From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Jan  9 08:32:12 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri,  9 Jan 2015 11:32:12 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
Message-ID: <20150109163212.D0A1518C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

Does anyone happen to have an email address for Peter Salus? He recently (OK,
it was 2008 - time flies as one gets older ;-) published an otherwise-useful
work:

  Peter H. Salus (editor), "The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished
	Foundations of the Internet", Peer-to-Peer Communications, 2008

which, alas, contains a serious error (IMO), and I'd like to let him know
about it.


I'm give it here, too, because this is a canard that I've been trying to kill
for a long time, with little success. However, hopefully, eventually the
correction will catch up with the bogon.

So that book says (pg. xiii):

  "Unfortunately, the innovative work of Baran was executed as an Air Force
  contract ... It was not widely circulated..."

This meme is pretty common. Alas, it's wrong.

Paulina Borsook pointed out to me quite a while ago that Baran's work _was_
published openly in a fairly widely distributed journal, at the time it was
done, viz.:

  Paul Baran, "On Distributed Communications Networks", (IEEE Transactions on
  Communications Systems, Vol. CS-12 No. 1, pp. 1-9, March 1964) 

This 9-page paper (check it out, here:

  http://www.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/Baran64.pdf

don't take my word for it) contains all the essential ideas from the RAND
multi-page set, in some detail. (Packets - although not called that at that
time, of course - make their appearance on page 6 of that paper.)


So an assertion that his work was was 'not openly available' is, frankly,
completely incorrect.

Furthermore, an abstract of that '64 IEEE ToCS paper was published in IEEE
Spectrum (circulation about 160,000 in those days) in August '64. I don't
know how much more widely circulated one can get.

	Noel


From reed at reedmedia.net  Fri Jan  9 09:48:39 2015
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 11:48:39 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150109163212.D0A1518C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150109163212.D0A1518C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.02.1501091147390.4874@t1.m.reedmedia.net>

On Fri, 9 Jan 2015, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> Does anyone happen to have an email address for Peter Salus?

I will respond to this off-list.


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Jan  9 10:18:52 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri,  9 Jan 2015 13:18:52 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
Message-ID: <20150109181852.1356C18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    >> Does anyone happen to have an email address for Peter Salus?

    > I will respond to this off-list.

Thanks to everyone who replied!

	Noel

PS: I take it nobody disagrees with my point about Baran?


From bill.n1vux at gmail.com  Fri Jan  9 10:29:47 2015
From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 13:29:47 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <alpine.NEB.2.02.1501091147390.4874@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
References: <20150109163212.D0A1518C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<alpine.NEB.2.02.1501091147390.4874@t1.m.reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <CAAbKA3VEEkC3YEaKFY1XNyC+NzF02JRizfr8MzShvBQ-d-11Rg@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed at reedmedia.net> wrote:
> I will respond to this off-list


As did I.

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Fri Jan  9 11:17:20 2015
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 08:17:20 +1300
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150109181852.1356C18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150109181852.1356C18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <54B02940.7070408@gmail.com>

On 10/01/2015 07:18, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     >> Does anyone happen to have an email address for Peter Salus?
> 
>     > I will respond to this off-list.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who replied!
> 
> 	Noel
> 
> PS: I take it nobody disagrees with my point about Baran?

I just checked in my copy of "Computer Networks and Their Protocols"
by Davies et al., (1979) and they cite the 1964 Baran paper and the
RAND reports, on page 47, as "the first full description of [packet
switching]". So it's not like this was arcane knowledge. The earliest
reference of his own that Davies cites is from 1967.

   Brian Carpenter


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Jan  9 15:04:58 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri,  9 Jan 2015 18:04:58 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
Message-ID: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Brian E Carpenter

    > I just checked in my copy of "Computer Networks and Their Protocols"
    > by Davies et al., (1979) and they cite the 1964 Baran paper and the
    > RAND reports, on page 47, as "the first full description of [packet
    > switching]". So it's not like this was arcane knowledge.

So, if not, why is the meme that Baran's work was 'classified and not
widely available' so common (and, given the evidence of the '64 IEEE
publication, apparently entirely wrong)?

I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed it
out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.

Interestingly, "The ARPANET Sourcebook" also includes a very interesting
note by Willis Ware of RAND (pp. 70-71) which makes quite plain that the
11-volume set was publicly available from the start, and also widely
distributed ("At that time, RAND document distribution always included a
lengthy list of deposit campus and urban libraries"). However, Willis'
note does not mention the publication in the IEEE journal.

The IEEE paper also clearly referenced thee complete set, and indicated that
it was "intended to release the volumes as a set"

As to why Baran's work took a while to be noticed, my _guess_ is that Baran's
focus on survivability may have led people to assume that his ideas had no
relevance to networks intended for 'general' use, so it had little impact when
first published - but that's just a quess.

