From joly at punkcast.com  Fri Feb  7 23:09:11 2014
From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie)
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 02:09:11 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
Message-ID: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>

Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?

j


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>


On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the history of the
> concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>

"Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
timesharing. Here are some related links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM

Here's a bit more on banking too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/
swiss-bank-account2.htm
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html

Good luck,

Fred

-- 
Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
FireSabre Consulting LLC
Content Services for Virtual Worlds
Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs
https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs




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-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
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From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Sat Feb  8 04:30:02 2014
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 07:30:02 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>

Probably goes back at least as far as the Egyptians - who invented lots 
of things (e.g., surveying) to "account" (root is the same as "count") 
to keep track of fields and grain stores across annual floodings of the 
Nile.  And then there's the whole history of trade and credit in its 
various forms, hence the term "on account."

I expect that if one goes back far enough, one will find that this is a 
case of parallel invention across multiple cultures, during 
pre-historical periods.

Joly MacFie wrote:
> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>
> j
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Fred Fuchs* <fred at firesabre.com <mailto:fred at firesabre.com>>
> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mcforelle at gmail.com>>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org 
> <mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
>
>
> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the
>     history of the
>     concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>
>
> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and 
> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html 
> <http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html>
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>
> Here's a bit more on banking too:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/swiss-bank-account2.htm
> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>
> Good luck,
>
> Fred
>
> -- 
> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
> FireSabre Consulting LLC
> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs <http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs>
> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org> mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: 
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -


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



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sat Feb  8 05:25:27 2014
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 08:25:27 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
	<52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <a06240815cf1be013877c@[10.0.1.3]>

For the origins of double-entry bookkeeping in the 16thC, I would 
recommend, The Measure of Reality by Alfred Crosby.  It does appear 
that the Europe was unique in developing this level of 
quantification.  While other civilizations develop mathematical 
recipes and actually get pretty sophisticated (linear algebra, 
Pascal's triangle in China), the concept of proof appears to be 
unique to the West.

John



At 7:30 AM -0500 2/8/14, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>Probably goes back at least as far as the Egyptians - who invented 
>lots of things (e.g., surveying) to "account" (root is the same as 
>"count") to keep track of fields and grain stores across annual 
>floodings of the Nile.  And then there's the whole history of trade 
>and credit in its various forms, hence the term "on account."
>
>I expect that if one goes back far enough, one will find that this 
>is a case of parallel invention across multiple cultures, during 
>pre-historical periods.
>
>Joly MacFie wrote:
>>Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>>
>>j
>>
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>From: *Fred Fuchs* <fred at firesabre.com <mailto:fred at firesabre.com>>
>>Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
>>Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
>>To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com 
>><mailto:mcforelle at gmail.com>>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org 
>><mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
>>
>>
>>On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the
>>     history of the
>>     concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>
>>
>>"Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and 
>>timesharing. Here are some related links:
>>
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
>>http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
>>http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html 
>><http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html>
>>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
>>http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>>
>>Here's a bit more on banking too:
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
>>http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/swiss-bank-account2.htm
>>http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>>
>>Good luck,
>>
>>Fred
>>
>>--
>>Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
>>FireSabre Consulting LLC
>>Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>>Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
>>www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs <http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs>
>>https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org> mailing list
>>is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>>Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: 
>>http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>>Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>>http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>---------------------------------------------------------------
>>Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>>WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>>http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>>--------------------------------------------------------------
>>-
>
>
>--
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra



From nigel at channelisles.net  Sat Feb  8 05:35:15 2014
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 13:35:15 +0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
	<52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <52F63293.3030903@channelisles.net>

Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers 
relates to timesharing.

The systems kept "an account" of time used - for billing purposes - so 
users had to had "accounts" to keep track of their usage and provide the 
data that could be used to generate bills (or, in the case of university 
users, limit usage).





On 08/02/14 12:30, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Probably goes back at least as far as the Egyptians - who invented lots
> of things (e.g., surveying) to "account" (root is the same as "count")
> to keep track of fields and grain stores across annual floodings of the
> Nile.  And then there's the whole history of trade and credit in its
> various forms, hence the term "on account."
>
> I expect that if one goes back far enough, one will find that this is a
> case of parallel invention across multiple cultures, during
> pre-historical periods.
>
> Joly MacFie wrote:
>> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>>
>> j
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: *Fred Fuchs* <fred at firesabre.com <mailto:fred at firesabre.com>>
>> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
>> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com
>> <mailto:mcforelle at gmail.com>>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org
>> <mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the
>>     history of the
>>     concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>
>>
>> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
>> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
>> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
>> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
>> <http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html>
>>
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
>> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>>
>> Here's a bit more on banking too:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
>> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/swiss-bank-account2.htm
>>
>> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>>
>> Good luck,
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> --
>> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
>> FireSabre Consulting LLC
>> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
>> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs <http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs>
>> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org> mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>
>


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Sat Feb  8 06:02:24 2014
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 09:02:24 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
	<52F6234A.4020406@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <52F638F0.1030600@meetinghouse.net>

I got curious, and a little googling turned up this:
http://www.aucegypt.edu/fac/Profiles/Documents/Science%20paper,%20Shawki%20Farag.pdf 
(the history of accounting in Egypt, back to Biblical times)

Which noted, among other things, accounting as regards tax collection.

Given the certainty of "death and taxes" - perhaps the notion of an 
"account" stems to just about the same time as the concept of "tax" :-)

Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Probably goes back at least as far as the Egyptians - who invented 
> lots of things (e.g., surveying) to "account" (root is the same as 
> "count") to keep track of fields and grain stores across annual 
> floodings of the Nile.  And then there's the whole history of trade 
> and credit in its various forms, hence the term "on account."
>
> I expect that if one goes back far enough, one will find that this is 
> a case of parallel invention across multiple cultures, during 
> pre-historical periods.
>
> Joly MacFie wrote:
>> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>>
>> j
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: *Fred Fuchs* <fred at firesabre.com <mailto:fred at firesabre.com>>
>> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
>> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:mcforelle at gmail.com>>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org 
>> <mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the
>>     history of the
>>     concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>
>>
>> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and 
>> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
>> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
>> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html <http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html> 
>>
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
>> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>>
>> Here's a bit more on banking too:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
>> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/swiss-bank-account2.htm 
>>
>> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>>
>> Good luck,
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> -- 
>> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
>> FireSabre Consulting LLC
>> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
>> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs <http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs>
>> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L at listserv.aoir.org> mailing 
>> list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: 
>> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>>
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>
>


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



From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Feb  8 11:08:54 2014
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 08:08:54 +1300
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <52F680C6.8070007@gmail.com>

Hi,

I had a look at Wilkes' 1968 book "Time-Sharing Computer Systems".
He describes the login procedure of CTSS as the exemplar. He also
cites a reference giving 11/1961 as the date of the first running
version of CTSS (on a 709). Since Wilkes would certainly have claimed
the idea of a login account for his own lab if he could have plausibly
done so, I assume that CTSS was the true origin.

BTW I also noticed that he credits Roger Needham with the idea
of storing only encrypted passwords on the host, using an unspecified
hard-to-decrypt algorithm.

   Brian

On 08/02/2014 20:09, Joly MacFie wrote:
> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
> 
> j
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com>
> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com>, AoIR-L <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> 
> 
> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the history of the
>> concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>
> 
> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
> timesharing. Here are some related links:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
> 
> Here's a bit more on banking too:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/
> swiss-bank-account2.htm
> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> Fred
> 


From dugo at xs4all.nl  Sat Feb  8 14:15:04 2014
From: dugo at xs4all.nl (Jacob Goense)
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 23:15:04 +0100
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAM9VJk2vRNDCoCdqfW3jiSJDp=_hvShhmkvbaSHkXUVy=Yxnsw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a718b9e29d8ac38e2ad12cb77e6b66aa.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl>

Sure, this old RAND paper tells the story how they went from punching
clocks for
time on the IBM 701 to automated accounting on the IBM 704 at GM around 1957.

