[ih] ARPANET/MILNET maps

[Jack Haverty]

Noel,

In my 12 years at BBN I saw many, many such maps.  I can't find any of
them in my garage archaeology.

BBN, and I assume other contractors, had contracts which required
submission of many reports, including the QTRs - Quarterly Technical
Reports.  Some of these surely had maps in them.

There were other reports too.  E.G., there were a series of hefty
(200+ page) semiannual reports on topics like the "Arpanet Routing
Algorithm Improvements" which would be a treasure trove of information
on what was going on *inside* the network.  I have one of these - the
March 1982 report, which I had the job of editting/compiling.  It is
full of details about how the IMP code was structured, how IMPs
interacted, etc.   (No maps though.)  Anyone curious about what was
going on *inside* the network might find a lot of good historical info
here, almost as accurate as looking at the IMP code.   Possibly a
little easier to understand too - but just a little.

DTIC might be a source for such old reports.  The Arpanet ones I have
were under contract MDA90-78-C-0129 from Arpa Order 3491.

Google found that March 1982 report - see
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA121350   It's a 285 page
pdf scan of that report.  But it's the only report Google found in a
search of "MDA90-78-C-0129" - there were many more.  And there were a
number of different contracts involved over time as well, so there's
potentially a lot of reports buried somewhere.

If you can get the various reports which were submitted under that
contract, it would be a significant piece of Arpanet History.   There
were, just at BBN, a variety of such contracts covering different
Internet-related projects.  E.G., one of them covered a bunch of the
"core Internet" projects - gateways, satnet, wbnet, etc.  For several
years, I was the one who had to make sure the QTR got submitted
promptly.  The government wouldn't send us the check until they got
the report.  So I know there's a lot of stuff in the government
archives which would now be of historical interest.  Presumably other
contractors - e.g., SRI, ISI, etc etc. had to submit similar reports -
but I can't recall ever seeing any QTRs but our own!

These reports were all categorized on the DD1473 as
"Unclassified/Unlimited" distribution.  But most of what they contain
was never really "published" in the classic sense.

Perhaps someone has the stamina to dive into the government paper
bureaucracy and do some archaeology.   Their garage is *much* bigger
than mine.....

/Jack


On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>    > I got distracted to work on an ARPANET maps page (almost done, hope to
>    > have it out soon)
>
> OK, these are 'done':
>
>  http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/arpageo.html
>  http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/arpalog.html
>  http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/milnet.html
>
> Those URLs are just for 'temporary' use, for anyone here to quickly see; I
> have an overall 'ARPANET technical info' page which is done, and another page
> for packet formats which is almost done, and the whole works will be linked
> together, so just going to the main page will give you links to these other
> ones. (It was originally all one page, but it got so huge it was unwieldy, so
> I split it up.)
>
>
> Now, for the important bit:
>
> Although these pages contain roughly 45 maps between them, BBN of course did
> many, many more maps that I don't have here. (These are mostly just what I
> happened to have lying around in my paper files.) I have found images of some
> online, but the quality was so poor (usually due to small images) that I
> decided not to include them.
>
> If anyone has any that I am missing, I would be happy to receive images of
> them (although of course there's no urgency). I have pretty good coverage up
> to about 1977, so after that would be the most appreciated. At least 1000
> pixels, please, and scanned, preferably.
>
> I found several inside the covers of ARPANET/DDN directories and ARPANET
> Protocol Handbooks (don't worry if they are in colour, some of these were
> too, before I converted them to B+W), so there's one place to look. Also, my
> copy of "A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade" (BBN #4799) lists, on
> pg. B-1, a long list of logical maps - not all of which my copy (photocopied)
> includes. If anyone would like to scan the ones I am missing (March '72,
> November '74, June '75, July '76, January '77) that would also be useful.
>
>        Noel