And as far as the meme goes, the fact that tiny portions of the large 1964
RAND publications on Baran's work _were_ classified may have somehow gotten
conflated in the general mind with the report as a whole.


However, hopefully, if it keeps being pointed out that the introductory
document from the RAND set was published in an IEEE journal, eventually the
meme that 'Baran's work was classified and not widely distributed' will be
extinguished.

	Noel


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Fri Jan  9 17:05:29 2015
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:05:29 +1300
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <54B07AD9.7010006@gmail.com>

On 10/01/2015 12:04, Noel Chiappa wrote:
...
> I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed it
> out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.

I pulled out my copy of "Casting the Net" by Peter Salus, 1995 edition.
Page 6:

"The Department [of Defense] wanted a survivable national network.
Studies were commissioned and, in 1962, Paul Baran and his colleagues
at the RAND Corporation produced 13 reports and (for security reasons)
published only 11 of them ("On Distributed Communications 1964)..."

and indeed the reference is to the IEEE Trans CS paper.

So, in 1995 Peter knew that they were published in the early 1960s.

The paper is also cited in "where wizards stay up late" (Hafner & Lyon 1996).

So, the meme is indeed puzzling and far from universal.

(BTW, there is some discussion of the military vs civilian origins of the
ARPANET project in Walter Isaacson's recent book "The Innovators." Not
to mention an interesting discussion of Kleinrock's contribution vs
Baran and Davies.)

   Brian

> 
> Interestingly, "The ARPANET Sourcebook" also includes a very interesting
> note by Willis Ware of RAND (pp. 70-71) which makes quite plain that the
> 11-volume set was publicly available from the start, and also widely
> distributed ("At that time, RAND document distribution always included a
> lengthy list of deposit campus and urban libraries"). However, Willis'
> note does not mention the publication in the IEEE journal.
> 
> The IEEE paper also clearly referenced thee complete set, and indicated that
> it was "intended to release the volumes as a set"
> 
> As to why Baran's work took a while to be noticed, my _guess_ is that Baran's
> focus on survivability may have led people to assume that his ideas had no
> relevance to networks intended for 'general' use, so it had little impact when
> first published - but that's just a quess.
> 
> And as far as the meme goes, the fact that tiny portions of the large 1964
> RAND publications on Baran's work _were_ classified may have somehow gotten
> conflated in the general mind with the report as a whole.
> 
> 
> However, hopefully, if it keeps being pointed out that the introductory
> document from the RAND set was published in an IEEE journal, eventually the
> meme that 'Baran's work was classified and not widely distributed' will be
> extinguished.
> 
> 	Noel
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
> 


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Jan  9 17:23:16 2015
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 20:23:16 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <3A10F5EC-38A6-430A-BE03-2005E1FC5973@comcast.net>

One could say that it is a testament to the quality of scholarship in todays world.

OTOH, Noel, you may as well give up.  Durer?s Rhinoceros has been being reproduced as an accurate picture of a rhino for 500 years and we have known since it was first produced that it didn?t have a horn protruding from between its shoulders.

If we can?t squelch that, you don?t stand a chance.  ;-)


> On Jan 9, 2015, at 18:04, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> From: Brian E Carpenter
> 
>> I just checked in my copy of "Computer Networks and Their Protocols"
>> by Davies et al., (1979) and they cite the 1964 Baran paper and the
>> RAND reports, on page 47, as "the first full description of [packet
>> switching]". So it's not like this was arcane knowledge.
> 
> So, if not, why is the meme that Baran's work was 'classified and not
> widely available' so common (and, given the evidence of the '64 IEEE
> publication, apparently entirely wrong)?
> 
> I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed it
> out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.
> 
> Interestingly, "The ARPANET Sourcebook" also includes a very interesting
> note by Willis Ware of RAND (pp. 70-71) which makes quite plain that the
> 11-volume set was publicly available from the start, and also widely
> distributed ("At that time, RAND document distribution always included a
> lengthy list of deposit campus and urban libraries"). However, Willis'
> note does not mention the publication in the IEEE journal.
> 
> The IEEE paper also clearly referenced thee complete set, and indicated that
> it was "intended to release the volumes as a set"
> 
> As to why Baran's work took a while to be noticed, my _guess_ is that Baran's
> focus on survivability may have led people to assume that his ideas had no
> relevance to networks intended for 'general' use, so it had little impact when
> first published - but that's just a quess.
> 
> And as far as the meme goes, the fact that tiny portions of the large 1964
> RAND publications on Baran's work _were_ classified may have somehow gotten
> conflated in the general mind with the report as a whole.
> 
> 
> However, hopefully, if it keeps being pointed out that the introductory
> document from the RAND set was published in an IEEE journal, eventually the
> meme that 'Baran's work was classified and not widely distributed' will be
> extinguished.
> 
> 	Noel
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.