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P7316.pdf

Items 2 and 6 on pages 9 and 10 for those in a hurry.

/Jacob

> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>
> j
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com>
> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com>, AoIR-L
> <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>
>
> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the history of
>> the
>> concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>
>
> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>
> Here's a bit more on banking too:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/
> swiss-bank-account2.htm
> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>
> Good luck,
>
> Fred
>
> --
> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
> FireSabre Consulting LLC
> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs
> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/
> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
>
>
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>  http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -
>




From johnl at iecc.com  Sat Feb  8 19:42:56 2014
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 9 Feb 2014 03:42:56 -0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52F63293.3030903@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>

In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers 
>relates to timesharing.

It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
so they knew who to charge it to.

Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts.  Back in ye
olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
accounts.

R's,
John




From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Feb  8 20:41:43 2014
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 17:41:43 +1300
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>
Message-ID: <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>

On 09/02/2014 16:42, John Levine wrote:
> In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>> Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers 
>> relates to timesharing.
> 
> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
> so they knew who to charge it to.

It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
contemporary with CTSS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS

   Brian


> 
> Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
> routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
> shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts.  Back in ye
> olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
> typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
> and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
> accounts.
> 
> R's,
> John
> 
> 
> 


From johnl at iecc.com  Sat Feb  8 21:00:38 2014
From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Date: 9 Feb 2014 00:00:38 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>

>> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>
> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
> contemporary with CTSS.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS

IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS.  Here's the manual 
for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112

On page 64 it says:

   The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
   may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
   other identifying information pertaining to a job.

I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  In 
the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard to 
believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the costs 
to the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I never 
heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in software, or 
more likely done with pen and paper.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Sun Feb  9 04:54:41 2014
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 07:54:41 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
Message-ID: <52F77A91.5090107@meetinghouse.net>

Older than that.  Just found a list of instructions for the IBM 1401 
that includes:

Modifiers for five-character Branch on Indicator (B) instruction:

	1419 	valid account-number field



John R. Levine wrote:
>>> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>>
>> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, 
>> Design of an
>> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 
>> 2(2), 1963.
>> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
>> contemporary with CTSS.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
>
> IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS.  Here's the 
> manual for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>
> On page 64 it says:
>
>   The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>   may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>   other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>
> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  
> In the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard 
> to believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the 
> costs to the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I 
> never heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in 
> software, or more likely done with pen and paper.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for 
> Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly


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



From lpress at csudh.edu  Sun Feb  9 07:16:33 2014
From: lpress at csudh.edu (Larry Press)
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 07:16:33 -0800
Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
In-Reply-To: <52F77A91.5090107@meetinghouse.net>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<52F77A91.5090107@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>

In looking for the first mention of an account, we have seen quotes from 
IBM manuals on IBSYS, FMS and the 1401 -- that takes me back!

Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)?  Could the 
readers of this list collectively create one?

Note that unit record machine manuals are also of interest -- I'd love 
to see a copy of one they had on functional components of unit record 
machines.  (Does anyone have old unit record manuals)?

Larry


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Sun Feb  9 12:10:49 2014
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 15:10:49 -0500
Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
In-Reply-To: <52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>	<52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>	<52F77A91.5090107@meetinghouse.net>
	<52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>
Message-ID: <52F7E0C9.5050004@meetinghouse.net>

Larry Press wrote:
> In looking for the first mention of an account, we have seen quotes 
> from IBM manuals on IBSYS, FMS and the 1401 -- that takes me back!
>
> Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)? Could 
> the readers of this list collectively create one?
>
> Note that unit record machine manuals are also of interest -- I'd love 
> to see a copy of one they had on functional components of unit record 
> machines.  (Does anyone have old unit record manuals)?
>
> Larry

The Computer History Museum lists a bunch of IBM documents in their 
catalog.  The ones I clicked on seem to be catalog records for paper copies.

There are also some interesting links off of this page: 
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/704.html - that seem to lead 
into IBM archives.

Miles Fidelman

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



From jpgs at ittc.ku.edu  Sun Feb  9 13:45:43 2014
From: jpgs at ittc.ku.edu (James P.G. Sterbenz)
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 21:45:43 +0000
Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
In-Reply-To: <52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<52F77A91.5090107@meetinghouse.net> <52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>
Message-ID: <FBA2D5EA-E458-4BEF-B815-7596679EC5E1@ittc.ku.edu>


On 9 Feb 2014, at 15:16, Larry Press wrote:

> In looking for the first mention of an account, we have seen quotes from IBM manuals on IBSYS, FMS and the 1401 -- that takes me back!
> 
> Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)?  Could the readers of this list collectively create one?
> 
> Note that unit record machine manuals are also of interest -- I'd love to see a copy of one they had on functional components of unit record machines.  (Does anyone have old unit record manuals)?

http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/ibm/

Worth going up a level above IBM as well.

Cheers,
James

---------------------------------------------------------------------
James P.G. Sterbenz   jpgs@{ittc|eecs}.ku.edu   jpgs at comp.lancs.ac.uk
www.ittc.ku.edu/~jpgs   154 Nichols ITTC|EECS   InfoLab21 Lancaster U
+1 508 944 3067      The University of Kansas     jpgs at tik.ee.ethz.ch
jpgs@{acm|ieee|comsoc|computer|m.ieice}.org     jpgsterbenz at gmail.com
gplus.to/jpgs  www.facebook.com/jpgsterbenz  google|skype:jpgsterbenz




From feinler at earthlink.net  Sun Feb  9 15:36:07 2014
From: feinler at earthlink.net (Elizabeth Feinler)
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 15:36:07 -0800
Subject: [ih] History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1391976001.16132.internet-history@postel.org>
References: <mailman.1.1391976001.16132.internet-history@postel.org>
Message-ID: <EF556A97-974F-4122-AE6E-830A2031F548@earthlink.net>

I can speak only as a user, but going back to the mid-60s it seems that there were 4 basic components of "account":
	- Cost
	- Resource access
	- Machine capacity
	- Access authorization
And these changed considerably over time.

I used some big information services (such as Dialog and OCLC search services) back in the mid-60s, that could run up bills of hundreds, sometimes thousands; so cost was very important.  One often had to pay long distance telephone costs as well as computer use costs and have accounts for both.  These particular accounts were billed to us by the information services and were administered internally by our library.  The library usually charged costs back to internal projects or individual users.  I also used accounts on commercial time-shared machines, such as those at GE and Tymshare.  On these machines we generally bought a "pie slice" of the machine based on both resources used and number of user accounts allowed. Within our organization (SRI not-for-profit research org. doing govt. projects), any of these account costs were carefully monitored and charged back to the correct project and/or overhead, so there was a whole SRI internal accounting system involved as well. 

Originally the Arpanet, and many early commercial networks provided remote access to important resources such as big research computers, airline reservation systems, information search services, etc.  Resource access is very important today, but is paid for differently than it was when the machines were very expensive, small in capacity, and scarce.

Researchers were not charged individually by DARPA to use the Arpanet, as DARPA paid for the network expenses and even provided several network host computers.  Even telephone access was covered by the govt. thru the TIPs and TACs.  However, some sites still maintained an internal accounting system for host usage, because their hosts did not belong to DARPA and costs were assigned accordingly, Arpanet research being just one such cost.  Most computers maintained an internal accounting system of who was using what,  whether the sites billed for usage or not.

Our machine at the NIC, first a DEC-10, then DEC-20 could support roughly 75-100 logins before it went to its knees, so machine capacity was very important.  How much of the machine resources any given user was using impacted other users, so there were different ways of slicing and dicing the capacity using accounts.

As the Arpanet morphed into the Defense Data Network, the network became an operational military network of which the Arpanet was only one segment (1983).  By then there were many other military and government agencies using the DDN for day-to-day work.  At that time legitimate access became a concern, and machine capacity and costs  were much less of an issue,  However, the network itself was expanding rapidly, and  there was concern about who was paying for, and who was using the network, so accounts became an issue of authorization.  Had someone official approved access for any given user?  And was each agency paying its fair share of network expenses?.  At that time (mid to late 80s) The NIC and BBN jointly developed an audit trail and billing system for DCA that was capable of billing and accounting down to the individual user, although to the best of my knowledge it never went that far.  The still govt-owned network was billed to, and paid for, by the various network sponsors.  At first sponsors were all billed an equal share of expenses, but once it was obvious that some agencies used a lot more network resources than others, the audit trail and billing system was authorized, and agencies were billed for their actual usage.  

When the Internet became a commercial network (about 1990), the concept of an "account" changed drastically, and is dependent upon what one wants to sell or use and how it is supported financially.  Many things on the Internet appear to be "free" because they are supported by advertising, and the concept of an "account" is to prove to the advertiser how many users are being exposed to their products. 

On Feb 9, 2014, at 12:00 PM, internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:

> Send internet-history mailing list submissions to
> 	internet-history at postel.org
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	internet-history-request at postel.org
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	internet-history-owner at postel.org
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of internet-history digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Jacob Goense)
>   2. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (John Levine)
>   3. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Brian E Carpenter)
>   4. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (John R. Levine)
>   5. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Miles Fidelman)
>   6. Old IBM manauls (Larry Press)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 23:15:04 +0100
> From: "Jacob Goense" <dugo at xs4all.nl>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<a718b9e29d8ac38e2ad12cb77e6b66aa.squirrel at webmail.xs4all.nl>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Sure, this old RAND paper tells the story how they went from punching
> clocks for
> time on the IBM 701 to automated accounting on the IBM 704 at GM around 1957.
> 
> http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P7316.pdf
> 
> Items 2 and 6 on pages 9 and 10 for those in a hurry.
> 
> /Jacob
> 
>> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>> 
>> j
>> 
>> 
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com>
>> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
>> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com>, AoIR-L
>> <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>> 
>> 
>> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the history of
>>> the
>>> concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>> 
>> 
>> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
>> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>> 
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
>> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
>> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
>> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>> 
>> Here's a bit more on banking too:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
>> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/
>> swiss-bank-account2.htm
>> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>> 
>> Good luck,
>> 
>> Fred
>> 
>> --
>> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
>> FireSabre Consulting LLC
>> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
>> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs
>> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
>> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
>> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/
>> listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>> 
>> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
>> http://www.aoir.org/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>> VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: 9 Feb 2014 03:42:56 -0000
> From: "John Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <20140209034256.28193.qmail at joyce.lan>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>> Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers 
>> relates to timesharing.
> 
> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
> so they knew who to charge it to.
> 
> Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
> routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
> shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts.  Back in ye
> olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
> typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
> and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
> accounts.
> 
> R's,
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 17:41:43 +1300
> From: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F70707.1080204 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> On 09/02/2014 16:42, John Levine wrote:
>> In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>>> Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers 
>>> relates to timesharing.
>> 
>> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>> so they knew who to charge it to.
> 
> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
> contemporary with CTSS.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
> 
>   Brian
> 
> 
>> 
>> Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
>> routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
>> shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts.  Back in ye
>> olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
>> typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
>> and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
>> accounts.
>> 
>> R's,
>> John
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: 9 Feb 2014 00:00:38 -0500
> From: "John R. Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378 at joyce.lan>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
>>> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>> 
>> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
>> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
>> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
>> contemporary with CTSS.
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
> 
> IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS.  Here's the manual 
> for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
> 
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
> 
> On page 64 it says:
> 
>   The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>   may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>   other identifying information pertaining to a job.
> 
> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  In 
> the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard to 
> believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the costs 
> to the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I never 
> heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in software, or 
> more likely done with pen and paper.
> 
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 07:54:41 -0500
> From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F77A91.5090107 at meetinghouse.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Older than that.  Just found a list of instructions for the IBM 1401 
> that includes:
> 
> Modifiers for five-character Branch on Indicator (B) instruction:
> 
> 	1419 	valid account-number field
> 
> 
> 
> John R. Levine wrote:
>>>> It's much older than that.  When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>>>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>>>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>>> 
>>> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, 
>>> Design of an
>>> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 
>>> 2(2), 1963.
>>> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
>>> contemporary with CTSS.
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
>> 
>> IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS.  Here's the 
>> manual for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>> 
>> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>> 
>> On page 64 it says:
>> 
>>  The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>>  may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>>  other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>> 
>> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  
>> In the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard 
>> to believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the 
>> costs to the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I 
>> never heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in 
>> software, or more likely done with pen and paper.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for 
>> Dummies",
>> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
> 
> 
> -- 
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 07:16:33 -0800
> From: Larry Press <lpress at csudh.edu>
> Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F79BD1.4010200 at csudh.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed
> 
> In looking for the first mention of an account, we have seen quotes from 
> IBM manuals on IBSYS, FMS and the 1401 -- that takes me back!
> 
> Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)?  Could the 
> readers of this list collectively create one?
> 
> Note that unit record machine manuals are also of interest -- I'd love 
> to see a copy of one they had on functional components of unit record 
> machines.  (Does anyone have old unit record manuals)?
> 
> Larry
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> 
> 
> End of internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 3
> ***********************************************




From johnl at iecc.com  Sun Feb  9 19:36:13 2014
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 10 Feb 2014 03:36:13 -0000
Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
In-Reply-To: <52F79BD1.4010200@csudh.edu>
Message-ID: <20140210033613.37578.qmail@joyce.lan>

>Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)?  Could the 
>readers of this list collectively create one?

The one we all use is bitsavers.org, mirrored in several places around
the world.  It says:

 As of January, 2014 there are over 27600 documents containing
 over 2.9 million pages in the archive.

They take their archival goals seriously.  Scroll down the home
page to see the scanning standards.

R's,
John


From jklensin at gmail.com  Tue Feb 11 11:02:05 2014
From: jklensin at gmail.com (John Klensin)
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 14:02:05 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
Message-ID: <CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 12:00 AM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>  Here's the manual for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>
> On page 64 it says:
>
>   The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>   may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>   other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>
> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  In
> the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard to
> believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the costs to
> the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I never heard
> of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in software, or more
> likely done with pen and paper.

Yes.  The "C" in CTSS stands for "Compatible" and what it was
compatible with was FMS batch and Timesharing running concurrently on
the same machine.   I also (vaguely) remember the 1401 instruction to
which Miles refers from the early to mid-1960s (but obviously going
back earlier).

Those decisions were, for the record, before my time -- I came to
those lines of machines a very significant few years later.

It would be interesting to check on whether explicit accounting stuff
appears in the line of machines and operating systems leading up to
the 707x -- one might imagine that chargeback regimes would have
appeared in "commercial" machines rather early.   But I don't remember
such arrangements on the 650 -- but have no idea whether that is
because they weren't there and charging was done by wall clock or
because my memory is gone.

Remember that "incredibly expensive" notwithstanding, accounting could
easily be done based on the wall clock (or even a punch clock, which I
vaguely remember in some installations) until operating systems got
smart enough to run more than one job at a time.

  -john (feeling very old today)


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb 11 13:29:06 2014
From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Date: 11 Feb 2014 16:29:06 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>

> Remember that "incredibly expensive" notwithstanding, accounting could
> easily be done based on the wall clock (or even a punch clock, which I
> vaguely remember in some installations) until operating systems got
> smart enough to run more than one job at a time.

Alan Perlis told me that when he was at CMU, he came into his office one 
Sunday evening and was startled when he tripped over a body in the hall in 
the dark. When he turned on the light, he found a line of sleeping women, 
grad students' wives (this was the 1950s) waiting for the signup sheet for 
the IBM 650 to be posted Monday morning.

