[ih] The origin of variable length packets

[John Day]

At 0:23 -0500 2011/03/01, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Dave Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com>
>
>     > I can't look up what ARPA's call for bids (RFQ) to develop the ARPANET
>     > IMP's specified.
>     > ...
>     > .. the packet-subnet of IMPs broke these messages into about 1,000 bit
>     > packets with the last packet in a message being possibly being shorter
>     > than a full 1,000 bits.
>
>I'm also too lazy to go check the RFQ or the BBN proposal, but I did look at
>the Heart et al paper, and although it doesn't _explicitly_ say that the IMPs
>used shorter packets, and give the details on how, there are a lot of things
>that implicitly say so, e.g.:
>
>"a line fully loaded with short packets will require more computation than a
>line with all long packets ... a line will typically carr a variety of
>different length packets" (pg. 564)
>
>	Noel