[ih] Historical fiction

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: "Sytel" <sytel at shaw.ca>

    > What did one of the old packets actually look like? We haven't been
    > able to do much except extrapolate from modern packets.

I wasn't there in the earliest days, but I can answer this for you (so that
others can focus on the stuff only they can provide, such as memories of
actual events).

I thought this was all available online in early RFCs, but looking at the
list, I don't see anything likely. I will scan and OCR all this stuff in from
various sources (e.g. BBN Report 1822), and throw up a web page (so it's
easily accessible in the future). Give me a couple of hours.

In the meantime, if you're interested in the technical details of how the
_network itself_ operated (as opposed to the host-host communication, and
the early applications), you should get ahold of:

  F.E. Heart, R.E. Kahn, S.M. Ornstein,  W.R. Crowther, and D.C. Walden, 
	"The interface message processor for the ARPA computer network",
	Proceedings AFIPS 1970 SJCC, Vol. 36, pp. 551-567.

  J.M. McQuillan, W.R. Crowther, B.P. Cosell, D.C. Walden, and F.E. Heart,
	"Improvements in the Design and Performance of the ARPA Network",
	Proceedings AFIPS 1972 FJCC, Vol. 40, pp. 741-754. 

which will give you a pretty complete picture (in a lot more detail than
you want to know, probably :-).

	Noel