[ih] Hesitating to disagree with one of the fathers of the Internet…..

[dave.walden.family at gmail.com]

One more point.
Because we at BBN had the contract to develop the IMP and to operate the IMP subnetwork plus monitoring and BBN also had the contract to develop the TIP host and BBN developed the TENEX host, we probably had lots more people involved in various aspects of ARPANET development than any other single group, and thus were involved in lots of aspects of the overall network design.  And because we later were also involved in the packet radio net and the satellite net stuff, we were also in the thick of the early Internet experiments and implementation work.  My point is not to claim "we did the design" -- we were only one group of many.  My point is to note that because we were involved in so many things, inevitably we touched lots of pieces of what some might call "the design".  Dave

Sent from my iPad

On May 10, 2012, at 3:58 PM, David Elliott Bell <bell1945 at offthisweek.com> wrote:

> nevertheless, I would point out that not everyone agreed that 
> 
> "BBN was the designer and operator of the ARPANET from the outset to its termination in 1990."  
> 
> The disagreement would be over the phrase "the designer".  
> 
> Michael Padlipsky clearly did not agree. per his book The Elements of Networking Style (& Other Essays & Animadversions of the Art of Intercomputer Networking. (Peter Salus continues to have a high opinion of this book, which includes the only reference on Wikipedia to the Arpanet Reference Model.)  
> 
> One of the chapters in that book "And They Argued All Night...."  posited that much of what happened in the early days of the Arpanet was the result of group discussion where the participants did not always themselves remember who said what and where ideas came from.
> 
> I recommend his book for some reflection of the life and times of the early days of ARPA's Network Working Group (?  phrasing right?).
> 
> David Bell
> 
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