There really is nothing new about job accounting for expensive equipment 
used for different jobs.  I expect there were accounting sheets for 
electromechanical tab equipment in the 1930s, and for belt driven machine 
shops in the 1830s.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly


From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Feb 11 16:40:32 2014
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 16:40:32 -0800
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
Message-ID: <CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:29 PM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:

> There really is nothing new about job accounting for expensive equipment
> used for different jobs.


Very true.   Management is about using resources, and you can't manage what
you can't measure.  Fascinating discussion...   it got me thinking about
the Internet (this *is* the internet-history list).

In particular, is The Internet the first and only "infrastructure"
(widespread resource used by everybody) that has been developed with no
associated mechanism for accounting?   I can't recall a single protocol,
packet header, or such mechanism, at least from the early days of 70s/80s,
that had anything even resembling an "account" field to enable usage to be
associated back to some specific "account".

There were some attempts (I pushed on "usage accounting" back in the 80s
but it got pretty much ignored), but I think nothing much ever developed
ingrained in the Internet architecture.  The culture of the 60s/70s/80s was
simply against it, and the ARPANET started, and ended, with no accounting.
  Computers had accounting.  ARPANET, and the Internet, do not.  How come?

I also can't offhand think of any other infrastructure without some kind of
accounting or at least "feedback" mechanism to make usage visible to the
user.   Transportation, energy, etc., all have had such mechanisms from
their early days.   Anything that involves sharing a resource is likely to
have some kind of accounting.

I think this is changing now in The Internet, as usage skyrockets with
video, and cellular carriers notice the costs of provisioning for use of
such resources by masses of people as an everyday activity.    Millions of
devices that all seem to need their software upgraded daily is probably a
factor too.

Is this finally the beginning of Internet accounting?   Is it A Bad Idea?
And is the Internet the first or only infrastructure to make it this far
(approaching 1/2 of the world population!) without any such mechanism?

/Jack Haverty
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From galmes at tamu.edu  Tue Feb 11 18:54:52 2014
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:54:52 -0600
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
	<CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>

Jack,
   Interesting observations/questions.

   I recall a meeting at Harvard's Kennedy School sometime about 1990 or 
so with people from several different countries discussing ways to 
ensure that the net was not overcongested (if I can be forgiven the 
arguable redundancy).
   It fascinated me.

   Some of the speakers were from parts of the world where the net was 
built around 64kb/s X.25 networks with a *relatively* strong notion of 
accounting.  At least at the X.25 layer, there were 'calls' and 
per-packet charges.
   They argued for the value of accounting.  They were coming from a 
mindset and reality in which resources were limited and careful 
accounting and charging was seen as a means of avoiding congestion.
   I say reality here to include the charging of the PTTs that dominated 
their world.  They could be forgiven seeing that PTT world as "the way 
things were".
   By the way, the very long distance intercontinental circuits were a 
particular focus of concern at that time.

   Most of the Americans in the room were fresh off the NSFnet effort in 
which stoking the infrastructure with bandwidth (between 1987 and 1989 
we'd seen the backbone bandwidth increase by a factor of 24 (56kb/s to 
T1) and three years later would see it increase again by a factor of 28 
(with T3).
   They argued for highly scaled best-effort service aimed at avoiding 
congestion by having lots of bandwidth.
   Accounting mechanisms, in their view, would add more congestion than 
it would remove.

   The Internet of today, largely, reflect that American 
experience/perspective.  Sometimes it's cheaper to stoke bandwidth in a 
simple network than to carefully account for usage in a more complex 
network.

   Decades later that Internet approach (by no means purely or even 
primarily American now) continues to work quite well.
   What accounting there is is done at the "entrance ramps" -- with 
local ISPs in various different contexts -- and not so much with respect 
to the wide area infrastructure.

   Let me not predict the future (especially in the post-net-neutrality 
era), but I'm glad that the government agencies of 1990 didn't agree to 
impose accounting at that time.
   	-- Guy

On 2/11/14, 6:40 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:29 PM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com
> <mailto:johnl at iecc.com>> wrote:
>
>     There really is nothing new about job accounting for expensive
>     equipment used for different jobs.
>
>
> Very true.   Management is about using resources, and you can't manage
> what you can't measure.  Fascinating discussion...   it got me thinking
> about the Internet (this *is* the internet-history list).
>
> In particular, is The Internet the first and only "infrastructure"
> (widespread resource used by everybody) that has been developed with no
> associated mechanism for accounting?   I can't recall a single protocol,
> packet header, or such mechanism, at least from the early days of
> 70s/80s, that had anything even resembling an "account" field to enable
> usage to be associated back to some specific "account".
>
> There were some attempts (I pushed on "usage accounting" back in the 80s
> but it got pretty much ignored), but I think nothing much ever developed
> ingrained in the Internet architecture.  The culture of the 60s/70s/80s
> was simply against it, and the ARPANET started, and ended, with no
> accounting.   Computers had accounting.  ARPANET, and the Internet, do
> not.  How come?
>
> I also can't offhand think of any other infrastructure without some kind
> of accounting or at least "feedback" mechanism to make usage visible to
> the user.   Transportation, energy, etc., all have had such mechanisms
> from their early days.   Anything that involves sharing a resource is
> likely to have some kind of accounting.
>
> I think this is changing now in The Internet, as usage skyrockets with
> video, and cellular carriers notice the costs of provisioning for use of
> such resources by masses of people as an everyday activity.    Millions
> of devices that all seem to need their software upgraded daily is
> probably a factor too.
>
> Is this finally the beginning of Internet accounting?   Is it A Bad
> Idea?   And is the Internet the first or only infrastructure to make it
> this far (approaching 1/2 of the world population!) without any such
> mechanism?
>
> /Jack Haverty
>


From amyzing at talsever.com  Tue Feb 11 19:51:48 2014
From: amyzing at talsever.com (Amelia A Lewis)
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 22:51:48 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
	<CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
	<52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>

There are a lot of possible responses, here, but Guy's is tempered. 
I'll try to temper mine, as well.

Certainly roads and grazing areas are similar examples to the 
TCP/IP-based internet. It's true that there's no per-user tariff from 
end-to-end, but there are indirect costs, and 'accounts' for entry to 
the commons, at least conceptually.

The end-to-end, or host-to-host definition of TCP/IP made accounting 
irrelevant, rightly. Accounting could happen at the access level (below 
IP, effectively ... like SS7 over Frame Relay (or over anything else, 
for that matter), perhaps best characterized as the charges (metered or 
unmetered) that access providers (ISPs) charged). Accounting could 
happen at the application level (above TCP), but that hardly suggests a 
need for account information to be supplied over IP or TCP. Major 
backbone providers negotiated agreements based on traffic, and modified 
them based on measurement, and charged "lesser entities" (ISPs) based 
on measurement of *their* traffic.

I don't think the absence of a bean-counting-bit impeded the growth of 
the internet, or the remuneration of those who built the infrastructure 
to enable it. In fact, I'd say that *at the level of IP and TCP*, the 
ideology of the shared-information sorts actually enabled a network 
that could be billed at connection- and application-levels.