From vint at google.com  Fri Jan  9 21:42:44 2015
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 00:42:44 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <3A10F5EC-38A6-430A-BE03-2005E1FC5973@comcast.net>
References: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<3A10F5EC-38A6-430A-BE03-2005E1FC5973@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAHxHgge2SxueK2j3ivLsQyGa61O9JtUU09R9LYVTHrBJFV69xg@mail.gmail.com>

see bibliography of this 1970 paper

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1480000/1477020/p543-roberts.pdf

v

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 8:23 PM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> One could say that it is a testament to the quality of scholarship in
> todays world.
>
> OTOH, Noel, you may as well give up.  Durer?s Rhinoceros has been being
> reproduced as an accurate picture of a rhino for 500 years and we have
> known since it was first produced that it didn?t have a horn protruding
> from between its shoulders.
>
> If we can?t squelch that, you don?t stand a chance.  ;-)
>
>
> > On Jan 9, 2015, at 18:04, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> From: Brian E Carpenter
> >
> >> I just checked in my copy of "Computer Networks and Their Protocols"
> >> by Davies et al., (1979) and they cite the 1964 Baran paper and the
> >> RAND reports, on page 47, as "the first full description of [packet
> >> switching]". So it's not like this was arcane knowledge.
> >
> > So, if not, why is the meme that Baran's work was 'classified and not
> > widely available' so common (and, given the evidence of the '64 IEEE
> > publication, apparently entirely wrong)?
> >
> > I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed
> it
> > out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.
> >
> > Interestingly, "The ARPANET Sourcebook" also includes a very interesting
> > note by Willis Ware of RAND (pp. 70-71) which makes quite plain that the
> > 11-volume set was publicly available from the start, and also widely
> > distributed ("At that time, RAND document distribution always included a
> > lengthy list of deposit campus and urban libraries"). However, Willis'
> > note does not mention the publication in the IEEE journal.
> >
> > The IEEE paper also clearly referenced thee complete set, and indicated
> that
> > it was "intended to release the volumes as a set"
> >
> > As to why Baran's work took a while to be noticed, my _guess_ is that
> Baran's
> > focus on survivability may have led people to assume that his ideas had
> no
> > relevance to networks intended for 'general' use, so it had little
> impact when
> > first published - but that's just a quess.
> >
> > And as far as the meme goes, the fact that tiny portions of the large
> 1964
> > RAND publications on Baran's work _were_ classified may have somehow
> gotten
> > conflated in the general mind with the report as a whole.
> >
> >
> > However, hopefully, if it keeps being pointed out that the introductory
> > document from the RAND set was published in an IEEE journal, eventually
> the
> > meme that 'Baran's work was classified and not widely distributed' will
> be
> > extinguished.
> >
> >       Noel
> > _______
> > internet-history mailing list
> > internet-history at postel.org
> > http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> > Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>
>
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150110/9cb281ff/attachment.htm>

From dhc2 at dcrocker.net  Sat Jan 10 12:49:54 2015
From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 12:49:54 -0800
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150109230458.ED8FC18C0CE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <54B19072.4060904@dcrocker.net>

On 1/9/2015 3:04 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> So, if not, why is the meme that Baran's work was 'classified and not
> widely available' so common (and, given the evidence of the '64 IEEE
> publication, apparently entirely wrong)?


Possibly for the same reasons as the oft-uttered claim that the Arpanet
work was intended to survive a nuclear holocaust.  (That is, dramatic
effect, research laziness, etc.)

As merely one more data point from that time, as a junior participant
from the early 70s, I had not ever heard that the paper was classified,
but in fact had frequently heard that essentially all of the packet work
was UNclassified.

Similarly, I always heard that "survival of hostile battlefield
conditions" was a goal, but that's quite different from "nuclear".

In recent years, I've asked about this some more and the most any of the
folk from that time and activity have offered is that maybe someone,
somewhere tried to sell a congress-critter with the nuclear reference.
But as I say, the regular reference I heard was "hostile battlefield".

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jan 13 06:48:41 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 09:48:41 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
Message-ID: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Brian E Carpenter

    > So, the meme is indeed puzzling and far from universal.

I've been puzzling over this a bit, and I wonder if the problem isn't a
conflation between 'we didn't know about it' and 'it must not have been
talked about'. It's certainly clear that in the beginning the US people were
not aware of Baran's work - but I wonder if they just assumed that they
hadn't heard of it because it wasn't talked about?

I wonder if that was because computer people (who were the group who
eventually took up Baran's ideas) may not have read a 'Communication' journal
(which was possibly focused towards telephone/etc people)?

And when they did find out about it, the form they got it was in the RAND
reports, which they might have assumed were not widely distributed, or
something - therefore not even realizing, at that stage, that it had been
previously described in the open professional literature.

