[ih] principles of the internet

[Alex McKenzie]

Matthais,

The IMP system was quite symmetrical, as you say.  Also, NCP was made symmetrical from the beginning, by intention.  I can't remember whose idea it was that NCP should be symmetrical, but possibly it was Steve Crocker.

Regards,
Alex McKenzie

--- On Tue, 6/1/10, Matthias Bärwolff <mbaer at cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> > Hmmm.  For that matter, I suspect the Arpanet NCP was not all that
> > symmetrical, although I do not remember enough of the details.  I also
> > do not remember how symmetrical the IMP behavior was.  (But perhaps the
> > Arpanet is going back too far for your discussion.)
 
> As for packet forwarding, the IMPs were symmetrical as far
> as I can
> tell; there wasn't much going on other than sending
> individual packets
> either way (and waiting for ACKs, and then trow packets
> away; or resend
> them if no ACK was coming back). The Arpanet Host-Host
> protocol was made
> symmetrical at some point, I believe (it wouldn't matter
> who'd issue a
> Request for Connection first, or if both issued them ar
> once; and both
> sides could send stuff, once the connection was up).