[ih] Why did congestion happen at all? Re: why did CC happen at all?

[Dave Crocker]

> The ARPANET was never intended as a network for doing research on
> networks.  It was intended as a production network to facilitate other
> research.  BBN was very limited in how much experimentation was possible
> and in what it could try.


So they put the first IMP into UCLA, where the Network Measurement
Center was -- Kleinrock, and all that -- on a whim?

My understanding is that the primary goal was experimentation, but in
the form of monitoring use and trying different algorithms, rather than
by conducting artificial traffic exercises.  One might think of this as
networking as a very different kind of social experiment than we think
of today...

My other understanding is that the extent of the direct benefit to users
wasn't quite anticipated, which made it increasingly difficult to make
changes to the net that could bring it down.  So it was a few years
before they had to start explicitly scheduling time slots for experiments.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net