[ih] Fate of Alohanet

[Matthias Bärwolff]

Mind you, may I add two more questions to the soup:

Did the Arpanet connection actually ever work fine? The final report
indicates that only by 1974 did NCP and Telnet work well enough on the
Alohanet side so as to allow terminal connections over to the Arpanet.
And, did people from the Arpanet connect to Alohanet terminals, too?

Second, what about the experiences with the retransmission scheme which
in the initial design required users to reinitiate retransmission after
three failed transmission attempts for a packet. How did that work out.
I'd suspect it must have happened quite often that such user initiated
retransmissions were required.

Matthias

Richard Binder wrote:
> Matthias ,
>
> I believe the arpanet connection was via a TIP at UH, but can't recall
> the connection details from the Menehune side. I left Hawaii in early
> 1975, but a good person to ask about the project's fate is Frank Kuo
> (ffkuo at mindspring.com).
>
> Dick
>
>> 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
>>>
>>
>>

-- 
Matthias Bärwolff
www.bärwolff.de