[ih] XEROX/PUP and Commercialization (was Re: FYI - Gordon Crovitz/WSJ on "Who Really Invented the Internet?")

[nfonseca at ic.unicamp.br]

A pointer to PUP

http://129.69.211.95/pdf/xerox/alto/ethernet/pupArch.pdf

nelson

>> To be clear, I was not referring to the political aspects of the =
>> article,=20
>> but  the references along the lines of:
>>
>>  "So having created the Internet, why didn't Xerox become the biggest =
>> company in the world? "
>
> So, on the XEROX issue.  (Ignoring the WSJ essay until the last sentence).
>
> I was not there for most of this and have heard things piecemeal so parts
> may be wrong.  But the broad sketch is:
>
>     * XEROX did some amazing stuff with networked Ethernets, including
>       the first voice over data networks experiments, simple bridging,
>       networked workstations, and distributed nameservers, in the 1970s
>       and early 1980s that still resonate today.
>
>     * They also developed an internetworking protocol stack called PUP
>       (PARC Universal Packet).  PUP was similar to TCP/IP and some
>       (lots?) of ideas got swapped.
>
>     * When Bob Metcalfe cofounded 3COM, he used PUP and Ethernet as the
>       starting point for their networking products and for a time they
>       did pretty well selling an local enterprise network solution.
>
> Neither PUP nor 3COM ever offered a system that could deal with a world
> with multiple independent operators (aka the EGP/BGP problem).
>
> So, XEROX's technology was commercialized.  It had its day and then faded.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig
>