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

[Miles Fidelman]

Dave Crocker wrote:
>> 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 understanding was that the primary goal was reducing the cost of 
researcher access to unique computers spread across academia - i.e., 
cutting the cost of travel dollars and leased lines.

Dave Walden posted links to the original ARPA RFP and BBN's proposal - 
interesting reading (and historical!) - at:
http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-rfq.pdf
and
http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/arpanet-prop-ocr.pdf
respectively.

The proposal did have a section on experimentation, but it was only 
about 2 pages long.

>
> 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.
>

I got to BBN a few years later, but my sense is that what was really 
unanticipated was the amount of operational use, by military types, 
which led pretty directly to the DDN.

Miles Fidelman



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra