From mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de Mon Jan 11 05:14:51 2010 From: mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Matthias_B=E4rwolff?=) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:14:51 +0100 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? Message-ID: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de> Hi, I found conflicting explanation: In of 1977 they use "telecommunications network"; however, Oxford proposes "computing teletype network", TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Forouzan uses "terminal network"; and suggests "Network Virtual Terminal Protocol". I briefly checked RFC 15, and 97, neither of which explains the meaning of the term telnet. Thanks for your brief clarifications and suggestions. Matthias/ / -- Matthias B?rwolff www.b?rwolff.de From vint at google.com Mon Jan 11 05:39:04 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:39:04 -0500 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? In-Reply-To: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de> References: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de> Message-ID: <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com> I think "telecommunication network" is probably the term I recall associating with the term "TELNET" - that was because it was used to make it seem as if a "terminal" (a fairly dumb device) connected directly to a mainframe computer on the ARPANET was actually just connected to a telecom network that linked the destination mainframe (host) to the terminal. The host to which the terminal directly connected was rendered invisible with the aid of the TELNET protocols running in both the client host and the server host. vint On Jan 11, 2010, at 8:14 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: > Hi, > > I found conflicting explanation: In > of 1977 they use > "telecommunications network"; however, Oxford proposes "computing > teletype network", TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Forouzan uses "terminal > network"; and suggests > "Network Virtual Terminal Protocol". > > I briefly checked RFC 15, and 97, neither of which explains the > meaning > of the term telnet. > > Thanks for your brief clarifications and suggestions. > > Matthias/ > > / > > -- > Matthias B?rwolff > www.b?rwolff.de > From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Jan 11 06:25:14 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:25:14 -0500 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? In-Reply-To: <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com> References: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de> <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com> Message-ID: Yes, that is my recollection as well, Telecommunications Network. And just for the record, contrary to what many textbooks say, the TELNET protocol is not a remote login protocol. It is a terminal device driver protocol. It is an important distinction. One of the common applications built using the telnet protocol is a remote login application. We were a bit sloppy giving them the same name. The telnet protocol is used in other applications as well. We knew the difference, but it seems a lot of textbook authors didn't. ;-) Take care, John At 8:39 -0500 2010/01/11, Vint Cerf wrote: >I think "telecommunication network" is probably the term I recall >associating with the term "TELNET" - > >that was because it was used to make it seem as if a "terminal" >(a fairly dumb device) connected directly to a mainframe computer >on the ARPANET was actually just connected to a telecom network >that linked the destination mainframe (host) to the terminal. >The host to which the terminal directly connected was rendered >invisible with the aid of the TELNET protocols running in both >the client host and the server host. > >vint > > >On Jan 11, 2010, at 8:14 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: > >>Hi, >> >>I found conflicting explanation: In >> of 1977 they use >>"telecommunications network"; however, Oxford proposes "computing >>teletype network", TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Forouzan uses "terminal >>network"; and suggests >>"Network Virtual Terminal Protocol". >> >>I briefly checked RFC 15, and 97, neither of which explains the meaning >>of the term telnet. >> >>Thanks for your brief clarifications and suggestions. >> >>Matthias/ >> >>/ >> >>-- >>Matthias B?rwolff >>www.b?rwolff.de From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Jan 11 07:07:04 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:07:04 -0800 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? In-Reply-To: <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com> References: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de> <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com> Message-ID: <4B4B3E98.7000607@dcrocker.net> I remember Jon Postel's being quite insistent that it did not explicitly stand for anything. When guessing, I remember "telephone network" being applied to the acronym, since it was replacing the dial-up function that remote terminal access usually relied on, in those days. d/ On 1/11/2010 5:39 AM, Vint Cerf wrote: > I think "telecommunication network" is probably the term I recall > associating with the term "TELNET" - > > that was because it was used to make it seem as if a "terminal" > (a fairly dumb device) connected directly to a mainframe computer > on the ARPANET was actually just connected to a telecom network > that linked the destination mainframe (host) to the terminal. > The host to which the terminal directly connected was rendered > invisible with the aid of the TELNET protocols running in both > the client host and the server host. > > vint > > > On Jan 11, 2010, at 8:14 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I found conflicting explanation: In >> of 1977 they use >> "telecommunications network"; however, Oxford proposes "computing >> teletype network", TCP/IP Protocol Suite by Forouzan uses "terminal >> network"; and suggests >> "Network Virtual Terminal Protocol". >> >> I briefly checked RFC 15, and 97, neither of which explains the meaning >> of the term telnet. >> >> Thanks for your brief clarifications and suggestions. >> >> Matthias/ >> >> / >> >> -- >> Matthias B?rwolff >> www.b?rwolff.de >> > > -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Mon Jan 11 07:59:18 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:59:18 -0500 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? In-Reply-To: References: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com>, Message-ID: <4B4B0486.15482.421F6CB7@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 11 Jan 2010 at 9:25, John Day wrote: > And just for the record, contrary to what many > textbooks say, the TELNET protocol is not a > remote login protocol. It is a terminal device > driver protocol. Indeed it is: many of us have used telnet to send email, pick up our email, do usenet.... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Jan 11 08:42:12 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:42:12 -0800 Subject: [ih] What does Telnet stand for? In-Reply-To: <4B4B0486.15482.421F6CB7@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> References: <4B4B244B.9080101@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <574168E9-C152-43F0-A52B-0113C7250A4F@google.com>, <4B4B0486.15482.421F6CB7@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <4B4B54E4.8060606@dcrocker.net> On 1/11/2010 7:59 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > On 11 Jan 2010 at 9:25, John Day wrote: > >> And just for the record, contrary to what many >> textbooks say, the TELNET protocol is not a >> remote login protocol. It is a terminal device >> driver protocol. > > Indeed it is: many of us have used telnet to send email, pick up our > email, do usenet.... The /protocol/ is a terminal access protocol. It defines an interactive channel designed for character or line interaction. It's application to control channels for other protocols was specifically to simulate terminal access, in case it was desired to have humans type commands. This was enormously helpful for protocol debugging (and still is.) Whether that terminal access required "login" is secondary to the nature of the mechanism defined by telnet. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de Mon Jan 11 09:04:01 2010 From: mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Matthias_B=E4rwolff?=) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:04:01 +0100 Subject: [ih] Arpanet incomplete messages and host level retransmissions Message-ID: <4B4B5A01.3030107@cs.tu-berlin.de> The following issue has been touched on here recently, but I'd be very happy about some additional data points on the issue: I understand that when a destination IMP's timer for all packets of a message to arrive triggered, it will have inquired with the source IMP whether "everything is fine", sort of. Now, in case the source IMP or host died before sending off the whole message, and is dead still, the destination IMP will tell its host so, and all is good. But, what if packets of a message got lost inside the subnetwork, and retransmission would be the way to go? The source IMPs did not have the capabilities of sending entire messages again, and, yes, people from both sides (BBN and host sites) say that message losses inside the subnetwork were very rare indeed. But still. While the host-host protocol did not have sequence numbers, NCP should have been able to use the missing RFNM to find out which data to retransmit (provided, of course, it kept a copy) -- and, in fact, RFC 528 mentions such retransmission, albeit at a somewhat higher conceptual layer (the terminal handling inside the TIPs): "In March [1973] the TIP program (and the programs of several other Hosts) was changed to retransmit messages for which the Incomplete Transmission indication was returned; some Hosts (e.g. MULTICs) have done this from the start. This modification has turned out to be relatively simple, and we urge other Hosts to consider implementing some sort of error recovery software." (p. 7) Does anyone here know what exactly Multics did in the respect here mentioned? Was retransmission at the host-host protocol layer an approach that was pursued further? Or was retransmission only implemented as part of TIPs, file transmission (checkpoints), etc.? Thanks for your comments. Matthias -- Matthias B?rwolff www.b?rwolff.de From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Jan 15 11:29:56 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:29:56 -0800 Subject: [ih] Email "autoresponder" Message-ID: <4B50C234.6030304@dcrocker.net> Folks, G'day. Just got a query from a reporter relayed to me: >>> Do you know anything about the history of the Email-autoresponder? >>> I'm currently working on an article about that subject matter and, so far, >>> couldn't find any information on how or by whom it was invented. Any hint My own MMDF had it in the late 70s but was definitely far from the first. I am reasonably certain that sendmail had it long before mine and that its predecessor delivermail might have. But I do not remember whether other email software had such a feature back then. Do any of you? Thanks. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From dcrocker at gmail.com Sat Jan 16 09:28:46 2010 From: dcrocker at gmail.com (Dave Crocker) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:28:46 -0800 Subject: [ih] Email "autoresponder" origins Message-ID: <4B51F74E.2030300@gmail.com> Folks, G'day. Just got a query from a reporter relayed to me: >>> Do you know anything about the history of the Email-autoresponder? >>> I'm currently working on an article about that subject matter and, so far, >>> couldn't find any information on how or by whom it was invented. Any hint My own MMDF had it in the late 70s but was definitely far from the first. Sendmail had it before min, as I recall, and its predecessor delivermail might have. (Eric's records only date back to about 1980.) But I do not remember whether other email software had such a feature back then. The obvious primary choices were at PARC and MIT. (One could imagine ITS or CTS having had it; this question doesn't require networking.) Do any of you recall the earliest history on this? Thanks. d/ ps. For some reason, postel.org has decided to block mail from my operator or me (bbiw.net or songbird.com): Connection refused by mailman.postel.org. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Jan 19 13:47:07 2010 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:47:07 -0800 Subject: [ih] Email "autoresponder" In-Reply-To: <4B50C234.6030304@dcrocker.net> References: <4B50C234.6030304@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <1263937627.3488.34.camel@localhost> Good question... I wrote the MIT-DMS mail daemon, which ran on our PDP-10 ITS machine back around 1975 or so. It was the "back-end" to which various other programs would interface - in particular the "reader" and "composer" which people used to send and read email. The daemon, which ran all the time, could process incoming email for a user when a message arrived for that user, and do virtually anything the user could imagine, by specifying a program, which the user could write, to be run by the daemon, on the user's behalf. Auto-responding was one of the common obvious uses of that facility. Some users were very clever though... One example was a "compiler mailbox". A user configured an email address so that the source code of a program could be sent to that address as a "message", and the autoresponder would take the message, run it through the compiler, and return the resulting object code as a reply. Compilation could take quite a while and load down the machine -- so this enabled that user to work on one machine editting and debugging while having a separate machine do all the heavy lifting of compiling. Thankfully he survived when this tactic was discovered by the rest of the group who were always struggling for computer cycles. I remember that I first "turned on" the auto-processing of incoming mail sometime in late spring, announcing to the user community how to write their own programs to act on their incoming mail - send back a response, print it out, file it somewhere, whatever. Within minutes, an autoresponder was written - the "I'm out of the office, I'll be back on Tuesday" kind of thing. It became popular - lots of people started using it. Then summer arrived and vacation season.... One Friday afternoon, several people called it a day and left for a week's vacation, and enabled their autoresponder as they turned out the lights. One of them also sent a message to the whole group, saying "Off on vacation, see you in a week." Think about it........ That last message got to the auto-responder of another vacationer, which dutifully composed and sent a doleful response about being sorry to miss your message but it will be answered in a week. The response went to the whole group also - "reply all". And when the other vacationers' autoresponders received it, they composed equally apologetic messages about being sorry to miss your message about being sorry to miss your message, and sent them to everyone. Repeat. Mayhem ensued as the PDP10 processor went to 100% and free disk space dropped precipitously. This was 1975 or 1976, can't remember exactly... IIRC, this experience was part of the motivation for having a guaranteed unique "Message-ID" and related fields in the header. A suitably sophisticated auto-responder could thereby detect loops and do something sensible. My simple "autoresponder" wasn't so clever at first. I wonder if modern email systems still have this same flaw. /Jack Haverty from the soggy, soggy, windy, wet California coast, where power and phones are out, but the Internet works! On Fri, 2010-01-15 at 11:29 -0800, Dave CROCKER wrote: > Folks, > > G'day. > > Just got a query from a reporter relayed to me: > > >>> Do you know anything about the history of the Email-autoresponder? > >>> I'm currently working on an article about that subject matter and, so far, > >>> couldn't find any information on how or by whom it was invented. Any hint > > > My own MMDF had it in the late 70s but was definitely far from the first. > > I am reasonably certain that sendmail had it long before mine and that its > predecessor delivermail might have. > > But I do not remember whether other email software had such a feature back then. > > Do any of you? > > Thanks. > > d/ > From johnl at iecc.com Tue Jan 19 19:37:13 2010 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 20 Jan 2010 03:37:13 -0000 Subject: [ih] Email "autoresponder" In-Reply-To: <1263937627.3488.34.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >My simple "autoresponder" wasn't so clever at first. I wonder if modern >email systems still have this same flaw. Some of them do. You think that the mere fact that it's been a known problem with a known solution for 35 years makes any difference? R's, John From richard at bennett.com Tue Jan 19 20:21:11 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:21:11 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> Message-ID: <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did people keep track of everything? I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts were more or less in order. Thanks, RB -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From richard at bennett.com Tue Jan 19 20:44:36 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:44:36 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> Message-ID: <4B568A34.9040809@bennett.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vint at google.com Tue Jan 19 20:46:26 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:46:26 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> Message-ID: <8DC1148B-5FB1-440E-BE27-BBAB19266B71@google.com> we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to map into IP addresses. Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and so on as well as FQDN concept. vint On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: > We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name > registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first > domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling > domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm > wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the > Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did > people keep track of everything? > > I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail > that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant > system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? > I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate > the rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the > facts were more or less in order. > > Thanks, > > RB > > -- > Richard Bennett > Research Fellow > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > Washington, DC > From richard at bennett.com Tue Jan 19 20:50:52 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:50:52 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <8DC1148B-5FB1-440E-BE27-BBAB19266B71@google.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <8DC1148B-5FB1-440E-BE27-BBAB19266B71@google.com> Message-ID: <4B568BAC.7010803@bennett.com> I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of official list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and interestingly, gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm curious about the first network map. On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. > SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to > map into IP addresses. > > Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc > > so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c > > the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and > so on as well as FQDN concept. > > vint > > On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: > >> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name >> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first >> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling >> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm >> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the >> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did >> people keep track of everything? >> >> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail >> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant >> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? >> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the >> rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts >> were more or less in order. >> >> Thanks, >> >> RB >> >> -- >> Richard Bennett >> Research Fellow >> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation >> Washington, DC >> > -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Jan 19 21:53:36 2010 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:53:36 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> Message-ID: <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> It was pretty simple really. Hosts (computers) in the early 70s had names, like MIT-DMS or USC-ISIA or BBN-TENEX or UCLA-CCN or SRI-KL. Note that there was already a bit of structure emerging - the names were often of the form -, but that structure was only understood by humans. To all the computers it was just a text string. Subsequently the structure transformed into ., and led to the DNS, where software could parse the name structure and act on the contents. In the beginning, ... there was a master file (HOSTS.TXT) that contained all of the names and their corresponding physical addresses, which were basically ARPANet addresses - i.e., IMP number and physical port. The master file was kept at SRI, which kept the most recent version available at a well known FTP location. People (host administrators, etc.) would download the file every so often to get the latest addresses. Programs like Telnet would use the local file to change names people typed in, like "MIT-DMS", into the appropriate numeric address for opening a network connection. People who brought up new hosts, or were silly enough to move them from one physical network port to another, would have to inform the NIC of what they had done, so the changes could be entered into the master file. Of course the changes wouldn't have an effect on any particular host until that host had downloaded the latest copy of HOSTS.TXT That could cause lots of confusion since there was little consistency in how frequently a particular host got a fresh copy of the hosts.txt file. This worked fine as long as the number of hosts fit on a few pages of printout. But it got unwieldy as the numbers of hosts grew, and users became less patient waiting for changes to take effect. Plus it became more difficult to pick a good name or "reserve" a piece of name-space so you could, for example, have all of the NET-xxx names for your own use. Something better had to be created. Out of all that pressure, DNS came into being. You can still see vestiges of the original scheme - for example in the /etc/hosts files on Unix systems, which look a lot like the old hosts.txt file. The DNS basically took the old human-driven system and made a system that provided similar but much richer services, able to handle much greater scale and speed. I believe that the "!x!y!z" type of name/route originated from the days of dial-up phone networks, in which a computer would periodically dial specific other computers and exchange email. The *user* specified the specific route that a message would take. So a name like X!Y!Z meant that machine x would dial up y, exchange the mail, and disconnect. Then Y would dial Z, pass the message, and disconnect. In those days when phone calls were expensive and host administrators had specific ideas about where their phone charges could be spent, such flexibility was important. In addition, since not just anyone was allowed to connect to the Arpanet/Internet, this made it possible for users on non-network hosts to be email-connected to users on Arpanet hosts - you just needed to find an x!y!z path that would make the appropriate linkage. One might even argue that this "email gateway" approach was the first internet...by providing email connectivity between two very different networks. Think of email messages as "IP packets". HTH, /Jack Haverty On Tue, 2010-01-19 at 20:21 -0800, Richard Bennett wrote: > We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name > registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first > domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling > domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm > wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the > Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did > people keep track of everything? > > I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail that > apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant system of > naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? I have the > feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the rise of the > Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts were more or less > in order. > > Thanks, > > RB > From LarrySheldon at cox.net Tue Jan 19 22:15:41 2010 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:15:41 -0600 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <4B569F8D.9000707@cox.net> In this discussion of the development of the DNS structure, am I wrong in believing: that the HOSTS.TXT "system" was a direct antecedent of the DNS, but the BITNET, "bang-path", FIDO structures (and