It is certainly ironic that the US people (Taylor, Roberts, etc) had to learn
about Baran's work by way of Davies and Scantlebury, from another country -
via someone at the British MoD - it's too bad we don't know who that was.


    > (BTW, there is some discussion of the military vs civilian origins of
    > the ARPANET project in Walter Isaacson's recent book "The Innovators."
    > Not to mention an interesting discussion of Kleinrock's contribution vs
    > Baran and Davies.)

I do have that (while I thought it was a good book, I was irked by it because
I noticed a number of small errors, which was extremely disappointing, because
he could have had readers who could have caught them, and it mars an otherwise
excellent work; it makes me wonder if his Jobs bio is the same).

Yes, his coverage of both of those topics (Kleinrock, and the nuclear war
meme) is very good, and IMO, correct. Hopefully future writers will follow his
lead on both of these! :-)

	Noel


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Jan 13 07:46:22 2015
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:46:22 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>


> On Jan 13, 2015, at 09:48, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> From: Brian E Carpenter
> 
>> So, the meme is indeed puzzling and far from universal.
> 
> I've been puzzling over this a bit, and I wonder if the problem isn't a
> conflation between 'we didn't know about it' and 'it must not have been
> talked about'. It's certainly clear that in the beginning the US people were
> not aware of Baran's work - but I wonder if they just assumed that they
> hadn't heard of it because it wasn't talked about?

It is true that for most of us asked to join the ARPANET, the focus was the *ARPANET.*  It is also true that most were computer scientists and read ACM, etc. (in those days). IEEE Trans on Communications was very much concerned with physical layer issues.  (Remember until the late 70s, a data comm textbook was 300 pages of physical layer and 50 pages on everything else. That isn?t a big exaggeration.)

The origin of the basic idea wasn?t a big concern.  Everyone was focused more on what to do with it. (Remember, very few people were really dealing with ?network issues.?  Kleinrock?s group was building it, BBN was building it, and Roberts was overseeing it. For everyone else, it was what to do with 1822 and what should NCP look like. As I have said, the fact that it was ?packet switching? was not that big a deal to us, it looked pretty straightforward approach to solving the problem. But we were computer people not telephony people.  For us, it was really more a distributed computing problem.  If you are computer person, the idea of picking up a buffer, throwing a header on it and sending it is pretty straightforward.  Admittedly it is a big deal to telephony types.  ?Packet switching? per se was invented independently (and in somewhat different forms) by more than Davies and Baran.  It turns out that stat muxes were packet switches at a finer granularity. I think Datapoint also independently came up with the idea, and probably others as well.

> 
> I wonder if that was because computer people (who were the group who
> eventually took up Baran's ideas) may not have read a 'Communication' journal
> (which was possibly focused towards telephone/etc people)?
> 
> And when they did find out about it, the form they got it was in the RAND
> reports, which they might have assumed were not widely distributed, or
> something - therefore not even realizing, at that stage, that it had been
> previously described in the open professional literature.

I would guess that their first exposure was in the BBN reports.  (Remember this was a very small group of people and very focused (as they still are) on what they had to build.) You didn?t have to read Baran?s article or the RAND reports to get the idea. Someone could just tell you about it and you (being a fairly bright person) could fill in the details and look at the BBN reports to see what you needed to do.  The RAND reports were not all that available. (Remember this was the days before documents were online and xeroxing was still expensive.)
> 
> It is certainly ironic that the US people (Taylor, Roberts, etc) had to learn
> about Baran's work by way of Davies and Scantlebury, from another country -
> via someone at the British MoD - it's too bad we don't know who that was.
> 
Now at this level it may well have been a different story and I believe the evidence indicates that those guys did know about Baran.

>> (BTW, there is some discussion of the military vs civilian origins of
>> the ARPANET project in Walter Isaacson's recent book "The Innovators."
>> Not to mention an interesting discussion of Kleinrock's contribution vs
>> Baran and Davies.)
> 
I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated with the Internet than the ARPANET.  Remember when the ARPANET started, it was the height of the Vietnam War and the DoD was not very popular on college campuses.  In fact, I have heard tell there was initial reticence to being on the ARPANET because it was DoD, which lead to John Melvin?s famous line about ARPA, ?It?s okay, our money is only bloody on one side.?  ;-)

In 1970, it was far too early to talk about military use, since they didn?t know if it would work. Although it was pretty obvious that tif it did, it would have military uses. One would have not have gotten very far with the argument to build this purely for military use.  And also remember this was before the Muskie Amendment and ARPA was funding fundamental research, like NLS, the ARPANET, IlliacIV, etc.  

I think there is too much tendency in this discussion to think that things back then are like they are now. They weren?t.

