From ocl at gih.com Mon Aug 8 10:24:21 2016 From: ocl at gih.com (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 19:24:21 +0200 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> Message-ID: <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> Dear Larry, I am ever so sorry to be answering 6 months later to an email you sent back in January. I guess threads live, die... and resurrect. On 02/01/2016 01:19, Larry press wrote: > Olivier, > > I don't believe we've ever met, but your connectivity list was/is great. Thx. I believe you probably are one of the earliest people that I have exchanged an email with, and have not met in person yet. > >> china > Good point. Did the communication move beyond Beijing? Yes it did. I wrote about back in OneWebDay stories. http://stories.onewebday.org/?p=40 (See story 2 - Chinese Dreams) I do have the original message thread with all the names, threads etc. The problem is that as this topic is still extremely sensitive in China, I've redacted all the names with "XXX" where needed. You never know if this might not cause trouble for people who were mentioned. > >> Although this message was published in a discussion list at the time, I have not found it archived anywhere on the Web. > Has there been a subsequent archive? > > We pulled one together after the Soviet Coup attempt -- it's at > http://www.cs.oswego.edu/~dab/coup/ That is great. I am not aware of a similar archive for China. > > We are leaving a lot of tracks for historians these days. Fragile tracks. So much stuff has dropped off line, including a lot of USENET gold nuggets... I sometimes think of a suitcase containing around 20Kg of printed documents spurted out from a DEC LP37 back in 1989, currently in storage with things I've never seen online since. Stuff like a handful of documents from the online CSNET archive. I hope the ink keeps well. Kindest regards, Olivier From leo at vegoda.org Wed Aug 10 08:56:42 2016 From: leo at vegoda.org (Leo Vegoda) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 16:56:42 +0100 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> Message-ID: <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 07:24:21PM +0200, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote: [...] > > We are leaving a lot of tracks for historians these days. > > Fragile tracks. So much stuff has dropped off line, including a lot of > USENET gold nuggets... It was my understanding that Google bought Dejanews and put some work into extending that archive. While I doubt it is complete it is still huge. > I sometimes think of a suitcase containing around > 20Kg of printed documents spurted out from a DEC LP37 back in 1989, > currently in storage with things I've never seen online since. Stuff > like a handful of documents from the online CSNET archive. I hope the > ink keeps well. I am not a professional historian but it is my understanding that while parchment might offer a very high quality long-term storage medium, a single copy of a book would take the skins or a whole herd of animals. That made books a very expensive product. And while paper was cheaper, it relied upon old rags and so was also pretty expensive. It was only in the 18th century that mass production of paper became possible. Even with incomplete sets of records, the last century will offer historians a scale of documentation without precedent to future historians. Regards, Leo From el at lisse.na Wed Aug 10 09:34:11 2016 From: el at lisse.na (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 17:34:11 +0100 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> Message-ID: <30C1D59B-E25D-40D0-90D4-2BB4FF06D38A@lisse.na> Olivier, OCR the stuff and hire a student to proof read it. PDF and hardcopy should preserve well. el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPad mini 4 > On 8 Aug 2016, at 18:24, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote: > [...]. > > Fragile tracks. So much stuff has dropped off line, including a lot of > USENET gold nuggets... I sometimes think of a suitcase containing around > 20Kg of printed documents spurted out from a DEC LP37 back in 1989, > currently in storage with things I've never seen online since. Stuff > like a handful of documents from the online CSNET archive. I hope the > ink keeps well. [...] From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Aug 10 09:41:44 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 09:41:44 -0700 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> Message-ID: On 8/10/2016 8:56 AM, Leo Vegoda wrote: > Even with incomplete sets of records, the last century will offer > historians a scale of documentation without precedent to future > historians. Likely true, assuming the electrons and polarized bits don't degrade. Which they will... And assuming they still have the software to interpret the bits. Which they might not... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From wfms at ottix.net Wed Aug 10 11:17:20 2016 From: wfms at ottix.net (William Sotomayor) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:17:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Aug 2016, Leo Vegoda wrote: > On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 07:24:21PM +0200, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote: > > [...] > >>> We are leaving a lot of tracks for historians these days. >> >> Fragile tracks. So much stuff has dropped off line, including a lot of >> USENET gold nuggets... > > It was my understanding that Google bought Dejanews and put some > work into extending that archive. While I doubt it is complete it is > still huge. Correct on both counts. Though it's a little harder to get at from simply the default web page. >> I sometimes think of a suitcase containing around >> 20Kg of printed documents spurted out from a DEC LP37 back in 1989, >> currently in storage with things I've never seen online since. Stuff >> like a handful of documents from the online CSNET archive. I hope the >> ink keeps well. > > I am not a professional historian but it is my understanding that > while parchment might offer a very high quality long-term storage > medium, a single copy of a book would take the skins or a whole herd > of animals. That made books a very expensive product. And while > paper was cheaper, it relied upon old rags and so was also pretty > expensive. It was only in the 18th century that mass production of > paper became possible. For the suitcase documents, scanners are our friend, though we already know electronic documents do still vanish so there's something to be said about having backups. More worrisome for books printed in the last century is paper that is disintegrating because of the presence of acids. (Think the yellowing of paper in library books leading to eventual crumbling.) wfms From leo at vegoda.org Wed Aug 10 11:53:46 2016 From: leo at vegoda.org (Leo Vegoda) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 19:53:46 +0100 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> Message-ID: <20160810185346.GA15073@vegoda.org> On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 09:41:44AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/10/2016 8:56 AM, Leo Vegoda wrote: > >Even with incomplete sets of records, the last century will offer > >historians a scale of documentation without precedent to future > >historians. > > Likely true, assuming the electrons and polarized bits don't degrade. Which > they will... > > And assuming they still have the software to interpret the bits. Which they > might not... I believe this is where national archives and university libraries come in. They both have a direct interest in obtaining the information and keeping it accessible for centuries to come. Format changes led to huge projects [1] to move video tape archives to digital formats and make those archives easy to search. I am sure that similar work will be funded when it is needed for important archives of digital information stored in proprietary formats. Regards, Leo [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2011/10/bbc-archive-and-digital-public-space.shtml From julf at julf.com Wed Aug 10 12:07:51 2016 From: julf at julf.com (Johan Helsingius) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 21:07:51 +0200 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> Message-ID: <04cdd1a5-b4a4-419a-5ddd-404860af689a@julf.com> On 10-08-16 18:41, Dave Crocker wrote: > Likely true, assuming the electrons and polarized bits don't degrade. > Which they will... They definitely do, which is why it is important to move the stuff to new media every 5 years or so. Fortunately: http://xkcd.com/1718/ > And assuming they still have the software to interpret the bits. Which > they might not... Another argument for well-documented, ascii-based, open source formats. The software might not exist any more, but can be recreated. Julf (who has far too many old 9-track tar format tapes and QIC cartridges in the basement) From jeanjour at comcast.net Wed Aug 10 12:26:36 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 15:26:36 -0400 Subject: [ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet in 1982 In-Reply-To: <04cdd1a5-b4a4-419a-5ddd-404860af689a@julf.com> References: <5684F2AB.3090608@gih.com> <4FF20B87-411D-4917-8757-7A871A1A6FDC@burkov.aha.ru> <56851288.6000201@gih.com> <222862bc-b0b5-b3b5-4be1-19ec1e7b8500@gih.com> <20160810155642.GA14994@vegoda.org> <04cdd1a5-b4a4-419a-5ddd-404860af689a@julf.com> Message-ID: <3DA5776E-3230-40AF-83C4-33B2A86AA2F3@comcast.net> Probably the best place for computing archives is the Charles Babbage Institute, not only is it dedicated to the topic, but they have an archive storage facility that is second to none: 2 caverns 80? under the library 100? x 50? x 600? And paper will still last longer than anything else we know of. I regularly have reason to use documents that are 500 years old or more. > On Aug 10, 2016, at 15:07, Johan Helsingius wrote: > > On 10-08-16 18:41, Dave Crocker wrote: > >> Likely true, assuming the electrons and polarized bits don't degrade. >> Which they will... > > They definitely do, which is why it is important to move > the stuff to new media every 5 years or so. > > Fortunately: http://xkcd.com/1718/ > >> And assuming they still have the software to interpret the bits. Which >> they might not... > > Another argument for well-documented, ascii-based, open source formats. > The software might not exist any more, but can be recreated. > > Julf (who has far too many old 9-track tar format tapes > and QIC cartridges in the basement) > > > _______ > 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 joly at punkcast.com Mon Aug 15 11:21:46 2016 From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 14:21:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Hendricks Dewayne Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 9:32 AM Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol By Tim Gihring Aug 11 2016 It was mid-March 1992, and Mark McCahill had never been to San Diego before. Back home in Minneapolis, the skies had been dumping snow for six months, and would keep at it for several more weeks. McCahill checked into the Hyatt Islandia, an 18-story high-rise hotel overlooking Mission Bay. ?There were palm trees,? he recalls. ?Boy, was it nice.? McCahill was then in his mid-30s and managing the Microcomputer Center at the University of Minnesota?Twin Cities, which facilitated the emerging use of personal computers on campus. He and Farhad Anklesaria, a programmer in the center, had been invited to address the 23rd Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an elite convocation of academics and government officials from around the world who were literally deciding how the internet should work. ?The gods of the internet,? McCahill says, though in other circles they would have gone unnoticed. In his memoirs, another internet pioneer, Tim Berners-Lee, describes these gatherings as ?people in T-shirts and jeans, and at times no footwear. They would meet in different small rooms and talk excitedly.? The internet then, as now, was a vast array of information stored in random computers around the world, only there was no easy or consistent access. It was difficult even to discover what was out there ? there were no good search engines. The most popular protocol, or method of retrieving information from another computer, was FTP (file transfer protocol), the primitive, labor-intensive equivalent of knocking on someone?s door and asking if you could carry away his piano. The IETF had been convening since 1986 to iron out these issues, which had prevented the internet from becoming the ?Intergalactic Network? its originators had foreseen, instead remaining the limited domain of physicists and the military. But this meeting felt different. For the first time, the internet seemed on the verge of going public. On March 18, in a conference room of the hotel, Berners-Lee presented one possible breakthrough: the World Wide Web. It was evening. Many of the 530 conference attendees had already gone to the bar or to dinner. To the curious who stayed behind, Berners-Lee explained that the Web could be used to connect all the information on the internet through hyperlinks. You could click on a word or a phrase in a document and immediately retrieve a related document, click again on a phrase in that document, and so on. It acted like a web laid over the internet, so you could spider from one source of information to another on nearly invisible threads. Two other programs with the potential to expand access to the internet ? WAIS and Prospero ? were discussed in the same session. In the reports of people who saw the presentation, the Web did not come across as the best of them, or even as particularly promising. The next day, in the light of the afternoon, McCahill and Anklesaria presented the Internet Gopher. It was simple enough to explain: With minimal computer knowledge, you could download an interface ? the Gopher ? and begin searching the internet, retrieving information linked to it from anywhere in the world. It was like the Web but more straightforward, and it was already working. In fact, most attendees needed little introduction to Gopher ? the software had been out for months. It was the developers they were curious about, the Minnesotans who had created the first popular means of accessing the internet. ?People we?d never met were telling us how they were using our stuff and adding things to it,? McCahill says. ?We had no idea how big Gopher was going to be until we experienced this firsthand and realized that growth could be exponential for a while.? In the years that followed, the future seemed obvious. The number of Gopher users expanded at orders of magnitude more than the World Wide Web. Gopher developers held gatherings around the country, called GopherCons, and issued a Gopher T-shirt ? worn by MTV veejay Adam Curry when he announced the network?s Gopher site. The White House revealed its Gopher site on Good Morning America. In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, ?Gopher seems to have won out.? [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast -------------------------------------------------------------- - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Mon Aug 15 13:35:13 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 08:35:13 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> Message-ID: <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> > the 23rd Internet Engineering Task > Force (IETF), an elite convocation of academics and government officials > from around the world Um, no. If you look at the proceedings, academic and government officials were far outnumbered by industry people. I won't comment on 'elite' ;-) > In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, > ?Gopher seems to have won out.? Who, I wonder? I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't recall Gopher being a clear leader. Certainly, WWW didn't take over until Mosaic was released, but after that it was no contest. The more interesting sessions with TimBL at the IETF were after Mosaic. Regards Brian Carpenter On 16/08/2016 06:21, Joly MacFie wrote: > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Hendricks Dewayne > Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 9:32 AM > Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol > To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net > > > The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol > By Tim Gihring > Aug 11 2016 > > > It was mid-March 1992, and Mark McCahill had never been to San Diego > before. Back home in Minneapolis, the skies had been dumping snow for six > months, and would keep at it for several more weeks. McCahill checked into > the Hyatt Islandia, an 18-story high-rise hotel overlooking Mission Bay. > ?There were palm trees,? he recalls. ?Boy, was it nice.? > > McCahill was then in his mid-30s and managing the Microcomputer Center at > the University of Minnesota?Twin Cities, which facilitated the emerging use > of personal computers on campus. He and Farhad Anklesaria, a programmer in > the center, had been invited to address the 23rd Internet Engineering Task > Force (IETF), an elite convocation of academics and government officials > from around the world who were literally deciding how the internet should > work. > > ?The gods of the internet,? McCahill says, though in other circles they > would have gone unnoticed. In his memoirs, another internet pioneer, Tim > Berners-Lee, describes these gatherings as ?people in T-shirts and jeans, > and at times no footwear. They would meet in different small rooms and talk > excitedly.? > > The internet then, as now, was a vast array of information stored in random > computers around the world, only there was no easy or consistent access. It > was difficult even to discover what was out there ? there were no good > search engines. The most popular protocol, or method of retrieving > information from another computer, was FTP (file transfer protocol), the > primitive, labor-intensive equivalent of knocking on someone?s door and > asking if you could carry away his piano. > > The IETF had been convening since 1986 to iron out these issues, which had > prevented the internet from becoming the ?Intergalactic Network? its > originators had foreseen, instead remaining the limited domain of > physicists and the military. But this meeting felt different. For the first > time, the internet seemed on the verge of going public. > > On March 18, in a conference room of the hotel, Berners-Lee presented one > possible breakthrough: the World Wide Web. It was evening. Many of the 530 > conference attendees had already gone to the bar or to dinner. To the > curious who stayed behind, Berners-Lee explained that the Web could be used > to connect all the information on the internet through hyperlinks. You > could click on a word or a phrase in a document and immediately retrieve a > related document, click again on a phrase in that document, and so on. It > acted like a web laid over the internet, so you could spider from one > source of information to another on nearly invisible threads. > > Two other programs with the potential to expand access to the internet ? > WAIS and Prospero ? were discussed in the same session. In the reports of > people who saw the presentation, the Web did not come across as the best of > them, or even as particularly promising. > > The next day, in the light of the afternoon, McCahill and Anklesaria > presented the Internet Gopher. It was simple enough to explain: With > minimal computer knowledge, you could download an interface ? the Gopher ? > and begin searching the internet, retrieving information linked to it from > anywhere in the world. It was like the Web but more straightforward, and it > was already working. > > In fact, most attendees needed little introduction to Gopher ? the software > had been out for months. It was the developers they were curious about, the > Minnesotans who had created the first popular means of accessing the > internet. ?People we?d never met were telling us how they were using our > stuff and adding things to it,? McCahill says. ?We had no idea how big > Gopher was going to be until we experienced this firsthand and realized > that growth could be exponential for a while.? > > In the years that followed, the future seemed obvious. The number of Gopher > users expanded at orders of magnitude more than the World Wide Web. Gopher > developers held gatherings around the country, called GopherCons, and > issued a Gopher T-shirt ? worn by MTV veejay Adam Curry when he announced > the network?s Gopher site. The White House revealed its Gopher site on Good > Morning America. In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, > ?Gopher seems to have won out.? > > [snip] > > Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: > > > > > > > > _______ > 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 scott.brim at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 14:10:57 2016 From: scott.brim at gmail.com (Scott Brim) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 17:10:57 -0400 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> Message-ID: Yes the