[ih] History of Network Virtual Terminal (NVT)

[Bernie Cosell]

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
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