[ih] birth of the Internet?

[Jack Haverty]

Eric might have been looking at the Internet to try to learn about it or
debug a problem, but I don't think he "monitored" it.  That was a job
for operators in the NOC.  Earlier it was probably the console on Mike
Brescia's or Bob Hinden's desk.  Maybe mine too for a day or two.

/Jack

Vint - FYI, when I send mail to you I get:

<vint at google.com>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)



On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 16:05 -0400, Vint Cerf wrote:
> - there was clearly an experimental activity up until 1/1/1983. The
> folks in Europe were forced to use the Packet Satellite network and
> X.25 networks to access the US during 1982 at least, so it could be
> that Eric Rosen was monitoring that as a operational if somewhat
> experimental system? Peter Kirstein would know since he managed at
> least the UK part of the operational SATNET access.
> 
> v
> 
> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:29 PM, James J Dempsey <jjd at jjd.com> wrote:
> > 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
> >
>