history seems jumbled up but it's a fun read anyway. On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> the 23rd Internet Engineering Task >> Force (IETF), an elite convocation of academics and government officials >> from around the world > > Um, no. If you look at the proceedings, academic and government officials were > far outnumbered by industry people. I won't comment on 'elite' ;-) > >> In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, >> ?Gopher seems to have won out.? > > Who, I wonder? I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting > at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't > recall Gopher being a clear leader. Certainly, WWW didn't take over until Mosaic > was released, but after that it was no contest. The more interesting sessions > with TimBL at the IETF were after Mosaic. > > Regards > Brian Carpenter From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 15:35:38 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 10:35:38 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 21/08/2016 09:10, Scott Brim wrote: > Yes the history seems jumbled up but it's a fun read anyway. > > On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Brian E Carpenter > wrote: >>> the 23rd Internet Engineering Task >>> Force (IETF), an elite convocation of academics and government officials >>> from around the world >> >> Um, no. If you look at the proceedings, academic and government officials were >> far outnumbered by industry people. I won't comment on 'elite' ;-) >> >>> In the race to rule the internet, one observer noted, >>> ?Gopher seems to have won out.? >> >> Who, I wonder? Actually, Google knows, although it wasn't said at IETF23: http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/soft/util/gopher/gophercon1.txt " GopherCon '92: Trip report Prentiss Riddle riddle at rice.edu 8/17/92 ... Finally, the relative numeric success of Gopher over WWW was discussed (there are orders of magnitude more Gopher servers than WWW servers out there): Gopher seems to have won out primarily because of the ease of entry (it's much harder to put up a WWW server than a Gopher server), although another factor may be that a hierarchical presentation is more appropriate than hypertext for the broad-based audience of a CWIS." Brian >> I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting >> at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't >> recall Gopher being a clear leader. Certainly, WWW didn't take over until Mosaic >> was released, but after that it was no contest. The more interesting sessions >> with TimBL at the IETF were after Mosaic. >> >> Regards >> Brian Carpenter > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sat Aug 20 15:37:40 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 15:37:40 -0700 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> On 8/15/2016 1:35 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > Who, I wonder? I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting > at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't > recall Gopher being a clear leader. I don't recall numbers, but I do recall that gopher pre-dated the web, by enough to give it a first-mover advantage. (Most of the other efforts at the time were on search, not publishing; at that point Anonymous FTP was still deemed sufficiently worthy... sigh.) Gopher initially had the major advantage of being usable with random text files, while the early web only worked with html files. Hence gopher worked with an existing, large base of documents while the web did not. Gopher's long-term disadvantages were that it didn't support other types of files and it didn't give content with each key-click, while the web could. That is, the web was multi-media. Also it could do something useful each time you clicked on a link, while with gopher you always had to walk down a sequence. Only the terminal node had content. By the way, gopher taught me what the Internet would be like. I was giving a class about Internet protocols in 1990, in Pittsburgh, and included a demo of gopher. There was a page that gave a list of different parts of the world and I asked the class where they wanted to 'go'. Someone said 'South Pacific' so I clicked on that and we saw Australia and New Zealand. Someone said New Zealand so I clicked that. Then Wellington. Then things got interesting, because I saw "Town Council", rather than reference to something geeky. So while sitting in Pittsburgh, I pulled of the Wellington New Zealand Town Council meeting minutes of the week before. In spite of working on the net for nearly 20 years I hadn't fully understood where it would go until that moment: if that sort of thing would be posted, everything would be. A few years ago I had my first trip to Wellington and gave a presentation. I told them the anecdote and so I got to thank the audience for teaching /me/ what the Internet would become. After the session, a fellow in the audience (John Houlker) came up and asked whether I'd like to meet the guy who put those pages up on the net in 1990.. I had the great privilege of having dinner that night with John Naylor who is quite a delightful fellow. He'd worked for the city power folk back then and thought it quite natural to string a metropolitan area network around town using the power lines... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Aug 20 16:16:33 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 19:16:33 -0400 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: I remember doing a few projects based on gopher - back in the early 1990s. I kind of wonder if the web would have just been one in a series of file sharing technologies - progressing from FTP, to MIT Tech Info, to Gopher, to the Web, to - if it had not been for Marc Andreessen (Mosaic) and and Robert McCool (the NCSA deamon that became Apache) at NCSA. Miles Fidelman On 8/20/16 6:37 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/15/2016 1:35 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> Who, I wonder? I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting >> at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't >> recall Gopher being a clear leader. > > I don't recall numbers, but I do recall that gopher pre-dated the web, > by enough to give it a first-mover advantage. (Most of the other > efforts at the time were on search, not publishing; at that point > Anonymous FTP was still deemed sufficiently worthy... sigh.) > > Gopher initially had the major advantage of being usable with random > text files, while the early web only worked with html files. Hence > gopher worked with an existing, large base of documents while the web > did not. > > Gopher's long-term disadvantages were that it didn't support other types > of files and it didn't give content with each key-click, while the web > could. That is, the web was multi-media. Also it could do something > useful each time you clicked on a link, while with gopher you always had > to walk down a sequence. Only the terminal node had content. > > > By the way, gopher taught me what the Internet would be like. I was > giving a class about Internet protocols in 1990, in Pittsburgh, and > included a demo of gopher. > > There was a page that gave a list of different parts of the world and I > asked the class where they wanted to 'go'. Someone said 'South Pacific' > so I clicked on that and we saw Australia and New Zealand. Someone said > New Zealand so I clicked that. Then Wellington. > > Then things got interesting, because I saw "Town Council", rather than > reference to something geeky. So while sitting in Pittsburgh, I pulled > of the Wellington New Zealand Town Council meeting minutes of the week > before. > > In spite of working on the net for nearly 20 years I hadn't fully > understood where it would go until that moment: if that sort of thing > would be posted, everything would be. > > A few years ago I had my first trip to Wellington and gave a > presentation. I told them the anecdote and so I got to thank the > audience for teaching /me/ what the Internet would become. > > After the session, a fellow in the audience (John Houlker) came up and > asked whether I'd like to meet the guy who put those pages up on the net > in 1990.. > > I had the great privilege of having dinner that night with John Naylor > who is quite a delightful fellow. He'd worked for the city power folk > back then and thought it quite natural to string a metropolitan area > network around town using the power lines... > > d/ > > > -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 16:55:18 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 11:55:18 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> On 21/08/2016 11:16, Miles Fidelman wrote: > I remember doing a few projects based on gopher - back in the early 1990s. > > I kind of wonder if the web would have just been one in a series of file > sharing technologies - progressing from FTP, to MIT Tech Info, to > Gopher, to the Web, to - if it had not been for Marc > Andreessen (Mosaic) and and Robert McCool (the NCSA deamon that became > Apache) at NCSA. I think another portable graphical browser would have come along soon enough. Tim's team was fixated on the NeXt for a while, but Unix workstations were rapidly becoming dominant in academia, so - without taking anything away from NCSA - somebody else would have done it, IMHO. Very possibly somebody at CERN, in fact. Brian > > Miles Fidelman > > > On 8/20/16 6:37 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: >> On 8/15/2016 1:35 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>> Who, I wonder? I no longer have my copies of The Matrix from that era, but sitting >>> at CERN we kept an eye on the growth curves for WAIS, Gopher and WWW and I don't >>> recall Gopher being a clear leader. >> >> I don't recall numbers, but I do recall that gopher pre-dated the web, >> by enough to give it a first-mover advantage. (Most of the other >> efforts at the time were on search, not publishing; at that point >> Anonymous FTP was still deemed sufficiently worthy... sigh.) >> >> Gopher initially had the major advantage of being usable with random >> text files, while the early web only worked with html files. Hence >> gopher worked with an existing, large base of documents while the web >> did not. >> >> Gopher's long-term disadvantages were that it didn't support other types >> of files and it didn't give content with each key-click, while the web >> could. That is, the web was multi-media. Also it could do something >> useful each time you clicked on a link, while with gopher you always had >> to walk down a sequence. Only the terminal node had content. >> >> >> By the way, gopher taught me what the Internet would be like. I was >> giving a class about Internet protocols in 1990, in Pittsburgh, and >> included a demo of gopher. >> >> There was a page that gave a list of different parts of the world and I >> asked the class where they wanted to 'go'. Someone said 'South Pacific' >> so I clicked on that and we saw Australia and New Zealand. Someone said >> New Zealand so I clicked that. Then Wellington. >> >> Then things got interesting, because I saw "Town Council", rather than >> reference to something geeky. So while sitting in Pittsburgh, I pulled >> of the Wellington New Zealand Town Council meeting minutes of the week >> before. >> >> In spite of working on the net for nearly 20 years I hadn't fully >> understood where it would go until that moment: if that sort of thing >> would be posted, everything would be. >> >> A few years ago I had my first trip to Wellington and gave a >> presentation. I told them the anecdote and so I got to thank the >> audience for teaching /me/ what the Internet would become. >> >> After the session, a fellow in the audience (John Houlker) came up and >> asked whether I'd like to meet the guy who put those pages up on the net >> in 1990.. >> >> I had the great privilege of having dinner that night with John Naylor >> who is quite a delightful fellow. He'd worked for the city power folk >> back then and thought it quite natural to string a metropolitan area >> network around town using the power lines... >> >> d/ >> >> >> > From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Aug 20 17:12:57 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 20:12:57 -0400 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 8/20/16 7:55 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > On 21/08/2016 11:16, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> I remember doing a few projects based on gopher - back in the early 1990s. >> >> I kind of wonder if the web would have just been one in a series of file >> sharing technologies - progressing from FTP, to MIT Tech Info, to >> Gopher, to the Web, to - if it had not been for Marc >> Andreessen (Mosaic) and and Robert McCool (the NCSA deamon that became >> Apache) at NCSA. > I think another portable graphical browser would have come along soon enough. > Tim's team was fixated on the NeXt for a while, but Unix workstations were > rapidly becoming dominant in academia, so - without taking anything away from > NCSA - somebody else would have done it, IMHO. Very possibly somebody at CERN, > in fact. Well, sure. But would it have been based on HTML & HTTP? What if UMich had open-sourced Gopher (which, I seem to recall, had a graphic browser at one point). Or would someone have taken a next step? Just a hypothetical, of course. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 20 17:37:39 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 21 Aug 2016 00:37:39 -0000 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <20160821003739.24206.qmail@ary.lan> >Gopher's long-term disadvantages were that it didn't support other types >of files and it didn't give content with each key-click, while the web >could. That is, the web was multi-media. Also it could do something >useful each time you clicked on a link, while with gopher you always had >to walk down a sequence. Only the terminal node had content. Back when I did the first edition of Internet for Dummies in 1993, the chapter in gopher was twice as long as the one on the web, because there was a lot more gopher stuff. At the time, it was vastly easier to set up a gopher server than a web server, and I recall at least one server that did both, generating web pages on the fly from the gopher menus. It is my impression that gopher died as much because U Minn put annoying conditions on the softwware as for its technical merits or lack thereof. R's, John From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 20 17:44:35 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 21 Aug 2016 00:44:35 -0000 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20160821004435.24241.qmail@ary.lan> >> I kind of wonder if the web would have just been one in a series of file >> sharing technologies - progressing from FTP, to MIT Tech Info, to >> Gopher, to the Web, to - if it had not been for Marc >> Andreessen (Mosaic) and and Robert McCool (the NCSA deamon that became >> Apache) at NCSA. > >I think another portable graphical browser would have come along soon enough. Cello came out in 1993. The Cornell LII started putting stuff on the web in late 1992, and realized they needed a Windows browser for all the lawyers using Windows, so LII founder Tom Bruce wrote one. It worked pretty well, but they abandoned it when Windows Mosaic came along. Cello handled embedded images and could play sound links. It was much easier to install on Windows 3.x than other browsers because it didn't need as many external libraries. I don't know how Tom did it because although he is a smart guy, his background was in theatre production, not technology. I asked him once and he shrugged it off. I guess those Windows manuals were better than I'd realized. R's, John From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 18:31:15 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 13:31:15 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> Message-ID: <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> On 21/08/2016 12:12, Miles Fidelman wrote: > On 8/20/16 7:55 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> On 21/08/2016 11:16, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> I remember doing a few projects based on gopher - back in the early 1990s. >>> >>> I kind of wonder if the web would have just been one in a series of file >>> sharing technologies - progressing from FTP, to MIT Tech Info, to >>> Gopher, to the Web, to - if it had not been for Marc >>> Andreessen (Mosaic) and and Robert McCool (the NCSA deamon that became >>> Apache) at NCSA. >> I think another portable graphical browser would have come along soon enough. >> Tim's team was fixated on the NeXt for a while, but Unix workstations were >> rapidly becoming dominant in academia, so - without taking anything away from >> NCSA - somebody else would have done it, IMHO. Very possibly somebody at CERN, >> in fact. > > Well, sure. But would it have been based on HTML & HTTP? What if UMich > had open-sourced Gopher (which, I seem to recall, had a graphic browser > at one point). Or would someone have taken a next step? > > Just a hypothetical, of course. > Don't overlook the main "defect" of the web: by design it was flat, with anything pointing to anything, and no mandatory dependencies. In fact, hypertext specialists thought it was broken; distributed systems designers thought it was broken. I suppose gopher was the same. This flatness actually made deployment a great deal easier. But IMHO the main point was that CERN placed the original code in the public domain, a few months before Mosaic was released. http://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399?ln=en (Open source really wasn't so much of a thing in 1993. Most CERN code went under the CERN Program Library licence, which was pretty flexible.) Brian From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sat Aug 20 19:54:09 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 19:54:09 -0700 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 8/20/2016 6:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > In fact, hypertext > specialists thought it was broken; distributed systems designers thought it > was broken. I suppose gopher was the same. This flatness actually made deployment > a great deal easier. No doubt I wasn't tracking any of this closely enough, but I don't recall hearing those complaints. But then, my framework for such things was thoroughly imprinted by having gotten access and becoming a longtime user of the Engelbart NLS system, starting in 1972. (My start; the system itself dated back to the 60s.) It had the same, at-will, direct, inter-document linking (albeit not inter-machine). Any place in any document could include a link to any other labeled/numbered place in any other document. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Aug 20 20:17:32 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 23:17:32 -0400 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> Message-ID: <495a0636-73e5-3e86-18a9-cef324faf457@meetinghouse.net> On 8/20/16 10:54 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/20/2016 6:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> In fact, hypertext >> specialists thought it was broken; distributed systems designers thought it >> was broken. I suppose gopher was the same. This flatness actually made deployment >> a great deal easier. > > No doubt I wasn't tracking any of this closely enough, but I don't > recall hearing those complaints. I seem to recall quite a bit of talk about 1-way links being a bad idea. Of course, as it turned out, the simplicity turned out to be a feature Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 21:47:48 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 16:47:48 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 21/08/2016 14:54, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/20/2016 6:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> In fact, hypertext >> specialists thought it was broken; The academics working on hypertext thought that a hypertext system without bidirectional links and some kind of continuous completeness checking (so that dead links would vanish automatically) wasn't useful. I remember a public argument between Tim BL and Hermann Maurer* (of Hyper-G fame) about this - I can't put an exact date on it, but it was when Hermann gave a seminar about Hyper-G at CERN and I'm guessing it was in 1993/94. (Maurer's later writings assert that Hyper-G was built on WWW experience, but my recollection is that if so, that can refer only to the very early pre-Mosaic web.) Tim made a very strong argument that a system with bidirectional links and consistency checks was undeployable at large scale, and of course he was right. *My memory says it was Maurer. Some Google hints suggest that it was his student Frank Kappe. All the same, Maurer wrote in late 1994: 'So is WWW the answer we all have been waiting for? Unfortunately, the answer is again a clear: "NO".' (elib.zib.de/pub/Workshops/TU_Berlin_1995/Maurer/Maurer.ps) Apparently, the Microcosm people at the University of Southampton had similar criticisms of the WWW design. >> distributed systems designers thought it >> was broken. In particular, they thought POST was broken because it didn't offer transactional integrity. And they still do, I think. Google "RESTful considered harmful." Or think about how disasters like XML-RPC and SOAP arose. Brian >> I suppose gopher was the same. This flatness actually made deployment >> a great deal easier. > > > No doubt I wasn't tracking any of this closely enough, but I don't > recall hearing those complaints. > > But then, my framework for such things was thoroughly imprinted by > having gotten access and becoming a longtime user of the Engelbart NLS > system, starting in 1972. (My start; the system itself dated back to > the 60s.) > > It had the same, at-will, direct, inter-document linking (albeit not > inter-machine). Any place in any document could include a link to any > other labeled/numbered place in any other document. From jabley at hopcount.ca Sun Aug 21 04:19:27 2016 From: jabley at hopcount.ca (Joe Abley) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 12:19:27 +0100 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <5692793062362376806@unknownmsgid> On Aug 21, 2016, at 00:01, Dave Crocker wrote: After the session, a fellow in the audience (John Houlker) came up and asked whether I'd like to meet the guy who put those pages up on the net in 1990.. I had the great privilege of having dinner that night with John Naylor who is quite a delightful fellow. He'd worked for the city power folk back then and thought it quite natural to string a metropolitan area network around town using the power lines... Amusingly, until I got down to your last two paragraphs I was also about to try and introduce you to Richard Naylor :-) I have been told that WCC bylaws and meeting minutes were also used internally at Apple (presumably around the same time) as examples of what government would look like in the future. But as you hint at with the brief mention of metro Ethernet which really nobody at the time was doing at Richard's cost-point, if you want to know what the future looks like, check what Richard is doing. Gopher, e-government, metro Ethernet, pervasive city-scale wifi and live internet video distribution are just easy examples and he doesn't seem to have slowed down at all. Joe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From julf at julf.com Sun Aug 21 04:34:09 2016 From: julf at julf.com (Johan Helsingius) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 13:34:09 +0200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> Message-ID: <72fb7af2-74d5-b56e-120d-f6a33571a911@julf.com> On 21-08-16 01:55, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > somebody else would have done it, IMHO. Well, there was Erwise in 1991... http://www.osnews.com/story/21076/The_World_s_First_Graphical_Browser_Erwise Julf From johnl at iecc.com Sun Aug 21 09:57:49 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 21 Aug 2016 16:57:49 -0000 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> >>> In fact, hypertext specialists thought it was broken; > >The academics working on hypertext thought that a hypertext system >without bidirectional links and some kind of continuous completeness >checking (so that dead links would vanish automatically) wasn't >useful. Ted Nelson sure did. Indeed, he still does, and he's still trying to implement something more like what he had in mind all along. >Tim made a very strong argument that a system with bidirectional links >and consistency checks was undeployable at large scale, and of course >he was right. As far as I can tell, none of the previous hypertext designs seriously thought about a system where everything wasn't more or less under the same management. R's, John From jeanjour at comcast.net Sun Aug 21 10:28:30 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 13:28:30 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: Depending on how you look at it, neither did the web. Thinking of the lack of security in http, either assumes the same management or no management. If it was expected to work with multiple management domains one would expect at least authentication and access control. All the talk that Internet didn?t consider security is kind of true, but the ARPANET did, at least to the degree machines were able, which wasn?t much in those days. The Multics guys especially were always bringing it up. The application protocols required authentication, e.g. login.* There was a lot of discussion around mail requiring anonymous login. And Multics added an access control method for mail: append. Rather than give the mail program write access. (Mailboxes were files instead of directories.) Take care, John *Telnet doesn?t because telnet is a device-driver, not a service to log into. But the service commonly built with Telnet does. > >> Tim made a very strong argument that a system with bidirectional links >> and consistency checks was undeployable at large scale, and of course >> he was right. > > As far as I can tell, none of the previous hypertext designs seriously > thought about a system where everything wasn't more or less under the > same management. > > R's, > John > _______ > 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 brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sun Aug 21 13:16:10 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 08:16:10 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <72fb7af2-74d5-b56e-120d-f6a33571a911@julf.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <72fb7af2-74d5-b56e-120d-f6a33571a911@julf.com> Message-ID: <234674e4-a748-007a-6432-1df4913626b4@gmail.com> On 21/08/2016 23:34, Johan Helsingius wrote: > On 21-08-16 01:55, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > >> somebody else would have done it, IMHO. > > Well, there was Erwise in 1991... > > http://www.osnews.com/story/21076/The_World_s_First_Graphical_Browser_Erwise > > Julf Interesting. "ran on the X Window System" was a bit limiting at the time, but when Tim BL came into my office in summer 1993 and virtually ordered me to try Mosaic, it was via an NCD X-Window terminal, and I showed it to my systems guy, and within the day our group had its own Web server. BTW there's a wealth of primary material at https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/ Brian From cos at aaaaa.org Sun Aug 21 16:47:17 2016 From: cos at aaaaa.org (Ofer Inbar) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:47:17 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 01:28:30PM -0400, John Day wrote: > Depending on how you look at it, neither did the web. Thinking of > the lack of security in http, either assumes the same management or > no management. If it was expected to work with multiple management > domains one would expect at least authentication and access control. SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network with independent management of each node? -- Cos From jeanjour at comcast.net Sun Aug 21 18:27:23 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 21:27:23 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> Message-ID: <92D3BAF0-1C31-4943-85A5-730E24030A38@comcast.net> That was much later. FTP and both RJE protocols required login. Back when mail was part of FTP there was a lot of discussion about anonymous login and it?s abuse. By the time, mail got its own protocol concerns about security had pretty much disappeared. John > On Aug 21, 2016, at 19:47, Ofer Inbar wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 01:28:30PM -0400, > John Day wrote: >> Depending on how you look at it, neither did the web. Thinking of >> the lack of security in http, either assumes the same management or >> no management. If it was expected to work with multiple management >> domains one would expect at least authentication and access control. > > SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of > security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both > designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network > with independent management of each node? > -- Cos From cos at aaaaa.org Sun Aug 21 18:36:13 2016 From: cos at aaaaa.org (Ofer Inbar) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 21:36:13 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <92D3BAF0-1C31-4943-85A5-730E24030A38@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <92D3BAF0-1C31-4943-85A5-730E24030A38@comcast.net> Message-ID: <20160822013613.GB1577@mip.aaaaa.org> > > On Aug 21, 2016, at 19:47, Ofer Inbar wrote: > > > > On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 01:28:30PM -0400, > > John Day wrote: > >> Depending on how you look at it, neither did the web. Thinking of > >> the lack of security in http, either assumes the same management or > >> no management. If it was expected to work with multiple management > >> domains one would expect at least authentication and access control. > > > > SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of > > security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both > > designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network > > with independent management of each node? On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 09:27:23PM -0400, John Day wrote: > That was much later. FTP and both RJE protocols required login. > > Back when mail was part of FTP there was a lot of discussion about anonymous login and it???s abuse. By the time, mail got its own protocol concerns about security had pretty much disappeared. > Sure, but HTTP was much later as well. Its lack of security features doesn't mean they assumed all servers would be under common management (or "no management", that seems ambiguous) any more than SMTP and NNTP and some others assumed that. Various protocols were designed deliberately for distributed management, while omitting security features, around that time. Yes? -- Cos From paul at redbarn.org Sun Aug 21 20:28:39 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 20:28:39 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> Message-ID: <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Ofer Inbar wrote: > SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of > security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both > designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network > with independent management of each node? at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but differently. -- P Vixie From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Sun Aug 21 22:22:27 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 22:22:27 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: On 8/21/2016 8:28 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip > connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors > including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it > at that stage. Telephone calls and postal service did not (and do not) require authentication before the call completes or the message is delivered. Email was design with the same level of authentication as the existing personal communication services, namely none. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From casner at acm.org Sun Aug 21 23:24:58 2016 From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2016 23:24:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: On Sun, 21 Aug 2016, Dave Crocker wrote: > Telephone calls and postal service did not (and do not) require > authentication before the call completes or the message is delivered. > Email was design with the same level of authentication as the existing > personal communication services, namely none. And for telephone calls that is proving to be a serious deficiency. -- Steve From julf at julf.com Mon Aug 22 01:59:44 2016 From: julf at julf.com (Johan Helsingius) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 10:59:44 +0200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <234674e4-a748-007a-6432-1df4913626b4@gmail.com> References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <72fb7af2-74d5-b56e-120d-f6a33571a911@julf.com> <234674e4-a748-007a-6432-1df4913626b4@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6126cad1-663a-192b-afa2-767caa27015d@julf.com> On 21-08-16 22:16, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > BTW there's a wealth of primary material at > https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/ Ah, thanks! Including Tim BL's review of Erwise: https://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/Erwise/Review.html "Conclusion: Erwise is certainly a well-finished browser for W3 systems, proffesionally produced. We only have binaries at the moment for sun4 and decstation use, and there seem to be a few outstanding problems with running on on some displays (like decstation). Its is a very good job, especially for a group starting completely from scratch with motif. Once the problems with crashes on different displays are solved, the next thing to decide will be who will support and extend this product for the very many users who will want it on their systems.". Julf From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Aug 22 03:32:22 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 06:32:22 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: As far as who was on the Net, the same was true and even more so in 1973, when FTP and the RJE protocols were done. Yet there, there was very strong arguments that login should be necessary. In fact, as I said, the Multics guys were very insistent on it. They really didn?t like the anonymous login. If anything, the reason for not doing it by the time SMTP was done was more the recognition that the process was more like the trusted postman delivering mail (as Dave points out), rather than just anyone. That sort of discussion had actually taken place when mail was part of FTP. And of course, we make special accommodation for the postman with a mail slot in the door or a mailbox and a law that makes it very illegal for tampering with the mailbox. As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, there was much more talk about modeling things after operating systems. If there were any two things that drew immediate resistance from that early group it was: this is how telephones work or this is the way IBM does it!! ;-) Both were considered (for better or worse) prime examples of how to be overly complex. > On Aug 21, 2016, at 23:28, Paul Vixie wrote: > > > > Ofer Inbar wrote: >> SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of >> security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both >> designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network >> with independent management of each node? > > at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip > connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors > including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it > at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could > make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in > terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely > considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a > bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of > folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of > humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to > access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but > differently. > > -- > P Vixie > _______ > 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 Mon Aug 22 04:15:18 2016 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 07:15:18 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: for the military applications of the Internet, there was attention paid to authentication and cryptography. RFC 1108 codified some of this and, of course, there was the end/end BCR project sponsored by ARPA that explored packet encryption technology (and the earlier Private Line Interface that was built by BBN to secure communication on the ARPANET). Authentication was implicit for the cases where symmetric key cryptography was used since both ends had to have the same key and this implied authenticity (leaving out the possibility that the key had been cracked, of course). v On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 6:32 AM, John Day wrote: > As far as who was on the Net, the same was true and even more so in 1973, > when FTP and the RJE protocols were done. Yet there, there was very strong > arguments that login should be necessary. In fact, as I said, the Multics > guys were very insistent on it. They really didn?t like the anonymous login. > > If anything, the reason for not doing it by the time SMTP was done was > more the recognition that the process was more like the trusted postman > delivering mail (as Dave points out), rather than just anyone. That sort > of discussion had actually taken place when mail was part of FTP. And of > course, we make special accommodation for the postman with a mail slot in > the door or a mailbox and a law that makes it very illegal for tampering > with the mailbox. > > As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was > to be like the telephone system, there was much more talk about modeling > things after operating systems. If there were any two things that drew > immediate resistance from that early group it was: this is how telephones > work or this is the way IBM does it!! ;-) Both were considered (for better > or worse) prime examples of how to be overly complex. > > > > On Aug 21, 2016, at 23:28, Paul Vixie wrote: > > > > > > > > Ofer Inbar wrote: > >> SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of > >> security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both > >> designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network > >> with independent management of each node? > > > > at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip > > connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors > > including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it > > at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could > > make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in > > terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely > > considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a > > bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of > > folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of > > humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to > > access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but > > differently. > > > > -- > > P Vixie > > _______ > > 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. > -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 22 05:50:55 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 05:50:55 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <119ccd8e-12d1-155d-812b-f7f1bc84e90c@dcrocker.net> On 8/21/2016 11:24 PM, Stephen Casner wrote: > On Sun, 21 Aug 2016, Dave Crocker wrote: > >> Telephone calls and postal service did not (and do not) require >> authentication before the call completes or the message is delivered. >> Email was design with the same level of authentication as the existing >> personal communication services, namely none. > > And for telephone calls that is proving to be a serious deficiency. The thread is a history discussion. So I wasn't trying to comment on the abuse issues that have been prompting efforts to change the model over the last 10 years. (Email first, phones now.) d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 22 05:52:57 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 05:52:57 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: > As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Aug 22 06:31:11 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:31:11 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. Take care, John > On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, > > > oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... > > d/ > > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net From wayne at playaholic.com Mon Aug 22 07:00:36 2016 From: wayne at playaholic.com (wayne at playaholic.com) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:00:36 -0500 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <20160822090036.3qz8axstdwogks0o@hostingemail.xo.com> > On Mon, 22 Aug 2016 06:32:22 -0400, John Day wrote: > If there were any two things that drew immediate resistance from that > early group it was: this is how telephones work or this is the way > IBM does it!! ;-) Both were considered (for better or worse) prime > examples of how to be overly complex. Being stuck on an IBM 360 running TSS at the time, I definitely remember that! :-) ? wayne ? From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 22 07:12:58 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 07:12:58 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> Message-ID: On 8/22/2016 6:31 AM, John Day wrote: > I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? Well, I meant to be a bit ironic, but didn't work hard enough at it (or proofread well enough.) Over the years, I've repeatedly heard that the origin of the word was lost and that people debated it's meaning. My own inclination is to be that it really did mean telephone network, since it directly replaced terminal dial-up service. Besides that, something like 'telecomunications network' strikes me as more cumbersome terminology than folks were using for naming on Arpanet stuff.