[ih] When was Go Back N adopted by TCP

[John Day]

At 11:46 AM -0700 5/18/14, Jack Haverty wrote:
>Since this is a "history" forum, I'll offer my perspective as one 
>who was there in the 80s and involved in the TCP work...
>
>IMHO, it's important to make the distinction between the protocol 
>and the implementations of that protocol.   The protocol defines the 
>formats of the data passing back and forth "on the wire", and the 
>required actions that the computer at each and take in response to 
>receiving that data.
>
>How a particular implementation performs that response is totally up 
>to that particular implementer.
>
>So, when you're talking about ARQ, packet timers, retransmission 
>algorithms, et al, you're talking about the *implementation*, rather 
>than the TCP protocol itself.
>
>I wrote a TCP back in the 1979 timeframe - the first one for a Unix 
>system, running on a PDP-11/40.  It first implemented TCP version 
>2.5, and later evolved to version 4.   It was a very basic 
>implementation, no "slow start" or any other such niceties that were 
>created as the Internet grew.

I think we went over this earlier and the conclusion was, we weren't 
sure.  But I can say Jack's was probably the first on an 11/40.

By 1979, we were on our second TCP implementation on Unix on an 11/45 
and 11/70, and would start our third soon.

Take care,
John