Amy!
(with apologies for typos; I've got an ouch on a finger and seem to 
*mostly* catch the errors, but if I missed one please account it to 
damage from Dangerous Kitchen Implements)
On Tue, 11 Feb 2014 20:54:52 -0600, Guy Almes wrote:
> Jack,
>   Interesting observations/questions.
> 
>   I recall a meeting at Harvard's Kennedy School sometime about 1990 
> or so with people from several different countries discussing ways to 
> ensure that the net was not overcongested (if I can be forgiven the 
> arguable redundancy).
>   It fascinated me.
> 
>   Some of the speakers were from parts of the world where the net was 
> built around 64kb/s X.25 networks with a *relatively* strong notion 
> of accounting.  At least at the X.25 layer, there were 'calls' and 
> per-packet charges.
>   They argued for the value of accounting.  They were coming from a 
> mindset and reality in which resources were limited and careful 
> accounting and charging was seen as a means of avoiding congestion.
>   I say reality here to include the charging of the PTTs that 
> dominated their world.  They could be forgiven seeing that PTT world 
> as "the way things were".
>   By the way, the very long distance intercontinental circuits were a 
> particular focus of concern at that time.
> 
>   Most of the Americans in the room were fresh off the NSFnet effort 
> in which stoking the infrastructure with bandwidth (between 1987 and 
> 1989 we'd seen the backbone bandwidth increase by a factor of 24 
> (56kb/s to T1) and three years later would see it increase again by a 
> factor of 28 (with T3).
>   They argued for highly scaled best-effort service aimed at avoiding 
> congestion by having lots of bandwidth.
>   Accounting mechanisms, in their view, would add more congestion 
> than it would remove.
> 
>   The Internet of today, largely, reflect that American 
> experience/perspective.  Sometimes it's cheaper to stoke bandwidth in 
> a simple network than to carefully account for usage in a more 
> complex network.
> 
>   Decades later that Internet approach (by no means purely or even 
> primarily American now) continues to work quite well.
>   What accounting there is is done at the "entrance ramps" -- with 
> local ISPs in various different contexts -- and not so much with 
> respect to the wide area infrastructure.
> 
>   Let me not predict the future (especially in the 
> post-net-neutrality era), but I'm glad that the government agencies 
> of 1990 didn't agree to impose accounting at that time.
>   	-- Guy
> 
> On 2/11/14, 6:40 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 1:29 PM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com
>> <mailto:johnl at iecc.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>     There really is nothing new about job accounting for expensive
>>     equipment used for different jobs.
>> 
>> 
>> Very true.   Management is about using resources, and you can't manage
>> what you can't measure.  Fascinating discussion...   it got me thinking
>> about the Internet (this *is* the internet-history list).
>> 
>> In particular, is The Internet the first and only "infrastructure"
>> (widespread resource used by everybody) that has been developed with no
>> associated mechanism for accounting?   I can't recall a single protocol,
>> packet header, or such mechanism, at least from the early days of
>> 70s/80s, that had anything even resembling an "account" field to enable
>> usage to be associated back to some specific "account".
>> 
>> There were some attempts (I pushed on "usage accounting" back in the 80s
>> but it got pretty much ignored), but I think nothing much ever developed
>> ingrained in the Internet architecture.  The culture of the 60s/70s/80s
>> was simply against it, and the ARPANET started, and ended, with no
>> accounting.   Computers had accounting.  ARPANET, and the Internet, do
>> not.  How come?
>> 
>> I also can't offhand think of any other infrastructure without some kind
>> of accounting or at least "feedback" mechanism to make usage visible to
>> the user.   Transportation, energy, etc., all have had such mechanisms
>> from their early days.   Anything that involves sharing a resource is
>> likely to have some kind of accounting.
>> 
>> I think this is changing now in The Internet, as usage skyrockets with
>> video, and cellular carriers notice the costs of provisioning for use of
>> such resources by masses of people as an everyday activity.    Millions
>> of devices that all seem to need their software upgraded daily is
>> probably a factor too.
>> 
>> Is this finally the beginning of Internet accounting?   Is it A Bad
>> Idea?   And is the Internet the first or only infrastructure to make it
>> this far (approaching 1/2 of the world population!) without any such
>> mechanism?
>> 
>> /Jack Haverty
>> 


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Feb 11 20:57:44 2014
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 12 Feb 2014 04:57:44 -0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
Message-ID: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>

>I don't think the absence of a bean-counting-bit impeded the growth of 
>the internet, or the remuneration of those who built the infrastructure 
>to enable it. In fact, I'd say that *at the level of IP and TCP*, the 
>ideology of the shared-information sorts actually enabled a network 
>that could be billed at connection- and application-levels.

That certainly seems right to me.  Trying to account a packet at a
time would have been a huge distraction from getting useful work done.



From dot at dotat.at  Wed Feb 12 03:12:45 2014
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:12:45 +0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
	<CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
	<52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>
	<20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1402121110420.2586@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>

Amelia A Lewis <amyzing at talsever.com> wrote:
>
> Certainly roads and grazing areas are similar examples to the
> TCP/IP-based internet.

Some other examples occurred to me in response to Jack Haverty's question
about other unmetered systems:

Domestic water supply and sewerage, at least in most of the UK. (However
water supply metering is becoming more common because of demand
outstripping supply.)

The obligatory topical joke about flooding brings to mind managed
navigations like rivers and canals.

Also police, fire, and other emergency services, and the NHS before
private capital got their teeth into it.

Broadcast radio and TV.

Do street lights count as part of the road system?

Tony (with suggestions from friends on IRC).
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first.
Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good,
occasionally poor at first.


From dot at dotat.at  Wed Feb 12 03:29:56 2014
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:29:56 +0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
	<CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
	<52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>
	<20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1402121125290.3234@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>

Amelia A Lewis <amyzing at talsever.com> wrote:
>
> Certainly roads and grazing areas are similar examples to the
> TCP/IP-based internet.

Regarding common land, there is a fair amount of it still used for grazing
in Cambridge quite near the city centre. It is now quite strictly managed
(see link below) and, like metered telecomms and water, the key factor is
the limited supply of the resource.

http://static.midsummercommon.org.uk/FoMCGrazing.html

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first.
Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good,
occasionally poor at first.


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Wed Feb 12 03:46:41 2014
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 06:46:41 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
Message-ID: <a0624087ccf210e76115a@[10.0.1.3]>

Actually, it was quite common at the time for networks to charge for 
both connect time and bytes sent.  Datapac, Transpac, Telenet, Tymnet 
all did this.  One of the arguments against datagrams at the time 
was, how to charge if the network had no idea what packets were being 
delivered and which ones weren't.  Even they realized that they 
shouldn't charge for retransmissions.

There seems to be a lot of conjecture going on here.  Generally, when 
we do history we try to consult original sources to document the 
facts as much as possible, rather than simply conjecture what sounds 
reasonable.

John

At 4:57 AM +0000 2/12/14, John Levine wrote:
>  >I don't think the absence of a bean-counting-bit impeded the growth of
>>the internet, or the remuneration of those who built the infrastructure
>>to enable it. In fact, I'd say that *at the level of IP and TCP*, the
>>ideology of the shared-information sorts actually enabled a network
>>that could be billed at connection- and application-levels.
>
>That certainly seems right to me.  Trying to account a packet at a
>time would have been a huge distraction from getting useful work done.



From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Feb 12 10:02:05 2014
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 10:02:05 -0800
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1402121110420.2586@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>
References: <20140209034256.28193.qmail@joyce.lan> <52F70707.1080204@gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378@joyce.lan>
	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA@mail.gmail.com>
	<alpine.BSF.2.00.1402111540160.68552@joyce.lan>
	<CAJLkZPmXiMWrHQo4x_7grU-DJ_rpQOS8LjjxX-LhT9ZrcrcFqA@mail.gmail.com>
	<52FAE27C.10803@tamu.edu>
	<20140211225148357671.cdbdd6b2@talsever.com>
	<alpine.LSU.2.00.1402121110420.2586@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <CAJLkZPkqW2GsC48UZAuVDpHK-vpwi2Ee0xi4nO84OTrMuhkqZQ@mail.gmail.com>

"Accounting" is probably not quite the right term for the concept I'm
trying to describe.   What I'm seeking is more like a feedback mechanism
for The Internet - something that makes users "feel" their increased usage
so that they're aware of how much resource they're using and feel some
pressure to control that usage.  Some way of reflecting usage of a resource
back to some "account" that is deciding how much to use.  It doesn't
necessarily even involve billing.

