISI (includes Saturday TCP Bakeoff) Note the general rule, perhaps the first (undocumented) Internet Standard: summer meetings on the East Coast, possible-cold-weather-season on the West Coast. This was altered slightly for Internet Meeting Protocol version 2, when meetings in Europe were added. DCEC/ARPA must have been a checksum error... That's all that are in my notebook. Gotta go digging to see if there are more notebooks somewhere up in the garage loft... /Jack From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Mar 31 05:33:02 2006 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:33:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] TCP/IP Meeting dates (Was: UDP creation) Message-ID: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Jack Haverty >> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 22:06 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> (And I wish we had an accurate list of the meeting dates/locations! >> One more thing to try and crank out sometime...) I started to crank one out, based on the data in the IEN index, and this: > From Jon's TCP Meeting Reports: helped out some. Here's what I have so far: IEN Author Published Meeting - Date 3* Postel 18-Aug-77 Internet Meeting Notes - 15 August 1977 - ISI 22 Postel 3-Feb-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 1 February 1978 - UCLA? 33 Bennett 15-May-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 1-2 May 1978 - UCL? 53 Postel 21-Aug-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 2-4 August 1978 - LL? 63 Postel 14-Nov-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 30-31 October 1978 76 Postel 7-Feb-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 25-26 January 1979 - ISI?? 106 Postel 17-May-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 8-11 May 1979 121* Postel 25-Oct-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 10-13 September 1979 - UCL 134* Postel 29-Feb-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 4-6 February 1980 - SRI 145* Postel 29-May-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 14-15 May 1980 - MIT 160* Postel 7-Nov-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 7-9 October 1980 - RSRE 175* Postel 13-Mar-81 Internet Meeting Notes - 28-30 January 1981 - ISI 64 Sunshine 12-Mar-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 12 March 1977 65 Postel 5-Aug-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 14-15 July 1977 - MIT 66 Postel 21-Oct-77 TCP Meeting Notes - 13-14 October 1977 - SRI 67 Postel 8-Feb-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 30-31 January 1978 - ISI 68 Postel 27-Jun-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 15-16 June 1978 - MIT 69 Postel 9-Oct-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 18-19 September 1978 - SRI 70 Postel 15-Dec-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978 - ARPA 77 Postel 7-Feb-79 TCP Meeting Notes - 29 January 1979 - ISI 60 Davidson 17-Oct-78 Boston Area Meeting of the Internet Working Group to Discuss Interactions with Gateways 104* Strazisar 12-Mar-79 Minutes of the Fault Isolation Meeting - BBN For meetings marked with a "*", the IEN minutes are online. The locations marked with "?" are guesses for location, based on the list of future meetings in IEN-3. > 27&29-30 January 1979 - ISI (includes Saturday TCP Bakeoff) I think remember that one! I certainly remember us all being in the ISI offices on a Saturday doing a bakeoff, with nobody else around. (Although I'd have to check the list of attendees to make sure that I'm not confusing it with some other ISI meeting...) And I'll bet that 25-26 January 1979 Internet meeting was at ISI too... But I wonder why the dates are 27&29-30, when the IEN title just says 29? Hmm, "cal 1 1979" says that for January 1979, the 27th was a Saturday, and the other two Monday-Tuesday. Hmmm... > That's all that are in my notebook. Gotta go digging to see if there > are more notebooks somewhere up in the garage loft... Maybe the list of IEN numbers (above) for the others will help? Noel From craig at aland.bbn.com Fri Mar 31 06:27:03 2006 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:27:03 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another birthday? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:18:44 PST." <20060330171145.R98792@ash.packetdesign.com> Message-ID: <20060331142703.CFAE368@aland.bbn.com> Hi Steve: Would this have been on the PSAT (Pluribus Satellite IMP) or the attached routers, or both? If the attached router, any memory of which one? The older BBN (Strasizar) routers were being phased out in 1981 for the new BBN (Hinden/Brescia) routers/mailbridges (firewalls). Thanks! Craig PS: Folks on the list may be interested to know that the January-March 2006 issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing is a special edition on BBN and includes a history of post-ARPANET networking work at BBN written by Steve Blumenthal and myself (with *lots* of help). In message <20060330171145.R98792 at ash.packetdesign.com>, Stephen Casner writes: >On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> I'd love to hear about any other multi-protocol router (i.e. a single box >> which handled multiple protocols in parallel - so-called "Ships in the Night >" >> - *not* wrapping, which was already a common idea, with the X.25 stuff) work >> in the '80-'81 timeframe. > >Does ST (Stream Protocol, identified as 5 in the same bit positions as >the IP version) count? That was done in 1981 for packet speech work >on the Wideband Satellite Network. > > -- Steve From casner at acm.org Fri Mar 31 