Take care,
John

> I do have that (while I thought it was a good book, I was irked by it because
> I noticed a number of small errors, which was extremely disappointing, because
> he could have had readers who could have caught them, and it mars an otherwise
> excellent work; it makes me wonder if his Jobs bio is the same).
> 
> Yes, his coverage of both of those topics (Kleinrock, and the nuclear war
> meme) is very good, and IMO, correct. Hopefully future writers will follow his
> lead on both of these! :-)
> 
> 	Noel
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.




From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Tue Jan 13 08:30:55 2015
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 11:30:55 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <54B5483F.8000305@meetinghouse.net>

John Day wrote:
> I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated with the Internet than the ARPANET.  Remember when the ARPANET started, it was the height of the Vietnam War and the DoD was not very popular on college campuses.  In fact, I have heard tell there was initial reticence to being on the ARPANET because it was DoD, which lead to John Melvin?s famous line about ARPA, ?It?s okay, our money is only bloody on one side.?  ;-)
>
> In 1970, it was far too early to talk about military use, since they didn?t know if it would work. Although it was pretty obvious that tif it did, it would have military uses. One would have not have gotten very far with the argument to build this purely for military use.  And also remember this was before the Muskie Amendment and ARPA was funding fundamental research, like NLS, the ARPANET, IlliacIV, etc.
>
>
On this, the record, and the oral history is crystal clear - the ARPANET 
was initially about making it easy to share resources - notably to let 
ARPA funded researchers use each others computers, without lots of 
travel costs or leased lines (remember, this was the age of one-off 
systems, not commoditized boxes and operating systems).

ARPANET mades its way into military use as a result of military folks 
adopting ARPANET email as a simpler, faster tool than the message 
switches of the day - leading to the DDN (I assume some folks remember 
the AUTODIN II shootout :-).  And then came all the tactical packet 
switching work.

It took years for packet technology to become mainstream for military 
use, and for message switching and telephony to take back seats (can you 
say ethernet vs. ISDN?), and we still have huge tactical telephony 
infrastructure.

Miles Fidelman



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



From bill.n1vux at gmail.com  Tue Jan 13 10:21:16 2015
From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:21:16 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:46 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated with the
> Internet than the ARPANET.


?Hmm, that makes sense.
(D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not useful in damage-prone
environment.
It was ?TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage.
(USEnet evolved adaptive routing, i don't recall how that was related .)

Also note that the Military nearly adopted the ISO OSI protocol stack not
the TCP/IP Internet stack, even though DARPA had subsidized the
(pre-Web/NSF/NSCC) development !

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150113/13a3f88d/attachment.htm>

From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Jan 13 10:34:27 2015
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 13:34:27 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7AC5BE7A-DE36-4EA8-9022-8C4BFACFDAA0@comcast.net>

ARPANET had adaptive routing from the start. 

This question is more about what people were doing and thinking in the 1969-1971 time frame, not events almost 10 years or more later.

John
> On Jan 13, 2015, at 13:21, Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:46 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
> I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated with the Internet than the ARPANET. 
> 
> ?Hmm, that makes sense. 
> (D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not useful in damage-prone environment.
> It was ?TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage. 
> (USEnet evolved adaptive routing, i don't recall how that was related .)
> 
> Also note that the Military nearly adopted the ISO OSI protocol stack not the TCP/IP Internet stack, even though DARPA had subsidized the (pre-Web/NSF/NSCC) development ! 
> 
> -- 
> Bill Ricker
> bill.n1vux at gmail.com <mailto:bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux <https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150113/28e0ae4d/attachment.htm>

From dhc2 at dcrocker.net  Tue Jan 13 10:50:43 2015
From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:50:43 -0800
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <54B56903.40003@dcrocker.net>

On 1/13/2015 10:21 AM, Bill Ricker wrote:
> (D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing

>From it's inception, the Arpanet had two, basic features:

   1.  Statistical multiplexing, which permitted fundamentally
       lower costs

   2.  Adaptive routing, which permitted fundamentally higher
       reliability

Packets and packet-switching were the underlying constructs that
enabling services to perform multiplexing and adaptive routing.

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From vint at google.com  Tue Jan 13 11:24:39 2015
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:24:39 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <7AC5BE7A-DE36-4EA8-9022-8C4BFACFDAA0@comcast.net>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<7AC5BE7A-DE36-4EA8-9022-8C4BFACFDAA0@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggfa0qJsxbeqXvRC+o6E-gEB4Q0J4styTftqh3UX8zp52A@mail.gmail.com>

John and Dave Crocker are correct - adaptive routing was one of the
important aspects of the ARPANET implementation.

The resilience theme in Baran's work and in the later Internet was born of
concern for post-nuclear command and control. ARPANET was motivated by
resource sharing as Larry Roberts and Barry Wessler clearly spelled out in
their 1970 paper. Some on this list may remember that we used Packet Radios
and Strategic Air Command aircraft to demonstrate around 1981-2 how a
fragmented ARPANET could be reconstituted using TCP/IP, terrestrial and
airborne packet radio and suitable routing mechanisms.

v


On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 1:34 PM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> ARPANET had adaptive routing from the start.
>
> This question is more about what people were doing and thinking in the
> 1969-1971 time frame, not events almost 10 years or more later.
>
> John
>
> On Jan 13, 2015, at 13:21, Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:46 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated with the
>> Internet than the ARPANET.
>
>
> ?Hmm, that makes sense.
> (D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not useful in damage-prone
> environment.
> It was ?TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage.
> (USEnet evolved adaptive routing, i don't recall how that was related .)
>
> Also note that the Military nearly adopted the ISO OSI protocol stack not
> the TCP/IP Internet stack, even though DARPA had subsidized the
> (pre-Web/NSF/NSCC) development !
>
> --
> Bill Ricker
> bill.n1vux at gmail.com
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
>
>
>
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150113/09f2ef98/attachment.htm>

From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jan 13 11:26:25 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:26:25 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
Message-ID: <20150113192625.44A4518C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>

    > (D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not useful in damage-prone
    > environment.

I don't think that's correct. The BBN Proposal (IMP P69-IST-5, 6 Sept 1968)
says (III-47) "We plan to provide an [alternative routing] algorithm which is
adaptive, free from routing loops". The first ARPANET paper (the 1970 SJCC
paper by Heart, Kahn, et al, "The Interface Message Processor the ARPA
Computer Network") says (pg. 555): "The routing table in consistently and
dynamically updated to adjust for hanging conditions in the network. The
system is adaptive to the ups and downs of lines, IMPs ..".

Everyone: please check before making these kinds of statements. This is how
these errors get started - and then it can take a lot of work to straigthen
them out.

    > It was TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage.

Ironically, some parts of the early Internet used static routing - I
certainly recall it being used in some of the MIT routers.

(Although I _think_ all the BBN routers used dynamic from the earliest -
various versions of GGP, to start with. Note that BBN at one point was using
an un-documented version of GGP, and when I sent a BBN router a GGP packet
formatted according to the spec, it promptly crashed... :-)

	  Noel


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Tue Jan 13 11:28:08 2015
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:28:08 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <54B571C8.1040809@meetinghouse.net>

Bill Ricker wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:46 AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net 
> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>
>     I think the nuclear war meme is really more tightly associated
>     with the Internet than the ARPANET. 
>
>
> ? Hmm, that makes sense.
> (D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not useful in damage-prone 
> environment.
> It was ?TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage.
> (USEnet evolved adaptive routing, i don't recall how that was related .)

That's simply wrong.  Adaptive routing was at the heart of the BBN 
switches, from day 1.

>
> Also note that the Military nearly adopted the ISO OSI protocol stack 
> not the TCP/IP Internet stack, even though DARPA had subsidized the 
> (pre-Web/NSF/NSCC) development !
>

Again, simply wrong.  The push for OSI came from GSA, and DoD fought 
long and hard to make sure that every single RFP that came out allowed 
for side-by-side use of the DoD protocol suite.  I seem to recall a few 
systems that had dual stacks.  I don't think I ever saw any of the OSI 
stuff actually used (or even functional).  [The exceptions being some 
X.400 email, X.500 directory services and X.509 crypto certs.]

Miles Fidelman

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



From dave.walden.family at gmail.com  Tue Jan 13 11:29:31 2015
From: dave.walden.family at gmail.com (Dave Walden)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:29:31 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.g
	mail.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <54b57222.825c8c0a.1e42.ffffbf93@mx.google.com>

ARPANET always had adaptive routing, and it was 
pretty good for the job for a while.  Later, the 
old ARPANET "distance vector" routing was 
replaced by the new ARPANET "link state" 
routing.  These routing algorithms *did* work 
around damage or other changes to the 
"environment", i.e., phone lines and packet 
switching going up and down, changes to the 
network configuration of phone lines and 
packet-switch sites, etc.  As things moved beyond 
the ARPANET, i.e., the Internet came into being 
and expanded, lots more routing work happened, as I remember.

At 01:21 PM 1/13/2015, Bill Ricker wrote:
???Hmm, that makes sense.?
>(D)ARPAnet initially had fixed routing, not 
>useful in damage-prone environment.
>It was ???TCP/IP that introduced adaptive routing around damage.?
>(USEnet evolved adaptive routing, i don't recall how that was related .)
>
>Also note that the Military nearly adopted the 
>ISO OSI protocol stack not the TCP/IP Internet 
>stack, even though DARPA had subsidized the (pre-Web/NSF/NSCC) development !?




