[ih] FC vs CC Re: [e2e] Fwd: Re: Once again buffer bloat and CC. Re: A Cute Story. Or: How to talk completely at cross purposes. Re: When was Go Back N adopted by TCP

[Jack Haverty]

On 08/23/2014 05:37 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> BTW, in "all internetworking systems", I would include PUP, which might also
> be worth covering briefly, since I gather the PUP guys did influence TCP/IP
> somewhat - the exact level would be an interesting historical research
> project for someone...
There was quite a lot of cross-pollination in the late 70s and early 80s
between the ARPA Internet projects and the Xerox PARC work (PUP et
al).    Larry Stewart of PARC was a frequent attendee at Vint's periodic
Internet Group meetings, as well as occasionally John Schoch.   Probably
others too. One of the DARPA regular meetings was hosted by PARC.   I
recall one session where we were all listening to someone talk about
something, and being distracted by all of the Alto monitors scattered
around the room.   At one point in the session, Dave Clark exclaimed,
quite loudly, "Get him!!!".   Apparently he was watching an intense game
of Maze Wars that was on one of the monitors, and whoever was playing
wasn't as good as Dave.

There was a lot of such cross-pollination, and quite a few competing
Internet architectures and protocol stacks.   TCP/IP was only one way to
do it.  PUP was another at about the same time.   DECNET, SPX/IPX, SNA,
Appletalk, .... and of course the ISO TPn protocols.  I don't remember
them all, but they were all certainly part of "all internetworking systems".

It may also be historically interesting to track the technical cross
pollination by following the people.   For example, Radia Perlman was
involved in the ARPA Internet work while at BBN, and then went to work
for Novell.  So it should be no surprise that Novell's SPX/IPX and
ARPA's TCP/IP have a lot in common.  Same with PUP.

I don't know how you might measure how much one project influenced
another.   It was a very "open" time when people talked freely about
what they were doing and why it was better than the others.

In my own case, when I left BBN to become "Internet Architect" at
Oracle, I helped push through an internetworking technology (with the
exciting name "Oracle Networking") that created internets of dissimilar
internets.   This was circa 1990. Essentially we created a concatenation
of reliable virtual circuits so that any client could communicate with
any server.   E.G., a PC on a Novell LAN using only SPX/IPX could
interact with a server on a DEC machine using only DECNET, possibly
communicating by using TCP/IP in the middle.   Or SNA, etc.  When TCP/IP
finally "won" the battle and emerged as the universal technology, we no
longer needed to do such concatenations so that "internet of internets"
could fade away.

The History of The Internet is much more complex than just the History
of TCP...

/Jack