probably some I have forgotten about or never knew about) were parallel to but not much part of the genealogy of the DNS? -- "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." Remember: The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals. Requiescas in pace o email Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml From tony.li at tony.li Tue Jan 19 22:33:20 2010 From: tony.li at tony.li (Tony Li) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:33:20 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <4B56A3B0.10003@tony.li> Other tidbits: Jack Haverty wrote: > Programs like Telnet would use the > local file to change names people typed in, like "MIT-DMS", into the > appropriate numeric address for opening a network connection. Certain operating systems also loaded the hosts file into memory so that you could get command completion on host names. > Of course the changes wouldn't have an effect on any particular > host until that host had downloaded the latest copy of HOSTS.TXT That > could cause lots of confusion since there was little consistency in how > frequently a particular host got a fresh copy of the hosts.txt file. Other operating systems had little daemons that would run, download the hosts file and install it. This worked well up until the day when SRI put lower case letters in the hosts file and the daemons crashed. ;-) See RFC 810 for more details. > I believe that the "!x!y!z" type of name/route originated from the days > of dial-up phone networks, in which a computer would periodically dial > specific other computers and exchange email. The *user* specified the > specific route that a message would take. So a name like X!Y!Z meant > that machine x would dial up y, exchange the mail, and disconnect. Then > Y would dial Z, pass the message, and disconnect. In those days when > phone calls were expensive and host administrators had specific ideas > about where their phone charges could be spent, such flexibility was > important. In addition, since not just anyone was allowed to connect to > the Arpanet/Internet, this made it possible for users on non-network > hosts to be email-connected to users on Arpanet hosts - you just needed > to find an x!y!z path that would make the appropriate linkage. As mentioned previously, these were part of the UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Program) network. Because nighttime phone calls were cheaper than daytime calls, host administrators also circulated information about when calls would be made. This eventually led to the creation of routing programs (pathalias) that would take all of the host information and execute the Dijkstra Shortest Path First algorithm to figure out how to deliver the mail easily. This also meant that users did not have to know the complete route. For even obscure hosts, it was sufficient to simply know the route from one of the very popular hosts (e.g., ucbvax). Regards, Tony From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Jan 20 03:51:23 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:51:23 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names Message-ID: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> Hi Richard: You're confusing a large number of topics which makes it hard to do history right. Regarding host names -- Vint's given you the gist. There was a text table for hostnames, one host per line. Hosts had an official name and could also have aliases. It was managed by the SRI NIC. If you had a host, you registered your name with the NIC and they put it into the table. When I joined the net in 1983 it took a bit under a week to get a host into the table. The table was retrieved by FTPing it from the NIC. We used a hardcoded IP address (some folks started out by FTPing from a symbolic name [sri-nic] but one day an editing error left the name out of the host table and then people couldn't retrieve a new table!!). To reduce the FTP burdens, big organizations typically had one machine FTP the table from the NIC and then had each machine within their organization grab a copy from the internal machine. Note the fact that hosts periodically got deleted by partial transfers, software bugs, etc. is why many Internet protocols permit use of raw IP addresses. It also explains why many old Internet folks still remember the IP addresses of some machines (my first workstation was bbn-loki at 128.89.1.178). Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for 35mm slides by BBN's art department. Thanks! Craig > I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of official > list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and interestingly, > gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to > another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm > curious about the first network map. > > On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > > we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. > > SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to > > map into IP addresses. > > > > Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc > > > > so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c > > > > the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and > > so on as well as FQDN concept. > > > > vint > > > > On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: > > > >> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name > >> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first > >> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling > >> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm > >> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the > >> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did > >> people keep track of everything? > >> > >> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail > >> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant > >> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? > >> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the > >> rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts > >> were more or less in order. > >> > >> Thanks, > >> > >> RB > >> > >> -- > >> Richard Bennett > >> Research Fellow > >> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > >> Washington, DC > >> > > > > -- > Richard Bennett > Research Fellow > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > Washington, DC ******************** Craig Partridge Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com Phone: +1 517 324 3425 From richard at bennett.com Wed Jan 20 04:14:54 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:14:54 -0800 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <4B56F3BE.2030308@bennett.com> Thanks, Craig. I think I've got it all sorted out except the notion of an "official host name". Apparently that was a convention that started on ARPANET and was carried over. Did the BBN ARPANET specs define host names, or was that an organic development from the Network User Group? One of the RFCs specified the syntax, but it's not clear whether that was informational following from a BBN spec or not. Thanks again On 1/20/2010 3:51 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > Hi Richard: > > You're confusing a large number of topics which makes it hard to do history > right. > > Regarding host names -- Vint's given you the gist. There was a text table > for hostnames, one host per line. Hosts had an official name and could also > have aliases. It was managed by the SRI NIC. If you had a host, you > registered your name with the NIC and they put it into the table. > When I joined the net in 1983 it took a bit under a week to get a host into > the table. > > The table was retrieved by FTPing it from the NIC. We used a hardcoded > IP address (some folks started out by FTPing from a symbolic name [sri-nic] > but one day an editing error left the name out of the host table and then > people couldn't retrieve a new table!!). To reduce the FTP burdens, > big organizations typically had one machine FTP the table from the NIC > and then had each machine within their organization grab a copy from the > internal machine. Note the fact that hosts periodically got deleted by > partial transfers, software bugs, etc. is why many Internet protocols permit > use of raw IP addresses. It also explains why many old Internet folks > still remember the IP addresses of some machines (my first workstation > was bbn-loki at 128.89.1.178). > > Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at > BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. > Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection > was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think > was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). > > As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put > together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted > with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the > IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for > 35mm slides by BBN's art department. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > >> I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of official >> list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and interestingly, >> gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to >> another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm >> curious about the first network map. >> >> On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: >> >>> we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. >>> SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to >>> map into IP addresses. >>> >>> Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc >>> >>> so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c >>> >>> the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and >>> so on as well as FQDN concept. >>> >>> vint >>> >>> On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: >>> >>> >>>> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name >>>> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first >>>> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling >>>> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm >>>> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the >>>> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did >>>> people keep track of everything? >>>> >>>> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail >>>> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant >>>> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? >>>> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the >>>> rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts >>>> were more or less in order. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> >>>> RB >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Richard Bennett >>>> Research Fellow >>>> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation >>>> Washington, DC >>>> >>>> >>> >> -- >> Richard Bennett >> Research Fellow >> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation >> Washington, DC >> > ******************** > Craig Partridge > Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies > E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com > Phone: +1 517 324 3425 > -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Jan 20 04:23:07 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:23:07 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names Message-ID: <20100120122307.A30B928E137@aland.bbn.com> I don't believe BBN had an official role in "official host names". (BBN had its hand in many things -- the point is I don't think the major locus of decision on this one was at BBN). I believe it was an SRI NIC function. But it is before my time. Thanks! Craig > Thanks, Craig. I think I've got it all sorted out except the notion of > an "official host name". Apparently that was a convention that started > on ARPANET and was carried over. Did the BBN ARPANET specs define host > names, or was that an organic development from the Network User Group? > One of the RFCs specified the syntax, but it's not clear whether that > was informational following from a BBN spec or not. > > Thanks again > > On 1/20/2010 3:51 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > > Hi Richard: > > > > You're confusing a large number of topics which makes it hard to do history > > right. > > > > Regarding host names -- Vint's given you the gist. There was a text table > > for hostnames, one host per line. Hosts had an official name and could als > o > > have aliases. It was managed by the SRI NIC. If you had a host, you > > registered your name with the NIC and they put it into the table. > > When I joined the net in 1983 it took a bit under a week to get a host into > > the table. > > > > The table was retrieved by FTPing it from the NIC. We used a hardcoded > > IP address (some folks started out by FTPing from a symbolic name [sri-nic] > > but one day an editing error left the name out of the host table and then > > people couldn't retrieve a new table!!). To reduce the FTP burdens, > > big organizations typically had one machine FTP the table from the NIC > > and then had each machine within their organization grab a copy from the > > internal machine. Note the fact that hosts periodically got deleted by > > partial transfers, software bugs, etc. is why many Internet protocols permi > t > > use of raw IP addresses. It also explains why many old Internet folks > > still remember the IP addresses of some machines (my first workstation > > was bbn-loki at 128.89.1.178). > > > > Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at > > BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. > > Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection > > was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think > > was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). > > > > As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put > > together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted > > with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the > > IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for > > 35mm slides by BBN's art department. > > > > Thanks! > > > > Craig > > > > > >> I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of official > >> list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and interestingly, > >> gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to > >> another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm > >> curious about the first network map. > >> > >> On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > >> > >>> we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. > >>> SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference to > >>> map into IP addresses. > >>> > >>> Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc > >>> > >>> so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c > >>> > >>> the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, and > >>> so on as well as FQDN concept. > >>> > >>> vint > >>> > >>> On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: > >>> > >>> > >>>> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name > >>>> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the first > >>>> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling > >>>> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm > >>>> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the > >>>> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How did > >>>> people keep track of everything? > >>>> > >>>> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail > >>>> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant > >>>> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before 1985? > >>>> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to commemorate the > >>>> rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts > >>>> were more or less in order. > >>>> > >>>> Thanks, > >>>> > >>>> RB > >>>> > >>>> -- > >>>> Richard Bennett > >>>> Research Fellow > >>>> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > >>>> Washington, DC > >>>> > >>>> > >>> > >> -- > >> Richard Bennett > >> Research Fellow > >> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > >> Washington, DC > >> > > ******************** > > Craig Partridge > > Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies > > E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com > > Phone: +1 517 324 3425 > > > > -- > Richard Bennett > Research Fellow > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > Washington, DC ******************** Craig Partridge Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com Phone: +1 517 324 3425 From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 04:31:55 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:31:55 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B568A34.9040809@bennett.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <4B568A34.9040809@bennett.com> Message-ID: <05B9E978-76EE-407D-9105-143011E4A0D1@google.com> host names were registered with SRI NIC. I think Jon Postel may have been at SRI at the time and managed this but the NIC was run by Jake Feinler so she would be a good reference. v On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:44 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: > To be more specific, RFC 597 says: "Note: The names listed on this > map are unofficial IMP names, NOT official Host names." Who assigned > Official Host Names, and what did they look like? > > Read more: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc597.html#ixzz0d7mcyuSC > > On 1/19/2010 8:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: >> >> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name >> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the >> first domain name created, but the first one registered in the >> fledgling domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that >> era, I'm wondering if anybody has any salient observations about >> what the Internet was like before the domain name system was >> created. How did people keep track of everything? >> >> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e-mail >> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant >> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before >> 1985? I have the feeliing that there will be some events to >> commemorate the rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if >> some of the facts were more or less in order. >> >> Thanks, >> >> RB >> > > -- > Richard Bennett > Research Fellow > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > Washington, DC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 04:53:13 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:53:13 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B56F3BE.2030308@bennett.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B56F3BE.2030308@bennett.com> Message-ID: no the bbn IMP (arpanet) specs stopped at IMP numbers and host numbers. the NWG developed the notion of host names along with NCP, TELNET, FTP and SMTP email addresses used the @ convention adopted by Ray Tomlinson. official host name meant: registered in the host.txt file at SRI NIC. v On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Richard Bennett wrote: > Thanks, Craig. I think I've got it all sorted out except the notion > of an "official host name". Apparently that was a convention that > started on ARPANET and was carried over. Did the BBN ARPANET specs > define host names, or was that an organic development from the > Network User Group? One of the RFCs specified the syntax, but it's > not clear whether that was informational following from a BBN spec > or not. > > Thanks again > > On 1/20/2010 3:51 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> Hi Richard: >> >> You're confusing a large number of topics which makes it hard to do >> history >> right. >> >> Regarding host names -- Vint's given you the gist. There was a >> text table >> for hostnames, one host per line. Hosts had an official name and >> could also >> have aliases. It was managed by the SRI NIC. If you had a host, you >> registered your name with the NIC and they put it into the table. >> When I joined the net in 1983 it took a bit under a week to get a >> host into >> the table. >> >> The table was retrieved by FTPing it from the NIC. We used a >> hardcoded >> IP address (some folks started out by FTPing from a symbolic name >> [sri-nic] >> but one day an editing error left the name out of the host table >> and then >> people couldn't retrieve a new table!!). To reduce the FTP burdens, >> big organizations typically had one machine FTP the table from the >> NIC >> and then had each machine within their organization grab a copy >> from the >> internal machine. Note the fact that hosts periodically got >> deleted by >> partial transfers, software bugs, etc. is why many Internet >> protocols permit >> use of raw IP addresses. It also explains why many old Internet >> folks >> still remember the IP addresses of some machines (my first >> workstation >> was bbn-loki at 128.89.1.178). >> >> Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations >> Center at >> BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated >> monthly. >> Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A >> selection >> was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and >> I think >> was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). >> >> As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to >> periodically put >> together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they >> interacted >> with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years >> in the >> IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions >> made for >> 35mm slides by BBN's art department. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Craig >> >> >>> I can track it in the RFCs back to 597, which is some sort of >>> official >>> list of all the hosts that were running at the time, and >>> interestingly, >>> gives notice of a move projected for MIT-MULTICS from one IMP to >>> another. But it says it's "the latest network map" so naturally I'm >>> curious about the first network map. >>> >>> On 1/19/2010 8:46 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: >>> >>>> we had host.txt that mapped host names into IP addresses. >>>> SRI NIC managed it and you downloaded this text file as reference >>>> to >>>> map into IP addresses. >>>> >>>> Host names before DNS were simple things like MIT, UCLA, etc >>>> >>>> so an email address might be something like vcerf at isi-c >>>> >>>> the domain name system introduced hierarchy, cacheing, timeouts, >>>> and >>>> so on as well as FQDN concept. >>>> >>>> vint >>>> >>>> On Jan 19, 2010, at 11:21 PM, Richard Bennett wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>> We're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first domain name >>>>> registration, that of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Not the >>>>> first >>>>> domain name created, but the first one registered in the fledgling >>>>> domain name system. Since I'm too old to remember that era, I'm >>>>> wondering if anybody has any salient observations about what the >>>>> Internet was like before the domain name system was created. How >>>>> did >>>>> people keep track of everything? >>>>> >>>>> I seem to remember a cumbersome system of bang addresses for e- >>>>> mail >>>>> that apparently arose out of UUCP, but wasn't there a more elegant >>>>> system of naming for ARPANET and the fledgling Internet before >>>>> 1985? >>>>> I have the feeliing that there will be some events to >>>>> commemorate the >>>>> rise of the Dot Com era, and it would be nice if some of the facts >>>>> were more or less in order. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks, >>>>> >>>>> RB >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> Richard Bennett >>>>> Research Fellow >>>>> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation >>>>> Washington, DC >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> -- >>> Richard Bennett >>> Research Fellow >>> Information Technology and Innovation Foundation >>> Washington, DC >>> >> ******************** >> Craig Partridge >> Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies >> E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com >> Phone: +1 517 324 3425 >> > > -- > Richard Bennett > Research Fellow > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation > Washington, DC > From bortzmeyer at nic.fr Wed Jan 20 04:59:53 2010 From: bortzmeyer at nic.fr (Stephane Bortzmeyer) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:59:53 +0100 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <05B9E978-76EE-407D-9105-143011E4A0D1@google.com> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <4B568A34.9040809@bennett.com> <05B9E978-76EE-407D-9105-143011E4A0D1@google.com> Message-ID: <20100120125953.GA29951@nic.fr> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 07:31:55AM -0500, Vint Cerf wrote a message of 92 lines which said: > host names were registered with SRI NIC. I think Jon Postel may have > been at SRI at the time and managed this but the NIC was run by Jake > Feinler so she would be a good reference. Elizabeth Feinler, Liz Borchardt and Dana Chrisler, retrieved a hosts file of 1974 and scanned it, so you can see what it looked like: http://www.bortzmeyer.org/files/hosts.txt-1974.pdf From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 05:13:03 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:13:03 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Domain Names Message-ID: <20100120131303.6A7296BE577@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> A couple of points... > From: Craig Partridge > There was a text table for hostnames ... It was managed by the SRI NIC. Once non-ARPA networking stuff started appearing, there were also some sites which had 'auxilliary' local host name tables, which were (at MIT at least) automatically merged with the NIC table and the resulting 'augmented' table was propogated locally. The extra hosts were usually workstations (i.e. clients only, not servers for anything), so the fact that they weren't into the NIC table was not a problem; nobody would be connecting to them anyway - unlike in the early days of the network, when almost all hosts were servers as well as clients. The client/server model is of course now ubiquitous... > Note the fact that hosts periodically got deleted by partial transfers, > software bugs, etc. is why many Internet protocols permit use of raw IP > addresses. It also explains why many old Internet folks still remember > the IP addresses of some machines A big reason for the numeric input for IP addresses, for us, was that we had a number of test machines of various kinds which didn't appear in the host-name tables (too much hassle to add them), and you needed to be able to specify those test machines. And in the early stages of writing network software, usually the code to deal with symbolic host-names was usually one of the latter things that got written, you started out with only the numeric interface, so that generally got left in when you later added host-names. > periodically put together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC > folks as they interacted with the rest of the Net. Do note that these maps (perhaps because they were seemingly intended as they were for the people running the 'core' routers) didn't really show the _whole_ Internet (i.e. all the IP routers, and separate networks), but only what BBN could easily see and/or was important to BBN. Things that were missing included all the back-door connections, all the internal topology (at places like MIT, which showed up on that map as a single node), etc. > From: Tony Li > Certain operating systems also loaded the hosts file into memory There was also a UDP-based 'name lookup' service (which some machines at MIT actually used) which allowed machines without disk storage to support host-names in the user interface. Noel From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 05:15:49 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:15:49 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B569F8D.9000707@cox.net> References: <20100120033713.93630.qmail@simone.iecc.com> <4B5684B7.50209@bennett.com> <1263966816.3420.42.camel@localhost> <4B569F8D.9000707@cox.net> Message-ID: <69946A38-7AE0-418B-9F1B-696B750A1CF1@google.com> yes the bang-path was parallel. eventually they met when gateways linked hosts in the two systems. v On Jan 20, 2010, at 1:15 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > In this discussion of the development of the DNS structure, am I > wrong in believing: > > that the HOSTS.TXT "system" was a direct antecedent of the DNS, but > > the BITNET, "bang-path", FIDO structures (and probably some I have > forgotten about or never knew about) were parallel to but not > much part of the genealogy of the DNS? > > -- > "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough > to take everything you have." > > Remember: The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by > professionals. > > Requiescas in pace o email > Ex turpi causa non oritur actio > Eppure si rinfresca > > ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml > From jeanjour at comcast.net Wed Jan 20 05:28:01 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:28:01 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: Actually this was much later. The original ARPANET maps were generated by UCLA-NMC. There was a well-known port on SEX (Sigma Exec) that you would connect to and it would send an APRPANET map that would print on one sheet of paper. It also showed what hosts were currently up or down. It was discontinued (if I remember right) when it would no longer fit on one sheet. ;-) It was a very popular port if I remember. Take care, John > > >Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at >BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. >Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection >was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think >was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). > >As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put >together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted >with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the >IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for >35mm slides by BBN's art department. From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 05:54:49 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:54:49 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> John, As far as I recall, the network maps were made by BBN. I was the chief programmer at the NMC but I don't recall making maps. The Network Analysis Corporation (run by Howard Frank) did make maps to analyze alternative topologies. Steve Crocker also thinks these early maps were made by BBN. vint On Jan 20, 2010, at 8:28 AM, John Day wrote: > Actually this was much later. The original ARPANET maps were > generated by UCLA-NMC. There was a well-known port on SEX (Sigma > Exec) that you would connect to and it would send an APRPANET map > that would print on one sheet of paper. It also showed what hosts > were currently up or down. It was discontinued (if I remember right) > when it would no longer fit on one sheet. ;-) It was a very > popular port if I remember. > > Take care, > John > >> >> >> Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations >> Center at >> BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated >> monthly. >> Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A >> selection >> was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and >> I think >> was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). >> >> As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to >> periodically put >> together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they >> interacted >> with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years >> in the >> IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions >> made for >> 35mm slides by BBN's art department. From jeanjour at comcast.net Wed Jan 20 06:11:53 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:11:53 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> Message-ID: There was a program at SEX that would generate a TTY map automatically of what hosts were up and down. They were formatted to print out on a model 33 teletype or better yet a model 37 to fit on one standard piece of paper. I remember it very distinctly and probably have one of the maps squirreled away somewhere. Ask Ollikanen, he will remember it. It was quite popular. So much so that people were asked to not connect to it so often. And as I said, it went away when it was no longer possible to fit all of the hosts on one sheet of paper. So it was probably defunct by 1972 or so. Take care, John At 8:54 -0500 2010/01/20, Vint Cerf wrote: >John, > >As far as I recall, the network maps were made by BBN. I was the >chief programmer at the NMC but I don't recall making maps. The >Network Analysis Corporation (run by Howard Frank) did make maps to >analyze alternative topologies. Steve Crocker also thinks these >early maps were made by BBN. > >vint > > >On Jan 20, 2010, at 8:28 AM, John Day wrote: > >>Actually this was much later. The original ARPANET maps were >>generated by UCLA-NMC. There was a well-known port on SEX (Sigma >>Exec) that you would connect to and it would send an APRPANET map >>that would print on one sheet of paper. It also showed what hosts >>were currently up or down. It was discontinued (if I remember >>right) when it would no longer fit on one sheet. ;-) It was a >>very popular port if I remember. >> >>Take care, >>John >> >>> >>> >>>Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at >>>BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. >>>Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection >>>was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think >>>was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). >>> >>>As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put >>>together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they interacted >>>with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the >>>IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for >>>35mm slides by BBN's art department. From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 06:14:17 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:14:17 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> Message-ID: <1B37BA21-6809-4D00-9FD3-60FFD8F3C6F9@google.com> is ari on the list? On Jan 20, 2010, at 9:11 AM, John Day wrote: > There was a program at SEX that would generate a TTY map > automatically of what hosts were up and down. They were formatted > to print out on a model 33 teletype or better yet a model 37 to fit > on one standard piece of paper. I remember it very distinctly and > probably have one of the maps squirreled away somewhere. Ask > Ollikanen, he will remember it. > > It was quite popular. So much so that people were asked to not > connect to it so often. And as I said, it went away when it was no > longer possible to fit all of the hosts on one sheet of paper. So > it was probably defunct by 1972 or so. > > Take care, > John > > > At 8:54 -0500 2010/01/20, Vint Cerf wrote: >> John, >> >> As far as I recall, the network maps were made by BBN. I was the >> chief programmer at the NMC but I don't recall making maps. The >> Network Analysis Corporation (run by Howard Frank) did make maps to >> analyze alternative topologies. Steve Crocker also thinks these >> early maps were made by BBN. >> >> vint >> >> >> On Jan 20, 2010, at 8:28 AM, John Day wrote: >> >>> Actually this was much later. The original ARPANET maps were >>> generated by UCLA-NMC. There was a well-known port on SEX (Sigma >>> Exec) that you would connect to and it would send an APRPANET map >>> that would print on one sheet of paper. It also showed what hosts >>> were currently up or down. It was discontinued (if I remember >>> right) when it would no longer fit on one sheet. ;-) It was a >>> very popular port if I remember. >>> >>> Take care, >>> John >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations >>>> Center at >>>> BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated >>>> monthly. >>>> Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A >>>> selection >>>> was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review >>>> (and I think >>>> was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). >>>> >>>> As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to >>>> periodically put >>>> together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they >>>> interacted >>>> with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some >>>> years in the >>>> IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions >>>> made for >>>> 35mm slides by BBN's art department. > From jeanjour at comcast.net Wed Jan 20 06:31:33 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:31:33 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <1B37BA21-6809-4D00-9FD3-60FFD8F3C6F9@google.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com> <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> <1B37BA21-6809-4D00-9FD3-60FFD8F3C6F9@google.com> Message-ID: No idea. Not even sure I still have a current email address for him Ari, you there? At 9:14 -0500 2010/01/20, Vint Cerf wrote: >is ari on the list? > > >On Jan 20, 2010, at 9:11 AM, John Day wrote: > >>There was a program at SEX that would generate a TTY map >>automatically of what hosts were up and down. They were formatted >>to print out on a model 33 teletype or better yet a model 37 to >>fit on one standard piece of paper. I remember it very distinctly >>and probably have one of the maps squirreled away somewhere. Ask >>Ollikanen, he will remember it. >> >>It was quite popular. So much so that people were asked to not >>connect to it so often. And as I said, it went away when it was no >>longer possible to fit all of the hosts on one sheet of paper. So >>it was probably defunct by 1972 or so. >> >>Take care, >>John >> >> >>At 8:54 -0500 2010/01/20, Vint Cerf wrote: >>>John, >>> >>>As far as I recall, the network maps were made by BBN. I was the >>>chief programmer at the NMC but I don't recall making maps. The >>>Network Analysis Corporation (run by Howard Frank) did make maps >>>to analyze alternative topologies. Steve Crocker also thinks these >>>early maps were made by BBN. >>> >>>vint >>> >>> >>>On Jan 20, 2010, at 8:28 AM, John Day wrote: >>> >>>>Actually this was much later. The original ARPANET maps were >>>>generated by UCLA-NMC. There was a well-known port on SEX (Sigma >>>>Exec) that you would connect to and it would send an APRPANET map >>>>that would print on one sheet of paper. It also showed what >>>>hosts were currently up or down. It was discontinued (if I >>>>remember right) when it would no longer fit on one sheet. ;-) >>>>It was a very popular port if I remember. >>>> >>>>Take care, >>>>John >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>Regarding maps -- they were compiled by the Network Operations Center at >>>>>BBN. Frequency varied. At one time I think they were updated monthly. >>>>>Later every quarter. They only showed ARPANET connectivity. A selection >>>>>was published some years ago in Computer Communication Review (and I think >>>>>was put on-line by Chris Edmondson at UT). >>>>> >>>>>As the Internet took off, Mike Brescia at the NOC used to periodically put >>>>>together Internet maps, I think mostly to help NOC folks as they >>>>>interacted >>>>>with the rest of the Net. These maps were published for some years in the >>>>>IETF proceedings (www.ietf.org). I also have some color versions made for >>>>>35mm slides by BBN's art department. From johnl at iecc.com Wed Jan 20 08:14:05 2010 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 20 Jan 2010 16:14:05 -0000 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <69946A38-7AE0-418B-9F1B-696B750A1CF1@google.com> Message-ID: <20100120161405.79404.qmail@simone.iecc.com> In article <69946A38-7AE0-418B-9F1B-696B750A1CF1 at google.com> you write: >yes the bang-path was parallel. > >eventually they met when gateways linked hosts in the two systems. Bang paths were used for uucp, a dialup network that transferred mostly mail and usenet messages, although the underlying transport could move arbitrary files. It ran for quite a while primarily by burying its phone costs in corporate overhead budgets. Its normal addressing was site!user, but due to something between a bug and a feature, addresses like sitea!siteb!sitec!user worked to route mail from site to site. It even had its own dynamic routing, sort of like the Arpanet but several orders of magnitude slower. Uucp sites would publish lists of who they talked to in a usenet group which was propagated (mostly by uucp) all over. At many sites a program called pathalias would crunch the lists once or twice a day to figure out the shortest bang path for each site, although at the many stub nodes they just used a default route to a better connected site. There were, as Vint noted, gateways to the Arpanet and other networks, which were handled by mixed addressing. For several years my address relative to the Arpanet was ima!johnl at CCA-UNIX. Pathalias eventually went away due to the combination of people realizing that mail worked better if the route wasn't embedded in the address, and the Internet and DNS becoming widely enough available that everyone could use MX records for routing. Uucp is still a pretty good protocol for transferring mail by phone call, and I still know a site or two that uses it to transfer mail with RFC822 addresses. R's, John From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Jan 20 08:37:44 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:37:44 -0500 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names Message-ID: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> > In article <69946A38-7AE0-418B-9F1B-696B750A1CF1 at google.com> you write: > >yes the bang-path was parallel. > > > >eventually they met when gateways linked hosts in the two systems. > Pathalias eventually went away due to the combination of people realizing > that mail worked better if the route wasn't embedded in the address, and > the Internet and DNS becoming widely enough available that everyone could > use MX records for routing. Uucp is still a pretty good protocol for > transferring mail by phone call, and I still know a site or two that > uses it to transfer mail with RFC822 addresses. Also the decision of much of USENET to start using domain names internally. The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree BITNET) into ARPANET was intentionally enabled... Craig From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Wed Jan 20 08:39:21 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:39:21 -0500 Subject: [ih] Domain Names In-Reply-To: <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> References: <20100120115123.90B7628E137@aland.bbn.com>, , <172D0914-1AA7-4FD1-854F-26B1EB0973DE@google.com> Message-ID: <4B56EB69.1205.22DE8DD0@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 20 Jan 2010 at 8:54, Vint Cerf wrote: > As far as I recall, the network maps were made by BBN. I was the chief > programmer at the NMC but I don't recall making maps. The Network > Analysis Corporation (run by Howard Frank) did make maps to analyze > alternative topologies. Steve Crocker also thinks these early maps > were made by BBN. My memory is that for a very long time Alex McKenzie, at BBN, was the map- czar for the ARPAnet. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From johnl at iecc.com Wed Jan 20 09:00:57 2010 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 20 Jan 2010 12:00:57 -0500 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: >> Pathalias eventually went away due to the combination of people realizing >> that mail worked better if the route wasn't embedded in the address, and >> the Internet and DNS becoming widely enough available that everyone could >> use MX records for routing. Uucp is still a pretty good protocol for >> transferring mail by phone call, and I still know a site or two that >> uses it to transfer mail with RFC822 addresses. > > Also the decision of much of USENET to start using domain names internally. Indeed. That's what I meant by not embedding the route in the address. R's, John From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 10:29:12 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:29:12 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot com etc Message-ID: <20100120112912.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.2069886d55.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 10:37:50 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:37:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120113750.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.d06c8584b6.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? From LarrySheldon at cox.net Wed Jan 20 11:07:02 2010 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:07:02 -0600 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120113750.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.d06c8584b6.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> References: <20100120113750.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.d06c8584b6.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <4B575456.3050303@cox.net> On 1/20/2010 12:37 PM, bboliek at catalpacreek.com wrote: > Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems > simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? Universities, organizations, and sometimes governments are biznesses. "commercial" correctly identifies the caste somewhat uniquely. But the answer to your question is "I don't know." The bigger question is "why either one". September would have eventually ended it they had been thinking better. -- "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." Remember: The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals. Requiescas in pace o email Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 11:13:51 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:13:51 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120121351.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.30a0b3e27c.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> Funny. It's something we use everyday, but noone seems to know exactly why it was chosen. Maybe Jon Postel, knew but he's gone, of course. Joyce Reynolds may know, but I haven't been able to get in touch with her. I found a pargraph about it in RFC920, but no realexplanation as to why. From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Jan 20 11:27:08 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:27:08 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120192708.53A0528E137@aland.bbn.com> > Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems > simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? I don't know but it happened between April 1984 and October 1984. In April 1984 Postel and Reynolds distributed a draft of what became RFC 920. In that draft they used Grapevine-like naming, so ERNIE.CS.CAL.UC for a site in the University of California system. In October 1984, when RFC 920 came out it specified GOV, EDU, COM, MIL and ORG. NET came later (Dick Edmiston's and my doing). I wish I had copies of the email discussions between April '84 and October '84 but I don't. My guess is that the discussion was in NAMEDROPPERS but I only have a very limited archive of old NAMEDROPPERS email. Thanks! Craig From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 11:33:31 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:33:31 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120123331.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.a6ae3c7fa9.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 11:47:16 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:47:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120194716.E5A376BE577@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com > noone seems to know exactly why it was chosen. Maybe Jon Postel, knew > but he's gone, of course. Joyce Reynolds may know I have this bit set that it was Paul Mockapetris who picked them, but that could be wrong. Certainly, they were in place by RFC-920 (by Jon and Joyce). I would guess some combo of Joyce and Paul could answer this pretty definitively. Noel From richard at bennett.com Wed Jan 20 11:54:57 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:54:57 -0800 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <4B575456.3050303@cox.net> References: <20100120113750.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.d06c8584b6.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> <4B575456.3050303@cox.net> Message-ID: <4B575F91.80502@bennett.com> Far as I can tell, the only advantage of the TLD cluster we have is that it simplifies the name management contracting space. If that's not an issue, a pure Grapevine seems to make a lot more sense. Given that everybody wants a .com, even for non-profits, we're essentially still using ARPANET host names anyhow. On 1/20/2010 11:07 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 1/20/2010 12:37 PM, bboliek at catalpacreek.com wrote: >> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems >> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? > > > Universities, organizations, and sometimes governments are biznesses. > > "commercial" correctly identifies the caste somewhat uniquely. > > But the answer to your question is "I don't know." > > The bigger question is "why either one". September would have > eventually ended it they had been thinking better. > -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Jan 20 11:59:52 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:59:52 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120195952.2B30B28E137@aland.bbn.com> The namedroppers list still exists (used for DNS policy issues). However no one seems to have an archive earlier than 1990 (MARC.INFO). I got my partial copies of the archives some years ago while working on some paper and squirreled it away as I'd discovered that mailing list archives from the 1980s were vanishing (issues of copyright and such). I did some digging in my private archive of MSG-PEOPLE (and you owe me -- the level of flames to content on that list... not to mention postings of example sendmail.cfs... :-)) and there's one side mention of the discussion on Namedroppers. Jon sends a note to Robert Morris (then an undergrad at Harvard) and cc'ed to MSG-PEOPLE about issues of sizing top-level domains but tells folks to reply to namedroopers. The next DNS related note is Jon's note of 13 Dec 84 pointing out that there's a plan in place for the new top level domains. Once upon a time I remember seeing a cluster of emails about naming policy from 1984 -- as I recall Karen Sollins played a key role and I'll bet Ken Harrenstein did too (at the meeting where we finalized various secondary issues and accidentally ended up reopening the list of TLDs Ken was by far the most vigorous advocate) -- but my memory could be flawed. Thanks! Craig > pt;">
Thanks. It's a big help. It might just be one of those little mys= > teries. How does one get to namedroppers?