From dave.walden.family at gmail.com  Tue Jan 13 13:10:11 2015
From: dave.walden.family at gmail.com (Dave Walden)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 16:10:11 -0500
Subject: [ih] ARPANET routing -- more than most people wanted to hear again
In-Reply-To: <54B571C8.1040809@meetinghouse.net>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<54B571C8.1040809@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <54b589b4.023de00a.5b26.ffffe539@mx.google.com>


>PS, the dynamic routing as the IMPs went out from BBN in 1969 is 
>described in this article:
    http://walden-family.com/public/1970-imp-afips.pdf
See journal page 555.

Journal page 272 of the following
    http://walden-family.com/public/whole-paper.pdf
has a little more graphical description of the same thing.

I was so disappointed at how dismissive later college networking 
courses were about the original ARPANET routing algorithm, that I 
wrote the following unpublished essay about a decade ago:
    http://walden-family.com/public/bf-history.pdf

The story of the "new" ARPANET routing algorithm is told at:
    http://walden-family.com/anecdotes/mcq-on-link-state-routing.pdf






--
home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537
home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it)
email address:  dave at walden-family.com; website: 
<http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150113/7ca3464a/attachment.htm>

From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Tue Jan 13 14:47:56 2015
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:47:56 -0500
Subject: [ih] ARPANET routing -- more than most people wanted to hear
	again
In-Reply-To: <54b589b4.023de00a.5b26.ffffe539@mx.google.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>	<54B571C8.1040809@meetinghouse.net>
	<54b589b4.023de00a.5b26.ffffe539@mx.google.com>
Message-ID: <54B5A09C.1080808@meetinghouse.net>

Dave,  Thanks for the references.  Good reads!   ...Miles

Dave Walden wrote:
>> PS, the dynamic routing as the IMPs went out from BBN in 1969 is 
>> described in this article: 
> http://walden-family.com/public/1970-imp-afips.pdf 
> <http://walden-family.com/public/1970-imp-afips.pdf>
> See journal page 555.
>
> Journal page 272 of the following
> http://walden-family.com/public/whole-paper.pdf 
> <http://walden-family.com/public/whole-paper.pdf>
> has a little more graphical description of the same thing.
>
> I was so disappointed at how dismissive later college networking 
> courses were about the original ARPANET routing algorithm, that I 
> wrote the following unpublished essay about a decade ago:
> http://walden-family.com/public/bf-history.pdf
> <http://walden-family.com/public/bf-history.pdf>
> The story of the "new" ARPANET routing algorithm is told at:
> http://walden-family.com/anecdotes/mcq-on-link-state-routing.pdf
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537
> home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137 (often don't carry it)
> email address:  dave at walden-family.com; website: http 
> <http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/> ://www.walden-family.com/ 
> <http://www.walden-family.com/>
>
>
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.


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



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Jan 14 07:57:37 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:57:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] ARPANET routing -- more than most people wanted to hear
	again
Message-ID: <20150114155737.E1E9F18C08B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Dave Walden

    > I was so disappointed at how dismissive later college networking
    > courses were about the original ARPANET routing algorithm

Gee, Dave, I thought BBN Report #3803 laid out in pretty good detail why the
original ARPANET routing algorithm was problematic... ;-)

But seriously, thanks for all those wonderful links. The McQuillan anecdote,
and your note about DV algorithms, were particurly informative.

	Noel


From bill.n1vux at gmail.com  Wed Jan 14 13:55:22 2015
From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:55:22 -0500
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <CAHxHggfa0qJsxbeqXvRC+o6E-gEB4Q0J4styTftqh3UX8zp52A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<0DD74E37-A57F-4B0A-AC16-7FF2F8E61C95@comcast.net>
	<CAAbKA3V5+iSJ8rd+P=3PkykYKCVQJKrE59pVj-153+6CNwbcEQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<7AC5BE7A-DE36-4EA8-9022-8C4BFACFDAA0@comcast.net>
	<CAHxHggfa0qJsxbeqXvRC+o6E-gEB4Q0J4styTftqh3UX8zp52A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAbKA3Ua_HzGH=YEY0YD-xn-AKBb1MuM=KRqxYTAJ7A4KZJQqw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:

> John and Dave Crocker are correct - adaptive routing was one of the
> important aspects of the ARPANET implementation.
>
>
?I should know better than to comment without consulting notes here...
happy to be wrong in this company. :-)
?



-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20150114/146c3006/attachment.htm>

From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sat Jan 17 09:17:14 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 12:17:14 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] Manuals Plus going out of business...
Message-ID: <20150117171714.8C91018C099@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

Bit off-topic, but since people here are interested in history:


Manuals Plus is one of those exotic companies that inhabit a niche where there
really isn't anyone else: they deal in manuals for old test equipment. (I just
bought a set of Tektronix 465 Service Manuals from them.) As such, they are an
invaluable resource.

