[ih] Hesitating to disagree with one of the fath ers of the InternetS..

[Sytel]

I'm actually a "she", but aside from that... I figured there were probably a 
lot of assumptions I was making that might not apply back then, but I don't 
know what exactly. Sorry about that; it's part of the reason I wanted to get 
the information here...
We actually are planning on incorporating the political and social issues of 
the time into the plot, but that's largely for later on, once 
personified-Arpanet gets out into the world more, meets students, and 
discovers that the world doesn't in fact revolve around him (yet)...
Very interested in the early uses of the network, though. What sort of 
resources would be shared over it? I've heard (and this may be inaccurate) 
that one of the primary reasons for inventing it was to run applications 
remotely instead of recoding them for each different computer; what 
applications might these have been at first?
Very useful information, especially on the NWG meetings and the attack on 
the office in Illinois. Will also be looking into the Iliac IV; would this 
have been connected to the ARPANET in any way?

Thanks,
Sytel
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Day" <jeanjour at comcast.net>
To: "Noel Chiappa" <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>; <bell1945 at offthisweek.com>; 
<internet-history at postel.org>
Cc: <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: [ih] Hesitating to disagree with one of the fath ers of the 
InternetS..


>A few things:
>
> Bernie is right.  It is amazing how it pretty much just worked. There were 
> bugs.  And those cranky Tuesday mornings. (BBN tried out new IMPsys' on 
> Monday nights, if they were going to.)  The ARPANET was primarily an 
> operational network from the beginning.  It was not a network for 
> experimenting about networks, it was a network for sharing resources, 
> which we did a lot.  We were the largest user of Rutherford in the UK, and 
> were using a lot of other machines around the network.
>
> What I find amusing about Sytel's questions is how much he assumes that 
> things then were like they are now.  They were very different.
>
> Noel is correct as far as I know.  The design and development of the IMP 
> subnet was pretty much a BBN affair.  Also the comments that NMC (and BBN) 
> was running most of the tests on the network.  Someone should talk to Ari 
> about that.  Most of the testing the hosts did were on their own projects.
>
> However the NWG meetings were a different matter.  They were loud, 
> boisterous, and cantankerous.  Made of the OS guys from the various sites, 
> who were lords in their own kingdoms (some would say prima donnas), so 
> sparks were to be expected.  I remember marvelling at how often we were 
> arguing about the same design but with different words. The same term 
> meaning slightly different things on different systems but largely 
> everyone had the same basic sense.  (Although one should read Ritual for 
> Catharisis #1).
>
> But what I have found missing here is the excitement of the what was going 
> on outside the lab.  Of course BBN being a company was pretty much immune 
> to it.  Demonstrations against the Vietnam War.  John Melvin's comment 
> about ARPA, that "our money is only bloody on one side."  Agitation about 
> the military research on campuses.  We were in the thick of it at Illinois 
> more because of Illiac IV than the ARPANET  but they were both ARPA 
> projects.  We spent many hours dealing with the demonstrators.  Our office 
> was fire bombed (but it didn't go off).  The thing was, we agreed with 
> them that classified research shouldn't be on campus.  The project was 
> doing anything classified, so what was the beef?  The story I tell of 4 of 
> us leaving Urbana to go Philadelphia to do some debugging, running into 
> the first metal detectors at the gate but as we had arrived in Chicago, 
> the flight attendant had said to me, "Are you guys in a band?"  ;-)  (That 
> wasn't the last time we were asked that question!) All of this happening 
> in the context of Kent State, Watergate, the overthrow of Allende, Agnew 
> resigning, etc.  It was a pretty wild and wooly time.  I am amazed at all 
> tthe stuff that was done.
>
> And other things I am not sure I should talk about.  ;-)
>
> Take care,
> John
>
>
> At 16:51 -0400 2012/05/10, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>     > From: David Elliott Bell <bell1945 at offthisweek.com>
>>
>>     > The disagreement would be over the phrase "the designer".
>>
>>It depends; there are lots of different parts to 'the ARPANet'. The 
>>Host-Host
>>and application protocols were clearly done by a group of people from the
>>sites. Then there is the actual network as implemented - and then you get 
>>the
>>early versions (as documented in Heart et al. 1970 SJCC), the 'middle' 
>>version
>>(McQuillan et al. 1972 FJCC) and the 'late' version (no quick ref for 
>>this,
>>but it includes after the 'new' routing algorithm).
>>
>>As to the actual network, check out the original ARPA RFQ, July 29 1968
>>(#DAHC15 69 Q 0002), and then look at the BBN proposal, 6 September 1968 
>>(IMP
>>P69-IST-5). Then compare that with the actual network as first 
>>implemented.
>>(And bear in mind that before the RFQ was written, there was a lot of
>>discussion among a fair number of folk, e.g. Wes Clark's suggestion of a
>>separate IMP.)
>>
>>I would say 'designed by BBN' is a reasonable, succint, description for 
>>the
>>actual network, but of course there were many hands, and many pieces, and
>>a full description of all the former, for the latter, is rather lengthy.
>>
>> Noel
>