[ih] Any suggestions for first uses of "e-mail" or "email"?

Sun Aug 30 18:15:11 PDT 2015

> On Aug 30, 2015, at 17:59, Joe Rinde <joe at rinde.org> wrote:
> 
> John
>  
> I am not sure what questions are being asked here. The colored balls were added fairly early, not sure if they were planned from the start, LaRoy could better answer that.  I know that the red and green balls were fundamental to preserve “visual clarity” so I suspect they were there from the start.  Your reference is to orange and yellow balls which had a different purpose. Those were the only balls directly initiated by the external processes (hosts).  Black and grey balls indicated loss of data and told the processes (most of which had no way of dealing with them) in which direction the data was lost.  On top of that were “character gobblers” and “circuit Zappers” all of which were internal although they could have external counter parts (close circuit, flush data in the circuit).  The external processes usually were Tymshare hosts that took advantage of the capabilities.  

Thanks for the clarification.
>  
> As to X.25 it never had a datagram capability, it was part of the standard but NO ONE implemented it.

That is correct.  (I don’t believe we were talking about datagrams.)

>   To Tymnet X.25 was an external interface whose traffic was carried the in the internal protocol, the same as if you put an X.25 interface on a router today.  X.75 was n o different in that regard.  At MCI we built a frame relay network that was nothing but an external interface that used IP transport internally, same difference.

Yes, correct.  As I said, X.25 was a DTE to DCE protocol, not internal DCE/DCE standard. And X.75 defined the interface between X.25 networks.  CCITT was very careful to define *interfaces* between boxes not to standardize how the internals of networks worked.  One early confusion as I point out in an article currently in press is that for CCITT interfaces were/are between boxes, whereas for the networking crowd interfaces were between layers.  
>  
> Again I am not sure what is being asked here.  Tymnet provided a very efficient method of transport given the available transmission technology at the time.  It was able to operate on much lower speed lines than Arpanet/Telenet.  In today’s world the design would have been very different.

Yes, it was. As I said, I came into contact with a similar technology when I worked at Codex.

Take care,
John
>  
>  
> Joe Rinde CCSS CNE CDPE CSSN
> United Real Estate Scottsdale
> 602-334-6790
> http://RindeRealEstate.com <http://rinderealestate.com/>
>  
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>  
> From: John Day [mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>] 
> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 11:54 AM
> To: Vint Cerf
> Cc: Joe Rinde; Jim Carpenter; internet history
> Subject: Re: [ih] Any suggestions for first uses of "e-mail" or "email"?
>  
>  
>> On Aug 30, 2015, at 11:09, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com <mailto:vint at google.com>> wrote:
>>  
>> I used to manage the TYMNET engineering team when I was SVP at MCI and the protocols were by no means slapdash. They were quite carefully thought out. The mechanism was statistical multiplexing of keystrokes into frames for hop by hop transfer. As the frame arrived at the next hop, it was disassembled and new frames created including other keystrokes from other forwarders that lay along the source-to-destination paths to the target. Sort of like buses or airplanes full of people that land at a hub airport, and reassemble onto new buses or planes for the next hop.
>  
> Okay, so they weren’t slapdash. Yes, this sounds very close to the stat mux protocols that Codex did.  They insisted it wasn’t packet switching but I finally convinced them that the only difference was the granularity.  I later used this as the argument for why people should be considering ATM over IP, rather IP over ATM.  ;-)  It was the same idea.
> 
>  
> There was a "colored ball" protocol to determine whether the train of keystrokes had been fully delivered to the destination by tossing in a colored ball and waiting for it to return. 
>  
> This is what I thought was slap dash. I remember reading an early article (probably around 76 when the first Telenet articles were ) on TYMNET in which they described how they built the network and ran into problems and found they needed to add the “colored ball” stuff, which was something they should have seen before they started.  I am sure that by the time you saw it at MCI it had evolved quite a bit.
> 
>  
> Joe Rinde was one of the authors of the TYMNET protocols  - he seems to have moved to Arizona and gone into the real estate business (!). 
>  
> I am copying him (if the email is still valid) for his observations.
>  
> Joe - I recall that X.25 was an exterior "skin" for the TYMNET colored ball protocols and that X.75 was indeed in use for inter-network exchanges via X.25. Can you confirm?
>  
> That would make sense since X.25 was a DTE-DCE protocol and not necessarily a DCE-DCE protocol.
>  
> Take care,
> John
> 
>  
> vint
>  
>  
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 7:06 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
> Not off the top of my head, but there were articles in conferences at the time on Tymnet and how it worked internally.  The protocols were (I believe) mostly homegrown.  What I remember about Tymnet was that they were pretty slapdash. They never saw anything coming until they ran into it, so even something like flow control was a retrofitted kludge.  At least that is the impression, I had at the time.
>  
> Take care,
> John
>> On Aug 30, 2015, at 06:22, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>  
>> Telenet used X.75 inside but I'm not sure what Tymnet used or when they used it. If anybody has any recommended bedtime reading for (technical) details of the internals of Telenet and Tymnet, especially TYM2, I'd be quite interested.
>> Jim Carpenter
>> the US-based Telenet and Tymnet both offered X.25 service and implemented X.75 I believe.
>>  
>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 11:04 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> X.75 was widely used within PTT packet-offerings.  As you would imagine mostly outside North America.
>> 
>> 
>> > On Aug 8, 2015, at 10:18, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Which raises an obvious question:  Did X.75 ever get much traction?  In
>> > my days at BBN (1985-1992), and for a few years earlier, when I was
>> > selling time sharing services, and using TELENET, I can't really recall
>> > ever encountering it in real use.
>> >
>> > Miles
>> >
>> > Vint Cerf wrote:
>> >> Larry Roberts asked me what he should use for protocol in Telenet and
>> >> I said TCP but he said he could not sell datagrams and went on to
>> >> develop X.25's virtual circuits with French, Canadian and UK
>> >> assistance at CCITT (now ITU-T). That was standardized in 1976 while
>> >> TCP was evolving. I told him we would run TCP (eventually TCP/IP) over
>> >> X.25 and by 1981 or so that is what we did in CSNET. 1822 was never a
>> >> contender for a global standard. X.25 begot X.75 which was the CCITT
>> >> response to the Internet's TCP/IP.
>> >>
>> >> OSI was yet another effort to craft a non-TCP/IP Internet and that got
>> >> started in 1978, using X.25 as the underlying virtual circuit basis.
>> >> Eventually an OSI connectionless mode was developed CLNP but never
>> >> gained much popularity.
>> >>
>> >> The TCP/IP vs OSI battle lasted from 1978 to 1993. X.25 was around
>> >> from 1976 to 2003 or so as I recall. I shut down the last MCI X.25
>> >> offering about 2003 or so if memory serves.
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 3:42 AM, Miles Fidelman
>> >> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> On 08/08/2015 08:12, Jack Haverty wrote:
>> >>> ...
>> >>>> But I don't think there's much written
>> >>>> material about that battle between TCP/IP and X.25 in the
>> >>    ARPANET arena.
>> >>
>> >>    Jack,
>> >>
>> >>    Granted that the TCP/IP cutover happened 2 years before I got to
>> >>    BBN, so my exposure wasn't quite firsthand -
>> >>    but weren't the battles really between 1822 and X.25, and then
>> >>    TCP/IP vs. the ISO stack?  After all, 1822 and X.25 were both
>> >>    single subnet protocols, with no support for internetworking (and
>> >>    that IP runs over both of them, just fine).
>> >>
>> >>    Miles
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>    --
>> >>    In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>> >>    In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >
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>> > In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
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