Alas, their landlord has just upped their rent to the point that they have to
close. So, they are holding a clearance sale of all their stock, and will
entertain any and all reasonable offers for same.

So if you have, or are interested in, old test equipment, please go check them
out:

  http://www.manualsplus.com
  sales at manualsplus.com
  1.800.345.4019

and help out an unusual business, and help save some history.

    Noel


From woody at pch.net  Sat Jan 17 10:05:46 2015
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 10:05:46 -0800
Subject: [ih] Manuals Plus going out of business...
In-Reply-To: <20150117171714.8C91018C099@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150117171714.8C91018C099@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <A5E84F57-95C7-4DDB-8695-BDAE51944E55@pch.net>



Brewster, grist for the mill?
    
                -Bill


> On Jan 17, 2015, at 09:37, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Bit off-topic, but since people here are interested in history:
> 
> 
> Manuals Plus is one of those exotic companies that inhabit a niche where there
> really isn't anyone else: they deal in manuals for old test equipment. (I just
> bought a set of Tektronix 465 Service Manuals from them.) As such, they are an
> invaluable resource.
> 
> Alas, their landlord has just upped their rent to the point that they have to
> close. So, they are holding a clearance sale of all their stock, and will
> entertain any and all reasonable offers for same.
> 
> So if you have, or are interested in, old test equipment, please go check them
> out:
> 
>  http://www.manualsplus.com
>  sales at manualsplus.com
>  1.800.345.4019
> 
> and help out an unusual business, and help save some history.
> 
>    Noel
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
> internet-history at postel.org
> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.




From R.W.Taylor at comcast.net  Sat Jan 17 20:36:44 2015
From: R.W.Taylor at comcast.net (Bob Taylor)
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 20:36:44 -0800
Subject: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work
In-Reply-To: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20150113144841.6ABCE18C088@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <009a01d032d8$5d4608e0$17d21aa0$@comcast.net>

In 1995, 25+ years after the fact, Lenny and Larry claimed that Lenny had
invented packet switching.  See
http://alexmckenzie.weebly.com/comments-on-kleinrocks-claims.html  to learn
the truth - a devastating putdown.  

---   rwt

-----Original Message-----
From: internet-history-bounces at postel.org
[mailto:internet-history-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of Noel Chiappa
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 6:49 AM
To: internet-history at postel.org
Cc: loris at well.com; jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work

    > From: Brian E Carpenter

    > So, the meme is indeed puzzling and far from universal.

I've been puzzling over this a bit, and I wonder if the problem isn't a
conflation between 'we didn't know about it' and 'it must not have been
talked about'. It's certainly clear that in the beginning the US people were
not aware of Baran's work - but I wonder if they just assumed that they
hadn't heard of it because it wasn't talked about?

I wonder if that was because computer people (who were the group who
eventually took up Baran's ideas) may not have read a 'Communication'
journal (which was possibly focused towards telephone/etc people)?

And when they did find out about it, the form they got it was in the RAND
reports, which they might have assumed were not widely distributed, or
something - therefore not even realizing, at that stage, that it had been
previously described in the open professional literature.

It is certainly ironic that the US people (Taylor, Roberts, etc) had to
learn about Baran's work by way of Davies and Scantlebury, from another
country - via someone at the British MoD - it's too bad we don't know who
that was.


    > (BTW, there is some discussion of the military vs civilian origins of
    > the ARPANET project in Walter Isaacson's recent book "The Innovators."
    > Not to mention an interesting discussion of Kleinrock's contribution
vs
    > Baran and Davies.)

I do have that (while I thought it was a good book, I was irked by it
because I noticed a number of small errors, which was extremely
disappointing, because he could have had readers who could have caught them,
and it mars an otherwise excellent work; it makes me wonder if his Jobs bio
is the same).

Yes, his coverage of both of those topics (Kleinrock, and the nuclear war
meme) is very good, and IMO, correct. Hopefully future writers will follow
his lead on both of these! :-)

	Noel
_______
internet-history mailing list
internet-history at postel.org
http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Jan 23 07:37:20 2015
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 10:37:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ih] The Internet and the global economy
Message-ID: <20150123153720.BA8E918C09F@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

So, in this Reuters story today:

  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/23/us-internet-trade-davos-idUSKBN0KW1QY20150123

I found this: the Internet "today forms the backbone of the global economy".

Wow.

That's a incredibly fast journey from its beginnings (barely 30 years ago) to
something that consequential. Who'd have thought, when we were working on it
back then, that it would become that important, that quickly? I mean, _I_ at
least understood (with help from John Brunner, and, later, William Gibson :-)
back then that it would become ubiquitous and important, but... "the backbone
of the global economy"?

I think I need to sit down for a moment... :-)

	Noel