[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 15, Issue 4

[Bob Braden]

  *> 
  *>     > 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".
  *> 

Noel,

We blame you for everything else, why not this... ;-)

  *> 
  *>     > 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...
  *> 

Just for fun, I just did a grep in ~in-notes/ien/, and got exactly one
hit (among those that are online): IEN178, April 1981, by Carl Sunshine.

        [8].   Another  approach  might be to return  a special  error
        message to the neighboring router forcing it to choose another
        entry    point    to     the     failed     network.      This
        backup-and-try-alternate  method has been implemented for call
        setup in Telenet [19].

Bob Braden