>
solid blue; margin-left: 8px; padding-left: 8px; font-size: 10pt; color: bl= > ack; font-family: verdana;"> >
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [ih] Dot Com etc
> From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
> Date: Wed, January 20, 2010 12:27 pm
> To: bboliek at catalpacreek.com
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
>
> > Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems<= > br> > > simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz?
>
> I don't know but it happened between April 1984 and October 1984.
>
> In April 1984 Postel and Reynolds distributed a draft of what became RFC 92= > 0.
> In that draft they used Grapevine-like naming, so ERNIE.CS.CAL.UC for a
> site in the University of California system.
>
> In October 1984, when RFC 920 came out it specified GOV, EDU, COM, MIL and<= > br> > ORG. NET came later (Dick Edmiston's and my doing).
>
> I wish I had copies of the email discussions between April '84 and October = > '84
> but I don't. My guess is that the discussion was in NAMEDROPPERS but I
> only have a very limited archive of old NAMEDROPPERS email.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig
> >
>
******************** Craig Partridge Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com Phone: +1 517 324 3425 From bortzmeyer at nic.fr Wed Jan 20 13:11:16 2010 From: bortzmeyer at nic.fr (Stephane Bortzmeyer) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:11:16 +0100 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120195952.2B30B28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120195952.2B30B28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <20100120211116.GA23680@nic.fr> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 02:59:52PM -0500, Craig Partridge wrote a message of 75 lines which said: > The namedroppers list still exists (used for DNS policy issues). A small fix: namedroppers is now the list of the IETF Working Group "DNS extensions" which works on *technical* issues, not policy ones. At one time in the history of namedroppers, Jon Postel decided that policy discussions were no longer welcome on the list. Hence its current role. From braden at ISI.EDU Wed Jan 20 13:18:27 2010 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:18:27 -0800 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: > >> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems >> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? > I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I feel quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by discussions with Paul. Bob Braden From johnl at iecc.com Wed Jan 20 13:39:20 2010 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 20 Jan 2010 21:39:20 -0000 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <4B575F91.80502@bennett.com> Message-ID: <20100120213920.74678.qmail@simone.iecc.com> >Far as I can tell, the only advantage of the TLD cluster we have is that >it simplifies the name management contracting space. If that's not an >issue, a pure Grapevine seems to make a lot more sense. Given that >everybody wants a .com, even for non-profits, we're essentially still >using ARPANET host names anyhow. My recollection is that the original idea was that the first and second levels would be fairly small, and names would be long, e.g. wks12.compsci.berkeley.uc.edu. I think that all changed when Mosaic or maybe Netscape treated "foo" in the address box as "foo.com". So I guess it's Marc Andreesen's fault. R's, John From richard at bennett.com Wed Jan 20 13:43:20 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:43:20 -0800 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120213920.74678.qmail@simone.iecc.com> References: <20100120213920.74678.qmail@simone.iecc.com> Message-ID: <4B5778F8.6020905@bennett.com> In a way, the segmentation of the namespace via TLDs follows the logic of the segmentation of ARPANET into Milnet and everthing else. On 1/20/2010 1:39 PM, John Levine wrote: >> Far as I can tell, the only advantage of the TLD cluster we have is that >> it simplifies the name management contracting space. If that's not an >> issue, a pure Grapevine seems to make a lot more sense. Given that >> everybody wants a .com, even for non-profits, we're essentially still >> using ARPANET host names anyhow. >> > My recollection is that the original idea was that the first and second > levels would be fairly small, and names would be long, e.g. > wks12.compsci.berkeley.uc.edu. > > I think that all changed when Mosaic or maybe Netscape treated "foo" > in the address box as "foo.com". So I guess it's Marc Andreesen's > fault. > > R's, > John > -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From ajs at crankycanuck.ca Wed Jan 20 14:01:44 2010 From: ajs at crankycanuck.ca (Andrew Sullivan) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:01:44 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120213920.74678.qmail@simone.iecc.com> References: <4B575F91.80502@bennett.com> <20100120213920.74678.qmail@simone.iecc.com> Message-ID: <20100120220144.GW76972@shinkuro.com> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 09:39:20PM -0000, John Levine wrote: > I think that all changed when Mosaic or maybe Netscape treated "foo" > in the address box as "foo.com". So I guess it's Marc Andreesen's > fault. Hrm. I suspect that conflates correspondence and cause. I think an equally good explanation for why Mozilla did that was because most sites were in fact .com sites, and the Mozilla programmers were trying to be helpful to people who didn't understand the DNS. (Not that it was a good idea. The programmers didn't understand the DNS either -- witness the mess the cookies spec made. I'm just not sure you have the causal arrow pointing the right way.) A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs at crankycanuck.ca From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Jan 20 14:42:36 2010 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:42:36 +0000 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> Message-ID: <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> Hi Bob! I also have the feeling that Jon put the list together, since as I recall he was the only one of us organized enough to deal with such things... As to *why* that initial list was chosen, my recollection is that it simply reflected the demographics of the emerging "Internet community" at the time. There were lots of governmental entities and lots of schools. The "rest of world" were commercial, or companies. Plus it was likely that someone from each TLD subgroup would step up and volunteer to be the coordinator/arbitrator of name etiquette within that subgroup. You couldn't have a TLD unless there was someone willing to manage it. The nascent Internet was very US-centric, again reflecting the demographics. Gov meant US government. Com was US companies, weighted toward government contractors such as BBN or Linkabit - I can't recall any non-US companies being involved until later in the game. I think .com originally was derived from "company" rather than "commercial". The .com's weren't thought of as "businesses" in the sense of places that consumers go to buy things. They were companies doing government contract work. The Internet was not chartered to interconnect businesses - it was a military command-and-control prototype network, being built by educational, governmental, and contractors. If anybody had suggested that businesses were to be included, it would have raised flotillas of red flags in the administrative ranks of government and PTTs. Hence .com -- not .biz. I don't recall anybody ever thinking we were creating an organizational structure to encompass hundreds of millions of entities covering the entire planet in support of all human activities. And it certainly wasn't supposed to last for 30+ years, even as an experiment. It just happened to turn out that way. IIRC, there weren't any major debates or counterproposals or such about TLDs. The TLD list just wasn't that big a deal (at the time). The Internet was an *experiment* which, like all experiments, was supposed to end. CCITT, ISO, and such organizations were inventing the official technologies for the future of data communications. We know now how that turned out Whatever TLD list and such was used in the Internet wasn't supposed to last long. So a specific logistical decision like the TLD list wasn't all that important - at the time. I agree that whatever discussion happened was almost certainly carried out mostly on the email lists which served as the primary way for everybody to interact between quarterly meetings, and then Jon and crew most likely put the initial list together, and there wasn't any real opposition so it became real. It's very difficult to identify who "invented" anything in those days. There was lots of discussions, ideas, and strawmen passed around in emails and then eventually somebody wrote the document or wrote the code to capture the "rough consensus" of the discussion. /Jack On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 13:18 -0800, Bob Braden wrote: > > internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: > > > > >> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems > >> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? > > > > I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I feel > quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by > discussions with Paul. > > Bob Braden > > > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Jan 20 14:55:45 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:55:45 -0800 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> On 1/20/2010 8:37 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree BITNET) into > ARPANET was intentionally enabled... Each of these had their own syntax. UUCP was strictly route-based sequencing of the fields, hop1!by!hop2 CSNet augmented Arpanet email addresses with mailbox%offnet-host at Arpanet-gateway-host As I recall, Bitnet was a dotted sequence of hostnames, but I don't remember whether it had global hostnaming or was route-based. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From louie at transsys.com Wed Jan 20 15:05:18 2010 From: louie at transsys.com (Louis Mamakos) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:05:18 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <7B4642EE-0BE2-4E33-8918-66188F6618C1@transsys.com> There was, of course, the .ARPA domain that came first. One day, all of the hosts in the SRI-NIC's HOSTS.TXT file grew aliases with the .ARPA suffix. For some period of time during the transition to the operational DNS, the NIC continued to add hosts with domain names (other than .ARPA) to the HOSTS.TXT file. I suppose the real "flag day" for the DNS was when the HOSTS.TXT file stopped getting updated or distributed. The HOSTS.TXT file also contained (classfull) network names as networks were allocated out of the IPv4 address space. I don't think this capability was really ever reimplemented in the DNS, especially when CIDR and classless network prefxes came on the scene and you couldn't obviously identify the "network" number by examination. Few programs really depended on this, and now we've got WHOIS and the like to bang against the registrars. Louis Mamakos On Jan 20, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > Hi Bob! > > I also have the feeling that Jon put the list together, since as I > recall he was the only one of us organized enough to deal with such > things... > > As to *why* that initial list was chosen, my recollection is that it > simply reflected the demographics of the emerging "Internet community" > at the time. There were lots of governmental entities and lots of > schools. The "rest of world" were commercial, or companies. > > Plus it was likely that someone from each TLD subgroup would step up and > volunteer to be the coordinator/arbitrator of name etiquette within that > subgroup. You couldn't have a TLD unless there was someone willing to > manage it. > > The nascent Internet was very US-centric, again reflecting the > demographics. Gov meant US government. Com was US companies, weighted > toward government contractors such as BBN or Linkabit - I can't recall > any non-US companies being involved until later in the game. > > I think .com originally was derived from "company" rather than > "commercial". The .com's weren't thought of as "businesses" in the > sense of places that consumers go to buy things. They were companies > doing government contract work. The Internet was not chartered to > interconnect businesses - it was a military command-and-control > prototype network, being built by educational, governmental, and > contractors. If anybody had suggested that businesses were to be > included, it would have raised flotillas of red flags in the > administrative ranks of government and PTTs. Hence .com -- not .biz. > > I don't recall anybody ever thinking we were creating an organizational > structure to encompass hundreds of millions of entities covering the > entire planet in support of all human activities. And it certainly > wasn't supposed to last for 30+ years, even as an experiment. It just > happened to turn out that way. > > IIRC, there weren't any major debates or counterproposals or such about > TLDs. The TLD list just wasn't that big a deal (at the time). The > Internet was an *experiment* which, like all experiments, was supposed > to end. CCITT, ISO, and such organizations were inventing the official > technologies for the future of data communications. We know now how > that turned out Whatever TLD list and such was used in the Internet > wasn't supposed to last long. So a specific logistical decision like > the TLD list wasn't all that important - at the time. > > I agree that whatever discussion happened was almost certainly carried > out mostly on the email lists which served as the primary way for > everybody to interact between quarterly meetings, and then Jon and crew > most likely put the initial list together, and there wasn't any real > opposition so it became real. > > It's very difficult to identify who "invented" anything in those days. > There was lots of discussions, ideas, and strawmen passed around in > emails and then eventually somebody wrote the document or wrote the code > to capture the "rough consensus" of the discussion. > > /Jack > > > On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 13:18 -0800, Bob Braden wrote: >> >> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: >> >>> >>>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems >>>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? >>> >> >> I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I feel >> quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by >> discussions with Paul. >> >> Bob Braden >> >> >> > From randy at psg.com Wed Jan 20 15:21:05 2010 From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:21:05 +0900 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120195952.2B30B28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120195952.2B30B28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: > The namedroppers list still exists (used for DNS policy issues). > However no one seems to have an archive earlier than 1990 (MARC.INFO). ftp://ftp.psg.com/pub/lists goes back to '83 randy From randy at psg.com Wed Jan 20 15:27:00 2010 From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:27:00 +0900 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120192708.53A0528E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100120192708.53A0528E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: > I wish I had copies of the email discussions between April '84 and October '84 > but I don't. My guess is that the discussion was in NAMEDROPPERS but I > only have a very limited archive of old NAMEDROPPERS email. ftp://ftp.psg.com/pub/lists/1983 and forward may help you they're also in mhonarc form at http://psg.com/lists/namedroppers/ randy From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 15:27:29 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:27:29 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <7B4642EE-0BE2-4E33-8918-66188F6618C1@transsys.com> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> <7B4642EE-0BE2-4E33-8918-66188F6618C1@transsys.com> Message-ID: <9C6AF440-9EF1-4D04-8188-11F302F48ADD@google.com> Louis, thanks for reminding us about the interim use of .arpa until registration of names in the other 7 TLDs occurred. I'd forgotten about that. Later, .arpa was used for reverse lookup and other infrastructure mechanisms. v On Jan 20, 2010, at 6:05 PM, Louis Mamakos wrote: > There was, of course, the .ARPA domain that came first. One day, > all of the hosts in the SRI-NIC's HOSTS.TXT file grew aliases with > the .ARPA suffix. For some period of time during the transition to > the operational DNS, the NIC continued to add hosts with domain > names (other than .ARPA) to the HOSTS.TXT file. > > I suppose the real "flag day" for the DNS was when the HOSTS.TXT > file stopped getting updated or distributed. > > The HOSTS.TXT file also contained (classfull) network names as > networks were allocated out of the IPv4 address space. I don't > think this capability was really ever reimplemented in the DNS, > especially when CIDR and classless network prefxes came on the scene > and you couldn't obviously identify the "network" number by > examination. Few programs really depended on this, and now we've > got WHOIS and the like to bang against the registrars. > > Louis Mamakos > > On Jan 20, 2010, at 5:42 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > >> Hi Bob! >> >> I also have the feeling that Jon put the list together, since as I >> recall he was the only one of us organized enough to deal with such >> things... >> >> As to *why* that initial list was chosen, my recollection is that it >> simply reflected the demographics of the emerging "Internet >> community" >> at the time. There were lots of governmental entities and lots of >> schools. The "rest of world" were commercial, or companies. >> >> Plus it was likely that someone from each TLD subgroup would step >> up and >> volunteer to be the coordinator/arbitrator of name etiquette within >> that >> subgroup. You couldn't have a TLD unless there was someone willing >> to >> manage it. >> >> The nascent Internet was very US-centric, again reflecting the >> demographics. Gov meant US government. Com was US companies, >> weighted >> toward government contractors such as BBN or Linkabit - I can't >> recall >> any non-US companies being involved until later in the game. >> >> I think .com originally was derived from "company" rather than >> "commercial". The .com's weren't thought of as "businesses" in the >> sense of places that consumers go to buy things. They were companies >> doing government contract work. The Internet was not chartered to >> interconnect businesses - it was a military command-and-control >> prototype network, being built by educational, governmental, and >> contractors. If anybody had suggested that businesses were to be >> included, it would have raised flotillas of red flags in the >> administrative ranks of government and PTTs. Hence .com -- not .biz. >> >> I don't recall anybody ever thinking we were creating an >> organizational >> structure to encompass hundreds of millions of entities covering the >> entire planet in support of all human activities. And it certainly >> wasn't supposed to last for 30+ years, even as an experiment. It >> just >> happened to turn out that way. >> >> IIRC, there weren't any major debates or counterproposals or such >> about >> TLDs. The TLD list just wasn't that big a deal (at the time). The >> Internet was an *experiment* which, like all experiments, was >> supposed >> to end. CCITT, ISO, and such organizations were inventing the >> official >> technologies for the future of data communications. We know now how >> that turned out Whatever TLD list and such was used in the Internet >> wasn't supposed to last long. So a specific logistical decision like >> the TLD list wasn't all that important - at the time. >> >> I agree that whatever discussion happened was almost certainly >> carried >> out mostly on the email lists which served as the primary way for >> everybody to interact between quarterly meetings, and then Jon and >> crew >> most likely put the initial list together, and there wasn't any real >> opposition so it became real. >> >> It's very difficult to identify who "invented" anything in those >> days. >> There was lots of discussions, ideas, and strawmen passed around in >> emails and then eventually somebody wrote the document or wrote the >> code >> to capture the "rough consensus" of the discussion. >> >> /Jack >> >> >> On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 13:18 -0800, Bob Braden wrote: >>> >>> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it >>>>> seems >>>>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? >>>> >>> >>> I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. >>> I feel >>> quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by >>> discussions with Paul. >>> >>> Bob Braden >>> >>> >>> >> > > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 15:52:10 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:52:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100120235210.5D8306BE5F9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Randy Bush > they're also in mhonarc form Thanks for that contribution to conserving the history of the Internet! Now, people (several of them, hopefully) ought to make complete copies _elsewhere_, so that if Randy should (G-d forbid :-) get run over by a truck, or whatever, that piece of history won't go offline when he's not there to keep an eye on it... Noel From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Jan 20 16:19:36 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:19:36 -0800 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7 In-Reply-To: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> Message-ID: <4B579D98.6050204@dcrocker.net> Some years ago, Jake Feinler said that there was a persistent, non-converging debate in the community about the TLD choices. She asserted that there was finally some small face-to-face discussion where she ran out of patience and declared that the choices would be com, net and org. I have a somewhat more vague recollection of her acknowledging that the question, then, was whetehr Jon would concur, and that he did. d/ On 1/20/2010 1:18 PM, Bob Braden wrote: > > > internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: > >> >>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems >>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? >> > > I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I feel > quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by > discussions with Paul. > > Bob Braden > > -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 16:20:47 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:20:47 -0700 Subject: [ih] dot com etc Message-ID: <20100120172047.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.cf6a364c84.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Wed Jan 20 16:53:03 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:53:03 -0700 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7 Message-ID: <20100120175303.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.16011faaf9.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 16:54:21 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:54:21 -0500 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7 In-Reply-To: <4B579D98.6050204@dcrocker.net> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> <4B579D98.6050204@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <6D7C22E4-0686-4FAB-9F35-95C1E411B704@google.com> perhaps the point has been made but the motivation for these TLDs was to parse the responsibility for registration into very distinct categories so that the work could be delegated without too much dispute over jurisdiction but still covered the range of then-foreseen participants in the use of the Internet system. On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:19 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: > Some years ago, Jake Feinler said that there was a persistent, non- > converging debate in the community about the TLD choices. > > She asserted that there was finally some small face-to-face > discussion where she ran out of patience and declared that the > choices would be com, net and org. > > I have a somewhat more vague recollection of her acknowledging that > the question, then, was whetehr Jon would concur, and that he did. > > d/ > > On 1/20/2010 1:18 PM, Bob Braden wrote: >> >> >> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: >> >>> >>>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it >>>> seems >>>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? >>> >> >> I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I >> feel >> quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by >> discussions with Paul. >> >> Bob Braden >> >> > > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net From cls at rkey.com Wed Jan 20 17:00:10 2010 From: cls at rkey.com (Craig Simon) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:00:10 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120235210.5D8306BE5F9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20100120235210.5D8306BE5F9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <4B57A71A.2040604@rkey.com> My dissertation might be handy for folks who are new to DNS history. http://www.rkey.com/essays/diss.pdf The veterans here have added some documents and primary info that I didn't have when I was writing, so I've been enjoying this thread immensely. I might add that perhaps an even more important milestone ? incrementation of NIC zone serial numbers ? didn?t begin until February 26, 1986 In any case, if someone bakes a birthday cake for March 15, I nominate Jake Feinler for the honor of blowing out the candles. Craig Simon Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Randy Bush > > > they're also in mhonarc form > > Thanks for that contribution to conserving the history of the Internet! > > Now, people (several of them, hopefully) ought to make complete copies > _elsewhere_, so that if Randy should (G-d forbid :-) get run over by a truck, > or whatever, that piece of history won't go offline when he's not there to > keep an eye on it... > > Noel > From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 17:20:24 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:20:24 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121012024.428226BE5FB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Richard Bennett > Far as I can tell, the only advantage of the TLD cluster we have is > that it simplifies the name management contracting space. If that's not > an issue, a pure Grapevine seems to make a lot more sense. The world is full of places where a superior (albeit more complex) technical solution was bypassed in place of a simpler one which 'seemed like a good idea at the time'... :-) Noel From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 17:25:27 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:25:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121012527.352CA6BE5FB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com > Is there a way I could get in touch with Jake? Feinler -at- earthlink.net used to work. Not sure if she's subscribed to this list. Noel From richard at bennett.com Wed Jan 20 17:24:59 2010 From: richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:24:59 -0800 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7 In-Reply-To: <6D7C22E4-0686-4FAB-9F35-95C1E411B704@google.com> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> <4B579D98.6050204@dcrocker.net> <6D7C22E4-0686-4FAB-9F35-95C1E411B704@google.com> Message-ID: <4B57ACEB.804@bennett.com> That's a very important insight. On 1/20/2010 4:54 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > perhaps the point has been made but the motivation for these TLDs was > to parse the responsibility for registration into very distinct > categories so that the work could be delegated without too much > dispute over jurisdiction but still covered the range of then-foreseen > participants in the use of the Internet system. > > > On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:19 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: > >> Some years ago, Jake Feinler said that there was a persistent, >> non-converging debate in the community about the TLD choices. >> >> She asserted that there was finally some small face-to-face >> discussion where she ran out of patience and declared that the >> choices would be com, net and org. >> >> I have a somewhat more vague recollection of her acknowledging that >> the question, then, was whetehr Jon would concur, and that he did. >> >> d/ >> >> On 1/20/2010 1:18 PM, Bob Braden wrote: >>> >>> >>> internet-history-request at postel.org wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>> Does anyone know why .com; .edu and .gov were chosen? I know it seems >>>>> simple, but why .com instead of something like .biz? >>>> >>> >>> I recall seeing those TLD names on Jon's white board at the time. I >>> feel >>> quite certain that they came out of Jon's head, but were ratified by >>> discussions with Paul. >>> >>> Bob Braden >>> >>> >> >> -- >> >> Dave Crocker >> Brandenburg InternetWorking >> bbiw.net > -- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 17:31:59 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:31:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121013159.B0CEC6BE5FB@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Vint Cerf > the motivation for these TLDs was to parse the responsibility for > registration into very distinct categories so that the work could be > delegated without too much dispute over jurisdiction Good point; at that point, access to the Internet was still restricted to those entities which were either i) US Govt, or ii) had a contract with the US-Govt, or iii) other US Govt-sourced reason to be on the Internet (e.g. a vendor to i or ii). So registration wasn't just a 'come and get it' thing; there was (in theory at least) a vetting stage. Noel From randy at psg.com Wed Jan 20 17:48:08 2010 From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:48:08 +0900 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: References: <20100120192708.53A0528E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: > they're also in mhonarc form at http://psg.com/lists/namedroppers/ looks like i lied. i only ran >= 1990 through mhonarc. it would be trivial to do the 1983-89 is anybody wishes. randy From tony.li at tony.li Wed Jan 20 20:11:28 2010 From: tony.li at tony.li (Tony Li) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:11:28 -0800 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100120121351.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.30a0b3e27c.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> References: <20100120121351.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.30a0b3e27c.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <4B57D3F0.4000100@tony.li> bboliek at catalpacreek.com wrote: > Funny. It's something we use everyday, but noone seems to know exactly > why it was chosen. Maybe Jon Postel, knew but he's gone, of course. > Joyce Reynolds may know, but I haven't been able to get in touch with > her. I found a pargraph about it in RFC920, but no realexplanation as to > why. You may recall that back in the day, the NSFnet carried research and educational traffic and was embargoed from carrying COMmercial traffic. I've always thought that Jon was simply embodying that. Just a theory, tho... Tho From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jan 20 20:26:09 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:26:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121042609.502EB6BE608@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Tony Li > .. back in the day, the NSFnet carried research and educational traffic > and was embargoed from carrying COMmercial traffic. Didn't the DNS considerably predate NSFnet? I thought the '.com' was a mix of 'commercial/company'. Noel From vint at google.com Wed Jan 20 21:29:42 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:29:42 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100121042609.502EB6BE608@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20100121042609.502EB6BE608@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <7F5D2395-36E5-4FB2-938E-7E8EB57DE5A3@google.com> not by much. DNS 1984; NSFNET 1986 On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:26 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> From: Tony Li > >> .. back in the day, the NSFnet carried research and educational >> traffic >> and was embargoed from carrying COMmercial traffic. > > Didn't the DNS considerably predate NSFnet? > > I thought the '.com' was a mix of 'commercial/company'. > > Noel From marty at martylyons.com Wed Jan 20 21:59:13 2010 From: marty at martylyons.com (Marty Lyons) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:59:13 -0800 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <3A8F4BA0-3528-4C18-8C56-4D23D1087CD2@martylyons.com> On Jan 20, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: > On 1/20/2010 8:37 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree BITNET) into >> ARPANET was intentionally enabled... > > Each of these had their own syntax. One of the challenging things in the 1980s was getting mail from one network to another. Figuring out how to manually route through gateways was something of a black art -- and often not officially sanctioned... as mail loads got heavier, sometimes postmasters would ask for people to stop using their connections. At the time, getting a connection to ARPAnet was still quite a non-trivial process; apart from the large research universities very few places had a circuit. CSNET and BITNET both helped fill that gap since NSF approval wasn't required. In the case of BITNET all a site needed was an IBM system running VM (or a VAX which could speak the IBM RSCS protocol), and a friendly partner who would accept a leased line connection. The ARPAnet had already solved the HOSTS.TXT problem by moving to DNS, but BITNET maintained a flat file of all connected hosts (and their peers) which was updated manually; routing was handled by RSCS, no explicit path knowledge was needed by the sender or appeared in the mail header (user at node sufficed). UUCP relied on explicit path routing ("bang paths": e.g. !rutgers!decwrl!user) until pathalias [1] became widespread and addresses of the form user at node.uucp were supported. There was a mailing list dedicated to network topics known as INFO-NETS hosted at MIT. After about a year of research I had a fairly complete map showing all the mail gateways. As a point of historical interest in 1991 I sent a copy to John Quarterman and it appeared in Matrix News (Volume 1, Number 6; September 1991). The "well known" gateways were also well-connected and on multiple networks. Typically they had mailers which could reliably parse addresses, rewrite headers as needed, and get mail moving on to the next hop. Manually routed mail could use the percent routing hack, quoted components, source routing, or weird combinations of all of them at once. It was really pretty amazing some of the stuff that would work. Lots of people in that era became sendmail wizards (often against their will!). On any given network, people knew the host of last resort by heart... you'd hear lots of "just send it to (ucbvax, wiscvm, ihnp4), they can probably get it there". A whacky example: Mail from a MAILNET connected host to someone inside DEC (routed via their UUCP connection): "rutgers!decvax!decwrl!KYOA::USER"%rutgers.arpa at mit-multics.mailnet Some well-connected sites included: Cal Berkeley (UCBVAX, UCBARPA, BERKELEY) [ARPA, UUCP], Univ. Delaware (UDEL-RELAY) [ARPA, CSNET], Univ. of Wisconsin (WISCVM) [ARPA, BITNET], DEC Western Research Lab (DECWRL, DECVAX) [ARPA, CSNET, UUCP], AT&T Bell Labs at Naperville, IL (ihnp4.uucp) [UUCP], Rutgers (RUTGERS) [ARPA, UUCP], Up until the early 1990s, it was still difficult to get on "the network". Many sites were still relying on the simplest way to move mail, which was UUCP. It wasn't until the NSF Acceptable Use Policy was lifted and the regional and independent networks were available (e.g. PSInet), that moving packets became straightforward. On a related topic: People had lots of fun on internal networks coming up with host naming schemes. It was one of the best parts about being the systems person. I recall MIT has breakfast cereals for awhile (MIT-RICECHEX). Rutgers main machines were colors (RU-RED, RU-BLUE, RU-GREEN). When I set up the namespace at South Pole Station, all the hosts were named after the one thing you'd never see: trees. A great reference on the history of various networks and how they all worked together is John Quarterman's "The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide", Digital Press, 1996, ISBN 1555580335. I'm not sure if John is on the list. Some more mail gateways from 1985: ARPA-UUCP: brl-tgr, ucbvax, berkeley, seismo ARPA-ACSNET (Australia): seismo.arpa ARPA-AUGMENT (Xerox): office.arpa ARPA-Xerox: xerox.arpa ARPA-CSNET: csnet-relay.arpa, csnet-sh.arpa, csnet-cic.arpa ARPA-BITNET: wiscvm.bitnet, ucbvax.arpa ARPA-DEC (Digital Equip. Corp.): decwrl.arpa ARPA-CCNET (Columbia Univ): columbia.arpa, cu20xx.arpa ARPA-MAILNET: mit-multics.arpa ARPA-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs.arpa CSNET-UUCP: tektronix.csnet, tektronix.uucp CSNET-DFN (Univ. Karlshruhe, Germany): germany.csnet CSNET-XEROX: xerox.csnet CSNET-HUJI (Herbrew Univ., Jerusalum, Israel): israel.csnet CSNET-SDN (Seoul, Korea): kaist.csnet CSNET-MTSNET (Univ. of Michigan): umich.csnet CSNET-DEC (Digital Equip. Corp.): decwrl.csnet CSNET-EAN (Canada): ubc.csnet CSNET-SUNET (Swedish Univ. Network): CHALMERS.CSNET CSNET-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs.csnet BITNET-UUCP: psuvax1.bitnet, psuvax1.uucp BITNET-CSNET: wiscvm.bitnet BITNET-IBM (IBM Research): vnet.bitnet, cunyvm.bitnet BITNET-NETNORTH (Canada): canada01.bitnet BITNET-CCNET (Columbia Univ.): cuvma.bitnet BITNET-EARN (European Academic Research Network, via GSI Darmstadt): dearn.bitnet MAILNET-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs-mailnet.mailnet MAILNET-CCNET (Columbia Univ.): carnegie.mailnet MAILNET-MTSNET (Univ. of Michigan): umich-mts.mailnet JANET (U.K.)-PSS (U.K.-British Telecom PDN): pssa.pss JANET (U.K.)-UUCP: dcl-cs.uucp, !seismo!