[ih] Fate of Alohanet

[Vint Cerf]

from Bob Kahn:

>> The Alohanet funding began (I think,  because it was before my  
>> time) with funds from AFOSR. Then, around 1969, DARPA got into the  
>> picture and augmented the AF funding (via AFOSR as agent). Most  
>> likely the last funding was in FY 1974 or 75.

If you Google "richard binder alohanet" you should turn up the final  
report of the Alohanet project that is dated late in 1974 so Bob's  
guess as to funding appears to be correct. As far as landlines, I  
don't think they got any better. The project itself successfully  
demonstrated the feasibility of the stochastic method for sharing  
capacity and by mid-1973, Bob Metcalfe, stimulated by his exposure to  
the Alohanet project, had invented and demonstrated Ethernet at Xerox  
PARC. The Internetting project, initiated by bob kahn at ARPA had  
already started in 1973 and was well underway in 1974 at Stanford.  
Packet Radio and Packet Satellite were also well underway and these  
also used some of the Alohanet ideas. In some sense, these other  
projects instantiated the Alohanet notions in more powerful, higher  
speed forms and it might have been thought that the Hawaiian project  
would not yield more beneficial results.

vint



Dick Binder is copied and may have more precision to offer.

vint


On Feb 25, 2010, at 4:40 AM, Matthias Bärwolff wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I gather from the literature (largely Abramson and Kuo) that Alohanet
> got connected to the Arpanet by means of an IMP at the Hawaii  
> University
> in late 1972; then, by 1974 they had NCP and Telnet sufficiently up in
> the Menehune to allow terminal connections to the Arpanet; and,  
> finally,
> in 1976 the whole project died for lack of further funding. No further
> information was provided for the latter point.
>
> Does anyone know a specific reason why they discontinued Alohanet? Did
> the landlines get better, and thus the raison d'etre vanished? What
> happened to the IMP, did it stay connected to the Arpanet?
>
> Thanks,
> Matthias
>
> -- 
> Matthias Bärwolff
> www.bärwolff.de
>