[*] d/ [*] And 'cumbersome naming' triggers a memory of some naming games played at the UCLA project in the late 60s, which did an o/s, somewhat comparable to Tenex. And since my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in enough yet, residual disinhibitions lead to this recitation: The team building it included Vint, my brother Steve, Jon Postel and others. They decided on an 'urban' model for naming. One day my brother asked our father for help naming one item they were stuck on, describing it as the component that allocated time to a process and ended the allocation when the time was up. With no hesitation, our father said "that's the madam". I'm told that one member of the team got quite irritated by the continuing effort to come up with clever names and demanded "Let's call a spade a space". So the team renamed the effort the Spade Working Group. The computer they were building for was an XDS Sigma 7, so the operating system became the Sigma Executive, with the obvious acronym. When I got hired, one of my tasks was to document this effort. The result was the SEX Manual. The system was always memory bound and the team located some additional memory for sale, asking ARPA for the money. Instead ARPA said we should get an access computer -- the first versions of ANTS and ELF were available -- and use resources around the net. The version 2 efforts for both access systems were problematic in various ways, but eventually we installed a new o/s that came out of Bell Labs. So ARPA took our SEX away and gave us Unix. Predictably the initial superuser password was indeed eunuchs. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Mon Aug 22 07:48:07 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 10:48:07 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <831e4a32-0f5a-afa3-0b0c-f4f4118cfafa@meetinghouse.net> On 8/21/16 12:57 PM, John Levine wrote: >>>> In fact, hypertext specialists thought it was broken; >> The academics working on hypertext thought that a hypertext system >> without bidirectional links and some kind of continuous completeness >> checking (so that dead links would vanish automatically) wasn't >> useful. > Ted Nelson sure did. Indeed, he still does, and he's still trying > to implement something more like what he had in mind all along. > Of course, he's also carrying on in the footsteps of UMich & gopher - trying to keep everything he does proprietary. And worse, it doesn't interoperate with anything. Great ideas, horrible implementations. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Mon Aug 22 07:52:56 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 10:52:56 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: On 8/21/16 11:28 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > > Ofer Inbar wrote: >> SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of >> security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both >> designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network >> with independent management of each node? > at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip > connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors > including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it > at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could > make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in > terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely > considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a > bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of > folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of > humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to > access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but > differently. > Somehow "trustworthy" and "universities" - in the late 60s - don't seem together. You know, there were these things called "students" floating around, many of whom were spending a lot of their time in the streets voicing distinctly anti-government and anti-military sentiments. Also the days when the MIT AI Lab handed out ITS accounts to all comers (that's how I first got on the net, Fall 1971, a few weeks before Ray Tomlinson sent the first ARPANET email - great timing on my part, a front row seat for lots of things). Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Aug 22 08:00:54 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 11:00:54 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> Message-ID: <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> Well, I kind of new you were making a joke and I agree that ?telecommunication network? always sounded to cumbersome to me too. It might have been 'telecom network.? Looking for it this morning, it certainly looked like it got lost pretty early. There is a lot of talk about it being process-to-process or terminal-to-terminal, but nothing that would get you Telnet. And of course, it go very confusing when they spun out Telenet. As for the eunuchs, that even goes to ?2nd order? use! Unix is of course a castrated Multics. And in 1975, when we put the first Unix up on the Net on our PDP-11/45, the next thing was to strip it down to make it fit on an LSI-11, which of course we called eunix. ;-) Then there was the Burros MCP. The lowest level languages on the machine were Algol and an extension of Algol for writing OSs called ESPOL. So all programs looked like procedures. The OS was just a process with a stack and user processes were simply procedures given their own stack (it was called a cactus stack). The uses process was set up to on completion simply return back to the OS stack. The procedure in the OS that created user jobs was of course called Motherforker. The schedule queue was called the sheet. So of course there were variables related to it called stackofsheet and pileofsheet. > On Aug 22, 2016, at 10:12, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 8/22/2016 6:31 AM, John Day wrote: >> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? > > > Well, I meant to be a bit ironic, but didn't work hard enough at it (or > proofread well enough.) Over the years, I've repeatedly heard that the > origin of the word was lost and that people debated it's meaning. > > My own inclination is to be that it really did mean telephone network, > since it directly replaced terminal dial-up service. Besides that, > something like 'telecomunications network' strikes me as more cumbersome > terminology than folks were using for naming on Arpanet stuff.[*] > > > d/ > > > [*] And 'cumbersome naming' triggers a memory of some naming games > played at the UCLA project in the late 60s, which did an o/s, somewhat > comparable to Tenex. And since my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in > enough yet, residual disinhibitions lead to this recitation: The team > building it included Vint, my brother Steve, Jon Postel and others. They > decided on an 'urban' model for naming. One day my brother asked our > father for help naming one item they were stuck on, describing it as the > component that allocated time to a process and ended the allocation when > the time was up. With no hesitation, our father said "that's the madam". > I'm told that one member of the team got quite irritated by the > continuing effort to come up with clever names and demanded "Let's call > a spade a space". So the team renamed the effort the Spade Working > Group. The computer they were building for was an XDS Sigma 7, so the > operating system became the Sigma Executive, with the obvious acronym. > When I got hired, one of my tasks was to document this effort. The > result was the SEX Manual. The system was always memory bound and the > team located some additional memory for sale, asking ARPA for the money. > Instead ARPA said we should get an access computer -- the first > versions of ANTS and ELF were available -- and use resources around the > net. The version 2 efforts for both access systems were problematic in > various ways, but eventually we installed a new o/s that came out of > Bell Labs. So ARPA took our SEX away and gave us Unix. Predictably the > initial superuser password was indeed eunuchs. > > > > > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > _______ > 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 Mon Aug 22 08:31:11 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 11:31:11 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <372195D8-BE8B-43F1-AA65-253C4310E17B@comcast.net> I was thinking the same thing. Being the largest military contract on campus, we were being demonstrated against often and we were participating both to counter the arguments that were wrong and to support the ones that were right. We fit right in. One of my favorite stories was when four of us left Urbana to go out to Philly to work on the machine. As we got off the plane in Chicago, the flight attendant said to me: ?Are you guys in a band?? ;-) I replied, no we are crypto-fascist lackeys of the military industrial state. A phrase we heard often in the demonstrations. Our office was fire-bombed at one point but it didn?t go off. (You have to be pretty bad to make a Molotov cocktail that doesn?t work!) Doing work for ARPA was a real concern, at an ARPANET pre-meeting there was a lot of reticence being expressed about taking their money. It is said that John Melvin got up and said, Guys, it is okay, our money is only bloody on one side! Whether it is happened or not, I am not sure. But it was a good line. > On Aug 22, 2016, at 10:52, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > On 8/21/16 11:28 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > >> >> Ofer Inbar wrote: >>> SMTP and NNTP came with no auth or access control or any sort of >>> security that I recall in the early days, and weren't they both >>> designed consciously and deliberately for a distributed network >>> with independent management of each node? >> at the time smtp was defined, everyone who could make a tcp/ip >> connection to you was trustworthy. government agencies and contractors >> including universities. there was no reason to authenticate or secure it >> at that stage. the idea of netcom or alternet where someone who could >> make tcp/ip sessions toward your server might have nothing to lose (in >> terms of their internet access or their government contract) was rarely >> considered, and when it was considered, one set of folks said it was a >> bad idea and the network should remain mostly closed, and another set of >> folks said it was a great idea and we should not make the rest of >> humanity jump through any special authentication hoops in order to >> access our services. so, all of us were wrong, about everything, but >> differently. >> > > Somehow "trustworthy" and "universities" - in the late 60s - don't seem > together. You know, there were these things called "students" floating > around, many of whom were spending a lot of their time in the streets > voicing distinctly anti-government and anti-military sentiments. Also > the days when the MIT AI Lab handed out ITS accounts to all comers > (that's how I first got on the net, Fall 1971, a few weeks before Ray > Tomlinson sent the first ARPANET email - great timing on my part, a > front row seat for lots of things). > > Miles Fidelman > > > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > _______ > 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 dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 22 09:02:23 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:02:23 -0700 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> Message-ID: On 8/22/2016 8:00 AM, John Day wrote: > Unix is of course a castrated Multics. I think that's actually a counter-productive view and probably just plain wrong. While yeah, Unix was a /reaction/ to Multics, I think the divergence was at a the level of design approaches, rather than about any of the specific technology. Multics was a classic "big system" design approach. Unix was a classic "minimal system" design approach. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From paul at redbarn.org Mon Aug 22 09:17:03 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:17:03 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <57BB257F.1080904@redbarn.org> Stephen Casner wrote: > On Sun, 21 Aug 2016, Dave Crocker wrote: > >> Telephone calls and postal service did not (and do not) require >> authentication before the call completes or the message is delivered. >> Email was design with the same level of authentication as the existing >> personal communication services, namely none. > > And for telephone calls that is proving to be a serious deficiency. when we created the first distributed internet reputation system (MAPS RBL) there was considerable pressure to make it positive rather than negative. this would have made the internet into a "gated community". my problem with gated communities is that it's impossible for the girl scouts of america to go door to door selling cookies. that may sound subjective and/or trivial, but economies and communities and cultures grow from roads moreso than from walls. lack of authentication/authorization in smtp is a small matter compared to the lack of source address validation on packets themselves, considering that dns and ntp and other udp protocols, and tcp itself during the first two phases of the 3-way handshake, are stateless and therefore perfect ddos amplifiers. in other words the problems of untrustworthy parties connected to the internet are so fundamental and so toxic that de-peering or other disconnection is the only possible defense. adding authentication and/or authorization to every internet application is so much harder that we know it can never be accomplished. -- P Vixie From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 22 09:35:06 2016 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 12:35:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) Message-ID: <20160822163506.16F8218C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Dave Crocker > On 8/22/2016 8:00 AM, John Day wrote: >> Unix is of course a castrated Multics. > I think that's actually a counter-productive view and probably just > plain wrong. Indeed. I am a HYUUGE fan of both systems (although for Unix, more the earlier ones, i.e. V7 and before, which had a mind-bogglingly high power/complexity ratio; contemporary Unix is nothing to write home about). Sadly, though, a lot of Ken and DMR's criticisms of Multics are just plain wrong - like a lot of the other contemporary opinions of it. (Which is not to say that it didn't make mistakes - they just aren't the ones you usually hear.) > Multics was a classic "big system" design approach. Unix was a classic > "minimal system" design approach. Exactly. And now, since this is the Internet-History list, not Computer-History, I will subside... ;-) Noel From paul at redbarn.org Mon Aug 22 09:38:37 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:38:37 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <57BB2A8D.90707@redbarn.org> Miles Fidelman wrote: > On 8/21/16 11:28 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > >> ... > > Somehow "trustworthy" and "universities" - in the late 60s - don't seem > together. You know, there were these things called "students" floating > around, many of whom were spending a lot of their time in the streets > voicing distinctly anti-government and anti-military sentiments. ... well, yes, and i also had anonymous access through various tips early on. so, i'll clarify. large scale spam of the canter/siegel or style would have resulted in account closures before the internet was commercialized/privatized. likewise ddos, while technically always possible, was infeasible during the early days. an ITS sysadmin would have defended their right to allow anonymous access, and stallman would have defended his right to have no password on his account, but nobody would have, or successfully could have, defended the kind of abuse the internet saw starting ~1995. -- P Vixie From touch at isi.edu Mon Aug 22 09:54:49 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:54:49 -0700 Subject: [ih] bogus list unsubscribe requests seen In-Reply-To: <55AC233C.2010308@isi.edu> References: <55AC233C.2010308@isi.edu> Message-ID: <2a1cf483-1e77-05b1-10c8-3030d2e6be25@isi.edu> Hi, all, Activity of the sort below seems to have picked up. AFAICT, it's correlated with posting something to the list, as if something is scraping the list archives and issuing unsubscribes through the web interface. I've activated every available feature on the version of Mailman running on our pre-2002 servers. The only news is that we do have modern replacements being configured now, and I'm hoping that the updated software has more options that help prevent this (e.g., CAPTCHA to issue unsubscribe). I won't know until the servers are upgraded, which won't be for a few more months, though. For now, the same advice applies - if you didn't issue an unsubscribe request, please ignore it. Joe (as list admin) On 7/19/2015 3:22 PM, Joe Touch wrote: > Hi, all, > > Over the past few days, I've received four reports from recent posters > to this list who have received list unsubscribe messages that they did > not request. > > These messages appear to be generated from ISI's mailman system. The > system does not require a login or confirmation to issue the unsubscribe > to any email address - that is a "feature" of mailman, and I am not > aware of a way to configure it otherwise. > > If you receive such a request and did not intend to unsubscribe, you can > just ignore it. > > Joe (as list admin) From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 22 11:11:13 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 11:11:13 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <57BB257F.1080904@redbarn.org> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <57BB257F.1080904@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <9685e05d-9268-f10e-a99b-a1e56ac5ca7f@dcrocker.net> +10 I've long been strongly advocating against a 'default deny' model, but hadn't latched on to a sufficiently simple and clear way to explain it. I therefore greatly appreciate the girl scout example. Unfortunately I also agree that the most efficacious approach for dealing with bad actions from hosts is terminating access by the host (or net, if there is an aggregation, or maybe as leverage against the operator.) d/ On 8/22/2016 9:17 AM, Paul Vixie wrote: > > > Stephen Casner wrote: >> On Sun, 21 Aug 2016, Dave Crocker wrote: >> >>> Telephone calls and postal service did not (and do not) require >>> authentication before the call completes or the message is delivered. >>> Email was design with the same level of authentication as the existing >>> personal communication services, namely none. >> >> And for telephone calls that is proving to be a serious deficiency. > > when we created the first distributed internet reputation system (MAPS > RBL) there was considerable pressure to make it positive rather than > negative. this would have made the internet into a "gated community". > > my problem with gated communities is that it's impossible for the girl > scouts of america to go door to door selling cookies. that may sound > subjective and/or trivial, but economies and communities and cultures > grow from roads moreso than from walls. > > lack of authentication/authorization in smtp is a small matter compared > to the lack of source address validation on packets themselves, > considering that dns and ntp and other udp protocols, and tcp itself > during the first two phases of the 3-way handshake, are stateless and > therefore perfect ddos amplifiers. > > in other words the problems of untrustworthy parties connected to the > internet are so fundamental and so toxic that de-peering or other > disconnection is the only possible defense. adding authentication and/or > authorization to every internet application is so much harder that we > know it can never be accomplished. > -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Mon Aug 22 12:45:36 2016 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 19:45:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] Telnet In-Reply-To: <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> Message-ID: <416377674.1402428.1471895136301.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> It is my recollection that Telnet is an abbreviation of "Teletype network."