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!dcl-cs!davis ACSNET (Australia)-UUCP: !decvax!mulga!psych.uq.oz DEC-UUCP: decwrl.uucp [1] http://www.uucp.org/papers/pathalias.pdf From sbrim at cisco.com Thu Jan 21 05:03:15 2010 From: sbrim at cisco.com (Scott Brim) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:03:15 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <7F5D2395-36E5-4FB2-938E-7E8EB57DE5A3@google.com> References: <20100121042609.502EB6BE608@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <7F5D2395-36E5-4FB2-938E-7E8EB57DE5A3@google.com> Message-ID: <4B585093.4070604@cisco.com> Vint Cerf allegedly wrote on 01/21/2010 24:29 EST: > not by much. DNS 1984; NSFNET 1986 But the TLDs were already well-established by then. When we came up with .NET it was the obvious thing to do. > > On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:26 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >>> From: Tony Li >> >>> .. back in the day, the NSFnet carried research and educational traffic >>> and was embargoed from carrying COMmercial traffic. >> >> Didn't the DNS considerably predate NSFnet? >> >> I thought the '.com' was a mix of 'commercial/company'. >> >> Noel > > From craig at aland.bbn.com Thu Jan 21 05:04:21 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:04:21 -0500 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names Message-ID: <20100121130421.05CE828E137@aland.bbn.com> Ah this brings back fun memories. My favorite one of this score was princeton. There was a princeton.bitnet and princeton.csnet and they were not connected to each other. The story (perhaps apocryphal) was that the sys admins would meet once a week to swap mag tapes of misdirected email. Craig (one of the techies who ran the CSNET relay in the 1980s). > > On Jan 20, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: > > > On 1/20/2010 8:37 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > >> The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree BITNET) into > >> ARPANET was intentionally enabled... > > > > Each of these had their own syntax. > > > One of the challenging things in the 1980s was getting mail from one network > to another. Figuring out how to manually route through gateways was somethi > ng of a black art -- and often not officially sanctioned... as mail loads got > heavier, sometimes postmasters would ask for people to stop using their conn > ections. > > At the time, getting a connection to ARPAnet was still quite a non-trivial pr > ocess; apart from the large research universities very few places had a circu > it. CSNET and BITNET both helped fill that gap since NSF approval wasn't re > quired. In the case of BITNET all a site needed was an IBM system running VM > (or a VAX which could speak the IBM RSCS protocol), and a friendly partner w > ho would accept a leased line connection. The ARPAnet had already solved th > e HOSTS.TXT problem by moving to DNS, but BITNET maintained a flat file of al > l connected hosts (and their peers) which was updated manually; routing was h > andled by RSCS, no explicit path knowledge was needed by the sender or appear > ed in the mail header (user at node sufficed). UUCP relied on explicit path rou > ting ("bang paths": e.g. !rutgers!decwrl!user) until pathalias [1] became wid > espread and addresses of the form user at node.uucp were supported. > > There was a mailing list dedicated to network topics known as INFO-NETS hoste > d at MIT. After about a year of research I had a fairly complete map showi > ng all the mail gateways. As a point of historical interest in 1991 I sent > a copy to John Quarterman and it appeared in Matrix News (Volume 1, Number 6; > September 1991). > > The "well known" gateways were also well-connected and on multiple networks. > Typically they had mailers which could reliably parse addresses, rewrite he > aders as needed, and get mail moving on to the next hop. Manually routed m > ail could use the percent routing hack, quoted components, source routing, or > weird combinations of all of them at once. It was really pretty amazing s > ome of the stuff that would work. Lots of people in that era became sendmail > wizards (often against their will!). On any given network, people knew the > host of last resort by heart... you'd hear lots of "just send it to (ucbvax, > wiscvm, ihnp4), they can probably get it there". > > A whacky example: Mail from a MAILNET connected host to someone inside DEC (r > outed via their UUCP connection): > "rutgers!decvax!decwrl!KYOA::USER"%rutgers.arpa at mit-multics.mailnet > > Some well-connected sites included: Cal Berkeley (UCBVAX, UCBARPA, BERKELEY) > [ARPA, UUCP], Univ. Delaware (UDEL-RELAY) [ARPA, CSNET], Univ. of Wisconsin > (WISCVM) [ARPA, BITNET], DEC Western Research Lab (DECWRL, DECVAX) [ARPA, CSN > ET, UUCP], AT&T Bell Labs at Naperville, IL (ihnp4.uucp) [UUCP], Rutgers (RUT > GERS) [ARPA, UUCP], > > Up until the early 1990s, it was still difficult to get on "the network". M > any sites were still relying on the simplest way to move mail, which was UUCP > . It wasn't until the NSF Acceptable Use Policy was lifted and the regional > and independent networks were available (e.g. PSInet), that moving packets be > came straightforward. > > On a related topic: People had lots of fun on internal networks coming up wit > h host naming schemes. It was one of the best parts about being the systems > person. I recall MIT has breakfast cereals for awhile (MIT-RICECHEX). Rutg > ers main machines were colors (RU-RED, RU-BLUE, RU-GREEN). When I set up the > namespace at South Pole Station, all the hosts were named after the one thin > g you'd never see: trees. > > A great reference on the history of various networks and how they all worked > together is John Quarterman's "The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing > Systems Worldwide", Digital Press, 1996, ISBN 1555580335. I'm not sure if J > ohn is on the list. > > Some more mail gateways from 1985: > > ARPA-UUCP: brl-tgr, ucbvax, berkeley, seismo > ARPA-ACSNET (Australia): seismo.arpa > ARPA-AUGMENT (Xerox): office.arpa > ARPA-Xerox: xerox.arpa > ARPA-CSNET: csnet-relay.arpa, csnet-sh.arpa, csnet-cic.arpa > ARPA-BITNET: wiscvm.bitnet, ucbvax.arpa > ARPA-DEC (Digital Equip. Corp.): decwrl.arpa > ARPA-CCNET (Columbia Univ): columbia.arpa, cu20xx.arpa > ARPA-MAILNET: mit-multics.arpa > ARPA-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs.arpa > CSNET-UUCP: tektronix.csnet, tektronix.uucp > CSNET-DFN (Univ. Karlshruhe, Germany): germany.csnet > CSNET-XEROX: xerox.csnet > CSNET-HUJI (Herbrew Univ., Jerusalum, Israel): israel.csnet > CSNET-SDN (Seoul, Korea): kaist.csnet > CSNET-MTSNET (Univ. of Michigan): umich.csnet > CSNET-DEC (Digital Equip. Corp.): decwrl.csnet > CSNET-EAN (Canada): ubc.csnet > CSNET-SUNET (Swedish Univ. Network): CHALMERS.CSNET > CSNET-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs.csnet > BITNET-UUCP: psuvax1.bitnet, psuvax1.uucp > BITNET-CSNET: wiscvm.bitnet > BITNET-IBM (IBM Research): vnet.bitnet, cunyvm.bitnet > BITNET-NETNORTH (Canada): canada01.bitnet > BITNET-CCNET (Columbia Univ.): cuvma.bitnet > BITNET-EARN (European Academic Research Network, via GSI Darmstadt): dearn.bi > tnet > MAILNET-JANET (U.K.): ucl-cs-mailnet.mailnet > MAILNET-CCNET (Columbia Univ.): carnegie.mailnet > MAILNET-MTSNET (Univ. of Michigan): umich-mts.mailnet > JANET (U.K.)-PSS (U.K.-British Telecom PDN): pssa.pss > JANET (U.K.)-UUCP: dcl-cs.uucp, !seismo!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!dcl-cs!davis > ACSNET (Australia)-UUCP: !decvax!mulga!psych.uq.oz > DEC-UUCP: decwrl.uucp > > [1] http://www.uucp.org/papers/pathalias.pdf > > ******************** Craig Partridge Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com Phone: +1 517 324 3425 From sbrim at cisco.com Thu Jan 21 05:06:05 2010 From: sbrim at cisco.com (Scott Brim) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:06:05 -0500 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <4B58513D.5090204@cisco.com> Dave CROCKER allegedly wrote on 01/20/2010 17:55 EST: > As I recall, Bitnet was a dotted sequence of hostnames, but I don't > remember whether it had global hostnaming or was route-based. I don't recall us doing more than just simple host names, e.g. "swb at CORNELLA". Hierarchy might have been added later when it was running over IP? From craig at aland.bbn.com Thu Jan 21 05:22:27 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:22:27 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121132227.74E1928E137@aland.bbn.com> > > I wish I had copies of the email discussions between April '84 and October > '84 > > but I don't. My guess is that the discussion was in NAMEDROPPERS but I > > only have a very limited archive of old NAMEDROPPERS email. > > ftp://ftp.psg.com/pub/lists/1983 and forward may help you > > they're also in mhonarc form at http://psg.com/lists/namedroppers/ Hi Randy: This is wonderful! Thank you! A quick scan reveals some details. The big TLD shift came between 30 April 1984 and 11 May 1984. A note from Jon of a draft of what became RFC 920 on 30 April still uses Grapevine-like naming. A note from Jon on 11 May 1984 has TLDs close to how we know them today. However, the May 1984 has some notable differences. .GOV and .EDU are there but there's .DDN (which became .MIL), .COR (for Corporate and become .COM) and .PUB (which became .ORG). Vigorous discussion promptly erupts on the list as the new idea is debated. But much is going on in the background and a quick read of the list suggests that only the creation of country codes came from public correspondence (I was reading quickly and may have missed things). In July 1984 we have a TLD list of ARPA, GOV, EDU, COM, MIL and ORG and 2-letter ISO country codes for countries. Thanks! Craig From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Thu Jan 21 05:54:56 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:54:56 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121065456.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.83e2bbd18a.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Jan 21 06:07:09 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:07:09 -0800 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> References: <4B577323.2040905@isi.edu> <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <4B585F8D.2040400@dcrocker.net> On 1/20/2010 2:42 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > I think .com originally was derived from "company" rather than > "commercial". The .com's weren't thought of as "businesses" in the > sense of places that consumers go to buy things. They were companies > doing government contract work. The Internet was not chartered to > interconnect businesses - it was a military command-and-control > prototype network, being built by educational, governmental, and > contractors. If anybody had suggested that businesses were to be > included, it would have raised flotillas of red flags in the > administrative ranks of government and PTTs. Hence .com -- not .biz. On the other hand, .org was meant to refer to non-commercial organizations and .com was meant to refer to commercial ones. Yes, commercial organizations on the net were initially limited to those doing government work, but there were plenty of for-profit companies on the net, from its start. Such as, oh, for example, BBN. And their use of the net expanded to include traffic that wasn't strictly related to their government contracts. Although this is what the AUP was intended to proscribe, it's effectiveness was limited. While I was at Digital Equipment Corp, in the late 80's, when the Acceptable Use Policy was still in effect, we had to resolve an apparent policy problem with doing DEC traffic over the Internet. The corporate lawyer initially looked at the AUP and said that it meant we couldn't do anything other than traffic related to government contracts. (The concern, at that point, was using the net for doing product support.) We countered by noting that other commercial groups were using the net for commercial purposes and we needed him to give us a work-around. I don't remember the details of what followed, but he did adapt his assessment... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jan 21 06:35:15 2010 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:35:15 -0600 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <3A8F4BA0-3528-4C18-8C56-4D23D1087CD2@martylyons.com> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> <3A8F4BA0-3528-4C18-8C56-4D23D1087CD2@martylyons.com> Message-ID: <4B586623.7000500@cox.net> On 1/20/2010 11:59 PM, Marty Lyons wrote: > > On Jan 20, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: > >> On 1/20/2010 8:37 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >>> The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree >>> BITNET) into ARPANET was intentionally enabled... >> >> Each of these had their own syntax. [snip] > The "well known" gateways were also well-connected and on multiple > networks. Typically they had mailers which could reliably parse > addresses, rewrite headers as needed, and get mail moving on to the > next hop. Manually routed mail could use the percent routing hack, > quoted components, source routing, or weird combinations of all of > them at once. It was really pretty amazing some of the stuff that > would work. Lots of people in that era became sendmail wizards > (often against their will!). On any given network, people knew the > host of last resort by heart... you'd hear lots of "just send it to > (ucbvax, wiscvm, ihnp4), they can probably get it there". > > A whacky example: Mail from a MAILNET connected host to someone > inside DEC (routed via their UUCP connection): > "rutgers!decvax!decwrl!KYOA::USER"%rutgers.arpa at mit-multics.mailnet By the time we (Creighton) got on NSFNET (Midnet) sendmail knew about gateways to commercial networks like COMPUSERVE, although I don't remember what the hack was to get the comma (for example) through. There were also gateways to FIDONET and the hams packet radio as I recall. And when I left in 2003, at least one of our client parochial schools used UUCP between our network and their Apple network. [snip] > On a related topic: People had lots of fun on internal networks > coming up with host naming schemes. It was one of the best parts > about being the systems person. I recall MIT has breakfast cereals > for awhile (MIT-RICECHEX). Rutgers main machines were colors > (RU-RED, RU-BLUE, RU-GREEN). When I set up the namespace at South > Pole Station, all the hosts were named after the one thing you'd > never see: trees. When I left, we were still naming most of the centrally-managed machines (and so did a lot of the departments) after birds. It turns out that you run out of bird names that will fit in the unix standard a lot quicker than you might think. (This house used to be on the University's network--this machine is "Hummimngbird" and the ones downstairs are "Chickadee" and "Nuthatch".) -- "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." Remember: The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals. Requiescas in pace o email Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Thu Jan 21 07:13:23 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:13:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100121151323.229F56BE570@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> From: Vint Cerf > not by much. DNS 1984; NSFNET 1986 Yes, but back then things were happening so fast we were all living on dog time - two years was forever! :-) Noel From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Jan 21 07:45:23 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:45:23 -0800 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <20100121151323.229F56BE570@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20100121151323.229F56BE570@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <4B587693.6060401@dcrocker.net> On 1/21/2010 7:13 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > From: Vint Cerf > > > not by much. DNS 1984; NSFNET 1986 > > Yes, but back then things were happening so fast we were all living on dog > time - two years was forever! :-) I don't think it changes any of the core parts of this thread, but accuracy probably dictates noting that the DNS was not viable as critical infrastructure replacement for the hosts table until somewhere around 1987, as I recall. The MX record was a key bit of breakthrough for this, in my predictable opinion (though I had nothing to do with that work.) Remember that it was developed after previous, unsuccessful tries to specify the email 'routing' record. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Thu Jan 21 07:47:39 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:47:39 -0500 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc In-Reply-To: <7B4642EE-0BE2-4E33-8918-66188F6618C1@transsys.com> References: , <1264027356.3494.42.camel@localhost>, <7B4642EE-0BE2-4E33-8918-66188F6618C1@transsys.com> Message-ID: <4B5830CB.24793.27D57987@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 20 Jan 2010 at 18:05, Louis Mamakos wrote: > There was, of course, the .ARPA domain that came first. One day, ... all of the hosts in the SRI-NIC's HOSTS.TXT file grew aliases with ... the .ARPA suffix. Funny you should mention that: just recently I ran across some old business cards of mine with the email address "cosell at bbn-labsb.arpa". Turns out that the printer didn't know what to do about that funny email address part (I think I was among the first (at BBN at least) to try to get my email addr on my business cards) and so he used a center-dot. Most folk to whom I gave my business card back in those days had no idea what an email address was..:o) /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From cos at aaaaa.org Thu Jan 21 13:51:03 2010 From: cos at aaaaa.org (Ofer Inbar) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:51:03 -0500 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <4B58513D.5090204@cisco.com> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> <4B58513D.5090204@cisco.com> Message-ID: <20100121215103.GA7306@mip.aaaaa.org> Scott Brim wrote: > Dave CROCKER allegedly wrote on 01/20/2010 17:55 EST: > > As I recall, Bitnet was a dotted sequence of hostnames, but I don't > > remember whether it had global hostnaming or was route-based. > > I don't recall us doing more than just simple host names, e.g. > "swb at CORNELLA". Hierarchy might have been added later when it was > running over IP? When Brandeis dropped BITNET in the early 90s, it was still @BRANDEIS, and I don't remember ever seeing dotted sequences for BITNET hosts. I do remember using hacks like @sitename.bitnet on non-BITNET sendmail hosts that were configured to rewrite those to go to the appropriate gateways. -- Cos From dcrocker at gmail.com Thu Jan 21 14:13:01 2010 From: dcrocker at gmail.com (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:13:01 -0800 Subject: [ih] bang paths, was Domain Names In-Reply-To: <20100121215103.GA7306@mip.aaaaa.org> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> <4B58513D.5090204@cisco.com> <20100121215103.GA7306@mip.aaaaa.org> Message-ID: <4B58D16D.5060607@gmail.com> On 1/21/2010 1:51 PM, Ofer Inbar wrote: > When Brandeis dropped BITNET in the early 90s, it was still @BRANDEIS, > and I don't remember ever seeing dotted sequences for BITNET hosts. > I do remember using hacks like @sitename.bitnet on non-BITNET sendmail > hosts that were configured to rewrite those to go to the appropriate > gateways. Hmmm. I'm starting to suspect that what I remember was merely the form brandeis.bitnet d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From marty at MARTYLYONS.COM Thu Jan 21 21:40:14 2010 From: marty at MARTYLYONS.COM (Marty Lyons) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:40:14 -0800 Subject: [ih] Some BITNET history, was bang paths In-Reply-To: <20100121215103.GA7306@mip.aaaaa.org> References: <20100120163744.7DB7928E137@aland.bbn.com> <4B5789F1.9090007@dcrocker.net> <4B58513D.5090204@cisco.com> <20100121215103.GA7306@mip.aaaaa.org> Message-ID: On Jan 21, 2010, at 1:51 PM, Ofer Inbar wrote: > I do remember using hacks like @sitename.bitnet on non-BITNET sendmail > hosts that were configured to rewrite those to go to the appropriate > gateways. The .bitnet mail suffix appeared first at the BITNET relay points, including Wisconsin and Princeton; I think that may have been around 1985. On the BITNET side, many people were running the excellent MAILER MTA written by E. Alan Crosswell who was at Columbia University. MAILER allowed sites to send files out on a default RSCS connection or an IP path if they had an interface. At the time, connecting an IBM mainframe channel to Ethernet was a big deal (more