[ih] A laugh and a question

[David L. Mills]

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
>>
>>
>>
>>