[ih] birth of the Internet?

[James J Dempsey]

Miles asks:

> Sure.  Is there anybody here who doesn't think that the (capital I) 
> Internet started with the ARPANET as its backbone, well before the 
> NSFnet was a gleam in anybody's eye?

With help from someone else's memory, I could argue that The Internet
started *before* the ARPANET was connected to it.

I recall being in the BBN NOC the day the ARPANET transitioned from NCP to
TCP.  That NOC was on the 5th floor of BBN's building 6.  Sometime pretty
soon after that, the NOC (and our offices) moved to BBN's building 1.  After
the move, the NOC was much larger, managed more networks and had windows to
the hallway that allowed visitors to look in at what was going on.

At about the time of that move, I remember people talking about the "ARPANET
NOC" as being the one in the lab, while the "Internet NOC" was (if I
remember correctly) in Eric Rosen's office.  Soon after that, the terminals
and displays monitoring the Internet gateways moved into a corner of the NOC
proper along with the ARPANET monitoring.

I'm not sure if this "Internet NOC" existed before 1 January 1983, but it
very well might have.  I'll bet Eric Rosen or Bob Hinden could say so more
definitively.  If there was an "Internet NOC" monitoring the Internet
gateways before January 1983, I would argue that at that point The Internet
did exist, even if the ARPANET was not yet connected to it via TCP/IP.

                       --Jim Dempsey--
                         jjd at jjd.com