Per-packet billing and such schemes would provide such feedback, but I
agree they would have prevented The Internet from becoming what it is
today.  But I keep thinking that some kind of feedback is needed, in any
system, to achieve stability, and I still don't see any here.

Today, I could hang a picture on my wall.  I could instead hang a large
flatscreen, and feed it with high-def video from a webcam on the other side
of the planet.  Perhaps a view of the Serengeti.   We'll put a nice
tropical beach in the bathroom too.  And the security cameras from the
house, to a corner of the screens in the office.  Or ...?   Run it all
24x7.  Why not?   If I do it, no one will notice.  If several hundred
million people do it, that's another story....   it works as long as the
ISPs keep the supply ahead of the demand, which may be getting difficult,
or at least figuring out who pays for it.

In the early days of the Internet, we were inherently limited by the size
of our pipes, and adjusted our behavior accordingly.  We had "data caps"
simply by the line speed.  Now with pipes approaching gigabit/sec capacity,
there's no reason not to use more - and "data caps" are how the industry is
responding, since that's what they can do.    When every house in the
neighborhood has a 3/4-inch water pipe, nobody can use very much water.
 There's an inherent "data cap" providing feedback.  But if every house
instead got a 4-foot pipe?

Broadcast TV is interesting.  It seems to be free and unmetered.  But I
think that depends on your perspective - who you think the users are.
Most of us are probably consumers, watching TV, and we perceive the TV as a
device for consuming entertainment, information, etc.   It's all free and
we can watch as much as we can stand.   We think we're the users.

However, another perspective of TV is from the corporate offices of the
advertisers.   From their perspective, the purpose of TV is to deliver
advertising.   Entertainment is overhead, necessary to keep the eyeballs in
front of the screen.   Advertisers of course pay heavily for their usage of
"free" broadcast TV.   The more ads they deliver to more eyeballs, the more
they pay.  So broadcast media isn't really "free" at all.   It's metered by
the second and the users pay more for more usage.  Cable TV didn't change
much -- except to add an additional revenue stream from the consumers who
can still watch as much as they can stand.  The users of broadcast TV are
the advertisers.

Of course that begs the question - who are the users of The Internet?   We
think it's us, sitting at our desktops/tablets/phones.   But perhaps it's
really the advertisers. We use the 'Net to consume what we seek, immersed
in a sea of pop-ups, banner ads, and screens increasingly full of
advertising content surrounding what we sought.   The Internet is replacing
broadcast media, but has similar characteristics - delivery of advertising
(what someone else wants you to see) along with entertainment and
information (what you want to see).   We think we're the users of The
Internet.  Maybe not.

I don't know anything about the economics and mechanisms of that
advertising machinery, but it seems to be very big and very effective (ask
Google...).  There must be some pretty powerful feedback mechanisms that
reflect usage back to the users who send out all the ads.  The limiting
factor seems to be simply screen real estate - how much of the screen can
be filled with ads versus what I asked to see, before I stop coming back
for more.

In that case, if you believe that the true "users" of The Internet are the
advertisers, there is already an accounting scheme in place which reflects
increased usage (more ads) back to the users (advertisers pay more).  The
humans in front of the screens are just eyeballs.

Still, that leaves open the question of feedback to those other "users"
whose decisions affect resources - e.g., why shouldn't we all put up webcam
artwork everywhere, and see if someone can figure out how to overlay ads on
it...?

I think we're in one of those tipping points in Internet History where this
gets sorted out, or at least changes noticeably.  The emergence of data
caps, and the prominence of "Net Neutrality" discussions are visible
symptoms.   Perhaps some ISP along the way will soon refuse to carry my
webcam feed, since it's not tied to some advertising account....

Sooner or later, I think we'll see the feedback mechanisms solidify (aka
"accounting").  I just still wonder if this is unique to The Internet,
taking 40+years to come to a head.

It would be interesting to see some kind of overview of the economics of
the Internet - who pays whom for what to keep it all going.  Also
interesting to see how that has changed over time, starting in the 70s with
DARPA/NSF/etc.    This phenomena has lasted for 40+ years but it's not
obvious, to me at least, why.   Or if the great experimental technique of
"keep the supply ahead of the demand" is about to end.

/Jack Haverty
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From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Feb 12 10:50:00 2014
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 07:50:00 +1300
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <a0624087ccf210e76115a@[10.0.1.3]>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<a0624087ccf210e76115a@[10.0.1.3]>
Message-ID: <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>

On 13/02/2014 00:46, John Day wrote:
> Actually, it was quite common at the time for networks to charge for
> both connect time and bytes sent.  Datapac, Transpac, Telenet, Tymnet
> all did this.  

It was a clear design advantage of X.25 for the PTTs that it made
such charging much easier. There was even a theft of service attack
possible at one stage, when they *didn't* charge for the initial
connect packet, which contained a Call User Data field that the user
could set to any value - after a while they started charging for
failed connects, so that people couldn't send free bits in that field.

> One of the arguments against datagrams at the time was,
> how to charge if the network had no idea what packets were being
> delivered and which ones weren't.  Even they realized that they
> shouldn't charge for retransmissions.

I wasn't in New Zealand at the relevant time, but I understand
that charging by the Internet byte was normal due to the high cost
and scarcity of trans-Pacific capacity in the 1990s.

   Brian

> 
> There seems to be a lot of conjecture going on here.  Generally, when we
> do history we try to consult original sources to document the facts as
> much as possible, rather than simply conjecture what sounds reasonable.
> 
> John
> 
> At 4:57 AM +0000 2/12/14, John Levine wrote:
>>  >I don't think the absence of a bean-counting-bit impeded the growth of
>>> the internet, or the remuneration of those who built the infrastructure
>>> to enable it. In fact, I'd say that *at the level of IP and TCP*, the
>>> ideology of the shared-information sorts actually enabled a network
>>> that could be billed at connection- and application-levels.
>>
>> That certainly seems right to me.  Trying to account a packet at a
>> time would have been a huge distraction from getting useful work done.
> 
> 


From braden at isi.edu  Wed Feb 12 11:24:28 2014
From: braden at isi.edu (Bob Braden)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 11:24:28 -0800
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3.1392148801.13692.internet-history@postel.org>
References: <mailman.3.1392148801.13692.internet-history@postel.org>
Message-ID: <52FBCA6C.5090302@isi.edu>

On 2/11/2014 12:00 PM, internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:
> Send internet-history mailing list submissions to
> 	internet-history at postel.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	internet-history-request at postel.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	internet-history-owner at postel.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of internet-history digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>     1. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (John Klensin)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 14:02:05 -0500
> From: John Klensin <jklensin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: "John R. Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
> Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAC-QkAAT-n_Fy1SU-m0-MdH4j2F6xXaWbT+qiX7HAG3TKVSxfA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 12:00 AM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>>   Here's the manual for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>>
>> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>>
>> On page 64 it says:
>>
>>    The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>>    may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>>    other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>>
>> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.  In
>> the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard to
>> believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the costs to
>> the users.  Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I never heard

There was no place to put the data because memory was very expensive and 
small, and I/O devices
expensive, at least in the Big Blue world where I mostly lived. OTOH, 
the compile-and-go
operation on Stanford's B220 did record job times, at least I think it 
did. This was early 1960s.
Probably punched clock values and job names on an IBM card. The actual 
accounting must
have been done offline.

Larry Breed, who wrote the very simple OS to log jobs on and off would know.