? (I know I'm getting old and my recollections are suspect.) Cheers,Alex From: John Day To: dcrocker at bbiw.net Cc: internet history Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 11:00 AM Subject: Re: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol Well, I kind of new you were making a joke and I agree that ?telecommunication network? always sounded to cumbersome to me too. It might have been 'telecom network.?? Looking for it this morning, it certainly looked like it got lost pretty early. There is a lot of talk about it being process-to-process or terminal-to-terminal, but nothing that would get you Telnet. And of course, it go very confusing when they spun out Telenet. As for the eunuchs, that even goes to ?2nd order? use!? Unix is of course a castrated Multics. And in 1975, when we put the first Unix up on the Net on our PDP-11/45, the next thing was to strip it down to make it fit on an LSI-11, which of course we called eunix. ;-) Then there was the Burros MCP. The lowest level languages on the machine were Algol and an extension of Algol for writing OSs called ESPOL.? So all programs looked like procedures.? The OS was just a process with a stack and user processes were simply procedures given their own stack (it was called a cactus stack). The uses process was set up to on completion simply return back to the OS stack. The procedure in the OS that created user jobs was of course called Motherforker.? The schedule queue was called the sheet. So of course there were variables related to it called stackofsheet and pileofsheet. > On Aug 22, 2016, at 10:12, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 8/22/2016 6:31 AM, John Day wrote: >> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? > > > Well, I meant to be a bit ironic, but didn't work hard enough at it (or > proofread well enough.)? Over the years, I've repeatedly heard that the > origin of the word was lost and that people debated it's meaning. > > My own inclination is to be that it really did mean telephone network, > since it directly replaced terminal dial-up service.? Besides that, > something like 'telecomunications network' strikes me as more cumbersome > terminology than folks were using for naming on Arpanet stuff.[*] > > > d/ > > > [*] And 'cumbersome naming' triggers a memory of some naming games > played at the UCLA project in the late 60s, which did an o/s, somewhat > comparable to Tenex.? And since my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in > enough yet, residual disinhibitions lead to this recitation: The team > building it included Vint, my brother Steve, Jon Postel and others. They > decided on an 'urban' model for naming. One day my brother asked our > father for help naming one item they were stuck on, describing it as the > component that allocated time to a process and ended the allocation when > the time was up. With no hesitation, our father said "that's the madam". >? I'm told that one member of the team got quite irritated by the > continuing effort to come up with clever names and demanded "Let's call > a spade a space".? So the team renamed the effort the Spade Working > Group.? The computer they were building for was an XDS Sigma 7, so the > operating system became the Sigma Executive, with the obvious acronym. > When I got hired, one of my tasks was to document this effort.? The > result was the SEX Manual. The system was always memory bound and the > team located some additional memory for sale, asking ARPA for the money. >? Instead ARPA said we should get an access computer -- the first > versions of ANTS and ELF were available -- and use resources around the > net.? The version 2 efforts for both access systems were problematic in > various ways, but eventually we installed a new o/s that came out of > Bell Labs.? So ARPA took our SEX away and gave us Unix.? Predictably the > initial superuser password was indeed eunuchs. > > > > > -- > >? Dave Crocker >? Brandenburg InternetWorking >? bbiw.net > _______ > 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: From jklensin at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 13:03:47 2016 From: jklensin at gmail.com (John Klensin) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 16:03:47 -0400 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <20160822163506.16F8218C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20160822163506.16F8218C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Dave Crocker > > > On 8/22/2016 8:00 AM, John Day wrote: > >> Unix is of course a castrated Multics. > > > I think that's actually a counter-productive view and probably just > > plain wrong. I wouldn't go nearly as far as John does, although I remember language like that being used shortly after Unix emerged. I do suggest that there are differences between the two in which decisions similar to the Unix ones have been significantly problematic for the Internet (I won't go as far as "caused by" or "derived from" Unix either, but the coincidences are striking). Two examples: * High level: Multics was very security-sensitive from the beginning, with the assumption that users needed to be protected from both each other and themselves. Unix had, shall we say, a much more relaxed attitude. This has been alluded to, in other terms, in other postings. * Low level (chosen as an example because it has taken up a lot of my time and a lot of Internet discussion bandwidth in recent months): The Multics file system supported multiple names per node, with primitives for adding and deleting names, asking about all of the names at a particular node, etc. Those names were true synonyms: anything that could be done with one could be done with any of the others. Unix, of course, does not -- the only way to simulate a synonym is with links. There are , of course, good, simplicity of system design, reasons for the latter However, we ended up with the same "one name per node" in the DNS. I have no information whether that was following the Unix model or independent discovery of the simplicity-related reasons. However, contemporary expectations of the DNS demand synonyms or tightly-linked aliases that work up and down the hierarchy, not merely on single nodes single subtrees. That can't be done (no matter how many times people chant the word "variant", but that is another matter) with the DNS- (and Unix-) style tree structure and attempts to simulate it lead to assorted messes. >... > Sadly, though, a lot of Ken and DMR's criticisms of Multics are just plain > wrong - like a lot of the other contemporary opinions of it. (Which is not to > say that it didn't make mistakes - they just aren't the ones you usually > hear.) > > > Multics was a classic "big system" design approach. Unix was a classic > > "minimal system" design approach. > > Exactly. I would have said that Multics was designed as a computer utility (a term that was used a lot at the time) with a requirement to support a diverse collection of users and applications who didn't have any good basis for mutual trust and who had very diverse needs and skills. Unix was designed for a far more homogeneous collection of users and environment along those dimensions and more. "Big" and "minimal" were as much consequences of those differences in goals as causes of them. While I agree with Noel about the high power/complexity ratio of early Unix, it was a lot bigger and more complex than anything truly minimal, even (or especially) by the standards of the time or earlier. > And now, since this is the Internet-History list, not Computer-History, I > will subside... ;-) Indeed, although the comparison above might be relevant. john From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 13:28:10 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 08:28:10 +1200 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> Message-ID: <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> On 23/08/2016 01:31, John Day wrote: > I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. > > What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) > > But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. > > My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! > > It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. The Telnet Internet Standard is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc854.txt. There's an enormous number of RFCs with "Telnet" in their titles. Mostly (Status: UNKNOWN). Brian > > Take care, > John > > > >> On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: >> >> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >>> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, >> >> >> oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... >> >> d/ >> >> -- >> >> Dave Crocker >> Brandenburg InternetWorking >> bbiw.net > > > _______ > 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 Mon Aug 22 13:48:59 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 16:48:59 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> Message-ID: <3727335E-2D17-4E01-A798-B99C079781EC@comcast.net> That is the later version to run over TCP. RFC 495 is the original new Telnet. It is only of historical significance but it should be there. John > On Aug 22, 2016, at 16:28, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > On 23/08/2016 01:31, John Day wrote: >> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. >> >> What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) >> >> But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. >> >> My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! >> >> It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. > > The Telnet Internet Standard is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc854.txt. > > There's an enormous number of RFCs with "Telnet" in their titles. Mostly > (Status: UNKNOWN). > > Brian > > >> >> Take care, >> John >> >> >> >>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: >>> >>> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >>>> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, >>> >>> >>> oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... >>> >>> d/ >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Dave Crocker >>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>> bbiw.net >> >> >> _______ >> 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 Mon Aug 22 14:01:55 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:01:55 -0400 Subject: [ih] Telnet In-Reply-To: <416377674.1402428.1471895136301.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <905DFBF9-2B8B-4D18-93CC-A539CEC392DF@comcast.net> <416377674.1402428.1471895136301.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <64794dc3-002a-7cb1-24c5-f29649960eb2@meetinghouse.net> Silly observation perhaps, but given that it's all caps, and there's no acronym expansion given in the early specs - could it simply be somebody's idea of a cool sounding name (or maybe just a convenient one)? Miles On 8/22/16 3:45 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > It is my recollection that Telnet is an abbreviation of "Teletype > network." (I know I'm getting old and my recollections are suspect.) > > Cheers, > Alex > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* John Day > *To:* dcrocker at bbiw.net > *Cc:* internet history > *Sent:* Monday, August 22, 2016 11:00 AM > *Subject:* Re: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of > the Gopher Protocol > > Well, I kind of new you were making a joke and I agree that > ?telecommunication network? always sounded to cumbersome to me too. It > might have been 'telecom network.? Looking for it this morning, it > certainly looked like it got lost pretty early. There is a lot of talk > about it being process-to-process or terminal-to-terminal, but nothing > that would get you Telnet. > > And of course, it go very confusing when they spun out Telenet. > > As for the eunuchs, that even goes to ?2nd order? use! Unix is of > course a castrated Multics. And in 1975, when we put the first Unix up > on the Net on our PDP-11/45, the next thing was to strip it down to > make it fit on an LSI-11, which of course we called eunix. ;-) > > Then there was the Burros MCP. The lowest level languages on the > machine were Algol and an extension of Algol for writing OSs called > ESPOL. So all programs looked like procedures. The OS was just a > process with a stack and user processes were simply procedures given > their own stack (it was called a cactus stack). The uses process was > set up to on completion simply return back to the OS stack. The > procedure in the OS that created user jobs was of course called > Motherforker. The schedule queue was called the sheet. So of course > there were variables related to it called stackofsheet and pileofsheet. > > > > On Aug 22, 2016, at 10:12, Dave Crocker > wrote: > > > > On 8/22/2016 6:31 AM, John Day wrote: > >> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? > > > > > > Well, I meant to be a bit ironic, but didn't work hard enough at it (or > > proofread well enough.) Over the years, I've repeatedly heard that the > > origin of the word was lost and that people debated it's meaning. > > > > My own inclination is to be that it really did mean telephone network, > > since it directly replaced terminal dial-up service. Besides that, > > something like 'telecomunications network' strikes me as more > cumbersome > > terminology than folks were using for naming on Arpanet stuff.[*] > > > > > > d/ > > > > > > [*] And 'cumbersome naming' triggers a memory of some naming games > > played at the UCLA project in the late 60s, which did an o/s, somewhat > > comparable to Tenex. And since my morning caffeine hasn't kicked in > > enough yet, residual disinhibitions lead to this recitation: The team > > building it included Vint, my brother Steve, Jon Postel and others. > They > > decided on an 'urban' model for naming. One day my brother asked our > > father for help naming one item they were stuck on, describing it as > the > > component that allocated time to a process and ended the allocation > when > > the time was up. With no hesitation, our father said "that's the > madam". > > I'm told that one member of the team got quite irritated by the > > continuing effort to come up with clever names and demanded "Let's call > > a spade a space". So the team renamed the effort the Spade Working > > Group. The computer they were building for was an XDS Sigma 7, so the > > operating system became the Sigma Executive, with the obvious acronym. > > When I got hired, one of my tasks was to document this effort. The > > result was the SEX Manual. The system was always memory bound and the > > team located some additional memory for sale, asking ARPA for the > money. > > Instead ARPA said we should get an access computer -- the first > > versions of ANTS and ELF were available -- and use resources around the > > net. The version 2 efforts for both access systems were problematic in > > various ways, but eventually we installed a new o/s that came out of > > Bell Labs. So ARPA took our SEX away and gave us Unix. Predictably > the > > initial superuser password was indeed eunuchs. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Dave Crocker > > Brandenburg InternetWorking > > bbiw.net > > _______ > > 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. > > > > > _______ > 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Mon Aug 22 14:13:22 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:13:22 -0400 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: References: <20160822163506.16F8218C091@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: On 8/22/16 4:03 PM, John Klensin wrote: > On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> > From: Dave Crocker >> >> > On 8/22/2016 8:00 AM, John Day wrote: >> >> Unix is of course a castrated Multics. Well, certainly a pun on the name. Just for the heck of it, I tried to track down an authoritative source for the general statement that Unix is a pun on Multics. Wikipedia reports: "The name Unics (UNiplexed Information and Computing Service, pronounced as "eunuchs"), a pun on Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computer Services), was initially suggested for the project in 1970: the new operating system was an emasculated Multics. Peter H. Salus credits Peter Neumann with the pun,[17] while Brian Kernighan claims the coining for himself, and adds that "no one can remember" who came up with the final spelling Unix.[18] Dennis Ritchie also credits Kernighan.[16]" [with the citations left on wikipedia] I also found this: > Message-ID: <4743 at Aucbvax.UUCP> > Newsgroups: fa.unix-wizards > Date: Wed Oct 28 00:22:45 1981 > Subject: Origins of unix > From: unix-wizards > > >From ihnss!karn at Berkeley Tue Oct 27 23:06:04 1981 > At the January USENIX meeting, Dennis Ritchie emphatically denied > that "Unix" was derived from "castrated MULTICS". > > Phil > And, of course, the classic Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-11-09 -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 15:20:15 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 10:20:15 +1200 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <3727335E-2D17-4E01-A798-B99C079781EC@comcast.net> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> <3727335E-2D17-4E01-A798-B99C079781EC@comcast.net> Message-ID: <729ff0ff-86bf-6bc2-249d-23d90fde5b73@gmail.com> On 23/08/2016 08:48, John Day wrote: > That is the later version to run over TCP. RFC 495 is the original new Telnet. It is only of historical significance but it should be there. If you have a copy of the attachments, I suggest communicating with the RFC Series Editor, Heather Flanagan . She's very much attuned to the archival issue. Whether she has a policy on attachments is another story. (I have a project on hold to persuade people to reclassify most Status: UNKNOWN RFCs as Status: HISTORIC, but that's another story.) Brian > > John > >> On Aug 22, 2016, at 16:28, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> >> On 23/08/2016 01:31, John Day wrote: >>> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. >>> >>> What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) >>> >>> But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. >>> >>> My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! >>> >>> It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. >> >> The Telnet Internet Standard is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc854.txt. >> >> There's an enormous number of RFCs with "Telnet" in their titles. Mostly >> (Status: UNKNOWN). >> >> Brian >> >> >>> >>> Take care, >>> John >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: >>>> >>>> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >>>>> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, >>>> >>>> >>>> oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... >>>> >>>> d/ >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> Dave Crocker >>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>>> bbiw.net >>> >>> >>> _______ >>> 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 Mon Aug 22 16:19:20 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 19:19:20 -0400 Subject: [ih] TELNET (was what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <729ff0ff-86bf-6bc2-249d-23d90fde5b73@gmail.com> References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> <3727335E-2D17-4E01-A798-B99C079781EC@comcast.net> <729ff0ff-86bf-6bc2-249d-23d90fde5b73@gmail.com> Message-ID: Ahhh... problem solved! I just went back and looked at MIL-STD-1782 (10 May 1984) - which, in section 3.2 (Definitions of Acronyms), lists "TELNET - Telecommunications Network." (I keep a copy of the old DDN Protocol Handbook on my shelf, for sentiment's sake.) Now there were earlier RFCs that go pretty far back (e.g., RFC 137, 30 April 1971 is the earliest I could find) - with no reference to an acronym expansion - but we all know the military's fondness for acronyms, and if the MIL-STD says it means "Telecommunications Network," who are we to argue. :-) Cheers, Miles On 8/22/16 6:20 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > On 23/08/2016 08:48, John Day wrote: >> That is the later version to run over TCP. RFC 495 is the original new Telnet. It is only of historical significance but it should be there. > If you have a copy of the attachments, I suggest communicating with the > RFC Series Editor, Heather Flanagan . She's very much > attuned to the archival issue. Whether she has a policy on attachments is > another story. > > (I have a project on hold to persuade people to reclassify most Status: UNKNOWN > RFCs as Status: HISTORIC, but that's another story.) > > Brian > >> John >> >>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 16:28, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>> >>> On 23/08/2016 01:31, John Day wrote: >>>> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. >>>> >>>> What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) >>>> >>>> But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. >>>> >>>> My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! >>>> >>>> It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. >>> The Telnet Internet Standard is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc854.txt. >>> >>> There's an enormous number of RFCs with "Telnet" in their titles. Mostly >>> (Status: UNKNOWN). >>> >>> Brian >>> >>> >>>> Take care, >>>> John >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >>>>>> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, >>>>> >>>>> oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... >>>>> >>>>> d/ >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> >>>>> Dave Crocker >>>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>>>> bbiw.net >>>> >>>> _______ >>>> 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. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Mon Aug 22 16:53:31 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 19:53:31 -0400 Subject: [ih] TELNET (was what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: References: <20160821165749.26413.qmail@ary.lan> <20160821234717.GY1577@mip.aaaaa.org> <57BA7167.6030405@redbarn.org> <0b41ee4e-ce59-d8fe-8064-50eb30d9e9cd@dcrocker.net> <687803DF-2FCD-4CAD-A1C9-E173D8BEF902@comcast.net> <35bdf294-1823-7e4c-85d2-ddb0541c0042@gmail.com> <3727335E-2D17-4E01-A798-B99C079781EC@comcast.net> <729ff0ff-86bf-6bc2-249d-23d90fde5b73@gmail.com> Message-ID: <995F5544-B9D8-4AC2-9454-2B26B7A199D1@comcast.net> No, I concur with Alex (and Dave). It is much more likely to be Teletype Network. I had seen Telecommunications Network too, but as Dave said earlier it always seemed to cumbersome. More like something made up to fit. 1984 is pretty late. It is doubtful that anyone involved in writing that Mil-std was around in 1971 or 72. It was a very small and informal group and from looking at the those early RFCs going back to RFC94, it is clear that the term TELNET was already so well used that there was no need to expand the acronym. Take care, John > On Aug 22, 2016, at 19:19, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Ahhh... problem solved! > > I just went back and looked at MIL-STD-1782 (10 May 1984) - which, in > section 3.2 (Definitions of Acronyms), lists "TELNET - > Telecommunications Network." (I keep a copy of the old DDN Protocol > Handbook on my shelf, for sentiment's sake.) > > Now there were earlier RFCs that go pretty far back (e.g., RFC 137, 30 > April 1971 is the earliest I could find) - with no reference to an > acronym expansion - but we all know the military's fondness for > acronyms, and if the MIL-STD says it means "Telecommunications Network," > who are we to argue. :-) > > Cheers, > > Miles > > > On 8/22/16 6:20 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> On 23/08/2016 08:48, John Day wrote: >>> That is the later version to run over TCP. RFC 495 is the original new Telnet. It is only of historical significance but it should be there. >> If you have a copy of the attachments, I suggest communicating with the >> RFC Series Editor, Heather Flanagan . She's very much >> attuned to the archival issue. Whether she has a policy on attachments is >> another story. >> >> (I have a project on hold to persuade people to reclassify most Status: UNKNOWN >> RFCs as Status: HISTORIC, but that's another story.) >> >> Brian >> >>> John >>> >>>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 16:28, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>>> >>>> On 23/08/2016 01:31, John Day wrote: >>>>> I always heard that Telnet stood for "telecommunications network.? I never heard the word ?telephone? associated with it. >>>>> >>>>> What is really funny is that starting with RFC 97, I don?t see a single TELNET spec that expands the acronym! ;-) >>>>> >>>>> But a concern: RFC495 purports to be a TELNET spec. However, the download is Alex McKenzie?s transmittal letter that mentions two attachments. I don?t find the attachments associated with it. >>>>> >>>>> My 1978 ARPANET Protocol Handbook has the Telnet spec labeled RFC542, which does appear to be Alex?s spec from the 1973 meeting. However, RFC542 is the FTP spec. Which is also labeled 542 in the Handbook! >>>>> >>>>> It does not appear to be possible to get the actual Telnet spec from the RFC Pages. Someone needs to fix this. >>>> The Telnet Internet Standard is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc854.txt. >>>> >>>> There's an enormous number of RFCs with "Telnet" in their titles. Mostly >>>> (Status: UNKNOWN). >>>> >>>> Brian >>>> >>>> >>>>> Take care, >>>>> John >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 08:52, Dave Crocker wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> On 8/22/2016 3:32 AM, John Day wrote: >>>>>>> As far as the telephone analogy, the last thing we were trying to do was to be like the telephone system, >>>>>> >>>>>> oh. so 'telnet' did stand for 'telephone network'... >>>>>> >>>>>> d/ >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> >>>>>> Dave Crocker >>>>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>>>>> bbiw.net >>>>> >>>>> _______ >>>>> 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. > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > _______ > 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 johnl at iecc.com Mon Aug 22 18:14:24 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 01:14:24 -0000 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20160823011424.30560.qmail@ary.lan> >The Multics file system supported multiple names per node, with >primitives for adding and deleting names, asking about all of the >names at a particular node, etc. Those names were true synonyms: >anything that could be done with one could be done with any of the >others. Unix, of course, does not -- the only way to simulate a >synonym is with links. Unix systems have hard links, which are fully synonymous names for the same file, and soft links which are like CNAMEs. You can add and delete links easily enough and ask how many names a file has, but there is no way to find all the links for a file short of enumerating all the names in the file system. Early Unix only had hard links. Soft links were I think a Berkeleyism added with the motivation being that all the hard links to a file had to be on the same file system, and in those days file systems were pretty small. > However, we ended up with the >same "one name per node" in the DNS. I have no information whether >that was following the Unix model or independent discovery of the >simplicity-related reasons. It wasn't the Unix model, but there were certainly plenty of operating systems that worked that way. I'd guess TENEX was the likely culprit. R's, John From lyndon at orthanc.ca Mon Aug 22 20:25:59 2016 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 20:25:59 -0700 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <20160823011424.30560.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160823011424.30560.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <53A779C9-B7B9-4F7E-A12D-B5C1FAFBE788@orthanc.ca> > On Aug 22, 2016, at 6:14 PM, John Levine wrote: > > Unix systems have hard links, which are fully synonymous names for the > same file That's where the metaphor falls apart. English language metaphors don't vanish when the words they direct towards vanish. Sometimes, they take over for the abandoned target. Symlinks are aliases, perhaps. But they aren't synonyms. Not in the context of spoken language. --lyndon -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 07:44:03 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 10:44:03 -0400 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <53A779C9-B7B9-4F7E-A12D-B5C1FAFBE788@orthanc.ca> References: <20160823011424.30560.qmail@ary.lan> <53A779C9-B7B9-4F7E-A12D-B5C1FAFBE788@orthanc.ca> Message-ID: >> Unix systems have hard links, which are fully synonymous names for the >> same file > > That's where the metaphor falls apart. English language metaphors don't > vanish when the words they direct towards vanish. Sometimes, they take > over for the abandoned target. Unix hard links are just pointers to the inode that decribes the file, and all hard links to a particular inode are equivalent. For a long time, this was the only way to rename a Unix file: link(oldname, newname); unlink(oldname) (Now you can also do an atomic rename() if you're worried about race conditions, but it does the same thing with internal locking.) > Symlinks are aliases, perhaps. But they aren't synonyms. Not in the context of spoken language. Right, those are soft links which have the same issues CNAMEs do. They're not hard links, Symlinks were introduced in 4.2BSD in 1983, CNAMEs in RFC 973 in 1986. I don't know whether ISI was a Unix shop and so whether symlinks were an influence. Now that I think about it, the analogy between hard and soft links on Unix and A and CNAME records in the DNS is pretty obvious. Regards, John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 08:41:10 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 15:41:10 -0000 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <9685e05d-9268-f10e-a99b-a1e56ac5ca7f@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> >I've long been strongly advocating against a 'default deny' model, but >hadn't latched on to a sufficiently simple and clear way to explain it. >I therefore greatly appreciate the girl scout example. It's not bad, but if I were sufficiently wedged, I'd say "don't be silly, the girl scouts show up in their little green uniforms and the guy at the gate will always let them through." I've often pointed out that the main difference between e-mail and all of the other messaging systems that have tried to replace it is that you can use e-mail for first contact, and that's important. About half of my income is from people who wrote to me looking for someone who does what I do. I suppose Facebook now has a sufficiently large critical mass that some people think that anyone who wants to contact them will have a FB account. Who knows, they might be right. R's, John From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Tue Aug 23 08:54:16 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 08:54:16 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/23/2016 8:41 AM, John Levine wrote: > It's not bad, but if I were sufficiently wedged, I'd say "don't be > silly, the girl scouts show up in their little green uniforms and > the guy at the gate will always let them through." We always need to make sure that the perfect isn't the enemy... If a big guy with a beard and cigar shows up wearing a girl scout uniform, he's not going to be let through... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 09:14:17 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 12:14:17 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: > We always need to make sure that the perfect isn't the enemy... > > If a big guy with a beard and cigar shows up wearing a girl scout uniform, > he's not going to be let through... Hm, that may explain why my troop always had poor sales numbers. In any event, as I hardly need tell you, one of the most persistent Well Known Bad Ideas (WKBI) is to stop spam with a walled garden, where the people inside are all nice and the spammers are all locked out. Now you've replaced the spam problem with the introduction problem, who to let in, which is even more intractable than the spam problem. It soon leads to the observation that any community large enough to be interesting is large enough to have people who you don't want. Regards, John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Tue Aug 23 09:16:50 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 09:16:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/23/2016 9:14 AM, John R. Levine wrote: > In any event, as I hardly need tell you, one of the most persistent Well > Known Bad Ideas (WKBI) is to stop spam with a walled garden, where the > people inside are all nice and the spammers are all locked out. Alas, folks might find it amusing to watch the IETF's STIR working group's current efforts attempting to invent anti-abuse mechanisms for telephony, with no attention to the 1-2 decades of email anti-abuse experience. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From agmalis at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 09:57:15 2016 From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 12:57:15 -0400 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 12:14 PM, John R. Levine wrote: > Now you've replaced the spam problem with the introduction problem, who to > let in, which is even more intractable than the spam problem. It soon > leads to the observation that any community large enough to be interesting > is large enough to have people who you don't want. > This reminds me of Groucho?s old line that he wouldn?t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. Cheers, Andy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Tue Aug 23 10:37:36 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 10:37:36 -0700 Subject: [ih] what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <20160823154110.32578.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <20eb1ee4-725b-54a6-0466-e90d59bc27c7@dcrocker.net> On 8/23/2016 9:14 AM, John R. Levine wrote: >> We always need to make sure that the perfect isn't the enemy... >> > >> > If a big guy with a beard and cigar shows up wearing a girl scout uniform, >> > he's not going to be let through... > Hm, that may explain why my troop always had poor sales numbers. I didn't know you chewed cigars. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 13:05:03 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 20:05:03 -0000 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed Message-ID: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Every time I send a message to this list, some bot sends in a fake unsubscribe and I get a confirmation message which I then ignore. Presumably the bot is one of the subscribers to the list. Anyone ever try and figure out who it is ? From paul at redbarn.org Tue Aug 23 13:30:07 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 13:30:07 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57BCB24F.8040704@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: > Every time I send a message to this list, some bot sends in a fake > unsubscribe and I get a confirmation message which I then ignore. i guess i'm glad it's not just be they want to falsely unsubscribe :-). > > Presumably the bot is one of the subscribers to the list. Anyone ever > try and figure out who it is ? joe touch sent e-mail about this yesterday. apparently the syslogs aren't useful on the current mailman server, so investigation is not presently possible. -- P Vixie From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Tue Aug 23 13:45:11 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 16:45:11 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <3ba59c90-ea33-6ffd-9fcd-8a1fa8bcdca7@meetinghouse.net> For what it's worth, I've received a bunch of those as well. On 8/23/16 4:05 PM, John Levine wrote: > Every time I send a message to this list, some bot sends in a fake > unsubscribe and I get a confirmation message which I then ignore. > > Presumably the bot is one of the subscribers to the list. Anyone ever > try and figure out who it is ? > > _______ > 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 agmalis at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 14:45:13 2016 From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:45:13 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <3ba59c90-ea33-6ffd-9fcd-8a1fa8bcdca7@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <3ba59c90-ea33-6ffd-9fcd-8a1fa8bcdca7@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: Funny, I?ve been sending to the list (as like right now) and haven?t gotten any. Cheers, Andy On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 4:45 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > For what it's worth, I've received a bunch of those as well. > > > On 8/23/16 4:05 PM, John Levine wrote: > > Every time I send a message to this list, some bot sends in a fake > > unsubscribe and I get a confirmation message which I then ignore. > > > > Presumably the bot is one of the subscribers to the list. Anyone ever > > try and figure out who it is ? > > > > _______ > > 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 > > _______ > 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: From scott.brim at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 15:02:53 2016 From: scott.brim at gmail.com (Scott Brim) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 18:02:53 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 15:13:25 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 23 Aug 2016 18:13:25 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: > I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to the guilty party. Regards, John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly From alan at clegg.com Tue Aug 23 15:35:47 2016 From: alan at clegg.com (Alan Clegg) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 18:35:47 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. > > The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged > addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to > the guilty party. If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 842 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Tue Aug 23 16:15:03 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 19:15:03 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: > On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >> the guilty party. Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the headers. > If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... > Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add an actual mailbox. Who's listmaster for ih anyway? Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From touch at isi.edu Tue Aug 23 17:43:44 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 17:43:44 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> Hi, all, On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: > >> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>> the guilty party. > Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the > headers. The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >> > Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add > an actual mailbox. > > Who's listmaster for ih anyway? I am. I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at least the stream of unsubs should calm down. Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. Joe From larrysheldon at cox.net Tue Aug 23 20:03:58 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:03:58 -0500 Subject: [ih] Unix vs. Multics (was - Re: what is and isn't the web, was Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol) In-Reply-To: <53A779C9-B7B9-4F7E-A12D-B5C1FAFBE788@orthanc.ca> References: <20160823011424.30560.qmail@ary.lan> <53A779C9-B7B9-4F7E-A12D-B5C1FAFBE788@orthanc.ca> Message-ID: On 8/22/2016 22:25, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: > >> On Aug 22, 2016, at 6:14 PM, John Levine wrote: >> >> Unix systems have hard links, which are fully synonymous names for >> the same file > > That's where the metaphor falls apart. English language metaphors don't vanish when the words they direct towards vanish. Sometimes, they take over for the abandoned target. > > Symlinks are aliases, perhaps. But they aren't synonyms. Not in the context of spoken language. I was taught (by some long forgotten somebody) there were [hard] "links" and "symbolic lings". -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From larrysheldon at cox.net Tue Aug 23 20:12:47 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:12:47 -0500 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <720fc92c-f5d3-ed31-b683-d710c16a27c1@cox.net> On 8/23/2016 15:05, John Levine wrote: > Every time I send a message to this list, some bot sends in a fake > unsubscribe and I get a confirmation message which I then ignore. > > Presumably the bot is one of the subscribers to the list. Anyone ever > try and figure out who it is ? Just an off-the-wall-guess: It is somebody who uses Thunderbird?? (or some such) and hits "spam" (instead of "delete" or "unsubscribe) and answers "yes" to the question "Would you like to unsubscribe?". And I'll quit there and spare y'all the "I-wish-Mozilla-stop-improving-products-that-used-to-work rant. -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From johnl at iecc.com Tue Aug 23 20:36:38 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 24 Aug 2016 03:36:38 -0000 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <720fc92c-f5d3-ed31-b683-d710c16a27c1@cox.net> Message-ID: <20160824033638.34277.qmail@ary.lan> >It is somebody who uses Thunderbird?? (or some such) and hits "spam" >(instead of "delete" or "unsubscribe) and answers "yes" to the question >"Would you like to unsubscribe?". Unless T'bird is even buggier than it used to be, that would send a message trying to unsubscribe that recipient, not the person who sent the message. Given how long this has been going on, I assume it is a bad joke that has now become malicious. R's, John From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Tue Aug 23 21:49:49 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:49:49 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> Message-ID: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe request, this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came from: from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id ED4591BF7CB for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2016 03:11:49 +0200 (CEST) So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying to unsubscribe people from internet-history? Miles Fidelman > The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your > original message. > > - Results: > Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for > approval. > > - Done. > > > ForwardedMessage.eml > > Subject: > unsubscribe > From: > mfidelman at meetinghouse.net > Date: > 8/23/16, 9:11 PM > > To: > internet-history-request at postel.org > On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: > Hi, all, > > > On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >> >>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>> the guilty party. >> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >> headers. > The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these > aren't forged; they're unsub requests. > >>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>> >> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >> an actual mailbox. >> >> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? > I am. > > I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user > unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track > those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at > least the stream of unsubs should calm down. > > Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. > > Joe -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From larrysheldon at cox.net Tue Aug 23 21:50:26 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 23:50:26 -0500 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <20160824033638.34277.