07:59:05 2006 From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:59:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] Another birthday? In-Reply-To: <20060331142703.CFAE368@aland.bbn.com> References: <20060331142703.CFAE368@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <20060331075157.P88506@oak.packetdesign.com> Craig, > Would this have been on the PSAT (Pluribus Satellite IMP) or the attached > routers, or both? If the attached router, any memory of which one? The > older BBN (Strasizar) routers were being phased out in 1981 for the new > BBN (Hinden/Brescia) routers/mailbridges (firewalls). The IP+ST gateway was implemented by Lincoln Lab on a PDP 11/44, I think primarily by Willie Kantrowitz. It communicated with the PSAT using a host-IMP protocol, the details of which I've forgotten, to initiate bandwidth reservations on the satellite channel for ST streams. -- Steve > In message <20060330171145.R98792 at ash.packetdesign.com>, Stephen Casner writes: > > >On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > > >> I'd love to hear about any other multi-protocol router (i.e. a single box > >> which handled multiple protocols in parallel - so-called "Ships in the Night > >" > >> - *not* wrapping, which was already a common idea, with the X.25 stuff) work > >> in the '80-'81 timeframe. > > > >Does ST (Stream Protocol, identified as 5 in the same bit positions as > >the IP version) count? That was done in 1981 for packet speech work > >on the Wideband Satellite Network. > > > > -- Steve From dpreed at reed.com Fri Mar 31 08:46:59 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:46:59 -0500 Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration) In-Reply-To: <20060331031639.D0B1486AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331031639.D0B1486AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <442D5D03.9070509@reed.com> I didn't conflate the meetings - in fact, I believe the '77 meeting is the one I was describing from memory. There was a basic agreement on a UDP at the first meeting. Since no one was implementing UDP, there was no need for a spec at that point. TCP was being split, so there was a need to spec the split enough so that the prototype which was in development at the time could continue to evolve. There was lots of discussion about the details of IP addresses, routing, what became the urgent pointer in TCP, the 3-way handshake and state machine for TCP, etc. I recall the spec of UDP (which is barely worthy of the name, it's so simple in concept) being written as part of a cleanup process, pushed by Postel to close some loose ends. Remember the point of UDP was to support such things as packet speech, message exchange protocols like DNS, ... and we were still far from understanding what might need to be in UDP for such things. So a long delay from conception to spec'ing was actually what happened. I personally focused 99% of my time on TCP and IP issues in this timeframe and so did everyone else. UDP was, to me, really a negotiating placeholder, something I was very happy we won in the negotiations leading up to it because my own research interest was in intercomputer message-exchange protocols - a general purpose solution that would be usable by lots of non-virtual-circuit apps. All it needed was demuxing (ports). In fact, I would have preferred (following my more extreme version of the E2E principle or principle of minimum mechanism) if there weren't even a checksum in the spec'ed format, so that error-recovery could have been left to layers on top (I recall I had "fantasies" at the time of putting end-to-end and inter-packet ECC's inside a crypto-based wrapper, so that only the ports and encrypted data would be exposed on the network. Of course that wasn't a big deal, because 4 bytes wasted is not a battle I wanted to fight, and you didn't have to actually compute or check the UDP checksum). Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: "David P. Reed" > > > UDP came into being at the same ISI (Marina del Rey) meeting where we > > split IP and TCP. ... I remember drawing on the board the IP packet and > > then the two alternative payload formats for TCP/IP and UDP/IP > > underneath them, and the common field layouts. We even talked at that > > meeting about the "virtual header" that would be included logical > > sharing in the TCP or UDP payload, because one of my personal agenda > > items was preserving the option to implement my officmate Steve Kent's > > proposal to do end-to-end encryption that he had submitted > > David, I wonder, are you conflating two different meetings in your memory? > > As far as I can tell, TCP and IP were split sometime at the end of '77, > because the TCP-3 spec (in which they were separated) came out in January 1978 > (IEN-21, Cerf, Jan-78 "TCP 3 Specification"). > > However, the UDP spec didn't come out until January 1979 (IEN-71, Reed, > 21-Jan-79, "User Datagram Protocol") - over a year later. > > Also, I do seem to recall the final format for UDP being hashed out at a > meeting I was at, shortly before you published the spec. > > Is it possible that the *basic concept* of UDP was worked out at one meeting > (at the time of the split), and the final *details* of the protocol were > hashed out at a much later meeting (shortly before the spec was published)? > > Noel > > > From dpreed at reed.com Fri Mar 31 08:49:23 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:49:23 -0500 Subject: [ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration In-Reply-To: <20060331033403.BEF5B86AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331033403.BEF5B86AE8@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <442D5D93.60100@reed.com> Yup, I remember the battle about variable length addresses well. One that I was on the losing side of, since the folks doing implementations said it would be enormously expensive to have fields that didn't end on 32-bit word boundaries. Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Jack Haverty > > >> On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 09:13 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> So it looks as if my prior take: > > >>> 3 was the first version that had the headers fully split ... but my > >>> guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall > >>> that 3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an > >>> editorial cleanup of 3.1 > > .>> is likely accurate (although I wish we could recover a 3.1 spec to be > >> sure). > > > I don't think it's right to think of 4 as an "editorial cleanup" of 3. > > Ah, I didn't say it was a cleanup of 3, I said it was a cleanup of 3.1! The > two were (I'm fairly sure) very different - TCP/IP-3 had variable-length > addresses, and I'm pretty sure that 3.1 had the fixed-length 4-byte addresses. > > > TCP/IP 3 really did have variable-length addresses. Here's an excerpt from > IEN-21, "TCP 3 Specification" (which also contains the IP specification); it > says, in section 4.3.1 "Internetwork Packet Format": > > An address is a variable length quantity (in multiples of octets). It is > intended for the first octet of an address to be interpreted as a network > identifier, and that the rest of the address identifies a host within that > network. > > ... > > > DAL: 4 bits > Destination Address Length in octets. > SAL: 4 bits > Source Address Length in octets. > Destination: variable > The destination address, DAL octets in length. > Source: variable > The source address, SAL octets in length. > > Figure 4.3-1 in that document shows this all too. > > Noel > > > From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Mar 31 09:00:57 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:00:57 -0800 Subject: [ih] TCP/IP Meeting dates (Was: UDP creation) In-Reply-To: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143824458.22771.267.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> The "Bakeoff" was on Saturday, prior to the official meeting, so that we could have something to report at the meeting. It was important to get everyone in one place so we could talk to each other easily, and the TCP Meeting was a convenient venue where everyone was going to be at the same place anyway, so we just came early. Jon picked Saturday because the ISI offices were mostly deserted, so we all spread out in various offices along a hallway, using the terminals to telnet into our home machines across the Arpanet and try the experiments. We could shout at each other down the corridor. Jon had set up a bunch of goals, like establishing a connection with someone else, and assigned points for each accomplishment. You even got points for doing things like crashing the other guy's system. I remember at first no one could talk to anyone else, because each implementation seemed to have its own ideas about what was a correct checksum and was rejecting all incoming packets. So we all turned off checksumming, and proceeded to get the basic interactions (SYN, ACK, etc.) to work. Then checksumming was debugged - getting the exact details of which fields were included in each checksum calculation and getting the byte-ordering correct. After that worked, checksumming was turned back on. A few hours later, I remember watching Bill Plummer (PDP-10 TCP) with his hand poised over the carriage-return key. Bill yelled down the hall to Dave Clark (Multics TCP) - "Hey Dave, can you turn off your checksumming again for a minute?" A bit later, Dave said "OK!", and Bill hit the carriage return key. A few seconds later ... Dave yelled "Hey, Multics just crashed!" and Bill whooped "Gotcha!" A discussion of the legality of getting points for crashing a system by subterfuge ensued, but doesn't appear in the minutes. Anyway, that was the Saturday meeting... /Jack On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 08:33 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > 27&29-30 January 1979 - ISI (includes Saturday TCP Bakeoff) > > I think remember that one! I certainly remember us all being in the > ISI > offices on a Saturday doing a bakeoff, with nobody else around. > (Although I'd > have to check the list of attendees to make sure that I'm not > confusing it > with some other ISI meeting...) And I'll bet that 25-26 January 1979 > Internet > meeting was at ISI too... > > But I wonder why the dates are 27&29-30, when the IEN title just says > 29? > Hmm, "cal 1 1979" says that for January 1979, the 27th was a Saturday, > and > the other two Monday-Tuesday. Hmmm... > From dpreed at reed.com Fri Mar 31 09:05:45 2006 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:05:45 -0500 Subject: [ih] TCP/IP Meeting dates (Was: UDP creation) In-Reply-To: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <442D6169.80102@reed.com> Noel - you and I didn't overlap at these meetings much in the early days - remember I was involved very early (1976- 78(?) when Dave Clark assumed my role representing MIT). I don't know whether there were IEN's for all of those meetings - in fact the group split sometime after that into a group focused on IP, addresses, routing, gateways and a group focused on TCP, urgent pointers, state machines, etc.. Many attended both sets of meetings. I *do* remember a meeting in DC at L'Enfant Plaza in 1977, and that location is not on your list - it was warm enough to walk outside without a coat, though. I also am very sure about the location of the TCP/IP-split-decision meeting, which we stayed in Marina del Rey for,a nd I have always remembered it was in 1977 - I'm pretty sure that would have been called ISI, but maybe UCLA? Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Jack Haverty > > >> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 22:06 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > >> (And I wish we had an accurate list of the meeting dates/locations! > >> One more thing to try and crank out sometime...) > > I started to crank one out, based on the data in the IEN index, and this: > > > From Jon's TCP Meeting Reports: > > helped out some. Here's what I have so far: > > > IEN Author Published Meeting - Date > > 3* Postel 18-Aug-77 Internet Meeting Notes - 15 August 1977 - ISI > 22 Postel 3-Feb-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 1 February 1978 - UCLA? > 33 Bennett 15-May-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 1-2 May 1978 - UCL? > 53 Postel 21-Aug-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 2-4 August 1978 - LL? > 63 Postel 14-Nov-78 Internet Meeting Notes - 30-31 October 1978 > 76 Postel 7-Feb-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 25-26 January 1979 - ISI?? > 106 Postel 17-May-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 8-11 May 1979 > 121* Postel 25-Oct-79 Internet Meeting Notes - 10-13 September 1979 - UCL > 134* Postel 29-Feb-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 4-6 February 1980 - SRI > 145* Postel 29-May-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 14-15 May 1980 - MIT > 160* Postel 7-Nov-80 Internet Meeting Notes - 7-9 October 1980 - RSRE > 175* Postel 13-Mar-81 Internet Meeting Notes - 28-30 January 1981 - ISI > > 64 Sunshine 12-Mar-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 12 March 1977 > 65 Postel 5-Aug-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 14-15 July 1977 - MIT > 66 Postel 21-Oct-77 TCP Meeting Notes - 13-14 October 1977 - SRI > 67 Postel 8-Feb-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 30-31 January 1978 - ISI > 68 Postel 27-Jun-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 15-16 June 1978 - MIT > 69 Postel 9-Oct-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 18-19 September 1978 - SRI > 70 Postel 15-Dec-78 TCP Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978 - ARPA > 77 Postel 7-Feb-79 TCP Meeting Notes - 29 January 1979 - ISI > > 60 Davidson 17-Oct-78 Boston Area Meeting of the Internet Working Group > to Discuss Interactions with Gateways > > 104* Strazisar 12-Mar-79 Minutes of the Fault Isolation Meeting - BBN > > For meetings marked with a "*", the IEN minutes are online. The locations > marked with "?" are guesses for location, based on the list of future meetings > in IEN-3. > > > > 27&29-30 January 1979 - ISI (includes Saturday TCP Bakeoff) > > I think remember that one! I certainly remember us all being in the ISI > offices on a Saturday doing a bakeoff, with nobody else around. (Although I'd > have to check the list of attendees to make sure that I'm not confusing it > with some other ISI meeting...) And I'll bet that 25-26 January 1979 Internet > meeting was at ISI too... > > But I wonder why the dates are 27&29-30, when the IEN title just says 29? > Hmm, "cal 1 1979" says that for January 1979, the 27th was a Saturday, and > the other two Monday-Tuesday. Hmmm... > > > That's all that are in my notebook. Gotta go digging to see if there > > are more notebooks somewhere up in the garage loft... > > Maybe the list of IEN numbers (above) for the others will help? > > Noel > > > From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Mar 31 17:28:24 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:28:24 -0800 Subject: [ih] TCP/IP Meeting dates (Was: UDP creation) In-Reply-To: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143854904.22771.291.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 08:33 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > Maybe the list of IEN numbers (above) for the others will help? Actually, all of the "TCP Meeting Notes" that I have are actually the emails that Jon sent out a week or so after the meeting. There is no "IEN xx" anywhere on them. That must have been added later. /Jack From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Mar 31 17:35:07 2006 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:35:07 -0800 Subject: [ih] TCP/IP Meeting dates (Was: UDP creation) In-Reply-To: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20060331133302.A7C7586ADB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <1143855307.22771.296.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org> Noel - you (and also Dave Clark) are in the "List of Attendees" representing MIT at the TCP Meeting on Monday, 29 January 1979 at ISI. There were 24 people in all. So you were almost certainly around on the preceding Saturday. /Jack On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 08:33 -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > 27&29-30 January 1979 - ISI (includes Saturday TCP Bakeoff) > > I think remember that one! I certainly remember us all being in the > ISI > offices on a Saturday doing a bakeoff, with nobody else around. > (Although I'd > have to check the list of attendees to make sure that I'm not > confusing it > with some other ISI meeting...) And I'll bet that 25-26 January 1979 > Internet > meeting was at ISI too... >