Bob Braden

> \------------------------------ 
> _______________________________________________ internet-history 
> mailing list internet-history at postel.org 
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history End of 
> internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 5 
> *********************************************** 



From adrian at creative.net.au  Wed Feb 12 12:06:38 2014
From: adrian at creative.net.au (Adrian Chadd)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:06:38 -0800
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<a0624087ccf210e76115a@10.0.1.3> <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAJ-VmonPCUae-EiNvaDi+wVPtCpOg7cn=mpADZrnaqO-vMSkYw@mail.gmail.com>

On 12 February 2014 10:50, Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/02/2014 00:46, John Day wrote:
>> Actually, it was quite common at the time for networks to charge for
>> both connect time and bytes sent.  Datapac, Transpac, Telenet, Tymnet
>> all did this.
>
> It was a clear design advantage of X.25 for the PTTs that it made
> such charging much easier. There was even a theft of service attack
> possible at one stage, when they *didn't* charge for the initial
> connect packet, which contained a Call User Data field that the user
> could set to any value - after a while they started charging for
> failed connects, so that people couldn't send free bits in that field.
>
>> One of the arguments against datagrams at the time was,
>> how to charge if the network had no idea what packets were being
>> delivered and which ones weren't.  Even they realized that they
>> shouldn't charge for retransmissions.
>
> I wasn't in New Zealand at the relevant time, but I understand
> that charging by the Internet byte was normal due to the high cost
> and scarcity of trans-Pacific capacity in the 1990s.

We had the same in Australia. The advent of internet exchanges changed
the dynamic for a while and we dumped a bunch of effort into netflow
based billing systems that provided free IX traffic and charged
transit. That mostly went out the window when ADSL came along - the
congested part became the ATM interconnect to the DSL provider network
and the "free" traffic was interfering.

(And yes, some of us tried QoS and adaptive shaping techniques to
mitigate this, but the industry as a whole migrated..)


-a


From jabley at hopcount.ca  Wed Feb 12 12:25:29 2014
From: jabley at hopcount.ca (Joe Abley)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:25:29 -0500
Subject: [ih] Billing by the Byte in NZ (was Re:  History of "accounts")
In-Reply-To: <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<a0624087ccf210e76115a@[10.0.1.3]> <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BD47E4D0-1C77-4091-9137-27C2036A8996@hopcount.ca>


On 2014-02-12, at 13:50, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wasn't in New Zealand at the relevant time, but I understand
> that charging by the Internet byte was normal due to the high cost
> and scarcity of trans-Pacific capacity in the 1990s.

The need to account for internet traffic by the byte was commonplace at commercial ISPs when I returned to New Zealand in 1996. The need to account for relative use of Internet capacity by the various NZ universities who bought internet capacity together under the name "Kawaihiko" led to the development of NeTraMeT by Nevil Brownlee, which we also used at CLEAR to bill frame-relay customers for international internet traffic.

("Kawaihiko" was explained to me as "fire root", the closest Maori word anybody could construct that meant something like "computer network".)

Trans-Pacific (and trans-Tasman) cable system capacity became extremely scarce in the late 90s, leading to a proliferation of capacity augmentation by satellite (iHUG, CLEAR, no doubt others) and some creative re-routing traffic out of Australia from circuits provisioned Tas-II to PacRim-East to free up capacity for sale in NZ on PRE. Before that bandwidth crunch, I think the principal reason to account for every byte was the cost of circuits, not a lack of capacity.

Southern Cross went live late in 2000 and ultimately relieved the international capacity shortage on PRE.

Billing by the byte turned into bandwidth caps which remain prevalent, although some providers are now attempting to disrupt the market by selling unlimited service. Earlier attempts at such disruption (e.g. Chello in 2000) did not last long.

<http://wiki.wlug.org.nz/NewZealandInternetHistory> provides some fun reading.


Joe




From jeanjour at comcast.net  Wed Feb 12 13:38:30 2014
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 16:38:30 -0500
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <52FBCA6C.5090302@isi.edu>
References: <mailman.3.1392148801.13692.internet-history@postel.org>
	<52FBCA6C.5090302@isi.edu>
Message-ID: <a06240892cf2199c7c838@[10.0.1.3]>

If we are talking about accounting on mainframes for job time, etc 
back in the day, they all did it to a greater or lesser degree, 
especially on university systems.

No one worried about network charging on the early ARPANET because no 
one was charging us.  That kind of spoiled us and then we got the 
idea it should be free.  But commercial networks did charge.


>
>There was no place to put the data because memory was very expensive 
>and small, and I/O devices
>expensive, at least in the Big Blue world where I mostly lived. 
>OTOH, the compile-and-go
>operation on Stanford's B220 did record job times, at least I think 
>it did. This was early 1960s.
>Probably punched clock values and job names on an IBM card. The 
>actual accounting must
>have been done offline.
>
>Larry Breed, who wrote the very simple OS to log jobs on and off would know.
>
>Bob Braden
>
>>\------------------------------ 
>>_______________________________________________ internet-history 
>>mailing list internet-history at postel.org 
>>http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history End of 
>>internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 5 
>>***********************************************



From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Feb 12 13:45:58 2014
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 13:45:58 -0800
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>
	<a0624087ccf210e76115a@10.0.1.3> <52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAJLkZPkEyQgA0kaABwdrxeMjzHaN428BboyDOiNpGnFx+t6OCw@mail.gmail.com>

In the spirit of capturing historical facts...

In the early 80s,  The Internet incorporated a satellite network, SATNET,
which provided connectivity between the US and Europe, with the
considerable expense absorbed by DARPA and associated sponsors.   Such
sponsors of course wanted that limited expensive resource to be used by
their projects.   There were other users who also wanted to communicate
between continents, but they weren't allowed (didn't pay for) use of SATNET.

I can't remember exactly when, but at some point while I was running
Internet projects at BBN, DARPA asked us to deploy a "VAN Gateway", which
was simply a gateway that used an X.25 network as a carrier, with an X.25
connection between 2 such gateways carrying IP traffic.   We did this, and
then there was connectivity between the US and Europe, using the X.25/X.75
public network as an underlying network instead of SATNET.   One gateway
was in the US, and one was in the UK.

I don't recall much of the detail, but I believe we relied on the two
European parts of the Internet remaining disjoint - no interconnections in
EU between the SATNET users' computers and the others'  - so that traffic
would go over the appropriate transatlantic path based simply by which
gateway (Satnet or VAN) a particular EU computer could access.   If they're
monitoring, Bob Hinden or Mike Brescia might remember more.

End-users didn't see any packet charges or other forms of accounting
feedback, but the US and UK government sponsors sure did, in the form of
bills from the X.25 providers.  Every connection, and every packet, cost
money, some in dollars, some in pounds.  We had to do some reworking of
internal mechanisms like gateway routing machinery, to avoid sending
packets constantly just because we could.

So, there was pressure to minimize operating costs by additional clever
techniques in the gateways.  The gateways could make decisions, for
example, about how long to keep a connection open, in case another packet
was heading its way to be sent out over the X.25 service.  As was typical
of the "phone system", each call made cost money, each packet sent cost
money, and each second the connection was open cost money.    Whoever
initiated a call got the bill for that call and for all traffic in both
directions.  Just like the phone system, pre-cellular at least.

So, ......

There was an interesting algorithm we put in the US-side VAN gateway which
wasn't discussed much and might have therefore escaped being captured by
History.   Until now.  Here it is, for posterity:

"When a packet arrives to be sent to the X.25 network, if the X.25
connection is open, queue the packet for sending.   If the X.25 connection
is *not* open, open the connection, send that single packet, and
immediately close the connection."

So, the SYN packet of a TCP connection heading to EU from a US computer
would get sent and the US would pay for a short, one-packet, X.25 session.
 The ACK returning from the EU computer would then open a connection from
the EU side, and, lacking a similar algorithm, subsequent packets for that
TCP session, and any others that might subsequently occur (FTP transfers
for example) would get billed to the UK.

So, most usage of that X.25 path got billed to the UK sponsors.  I don't
know if the UK ever noticed that this was happening.   Peter Kirstein might
remember.   For the curious, the history of the VAN gateway is discussed in
a series of BBN Quarterly Technical Reports of that era, many of which are
available online.

