[ih] Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan

[Guy Almes]

Vint,
   I agree very much about "However, the writer does fail to recognize 
..."  When I read the article, it seemed obvious that (a) the writer was 
failing to recognize *lots* of other things and (b) that (and maybe this 
is just the way that I read it) that the writer was writing as though it 
was obvious to his readers that he was doing so.  This is what I meant 
by myopia.
   One thing that makes this "Internet history" list interesting to me 
is the richness of all these different myopic stories.

   But, as I say, I had never heard of John Cramer.  When I read his 
note, my first reaction was to be miffed that while he was at UW 
Physics, he had not recognized the efforts of us at UW Computer Science 
to secure an ARPAnet connection for UW.
   But I took his "How Al Gore and I Invented the Internet" to be 
obvious tongue-firmly-in-cheek humor and read on.

   I actually found his story about the little 1984 committee charming.
   He made no pretense to having contributed anything to the technology 
or the building of the Internet.  But if he played even a very small 
part in convincing the NSF that there needed to be a network adequate 
for moving gigabyte files between the small number of supercomputer 
centers and the much larger number of research universities where the 
users of those centers were, I'd take that as an interesting story.

   I very much agree with your positive comments about CSNET, the fall 
1986 hearings, and the NREN efforts.
   But (and here I'm just showing my ignorance) I had not previously 
heard Cramer's story about a science user pressing in 1984 for effective 
remote access to the supercomputers (implicitly from all the major 
research universities) as being essential.

   Regards,
	-- Guy

On 1/5/13 9:27 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> I have no reason to dispute the facts in the story, either. However, the
> writer does fail to recognize the pioneering nature of the CSNET (it
> adopted TCP/IP thanks to Larry Landweber's 1980/81 intervention before
> Dennis Jennings made the same decision for the NSFNET around 1985. If I
> am remembering correctly, Dennis was involved with the super computer
> effort at the time he recommended that the nascent NSFNET also make use
> of TCP/IP. In Fall 1986, then-Senator Gore held a hearing at which Bob
> Kahn introduced the term "information infrastructure" and Senator Gore
> asked whether an optical fiber network should be constructed to link the
> Supercomputer centers together. The head of CISE at that time was Gordon
> Bell and he convened a Feb 1987 meeting in San Diego that led to the
> proposal for the National Research and Education Network program. I also
> seem to recall that the supercomputer center directors lobbied
> unsuccessfully to build their own, disconnected networks on the grounds
> that performance required specialization and control by each center
> [perhaps someone on the list can clarify that hazy memory]. They were
> overruled (assuming I am remembering this correctly) in favor of an
> NSF-wide network.
>
> vint
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Guy Almes <galmes at tamu.edu
> <mailto:galmes at tamu.edu>> wrote:
>
>     Alex,
>        I was UW Computer Science during the time period he writes of and
>     I was not aware of him.  But, myopia aside, his story rings true
>     with me for several reasons.
>        First, whatever the reason was, the fact that NSF funded and
>     (more or less) organized an effort to connect all the US
>     universities to the (NSFnet) Internet was clearly of huge importance
>     to the growth of the Internet.
>        Second, the specific driver, enabling effective remote access to
>     the five or so centers from the 200 or so research universities, was
>     both a demanding application and one that gave the NSF a defensible
>     reason for funding and organizing the NSFnet effort.
>        Third, that remote supercomputer application presented a clear
>     motivation for much higher end-to-end capacity that the
>     ARPAnet-based Internet that existed in 1984.  In short, moving
>     gigabyte files motivated T1 performance levels.
>        Fourth, this story helps one understand the substantive ways in
>     which Sen. Gore's efforts made a difference.
>
>              -- Guy
>
>
>     On 1/5/13 5:38 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote:
>
>         http://www.analogsf.com/2013___03/altview.shtml
>         <http://www.analogsf.com/2013_03/altview.shtml>
>
>