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

[Bill Ricker]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:

> so we need to make the distinction between the subnet ...  and the system
> of hosts,
> protocol stack, applications, etc.
>

and must be further distinguished from the communities that grew around the
latter.


> A problem in discussions like this is the ambiguity of the term "ARPANET"
>

I believe MAP as the self-designated 'Semantic Puritan' would have endorsed
that statement.

The modern conflation of "WWW" (application level infrastructure, now with
tiered apps on that) and "Internet" (lowest end to end protocol) and
"Broadband" (physical and hop-wise protocol) is equally annoying and
pernicious , but at least we the cognoscenti have separate words for them,
rather than calling all three "ARPAnet".

( If it's turtles all the way down, are apps built on apps built
on applications camels all the way up ? )

Padlipsky also distinguished between the (Aristotelian) ARPAnet Refernce
Model and the (evolving) protocol stack (as of some date: NCP/FTP/TELNET or
TCP/IP/HTTP or IPv6/DNSsec/AQM someday).

DEB may overstate the case, but he is correct to the extent that Mike was
regularly perturbed to peroration by folks who, whether by intent or
ignorance, conflated the subnet and The Net, and pitched Kleinrock and BBN
as sole founders of the ARPAnet (or laterly internet), defending
the contributions Licklider, Vint, Postel, and rest of NWG/IETF/RFC
community.

Mike was not blind to the contribution of BBN; he prized a copy of Sen.
Kennedy's hilarious telegram to BBN congratulating them on their
development of the "Interfaith Message Processor" [sic], and had respect
for BBN NWG reps in protocol and security matters (e.g. Steve Kent, to name
but one).

To direct an echo of Mike's defense of Vint (and Jon) against Vint (who has
just volunteered to help defended Jon's memory in the other thread) is
cosmic irony, a sort that MAP would have savored (although he'd have likely
told me that properly it was not properly 'irony' in a rhetorical sense).

-- 
Bill Ricker
MAP's literary estate
@n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com
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