Someone told me once - "Management is the art of putting your expenses into
someone else's budget".... which we did, as part of our role in managing
the "core gateways".

Anyone thinking about Net Neutrality might want to look at what happened
back then.   It's far from a new idea for Internet carriers to treat
certain packets differently.

I hope I haven't started an international incident.....

/Jack Haverty
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From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Wed Feb 12 15:55:08 2014
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:55:08 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <CAJLkZPkEyQgA0kaABwdrxeMjzHaN428BboyDOiNpGnFx+t6OCw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20140212045744.70783.qmail@joyce.lan>	<a0624087ccf210e76115a@10.0.1.3>
	<52FBC258.6020704@gmail.com>
	<CAJLkZPkEyQgA0kaABwdrxeMjzHaN428BboyDOiNpGnFx+t6OCw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <52FC09DC.6000503@meetinghouse.net>

Jack Haverty wrote:
>
> There was an interesting algorithm we put in the US-side VAN gateway 
> which wasn't discussed much and might have therefore escaped being 
> captured by History.   Until now.  Here it is, for posterity:
>
> "When a packet arrives to be sent to the X.25 network, if the X.25 
> connection is open, queue the packet for sending. If the X.25 
> connection is *not* open, open the connection, send that single 
> packet, and immediately close the connection."
>
> So, the SYN packet of a TCP connection heading to EU from a US 
> computer would get sent and the US would pay for a short, one-packet, 
> X.25 session.  The ACK returning from the EU computer would then open 
> a connection from the EU side, and, lacking a similar algorithm, 
> subsequent packets for that TCP session, and any others that might 
> subsequently occur (FTP transfers for example) would get billed to the UK.
>
> So, most usage of that X.25 path got billed to the UK sponsors.  I 
> don't know if the UK ever noticed that this was happening.   Peter 
> Kirstein might remember.   For the curious, the history of the VAN 
> gateway is discussed in a series of BBN Quarterly Technical Reports of 
> that era, many of which are available online.
>
> Someone told me once - "Management is the art of putting your expenses 
> into someone else's budget".... which we did, as part of our role in 
> managing the "core gateways".

Better watch out Jack - someone might come after you for back charges.

Cheers,

Miles

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



From dot at dotat.at  Thu Feb 13 03:30:07 2014
From: dot at dotat.at (Tony Finch)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 11:30:07 +0000
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 83, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <a06240892cf2199c7c838@[10.0.1.3]>
References: <mailman.3.1392148801.13692.internet-history@postel.org>
	<52FBCA6C.5090302@isi.edu> <a06240892cf2199c7c838@[10.0.1.3]>
Message-ID: <alpine.LSU.2.00.1402131128070.18502@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk>

John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> If we are talking about accounting on mainframes for job time, etc back in the
> day, they all did it to a greater or lesser degree, especially on university
> systems.

This reminds me of http://dotat.at/random/info.eagle.current.status
which is infamous to Cambridge computer users of a certain age - to the
extent that it spawned the word "balge" meaning "by and large good
enough".

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Forties, Cromarty: East, veering southeast, 4 or 5, occasionally 6 at first.
Rough, becoming slight or moderate. Showers, rain at first. Moderate or good,
occasionally poor at first.


From jmamodio at gmail.com  Thu Feb 13 03:53:44 2014
From: jmamodio at gmail.com (Jorge Amodio)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 05:53:44 -0600
Subject: [ih] Billing by the Byte (was Re: Billing by the Byte in NZ)
Message-ID: <CAMzo+1YcFbkjK72AFtCQBTeE+O9_+1_6aKZ019f+D+E7grQUvw@mail.gmail.com>

In Argentina after the privatization of the state owned phone company
(Entel 1990) there was initially only one company that was allowed to
provide international services.

We already had by a special agreement with Entel, a low speed vocal grade
analog satellite link that helped us to get connected to SuraNet in 1990.
It took us several years to convince the new company (Telintar) to provide
a digital link and let the local Internet commercial market to flourish and
open the services to everybody, given that our initial link was only (due
our agreement with NSF) for academic purposes.

We made a deal with them were we trained them, helped them get started and
broker an agreement on the US side for their first digital connection, in
exchange to let the academic and scientific community connect digitally
(1994) and later open the market (1995) for other companies and the general
public.

What was not effective with the training (and I'm the primary culprit) is
that they kept the PTT mentality about how to charge for the services, and
obviously they established a tariff based on volume.

They were struggling trying to convert byte traffic stats into the classic
X.25 kilosegments and for several years (I still have a copy of the first
ad showing the prices) they charged a ridiculous amount of money based on
link speed and volume, following another PTT old practice of establishing
the prices in Gold Francs (XFO.)

In 1995 one kilosegment of traffic was 16.67 XFO and based on the link
speed you were billed for a fixed number of kilosegments based on link
speed, for example 1250 for a 64Kbps link. Then on top of the cost of the
digital line (actually ISDN with Newbridge gear,) for 64Kbps you had to pay
a minimum of 20,837.50 XFO that today would be something like USD
251420/month.

Hey but it was a good deal, they offered discounts if you had more than
5000 kilosegments per month.

Given that their license as a telecom operator was only for international
services, the very first local ISPs (mostly dialup) had to connect to them
to be on the "global" Internet, and due Telintar's volume based tariffs
many of the early ISPs established their tariffs also based on volume.

This schema didn't last long but was one of the roadblocks for the early
steps of Internet services developments in Argentina.

Cheers
Jorge
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Feb 13 13:32:31 2014
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:32:31 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
Message-ID: <20140213213231.2EBA718C0CA@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>

    > So, the SYN packet of a TCP connection heading to EU from a US computer
    > would get sent and the US would pay for a short, one-packet, X.25
    > session.
    > The ACK returning from the EU computer would then open a connection
    > from the EU side, and, lacking a similar algorithm, subsequent packets
    > for that TCP session, and any others that might subsequently occur (FTP
    > transfers for example) would get billed to the UK.

Err, what makes you so sure they weren't doing the same thing? :-) (I.e.
opening a connection just for the SYN-ACK, then shutting it down?)

	Noel


From jack at 3kitty.org  Thu Feb 13 19:54:58 2014
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 19:54:58 -0800
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
In-Reply-To: <20140213213231.2EBA718C0CA@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20140213213231.2EBA718C0CA@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAJLkZPmt5mUig3T-q2Qq6r8-8FJZ4SSmd6sXCOBSTWkGXYcGrQ@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Noel,

The VAN gateway was one of the later additions to the gateway project.   I
don't recall the timing, but by then we probably had the gateways all
managed by the NOC, so there were logs, traps, etc., continuously reporting
operational stats.   Even before the NOC there were mechanisms to watch
what each gateway was doing, and someone (Hinden/Brescia/Sheltzer most
likely) looking every day for issues.   Again, I don't remember the
details, but the VAN gateway would probably have reported data flow every
few minutes, as well as logs of interesting events, like opening/closing an
X.25 connection, including whether we initikated or answered the call.
So, if UCL used a similar algorithm, we would have easily seen it in the
logs.

This is a pragmatic example of "you can't manage what you can't measure".
We measured.  By the mid-80s, the Arpanet had grown to include lots of
operational statistics et al for the NOC operators to use to manage the
net, and the gateways followed the lead with similar mechanisms.

/Jack



On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>wrote:

>     > From: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
>
>     > So, the SYN packet of a TCP connection heading to EU from a US
> computer
>     > would get sent and the US would pay for a short, one-packet, X.25
>     > session.
>     > The ACK returning from the EU computer would then open a connection
>     > from the EU side, and, lacking a similar algorithm, subsequent
> packets
>     > for that TCP session, and any others that might subsequently occur
> (FTP
>     > transfers for example) would get billed to the UK.
>
> Err, what makes you so sure they weren't doing the same thing? :-) (I.e.
> opening a connection just for the SYN-ACK, then shutting it down?)
>
>         Noel
>
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