[ih] A laugh and a question

[David L. Mills]

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