below). Mail on an IBM VM system had no special status as such. Mail files appeared in the user machine's virtual reader, and were sent to the virtual punch. The Remote Spooling Communication Subsystem (RSCS) could enqueue files to remote hosts and a specified virtual machine. For example, our node was NJITCCCC (NJ Inst. of Tech.). A file could be sent from another node/user pair to NJITCCCC MARTY, with no expectation or need for RFC compliant headers, or any "mail" related information -- it was just a file. When MAILER became available, all files would get routed to NJITCCCC MAILER, which expected valid mail headers etc, and then would drop the validated file into the individual user's virtual reader. One way to view the difference between the networks was in the ARPANET everything looked like a packet. In BITNET, everything looked like a file. The included MUA on IBM VM systems was the NOTE program, which only supported RSCS node names. There was no way using just NOTE to send mail to the Internet at large as due to lack of headers mail would be dropped; intra-BITNET would work fine. Richard Schafer at Rice University wrote the MAIL program which built valid RFC compatible mail files, and combined with MAILER, really allowed BITNET hosts to function as first-class Internet mail citizens. Mail gatewaying to the Internet at large would transit through someplace like Wisconsin, Princeton, etc, and mail headers rewritten using the % routing hack as MARTY%NJITCCCC.BITNET at puccvm.princeton.edu. Sometimes you'd see a MARTY at NJITCCCC.BITNET in the wild, but you'd have to hope your local postmaster had the MTA configured to get it back to the right gateway. It was still an era when users benefited from local knowledge of how the underlying transport worked, to get things where they needed to go. To handle the emergence of mailing lists, Eric Thomas wrote the second generation of mailing list server, LISTSERV, superseding the first version run at City University of New York which could not handle the load. Ultimately Eric formed L-SOFT to market and sell LISTSERV, and it remains one of the leading commercial mailing list tools. Fairly quickly the central nodes on BITNET started overloading, the more central nodes (e.g. CUNY, PRINCETON, WISCVM, CORNELL) starting manually managing RSCS mail queues. CUNY in particular had a dedicated person routing files by hand as parts of the network would slow down. To make matters worse, RSCS allowed instant messages using the MSG/TELL command (e.g. "TELL ARTY AT CUNYVM Want to get dinner?"). Originally these messages were designed for high-priority traffic such as operator messages to users, and in the network took precedence over mail traffic. Then Jeff Kell at Univ. of Tennessee wrote RELAY (probably the first distributed chat service) [1], and you can imagine what happened next. Within a year there were restrictions on time of day when people would turn on RELAY (usually only late at night) otherwise the network would grind to a halt. Most sites were connected using 9600bps leased lines...that was for a whole university -- something to keep in mind now that we all complain about our personal megabit connections :) To connect to an Ethernet, IBM's official hardware offering included a 7170 DACU (Direct Attach Channel Unit) which consisted of a modified PC and block channel card; it was a poorly supported project and did not catch on. Around 1988, IBM shipped the 8232 LAN Channel Station, which was a PS/2 with a microchannel card to connect to a mainframe channel (price was about $40k USD); Jeff Kravitz [2] worked on that project. An independent company, Bus-Tech, Inc. ("BTI") sold their own interface box, which was both faster and cheaper than the IBM 8232. The only problem was their driver didn't work well. David Lippke from the University of Texas at Dallas wrote one which became the standard ("the Lippke driver") which was recommended by BTI. IBM during the early days of BITNET didn't offer a TCP suite. Independently, the University of Wisconsin wrote a full package known as WISCNET (around 1985), which IBM later sold as a supported product. Matt Korn wrote the SMTP component while at Wisconsin, and later moved to IBM. When the product became supported within IBM, it was handled at TJ Watson Research Center; Jay Elinksy and Barry Appelman worked with Matt on the product. Once VM systems has full IP access, other utilities rapidly were developed; Peter DiCamillo at Brown University wrote tn3270, to allow telnet in 3270 full screen emulation mode. I seem to recall the first version was developed as a Mac application, then a Unix port was made that used the curses library. Arty Ecock at the City University of New York wrote RXSOCKET for socket support. Rick Troth at Rice University wrote a Gopher implementation. Many of the significant contributors to BITNET attended VM Workshops, held in the summer at college campuses (at low cost), run by Harry Williams from Marist College. The IBM SHARE VM User Group also was a big event. The BITNET and VM community was small and close knit, and seemed to succeed despite IBM sometimes (who continued to push their MVS operating system as a superior alternative to VM... even though it wasn't!). Several people from IBM had moved to Advanced Networks & Services (ANS) when it was formed in the late 80s. (An aside: In 1993, I joined Matt, Jay, Barry, and David in the early days of America Online. Our first IP connections were from ANS. UUnet, MCI, and MAE-EAST were just down the street; SURAnet was based at the University of Maryland. The DC area was a real hot spot for the net, to some degree even more than the valley.) The underlying BITNET network remained a flat namespace due to RSCS being the routing layer. BITNET never moved to hierarchal names, although multi-homed hosts might appear that way on the ARPA side -- CORNELLC was a big BITNET node and was also cornellc.cit.cornell.edu. Princeton's main node was PUCCVM aka puccvm.princeton.edu. CUNYVM was cunyvm.cuny.edu. In the later years (1988) BITNET2 allowed nodes to route traffic over the Internet (RJE over IP). With the emergence of the regional networks, within several years however most campuses had dedicated Internet connections and BITNET registrations started declining; BITNET effectively wrapped up by 1996. The interesting trend in nearly all of Internet history is the same people keep crossing paths repeatedly; I've lost track of how many people I keep bumping into over and over just with a different business card. And the overlap between operating system development and network development is significant -- more so than has been written in the popular press, although John Day covers this very well in his book [3]. Many of the BITNET milestones were enabled by the VM operating system, which was a great platform for development and testing. Ultimately even IBM realized that the network and how easy it was to utilize was critical to sales; there was a long held belief within IBM that SNA (their proprietary architecture) and 3725 style controllers were the future of networking [this was often attributed to Ellen Hancock]. The dramatic sales of low cost DEC VAX systems in the mid-80s really showed how important networking capabilities were "out of the box". Although oddly enough, VMS in the 80s did not natively support TCP, as Digital was pushing DECNET. One of the best implementations under VMS was from a company called TGV ("Three Guys and a Vax") in Silicon Valley. So in the case of BITNET, much of the innovation was driven by the users despite an operating system and hardware that really didn't offer much in the way of native networking functionality. From hardware interfaces to most of the software, a great deal of the technology was developed outside of the organization that built the underlying systems. Much of this was out of necessity since BITNET was the only game in town for many campuses, since it was so difficult to get approval for a full ARPAnet connection. Marty [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitnet_Relay [2] http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/jkravitz.index.html [3] "Patterns in Network Architecture", Prentice Hall, 2008, ISBN 978-0132252423 From mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de Fri Jan 22 04:33:03 2010 From: mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Matthias_B=E4rwolff?=) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:33:03 +0100 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) Message-ID: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de> Hi all, I've been trying to find out about the actual origins of NVT, but cannot find statements other than (1) that a common terminal representation would be good, or (2) that it exists in the shape of NVT. So where does it come from? Did the BBN guys specify it when building the TIPs (which did just that: the character conversion between the local terminal and NVT)? Or did it emerge from the work on Telnet in the NWG? Thanks for all hints. Matthias -- Matthias B?rwolff www.b?rwolff.de From vint at google.com Fri Jan 22 07:38:32 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:38:32 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de> References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de> Message-ID: <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. Steve Crocker led that group and might have better answers. this was not something that BBN designed - it came from the NWG, of course BBN had people involved in the WG. As I recall, Dave Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. vint On Jan 22, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: > Hi all, > > I've been trying to find out about the actual origins of NVT, but > cannot > find statements other than (1) that a common terminal representation > would be good, or (2) that it exists in the shape of NVT. So where > does > it come from? Did the BBN guys specify it when building the TIPs > (which > did just that: the character conversion between the local terminal and > NVT)? Or did it emerge from the work on Telnet in the NWG? > > Thanks for all hints. > > Matthias > > -- > Matthias B?rwolff > www.b?rwolff.de > From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Fri Jan 22 08:13:10 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:13:10 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> Message-ID: <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 22 Jan 2010 at 10:38, Vint Cerf wrote: > this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. Indeed, but a lot of the details ended up being done by me and bob Clements. I was implementing the NVT stuff on the TIP [and trying to get the @#$%@#$% IBM 2741 to play nice] and Bob was working with the corresponding code on TENEX, so since we were just a few offices away we could easily try ideas and debug things. > ... As I recall, Dave > Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. Actually, I did that. We were playing with the problems of asynchronous negotiation and I worked out the details of D/D/W/W on napkins on the airplane as dave and I were flying to UCLA for a telnet meeting [at which DDWW was presented]. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Jan 22 08:21:14 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:21:14 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de> <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> Message-ID: I may be wrong, but I thought the NVT idea first showed up in the "new" Telnet in mid-72. I had always thought it originated with Alex MacKenzie, but he swears it wasn't him. Take care, John At 10:38 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. > >Steve Crocker led that group and might have better answers. >this was not something that BBN designed - it came from the NWG, >of course BBN had people involved in the WG. As I recall, Dave >Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. > >vint > > >On Jan 22, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: > >>Hi all, >> >>I've been trying to find out about the actual origins of NVT, but cannot >>find statements other than (1) that a common terminal representation >>would be good, or (2) that it exists in the shape of NVT. So where does >>it come from? Did the BBN guys specify it when building the TIPs (which >>did just that: the character conversion between the local terminal and >>NVT)? Or did it emerge from the work on Telnet in the NWG? >> >>Thanks for all hints. >> >>Matthias >> >>-- >>Matthias B?rwolff >>www.b?rwolff.de From vint at google.com Fri Jan 22 08:38:07 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:38:07 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: Bernie, thanks so much for setting this straight - i had not remembered the strong extent of the BBN work here. vint On Jan 22, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > On 22 Jan 2010 at 10:38, Vint Cerf wrote: > >> this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. > > Indeed, but a lot of the details ended up being done by me and bob > Clements. I was implementing the NVT stuff on the TIP [and trying > to get > the @#$%@#$% IBM 2741 to play nice] and Bob was working with the > corresponding code on TENEX, so since we were just a few offices > away we > could easily try ideas and debug things. > >> ... As I recall, Dave >> Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. > > Actually, I did that. We were playing with the problems of > asynchronous > negotiation and I worked out the details of D/D/W/W on napkins on the > airplane as dave and I were flying to UCLA for a telnet meeting [at > which > DDWW was presented]. > > /Bernie\ > > -- > Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers > mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA > --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- > > > From mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de Fri Jan 22 08:45:11 2010 From: mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Matthias_B=E4rwolff?=) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:45:11 +0100 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de> <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> Message-ID: <4B59D617.3040401@cs.tu-berlin.de> Thanks for your suggestions so far; after searching around in early BBN reports and RFCs I have found three references on the history of NVT which might be of interest to the discussion: BBN Report 1928 (the Quarterly Technical Report No.4, 1 October 1969 to 31 December 1969} states: "While we have come to believe that the IMP should not do character set conversions, there is still an immediate need for a network-wide teletype character set into and out of which each Host translates his messages. The choice is arbitrary, and the need for a decision has become urgent (already we see Hosts converting to the language of the destination). We recommend the adoption of 8-bit ASCII with the 8th bit (checksum bit) set to 1, which is the IMP's internal character set. This choice has the small additional advantage that Hosts may send messages to local or remote IMP teletypes without an additional conversion. As network use develops, other standards (such as a display language) will be needed." (p.\,9) Then, Steve Crocker's RFC 66 (of mid-1970): "We next agreed [in a meeting with BBN and MIT representatives] on an initial network standard console: 7-bit ASCII in 8 bit fields with the eight bit on, transmitted in contiguous streams. The specific codes are listed in appendix H of the IMP Operations manual, BBN report #1877. This seems to work only some hardship on PDP-10's and be fine for all others." (p.\,3) And, RFC 137 (on Telnet) refers to an "Official Network Virtual Terminal Code" already. So, by early 1971 at the latest seems there to have been a firm notion of NVT. I would think, though, that the TIPs pushed the whole thing quite a bit, being in a prime position to enforce a standard on this. From the Ornstein et al (1971) paper: "Because of the large number of different terminal types used in the network, the concept of the Network Virtual Terminal was developed. This is an imaginary but well-defined type of terminal. The TIP translates typed data to virtual terminal code before shipping it into the network, and conversely translates the remote system's response back into the local terminal's code. Thus, each Host system must deal only with this single terminal type." Still the precise origin is somewhat foggy. But then again, the concept seems in a way obvious, so maybe whoever came up with the details (like, how large or how small to make the standard terminal set, trading off breadth of applicability and feature-richness, and whom to favor) did not think it necessary to make a big fuss about it. Matthias John Day wrote: > I may be wrong, but I thought the NVT idea first showed up in the > "new" Telnet in mid-72. I had always thought it originated with Alex > MacKenzie, but he swears it wasn't him. > > Take care, > John > > At 10:38 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >> this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. >> >> Steve Crocker led that group and might have better answers. >> this was not something that BBN designed - it came from the NWG, >> of course BBN had people involved in the WG. As I recall, Dave >> Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. >> >> vint >> >> >> On Jan 22, 2010, at 7:33 AM, Matthias B?rwolff wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> I've been trying to find out about the actual origins of NVT, but >>> cannot >>> find statements other than (1) that a common terminal representation >>> would be good, or (2) that it exists in the shape of NVT. So where does >>> it come from? Did the BBN guys specify it when building the TIPs (which >>> did just that: the character conversion between the local terminal and >>> NVT)? Or did it emerge from the work on Telnet in the NWG? >>> >>> Thanks for all hints. >>> >>> Matthias >>> >>> -- >>> Matthias B?rwolff >>> www.b?rwolff.de > -- Matthias B?rwolff www.b?rwolff.de From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Jan 22 09:00:56 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:00:56 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: Actually, my question is who came up with making the protocol symmetrical? That was the brilliant insight, even more so than the NVT. Everyone else saw this problem as an assymmetric terminal to host protocol. What made Telnet unique and so useful was seeing it as symmetircal. I stell teach Telnet, not because everyone uses Telnet but as examples of insightful design. Also the go-ahead solution for the same reason. Take care, John At 11:38 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >Bernie, > >thanks so much for setting this straight - i had not remembered the >strong extent of the BBN work here. > >vint > > >On Jan 22, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: > >>On 22 Jan 2010 at 10:38, Vint Cerf wrote: >> >>>this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. >> >>Indeed, but a lot of the details ended up being done by me and bob >>Clements. I was implementing the NVT stuff on the TIP [and trying to get >>the @#$%@#$% IBM 2741 to play nice] and Bob was working with the >>corresponding code on TENEX, so since we were just a few offices away we >>could easily try ideas and debug things. >> >>>... As I recall, Dave >>>Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. >> >>Actually, I did that. We were playing with the problems of asynchronous >>negotiation and I worked out the details of D/D/W/W on napkins on the >>airplane as dave and I were flying to UCLA for a telnet meeting [at which >>DDWW was presented]. >> >> /Bernie\ >> >>-- >>Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >>mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA >> --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Fri Jan 22 09:24:40 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:24:40 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com>, Message-ID: <4B599908.8178.2D52A2A8@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 22 Jan 2010 at 11:21, John Day wrote: > I may be wrong, but I thought the NVT idea first > showed up in the "new" Telnet in mid-72. I had > always thought it originated with Alex MacKenzie, > but he swears it wasn't him. I think that that was the result of the meeting I referred to when I mentioned DDWW in the previous message: Dave W and I were the representatives of BBN's TIP group at that meeting [although at that time I was pretty much "the guy" working on the TIP code and so I was mostly worrying about the telnet considerations from our side of BBN [as opposed to the TENEX side] and I don't remember who, if anyone, was at the meeting from the BBN TENEX group]. Ralph Alter and Will Crowther had started on support for the 2741 [half duplex line-at-a-time selectric based IBM terminal], although I don't know why [obviously ARPA told us to do it, but I don't know why and I just had the chore of making it all work...:o)] and I guess a general concern arose at that meeting for being able to talk to sites like MULTICS and [I think] some IBM-based sites that weren't so hot with full- duplex, straight ASCII terminals. [I was a cross-point for that because I was trying to get the 2741 to work at least plausibly with TENEX and so I ran into every sort of terminal-compatibility problem you could imagine [e.g., the 2741 locked its keyboard after you hit 'enter' so you couldn't [easily] input two lines at at time]. The details all fade, but I'd bet it was at that meeting where the idea of the NVT was hammered out. Same meeting I presented my scheme for doing negotiations [DDWW] and all that got documented in the RFC you mentioned. After that there were several RFCs with new "options" defined [the first I can remember was RCTE: remote-controlled-transmission-and- echoing, proposed by the folks in Hawaii, I think] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From vint at google.com Fri Jan 22 09:47:27 2010 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:47:27 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: interestingly this symmetry was deliberately baked into the TCP protocol so maybe this was contagious? vint On Jan 22, 2010, at 12:00 PM, John Day wrote: > Actually, my question is who came up with making the protocol > symmetrical? > > That was the brilliant insight, even more so than the NVT. Everyone > else saw this problem as an assymmetric terminal to host protocol. > What made Telnet unique and so useful was seeing it as symmetircal. > > I stell teach Telnet, not because everyone uses Telnet but as > examples of insightful design. Also the go-ahead solution for the > same reason. > > Take care, > John > > At 11:38 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >> Bernie, >> >> thanks so much for setting this straight - i had not remembered the >> strong extent of the BBN work here. >> >> vint >> >> >> On Jan 22, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: >> >>> On 22 Jan 2010 at 10:38, Vint Cerf wrote: >>> >>>> this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. >>> >>> Indeed, but a lot of the details ended up being done by me and bob >>> Clements. I was implementing the NVT stuff on the TIP [and trying >>> to get >>> the @#$%@#$% IBM 2741 to play nice] and Bob was working with the >>> corresponding code on TENEX, so since we were just a few offices >>> away we >>> could easily try ideas and debug things. >>> >>>> ... As I recall, Dave >>>> Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. >>> >>> Actually, I did that. We were playing with the problems of >>> asynchronous >>> negotiation and I worked out the details of D/D/W/W on napkins on >>> the >>> airplane as dave and I were flying to UCLA for a telnet meeting >>> [at which >>> DDWW was presented]. >>> >>> /Bernie\ >>> >>> -- >>> Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >>> mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA >>> --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Jan 22 09:53:22 2010 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:53:22 -0800 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: <4B59E612.5040905@dcrocker.net> On 1/22/2010 9:00 AM, John Day wrote: > That was the brilliant insight, even more so than the NVT. Everyone else > saw this problem as an assymmetric terminal to host protocol. What made > Telnet unique and so useful was seeing it as symmetircal. The 'symmetry' of having either side able to initiate an option assertion, including both simultaneously, was quite nice, especially since it eliminated timing sensitivity. The larger construct that this was an entirely symmetrical connection between two terminals had the problem that /options/ didn't clarify the 'side' they were meant for. While running a TCP/IP product team, we had a bid for a government contract that included a site visit to test our stuff. We get to the demo of telnet and the gov't guy said he wanted to see echoing, or somesuch, /from the terminal to the host./ We explained why that made no sense. He calmnly nodded and said he entirely understood the problem this requirement imposed. He then pointed to the relevant specification text and it clearly said that this was all symmetrical and said his job was to verify conformance, not merely conformance of the stuff that made sense... So, with everyone very clear that this was one of the more silly bits of code that the team would ever write, the lead programmer quickly added the code needed to make the terminal side process a DO echoing from the server. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From bernie at fantasyfarm.com Fri Jan 22 10:03:43 2010 From: bernie at fantasyfarm.com (Bernie Cosell) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:03:43 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, , Message-ID: <4B59A22F.13938.2D7662F0@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> On 22 Jan 2010 at 12:00, John Day wrote: > Actually, my question is who came up with making the protocol symmetrical? > > That was the brilliant insight, even more so than the NVT. Everyone > else saw this problem as an assymmetric terminal to host protocol. > What made Telnet unique and so useful was seeing it as symmetircal. I guess that'd be me. [at least I did something back then that someone thinks was useful.. :o)]. You're right about the asymmetry and in working through the option negotiations [echoing, etc] it was clear that aysmmetry wasn't working: terminals needed to tell the servers of their preferences, servers needed to tell terminals of their preferences, and there needed to be some way to resolve conflicts, all the while realizing that it was symmetric and so acceptances or refusals could pass like ships in the night. It was largely in my court because since I was "the TIP guy" at the time I ended up worrying about that stuff [from the terminal side of things]. As Dave and I were flying to LA, I worked out a scheme (it really was on the napkin on the airplane -- *that* I remember! :o)) that I presented at the meeting and argued would be guaranteed *always* to settle on an agreement [that is never to go into a loop] no matter which side did [or wanted to do] what. As I recall, no one at the meeting was really all that interested in the details -- everyone agreed it would be a good thing and it looked like I had cobbled up something that would work [and I think I had decent technical-cred with the group at that time, so they were willing to buy into a lot of hand waving on my part]. And so I was sent back to BBN to nail down the details and that became will/wont/do/dont. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Fri Jan 22 10:09:18 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:09:18 -0700 Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?Does_anyone_know_how_to_get_in_touch_with_Joyce_Re?= =?utf-8?q?ynolds=3F?= Message-ID: <20100122110918.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.724c2ca9e5.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From craig at aland.bbn.com Fri Jan 22 10:08:08 2010 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:08:08 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) Message-ID: <20100122180808.127FD28E137@aland.bbn.com> Just before Bernie's note arrived I did a bit of reading in the RFCs. RFC 137 and 139 strongly suggest that the initial idea of doing an NVT was made in April 1971 by the then TELNET committee which included Crowther. It was a very vague concept at the time. Craig > On 22 Jan 2010 at 11:21, John Day wrote: > > > I may be wrong, but I thought the NVT idea first > > showed up in the "new" Telnet in mid-72. I had > > always thought it originated with Alex MacKenzie, > > but he swears it wasn't him. > > I think that that was the result of the meeting I referred to when I > mentioned DDWW in the previous message: Dave W and I were the > representatives of BBN's TIP group at that meeting [although at that time > I was pretty much "the guy" working on the TIP code and so I was mostly > worrying about the telnet considerations from our side of BBN [as opposed > to the TENEX side] and I don't remember who, if anyone, was at the > meeting from the BBN TENEX group]. > > Ralph Alter and Will Crowther had started on support for the 2741 [half > duplex line-at-a-time selectric based IBM terminal], although I don't > know why [obviously ARPA told us to do it, but I don't know why and I > just had the chore of making it all work...:o)] and I guess a general > concern arose at that meeting for being able to talk to sites like > MULTICS and [I think] some IBM-based sites that weren't so hot with full- > duplex, straight ASCII terminals. [I was a cross-point for that because > I was trying to get the 2741 to work at least plausibly with TENEX and so > I ran into every sort of terminal-compatibility problem you could imagine > [e.g., the 2741 locked its keyboard after you hit 'enter' so you couldn't > [easily] input two lines at at time]. > > The details all fade, but I'd bet it was at that meeting where the idea > of the NVT was hammered out. Same meeting I presented my scheme for > doing negotiations [DDWW] and all that got documented in the RFC you > mentioned. After that there were several RFCs with new "options" defined > [the first I can remember was RCTE: remote-controlled-transmission-and- > echoing, proposed by the folks in Hawaii, I think] > > /Bernie\ > > -- > Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers > mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA > --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- > > ******************** Craig Partridge Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com Phone: +1 517 324 3425 From braden at ISI.EDU Fri Jan 22 10:59:41 2010 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:59:41 -0800 Subject: [ih] The origin of the NVT In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B59F59D.5070403@isi.edu> A hasty scan of this discussion of NVT seemed to reveal an omission that seems remarkable to me: Jon Postel's contribution. I associate the protocol terminology "Network Virtual Terminal" with Jon, and I think it represented his clarity of vision. The other omission is what I believe to be the heart of the NVT: the treatment of end of line across diverse operating systems with differing EOL conventions. Again, I associate the adoption of CR LF with Jon, and I think of it as the core of the NVT concept. Option negotiation seems to be, and was historically, another concept layered on top of the NVT.(I was at the ISI meeting where D/D/W/W was first presented, I think.) Finally, as a purveyor of one of the IBM systems on the ARPAnet that (D)ARPA considered important, I take part of the credit/blame for making the default NVT options be a least-common-denominator terminal, an IBM 2741. Me and Joel Winett.at Lincoln Labs, who had an IBM TSS.360 system. Bob Braden From bboliek at catalpacreek.com Fri Jan 22 11:08:29 2010 From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com (bboliek at catalpacreek.com) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:08:29 -0700 Subject: [ih] Dot Com etc Message-ID: <20100122120829.4ad3dbe9d756a881d75c27a0c1a0edf6.830ba2198a.wbe@email05.secureserver.net> Does anyone know how to get in touch with Joyce Reynolds? I'm still delving into the origins of .com etc. Here email at the postel.org doesn't work and the phone there isn't any good either. Thanks in advance. You guys are great. This has been an incredible history lesson. I just wish I understood more. Brooks Boliek From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Fri Jan 22 11:17:26 2010 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:17:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ih] Does anyone know how to get in touch with Joyce Reynolds Message-ID: <20100122191726.C7E3F6BE57C@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: bboliek at catalpacreek.com > I'm still poking around on the origins of the top-level domains, and > thought she might have some insight since she was working with Postel > on the RFCs. The last email I have for her is jkrey -at- ISI.EDU, but it's from a couple of years ago, might not still be working. {Pause} Looks like it should still be working, though: http://www.isi.edu/div7/individual pages/reynolds.html Noel From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Jan 22 12:09:48 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:09:48 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: References: <4B599AFF.5070001@cs.tu-berlin.de>, <5A34013D-0B48-468A-93EC-5777F759F141@google.com> <4B598846.1815.2D112A09@bernie.fantasyfarm.com> Message-ID: There was a general attitude at the time that symmetry was good, asymmetry bad; degenerate cases were good; special cases were bad; that event driven was good, polled was bad; that streams were good, fixed records were bad; etc. ;-) IOW, we believed in good design discipline unlike most stuff done today. Also if you think about it, as soon as one introduces a layer with an asymmetric service, it terminates the ability to build on top of it. One more thing is possible, but that is it. Telnet being symmetrical is what enabled it to be used by other application protocols. Take care, John At 12:47 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >interestingly this symmetry was deliberately baked into the TCP >protocol so maybe this was contagious? > >vint > > >On Jan 22, 2010, at 12:00 PM, John Day wrote: > >>Actually, my question is who came up with making the protocol symmetrical? >> >>That was the brilliant insight, even more so than the NVT. >>Everyone else saw this problem as an assymmetric terminal to host >>protocol. What made Telnet unique and so useful was seeing it as >>symmetircal. >> >>I stell teach Telnet, not because everyone uses Telnet but as >>examples of insightful design. Also the go-ahead solution for the >>same reason. >> >>Take care, >>John >> >>At 11:38 -0500 2010/01/22, Vint Cerf wrote: >>>Bernie, >>> >>>thanks so much for setting this straight - i had not remembered >>>the strong extent of the BBN work here. >>> >>>vint >>> >>> >>>On Jan 22, 2010, at 11:13 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote: >>> >>>>On 22 Jan 2010 at 10:38, Vint Cerf wrote: >>>> >>>>>this was an idea that emerged from the network working group. >>>> >>>>Indeed, but a lot of the details ended up being done by me and bob >>>>Clements. I was implementing the NVT stuff on the TIP [and trying to get >>>>the @#$%@#$% IBM 2741 to play nice] and Bob was working with the >>>>corresponding code on TENEX, so since we were just a few offices away we >>>>could easily try ideas and debug things. >>>> >>>>>... As I recall, Dave >>>>>Walden was a strong proponent of the Do/Don't/Will/Won't idea. >>>> >>>>Actually, I did that. We were playing with the problems of asynchronous >>>>negotiation and I worked out the details of D/D/W/W on napkins on the >>>>airplane as dave and I were flying to UCLA for a telnet meeting [at which >>>>DDWW was presented]. >>>> >>>>/Bernie\ >>>> >>>>-- >>>>Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >>>>mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA >>>> --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Jan 22 12:17:03 2010 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:17:03 -0500 Subject: [ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT) In-Reply-To: <20100122180808.127FD28E137@aland.bbn.com> References: <20100122180808.127FD28E137@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: Right, but the NVT doesn't necessarily imply symmetry. That was a separate innovation. And it distinctly has the feel of something that has to be an ah-ha of a single brain. I am glad that Bernie has owned up to it! ;-) And I would offer, Bernie, that the reason no one was too interested in the details was because as soon as you see it, you see the inherent elegance and that is all you need to know! ;-) I know that was my initial reaction! Great work! Take care, John At 13:08 -0500 2010/01/22, Craig Partridge wrote: >Just before Bernie's note arrived I did a bit of reading in the RFCs. > >RFC 137 and 139 strongly suggest that the initial idea of doing an NVT >was made in April 1971 by the then TELNET committee which included Crowther. >It was a very vague concept at the time. > >Craig > >> On 22 Jan 2010 at 11:21, John Day wrote: >> >> > I may be wrong, but I thought the NVT idea first >> > showed up in the "new" Telnet in mid-72. I had >> > always thought it originated with Alex MacKenzie, >> > but he swears it wasn't him. >> >> I think that that was the result of the meeting I referred to when I >> mentioned DDWW in the previous message: Dave W and I were the >> representatives of BBN's TIP group at that meeting [although at that time >> I was pretty much "the guy" working on the TIP code and so I was mostly >> worrying about the telnet considerations from our side of BBN [as opposed >> to the TENEX side] and I don't remember who, if anyone, was at the >> meeting from the BBN TENEX group]. >> >> Ralph Alter and Will Crowther had started on support for the 2741 [half >> duplex line-at-a-time selectric based IBM terminal], although I don't >> know why [obviously ARPA told us to do it, but I don't know why and I >> just had the chore of making it all work...:o)] and I guess a general >> concern arose at that meeting for being able to talk to sites like >> MULTICS and [I think] some IBM-based sites that weren't so hot with full- >> duplex, straight ASCII terminals. [I was a cross-point for that because >> I was trying to get the 2741 to work at least plausibly with TENEX and so >> I ran into every sort of terminal-compatibility problem you could imagine >> [e.g., the 2741 locked its keyboard after you hit 'enter' so you couldn't >> [easily] input two lines at at time]. >> >> The details all fade, but I'd bet it was at that meeting where the idea >> of the NVT was hammered out. Same meeting I presented my scheme for >> doing negotiations [DDWW] and all that got documented in the RFC you >> mentioned. After that there were several RFCs with new "options" defined >> [the first I can remember was RCTE: remote-controlled-transmission-and- >> echoing, proposed by the folks in Hawaii, I think] >> >> /Bernie\ >> >> -- >> Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers >> mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA >> --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- >> >> >******************** >Craig Partridge >Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies >E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com >Phone: +1 517 324 3425