[ih] origins of the term "router"

[John Day]

The router term definitely showed up after the gateway term.  My 
vague recollection was that it started as a "marketing" term.  But it 
is vague.

Was there an attempt to draw a distinction between boxes that 
converted between different protocols at the same layer and those 
that had a common protocol but different protocols at a lower layer?

Being a relativist, I remember I didn't like having different terms 
for the same thing just because it was at a different layer!

Take care,
John



At 18:49 -0400 2006/05/16, Vint Cerf wrote:
>There were bridges associated with LANs that would have emerged in the early
>1980s - think of Judy Estrin's Bridge Corp by way of example. Gateway was
>the term Bob and I used in our 1974 paper. Cisco shows up, what, about 1984?
>I do have the distinct recollection of believing that cisco made first use
>of the term but I was largely focused on MCI Mail from late 1982-mid-1986
>and not paying a lot of attention to Internet during that period.
>
>Noel, when did the first Proteon routers show up?
>
>  I can confirm that we called the IMPs "packet switching" and what they did
>"packet switching" with regard to the ARPANET. The nodes of the Packet Radio
>and Packet Satellite network got similar nomenclature.
>
>vint
>
>
>Vinton G Cerf
>Chief Internet Evangelist
>Google
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>vint at google.com
>www.google.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: internet-history-bounces at postel.org
>[mailto:internet-history-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa
>Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 5:56 PM
>To: internet-history at postel.org
>Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
>Subject: Re: [ih] origins of the term "router"
>
>     > From: "Tim Moors" <t.moors at unsw.edu.au>
>
>     > I'm wondering if some of the sages on this mailing list might be able
>     > to shed some light on the origins of the term "router"
>
>This is definitely the right place!
>
>In particular, I get a share (exactly how large I will let others judge) of
>the credit (blame?) for explicitly pushing the term "router" as a desirable
>replacement for "gateway".
>
>     > in particular why it was introduced as a term distinct from "(packet)
>     > switch" or "gateway"?
>
>We never called them "packet switches" much, because the latter is too broad
>a term: ARPAnet IMP's are packet switches too, but at a different level of
>abstraction.
>
>The term "gateway" is what we originally called them, but with the rise of
>application-layer "gateways" (principally email) to mediate between all the
>different flavours of protocol families (remember, this was before TCP/IP
>killed everything else off), we (well, I) found our use of the term
>"gateway"
>to be confusing when trying to explain TCP/IP to outsiders. So I started
>pushing to replace it with "router". I have no idea, at this distance, where
>"router" came from, or who coined it, alas. Others may have done the same,
>not sure at this distance.
>
>(There's probably some old IETF or TCP-IP email archive which gives more
>detail, if you can find it. I seem to recall writing email about it to such
>lists on a number of occasions.)
>
>
>     > The earliest reference to "router" that I can find in RFCs is in
>RFC753
>     > from March 1979, which discusses message (email) routers
>
>That was an outlier; probably not important.
>
>     > The first reference to routers in the context of the "network layer"
>     > appears in the April 1984 "Gateway SIG Meeting Notes" (RFC 898)
>
>Have you looked in the Internet Meeting notes (in the IEN series, all
>available online, although only some are in ASCII)? That's probably the best
>place to look...
>
>     > RFC 1001 also mentions network layer routers, while RFC 1009 from June
>     > 1987 seems to be the first to define and discuss technical details of
>     > such routers:
>
>Well, before that there wasn't really a "what functionality is in a router"
>document, although they were of course being built. Everyone who was
>building them was part of the IETF (or predecessor) community, and we just
>knew which parts of 791, 792, etc, etc, etc needed to be included.
>
>
>     > Is there, perhaps, a relationship between the use of the term "router"
>     > and activity of that juggernaut of routers, Cisco?
>
>Not that I recall, but the adoption of the term, and the start of Cisco, wer
>*very* roughly contemporaneous - but I *think* the term switch predated
>Cisco somewhat. I'd have to check the details to be sure, but the people who
>did Cisco were not the people who pushed the adoption of the term.
>
>	Noel