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160824033638.34277.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <4e61952c-839f-a8b1-6e35-aacd58f079da@cox.net> On 8/23/2016 22:36, John Levine wrote: >> It is somebody who uses Thunderbird?? (or some such) and hits "spam" >> (instead of "delete" or "unsubscribe) and answers "yes" to the question >> "Would you like to unsubscribe?". > > Unless T'bird is even buggier than it used to be, that would send > a message trying to unsubscribe that recipient, not the person > who sent the message. > > Given how long this has been going on, I assume it is a bad joke > that has now become malicious. I am pretty sure that for quite awhile, if you say "yes", it tries to unsubcribe you. -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Tue Aug 23 22:03:28 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 01:03:28 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: Come to think of it, perhaps you might check the subscriber list for anything that looks like: smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com [92.103.69.35] and remove it! Now, if some subscriber is automatically vectoring messages through some kind of unsubscription service, finding that subscriber might be just a tad harder. Unfortunately, there is no web site at vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (well, it comes back as 403 Forbidden) The whois shows this as owned by some French company that offers yet another email security program - one that obviously makes things worse for the world. Perhaps you might drop them an email - see if anyone responds. Seems like their system is attacking the list. Domain Name: vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com Registry Domain ID: 1686009255_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.ovh.com Registrar URL: http://www.ovh.com Updated Date: 2015-10-28T09:45:30.0Z Creation Date: 2011-11-07T13:57:12.0Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-11-07T13:57:12.0Z Registrar: OVH, SAS Registrar IANA ID: 433 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse at ovh.net Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +33.972101007 Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited Registry Registrant ID: Registrant Name: Vade Retro Technology Registrant Organization: Vade Retro Technology Registrant Street: avenue antoine pinay Registrant City: hem Registrant State/Province: Registrant Postal Code: 59510 Registrant Country: FR Registrant Phone: +33.328328328 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: +33.328328329 Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: uku0shwwfp3xze6a91lu at l.o-w-o.info Registry Admin ID: Admin Name: Vade Retro Technology Admin Organization: Vade Retro Technology Admin Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay Admin City: hem Admin State/Province: Admin Postal Code: 59510 Admin Country: FR Admin Phone: +33.328328888 Admin Phone Ext: Admin Fax: +33.328328329 Admin Fax Ext: Admin Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info Registry Tech ID: Tech Name: Vade Retro Technology Tech Organization: Vade Retro Technology Tech Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay Tech City: hem Tech State/Province: Tech Postal Code: 59510 Tech Country: FR Tech Phone: +33.328328888 Tech Phone Ext: Tech Fax: +33.328328329 Tech Fax Ext: Tech Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info Name Server: dns1.goto.fr Name Server: dns2.goto.fr DNSSEC: unsigned On 8/24/16 12:49 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 > > And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe request, > this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. > > And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be > forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came from: > > from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by > smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id > ED4591BF7CB for ; Wed, 24 Aug > 2016 03:11:49 +0200 (CEST) > > So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying > to unsubscribe people from internet-history? > > Miles Fidelman > > >> The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your >> original message. >> >> - Results: >> Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for >> approval. >> >> - Done. >> >> >> ForwardedMessage.eml >> >> Subject: >> unsubscribe >> From: >> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net >> Date: >> 8/23/16, 9:11 PM >> >> To: >> internet-history-request at postel.org >> > > > On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: >> Hi, all, >> >> >> On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >>> >>>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>>> the guilty party. >>> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >>> headers. >> The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these >> aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >> >>>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>>> >>> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >>> an actual mailbox. >>> >>> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? >> I am. >> >> I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user >> unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track >> those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at >> least the stream of unsubs should calm down. >> >> Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. >> >> Joe > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From touch at isi.edu Tue Aug 23 22:07:13 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:07:13 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: Hi, Mark, et al., First, please forward me that email with headers intact. Can you also send me the headers you receive for this message, to use as comparison? FYI, the past instances of this issue all had headers indicating the mail came from ISI, i.e., they looked exactly as they should if they were generated by the Mailman system itself. The header portion below is listed as coming from a 10-net address, which shouldn't even be crossing the Internet, so I'm not yet sure what it's evidence of. Joe On 8/23/2016 9:49 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 > > And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe request, > this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. > > And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be > forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came from: > > from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by > smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id > ED4591BF7CB for ; Wed, 24 Aug > 2016 03:11:49 +0200 (CEST) > > So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying > to unsubscribe people from internet-history? > > Miles Fidelman > > >> The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your >> original message. >> >> - Results: >> Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for >> approval. >> >> - Done. >> >> >> ForwardedMessage.eml >> >> Subject: >> unsubscribe >> From: >> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net >> Date: >> 8/23/16, 9:11 PM >> >> To: >> internet-history-request at postel.org >> > > > On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: >> Hi, all, >> >> >> On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >>> >>>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>>> the guilty party. >>> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >>> headers. >> The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these >> aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >> >>>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>>> >>> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >>> an actual mailbox. >>> >>> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? >> I am. >> >> I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user >> unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track >> those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at >> least the stream of unsubs should calm down. >> >> Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. >> >> Joe > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From touch at isi.edu Tue Aug 23 22:10:49 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:10:49 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: FYI: On 8/23/2016 10:03 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Come to think of it, perhaps you might check the subscriber list for > anything that looks like: > > smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com [92.103.69.35] > I already checked and there is no such member (nobody with even a portion of that name). > and remove it! > > Now, if some subscriber is automatically vectoring messages through > some kind of unsubscription service, finding that subscriber might be > just a tad harder. > > Unfortunately, there is no web site at vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com > (well, it comes back as 403 Forbidden) > Try this: https://www.vade-retro.com/en/technology/safe_unsubscribe.asp If we have evidence from at least one other subscriber that this organization is responsible, I will contact them to see what's up. (can anyone else who is receiving these messages send the entire message, headers intact please?) Thanks, Joe > The whois shows this as owned by some French company that offers yet > another email security program - one that obviously makes things worse > for the world. Perhaps you might drop them an email - see if anyone > responds. Seems like their system is attacking the list. > > Domain Name: vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com > Registry Domain ID: 1686009255_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN > Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.ovh.com > Registrar URL: http://www.ovh.com > Updated Date: 2015-10-28T09:45:30.0Z > Creation Date: 2011-11-07T13:57:12.0Z > Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-11-07T13:57:12.0Z > Registrar: OVH, SAS > Registrar IANA ID: 433 > Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse at ovh.net > Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +33.972101007 > Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited > https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited > Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited > https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited > Registry Registrant ID: > Registrant Name: Vade Retro Technology > Registrant Organization: Vade Retro Technology > Registrant Street: avenue antoine pinay > Registrant City: hem > Registrant State/Province: > Registrant Postal Code: 59510 > Registrant Country: FR > Registrant Phone: +33.328328328 > Registrant Phone Ext: > Registrant Fax: +33.328328329 > Registrant Fax Ext: > Registrant Email: uku0shwwfp3xze6a91lu at l.o-w-o.info > Registry Admin ID: > Admin Name: Vade Retro Technology > Admin Organization: Vade Retro Technology > Admin Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay > Admin City: hem > Admin State/Province: > Admin Postal Code: 59510 > Admin Country: FR > Admin Phone: +33.328328888 > Admin Phone Ext: > Admin Fax: +33.328328329 > Admin Fax Ext: > Admin Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info > Registry Tech ID: > Tech Name: Vade Retro Technology > Tech Organization: Vade Retro Technology > Tech Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay > Tech City: hem > Tech State/Province: > Tech Postal Code: 59510 > Tech Country: FR > Tech Phone: +33.328328888 > Tech Phone Ext: > Tech Fax: +33.328328329 > Tech Fax Ext: > Tech Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info > Name Server: dns1.goto.fr > Name Server: dns2.goto.fr > DNSSEC: unsigned > > > > On 8/24/16 12:49 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> >> Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 >> >> And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe >> request, this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. >> >> And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be >> forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came >> from: >> >> from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by >> smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id >> ED4591BF7CB for ; Wed, 24 Aug >> 2016 03:11:49 +0200 (CEST) >> >> So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it >> trying to unsubscribe people from internet-history? >> >> Miles Fidelman >> >> >>> The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your >>> original message. >>> >>> - Results: >>> Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for >>> approval. >>> >>> - Done. >>> >>> >>> ForwardedMessage.eml >>> >>> Subject: >>> unsubscribe >>> From: >>> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net >>> Date: >>> 8/23/16, 9:11 PM >>> >>> To: >>> internet-history-request at postel.org >>> >> >> >> On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: >>> Hi, all, >>> >>> >>> On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>>> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>>>> the guilty party. >>>> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >>>> headers. >>> The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these >>> aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >>> >>>>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>>>> >>>> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >>>> an actual mailbox. >>>> >>>> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? >>> I am. >>> >>> I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user >>> unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track >>> those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at >>> least the stream of unsubs should calm down. >>> >>> Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. >>> >>> Joe >> >> -- >> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >> In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From randy at psg.com Tue Aug 23 22:26:15 2016 From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 14:26:15 +0900 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: boys and girls (there are girls here, please), posts to this list have automagically received unsubscribe confirmations for years. get over it, or send donations to the ISI sysadmins. randy From larrysheldon at cox.net Tue Aug 23 22:31:37 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:31:37 -0500 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: On 8/23/2016 23:49, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 > > And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe request, > this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. > > And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be > forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came from: > > from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by > smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id ED4591BF7CB > for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2016 03:11:49 > +0200 (CEST) > > So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying http://support2.constantcontact.com/articles/FAQ/1173 > to unsubscribe people from internet-history? > > Miles Fidelman > > >> The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your >> original message. >> >> - Results: >> Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for >> approval. >> >> - Done. >> >> >> ForwardedMessage.eml >> >> Subject: >> unsubscribe >> From: >> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net >> Date: >> 8/23/16, 9:11 PM >> >> To: >> internet-history-request at postel.org >> > > > On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: >> Hi, all, >> >> >> On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >>> >>>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>>> the guilty party. >>> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >>> headers. >> The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these >> aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >> >>>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>>> >>> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >>> an actual mailbox. >>> >>> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? >> I am. >> >> I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user >> unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track >> those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at >> least the stream of unsubs should calm down. >> >> Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. >> >> Joe > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > > > > _______ > 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. > -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From touch at isi.edu Tue Aug 23 22:32:50 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:32:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <618d4063-6daa-c448-178d-015549029a6e@isi.edu> FYI, in case anyone wants to know: vade retro is latin for "step back, Satan". it's a phrase used in exorcisms. The company below appears to be an automated system to unsubscribe from everything it receives. We're seeing that now because I was now able to reconfigure the system to figure this out. Here's what seems to be happening: Someone on our list signed up for this service, and now every list post turns into an unsubscribe request. I'll get a copy of the mailing list and try to debug this over the next few days. I think I now know how to figure out which address is causing the problem. When/if I find out more, I'll post. Joe On 8/23/2016 10:10 PM, Joe Touch wrote: > > FYI: > > > On 8/23/2016 10:03 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> >> Come to think of it, perhaps you might check the subscriber list for >> anything that looks like: >> >> smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com [92.103.69.35] >> > > I already checked and there is no such member (nobody with even a > portion of that name). > >> and remove it! >> >> Now, if some subscriber is automatically vectoring messages through >> some kind of unsubscription service, finding that subscriber might be >> just a tad harder. >> >> Unfortunately, there is no web site at vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com >> (well, it comes back as 403 Forbidden) >> > > Try this: > https://www.vade-retro.com/en/technology/safe_unsubscribe.asp > > If we have evidence from at least one other subscriber that this > organization is responsible, I will contact them to see what's up. > > (can anyone else who is receiving these messages send the entire > message, headers intact please?) > > Thanks, > > Joe > >> The whois shows this as owned by some French company that offers yet >> another email security program - one that obviously makes things >> worse for the world. Perhaps you might drop them an email - see if >> anyone responds. Seems like their system is attacking the list. >> >> Domain Name: vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com >> Registry Domain ID: 1686009255_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN >> Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.ovh.com >> Registrar URL: http://www.ovh.com >> Updated Date: 2015-10-28T09:45:30.0Z >> Creation Date: 2011-11-07T13:57:12.0Z >> Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-11-07T13:57:12.0Z >> Registrar: OVH, SAS >> Registrar IANA ID: 433 >> Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse at ovh.net >> Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +33.972101007 >> Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited >> https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited >> Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited >> https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited >> Registry Registrant ID: >> Registrant Name: Vade Retro Technology >> Registrant Organization: Vade Retro Technology >> Registrant Street: avenue antoine pinay >> Registrant City: hem >> Registrant State/Province: >> Registrant Postal Code: 59510 >> Registrant Country: FR >> Registrant Phone: +33.328328328 >> Registrant Phone Ext: >> Registrant Fax: +33.328328329 >> Registrant Fax Ext: >> Registrant Email: uku0shwwfp3xze6a91lu at l.o-w-o.info >> Registry Admin ID: >> Admin Name: Vade Retro Technology >> Admin Organization: Vade Retro Technology >> Admin Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay >> Admin City: hem >> Admin State/Province: >> Admin Postal Code: 59510 >> Admin Country: FR >> Admin Phone: +33.328328888 >> Admin Phone Ext: >> Admin Fax: +33.328328329 >> Admin Fax Ext: >> Admin Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info >> Registry Tech ID: >> Tech Name: Vade Retro Technology >> Tech Organization: Vade Retro Technology >> Tech Street: 3 avenue antoine pinay >> Tech City: hem >> Tech State/Province: >> Tech Postal Code: 59510 >> Tech Country: FR >> Tech Phone: +33.328328888 >> Tech Phone Ext: >> Tech Fax: +33.328328329 >> Tech Fax Ext: >> Tech Email: sl6mw8yiwfnf3i13lzte at f.o-w-o.info >> Name Server: dns1.goto.fr >> Name Server: dns2.goto.fr >> DNSSEC: unsigned >> >> >> >> On 8/24/16 12:49 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> >>> Well, just got another one, timestamped 9:12 >>> >>> And where the earlier ones asked me to confirm my unsubscribe >>> request, this one says that it's forwarded it to the admin. >>> >>> And no, I did not send the original request - the From: line must be >>> forged. But... looking at the headers, it looks like it REALLY came >>> from: >>> >>> from [unsubscribe] (unknown [10.10.31.123]) by >>> smtp01.vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com (Postfix) with SMTP id >>> ED4591BF7CB for ; Wed, 24 Aug >>> 2016 03:11:49 +0200 (CEST) >>> >>> So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it >>> trying to unsubscribe people from internet-history? >>> >>> Miles Fidelman >>> >>> >>>> The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your >>>> original message. >>>> >>>> - Results: >>>> Your unsubscription request has been forwarded to the list administrator for >>>> approval. >>>> >>>> - Done. >>>> >>>> >>>> ForwardedMessage.eml >>>> >>>> Subject: >>>> unsubscribe >>>> From: >>>> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net >>>> Date: >>>> 8/23/16, 9:11 PM >>>> >>>> To: >>>> internet-history-request at postel.org >>>> >>> >>> >>> On 8/23/16 8:43 PM, Joe Touch wrote: >>>> Hi, all, >>>> >>>> >>>> On 8/23/2016 4:15 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>>>> On 8/23/16 6:35 PM, Alan Clegg wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> On 8/23/16 6:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>>>>>>> I get them as well. I've seen them on other lists too. >>>>>>> The usual approach is to send mail to parts of the list with tagged >>>>>>> addresses to see which ones trigger the unsub-bot, and narrow it down to >>>>>>> the guilty party. >>>>> Or to just save incoming messages to -request, so one can look at the >>>>> headers. >>>> The header indicates it's coming from the mailman system. I.e., these >>>> aren't forged; they're unsub requests. >>>> >>>>>> If only there were programmers around to make this happen.... >>>>>> >>>>> Not even - just a sysadmin who can update the alias for -request, to add >>>>> an actual mailbox. >>>>> >>>>> Who's listmaster for ih anyway? >>>> I am. >>>> >>>> I did some digging on this issue and the suggestion is to disable user >>>> unsubscribe completely (i.e., requires admin OK). Since I don't track >>>> those mails, it may be more difficult to get off the list now, but at >>>> least the stream of unsubs should calm down. >>>> >>>> Please let me know if you see further unsub requests. >>>> >>>> Joe >>> >>> -- >>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >>> In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra >> >> -- >> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >> In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From touch at isi.edu Tue Aug 23 22:38:50 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2016 22:38:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <1c9bacda-cc2f-71a6-6bb4-8ca2215e51ae@isi.edu> This issue was first reported only about 1 year ago (July 2015). We now have extended information on the event and are working to track it down, as I just posted. FYI. Joe On 8/23/2016 10:26 PM, Randy Bush wrote: > boys and girls (there are girls here, please), posts to this list have > automagically received unsubscribe confirmations for years. get over > it, or send donations to the ISI sysadmins. > > randy > _______ > 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 larrysheldon at cox.net Tue Aug 23 22:59:11 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:59:11 -0500 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <036786f1-04dc-836e-c43e-87b85bf58f81@cox.net> On 8/24/2016 00:07, Joe Touch wrote: > The header portion below is listed as coming from a 10-net address, > which shouldn't even be crossing the Internet, so I'm not yet sure what > it's evidence of. I think that if you look at the copy of this that I sent directly to you, you might see that it started on a 192.168.1.7 address (my home network), the bounced around (depending on the weather) some 68.x.y.z and 10.x.y.z addresses (Cox's internal stuff) and finally, out in the clear from addresses that depend of which data center it escaped from. -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Wed Aug 24 04:58:22 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 07:58:22 -0400 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <1c9bacda-cc2f-71a6-6bb4-8ca2215e51ae@isi.edu> References: <20160823200503.33293.qmail@ary.lan> <1ca55613-93e3-7fc4-b49a-c968f97fc05c@meetinghouse.net> <93d26d00-1557-e1f2-ee3d-0a3c9dbd1c23@isi.edu> <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> <1c9bacda-cc2f-71a6-6bb4-8ca2215e51ae@isi.edu> Message-ID: Joe, Thanks for jumping on this! Miles On 8/24/16 1:38 AM, Joe Touch wrote: > This issue was first reported only about 1 year ago (July 2015). > > We now have extended information on the event and are working to track > it down, as I just posted. > > FYI. > > Joe > > > On 8/23/2016 10:26 PM, Randy Bush wrote: >> boys and girls (there are girls here, please), posts to this list have >> automagically received unsubscribe confirmations for years. get over >> it, or send donations to the ISI sysadmins. >> >> randy >> _______ >> 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 johnl at iecc.com Wed Aug 24 11:34:15 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 24 Aug 2016 18:34:15 -0000 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <51946961-f354-697a-a833-564b74d63f75@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <20160824183415.36319.qmail@ary.lan> >So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying >to unsubscribe people from internet-history? I know people at Vade Retro. They're a legit service that manages unsubscribes for bulk mailers like Constant Contact. I can think of a variety of ways that IH mail might be getting to them, none of them pretty. If Joe has problems tracking down the offender, I could probably send them some headers with timestamps and IDs and they could look at their logs to see where they're coming from. R's, John From touch at isi.edu Wed Aug 24 17:44:18 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 17:44:18 -0700 Subject: [ih] No, really, I want to stay subscribed In-Reply-To: <20160824183415.36319.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160824183415.36319.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <4aef9485-8ebd-e1d7-3967-1585972c2cd0@isi.edu> On 8/24/2016 11:34 AM, John Levine wrote: >> So who the hell is vaderetro-safeunsubscribe.com, and why is it trying >> to unsubscribe people from internet-history? > > I know people at Vade Retro. They're a legit service that manages > unsubscribes for bulk mailers like Constant Contact. Any chance of getting them to contact me? I pinged them via their online form yesterday, but no response. > I can think of a variety of ways that IH mail might be getting to > them, none of them pretty. AFAICT, someone on this list subscribed to their service. > If Joe has problems tracking down the offender, I could probably > send them some headers with timestamps and IDs and they could look > at their logs to see where they're coming from. FYI, the current plan is to send direct mail to each person on this list (once I get that list of emails from our comp center - they're a bit busy with some restructuring) and see whose mail generates an unsub for me. Joe From touch at isi.edu Thu Aug 25 16:11:07 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2016 16:11:07 -0700 Subject: [ih] just a check Message-ID: <7b3e785e-f95c-5557-ca29-6a57969d298b@isi.edu> please do not respond - this is a test message. Joe From touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 10:53:22 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:53:22 -0700 Subject: [ih] another check Message-ID: Please ignore. From touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 11:05:48 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 11:05:48 -0700 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests Message-ID: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Hi, all, The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the "Apparently-To:" address. The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day and seen no notices. A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber directly. If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. Joe (list admin) From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 26 12:03:26 2016 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 19:03:26 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> References: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Message-ID: <1481817577.421922.1472238206885@mail.yahoo.com> Joe, A big thank you! AM From: Joe Touch To: internet history Sent: Friday, August 26, 2016 2:05 PM Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests Hi, all, The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the "Apparently-To:" address. The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day and seen no notices. A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber directly. If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. Joe (list admin) _______ 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: From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Fri Aug 26 13:17:50 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 08:17:50 +1200 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> References: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Message-ID: Apparently, "Apparently-To:" SHOULD NOT be used [RFC5321]. It isn't present in list mail that reaches me, so it must have been added downstream for that particular subscriber. http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/other/Sendmail_3rd/1565928393_ch25-77071.html Regards Brian On 27/08/2016 06:05, Joe Touch wrote: > Hi, all, > > The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a > commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade > Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing > unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the > "Apparently-To:" address. > > The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also > alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day > and seen no notices. > > A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien > Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber directly. > > If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to > monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. > > Joe (list admin) > > _______ > 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 johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 13:28:24 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 26 Aug 2016 20:28:24 -0000 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Message-ID: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> >The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a >commercial service that automates list removal. That's sort of the problem. The rest of it is that the address was at a domain that was abandoned years ago, and the entire domain is now a spamtrap. The address bounced for quite a while, so normal list bounce processing would have removed it. If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. R's, John From touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 13:29:48 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 13:29:48 -0700 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Message-ID: Hi, Brian, On 8/26/2016 1:17 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > Apparently, "Apparently-To:" SHOULD NOT be used [RFC5321]. It isn't present > in list mail that reaches me, so it must have been added downstream for that > particular subscriber. > > http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/other/Sendmail_3rd/1565928393_ch25-77071.html My only point was that "Apparently-To:" might be the only field that helps here - or some other internal logging that indicates who the message was supposed to be delivered to. Absent that info, there's no way to unsubscribe members from lists automatically. Joe > > Regards > Brian > > On 27/08/2016 06:05, Joe Touch wrote: >> Hi, all, >> >> The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a >> commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade >> Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing >> unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the >> "Apparently-To:" address. >> >> The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also >> alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day >> and seen no notices. >> >> A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien >> Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber directly. >> >> If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to >> monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. >> >> Joe (list admin) >> >> _______ >> 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 touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 13:32:17 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 13:32:17 -0700 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/26/2016 1:28 PM, John Levine wrote: >> The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a >> commercial service that automates list removal. > That's sort of the problem. The rest of it is that the address was at > a domain that was abandoned years ago, and the entire domain is now a > spamtrap. The address bounced for quite a while, so normal list > bounce processing would have removed it. > > If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce > pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. We do use bounce processing, FWIW. It simply failed to work for this address, for whatever reason. More modern Mailman software may be better at dealing with cases that our version fails on. Joe From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 13:55:04 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 26 Aug 2016 16:55:04 -0400 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: >> If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce >> pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. > We do use bounce processing, FWIW. It simply failed to work for this > address, for whatever reason. OK. Having looked at the bounce code in some list managers, I'm not surprised. So since we're talking about Internet history anyway, ... I assume that back in the heroic era when lists were just large MTA aliases, the bounces went back to the human manager who did whatever was needed. Since most of the bounces were actually those obnoxious sendmail "It's been two hours and I'm still working on it, and will tell you again two hours from now", the usual action was nothing. Dan Bernstein's VERP hack showed up in qmail in about 1998. It embedded the recipient address in the bounce address, which made automatic processing pretty easy, at to the extent that bounce messages actually menat that an address didn't work. When did list managers start parsing DSNs and DSN-like things such as the "Hi. This is ..." that qmail and its relatives produce? R's, John From touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 14:09:42 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 14:09:42 -0700 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: Hi, John, On 8/26/2016 1:55 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>> If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce >>> pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. >> We do use bounce processing, FWIW. It simply failed to work for this >> address, for whatever reason. > > OK. Having looked at the bounce code in some list managers, I'm not > surprised. > > So since we're talking about Internet history anyway, ... > > I assume that back in the heroic era when lists were just large MTA > aliases, the bounces went back to the human manager who did whatever > was needed. Since most of the bounces were actually those obnoxious > sendmail "It's been two hours and I'm still working on it, and will > tell you again two hours from now", the usual action was nothing. I can configure the system so I get a copy of the bounce messages, but I get a very large number of these for too many reasons - and many aren't useful. E.g., the list has many addresses that are themselves lists, and I sometimes get bounces when delivery to those members fail. There often isn't a trail to indicate which subscriber caused the problem (i.e., that's where "Apparently-To:" would have helped). Because of that and the number of lists I run means that the result is too much noise to see a signal for this sort of exceptional case. Joe From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 14:14:55 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:14:55 -0400 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <1481817577.421922.1472238206885@mail.yahoo.com> References: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> <1481817577.421922.1472238206885@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <196cfde9-64c7-5744-7dae-a778e27e9583@meetinghouse.net> Likewise! On 8/26/16 3:03 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > Joe, > > A big thank you! > > AM > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Joe Touch > *To:* internet history > *Sent:* Friday, August 26, 2016 2:05 PM > *Subject:* [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests > > Hi, all, > > The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a > commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade > Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing > unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the > "Apparently-To:" address. > > The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also > alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day > and seen no notices. > > A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien > Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber > directly. > > If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to > monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. > > Joe (list admin) > > _______ > 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. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 14:27:36 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:27:36 -0400 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <10ac45c0-0b4d-fe77-f149-20c406823328@isi.edu> Message-ID: True, but SMTP and related standards/practices have long suffered from lack of attention to standardizing things like: - list functions & behaviors (or we wouldn't be dealing with the impact of DMARC on lists) - the administrative realities of running mail systems and lists - such as trying to track down things like who's sending bogus unsubscribe requests, or who's been using their "spam" button as a delete key (things that get very hard when, for example, someone is forwarding list mail to a new address, but has left their old address on the list - I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to remove someone from a list, and simply can't find an address that remotely resembles the one they send the removal request from) Various hacks like "Apparently-To:" are practical measures to address situations that are simply not addressed in a standard way. They cause their own problems, of course - but.... Miles On 8/26/16 4:17 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > Apparently, "Apparently-To:" SHOULD NOT be used [RFC5321]. It isn't present > in list mail that reaches me, so it must have been added downstream for that > particular subscriber. > > http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/other/Sendmail_3rd/1565928393_ch25-77071.html > > Regards > Brian > > On 27/08/2016 06:05, Joe Touch wrote: >> Hi, all, >> >> The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a >> commercial service that automates list removal. That service, Vade >> Secure, appears to have a bug in their software. It was issuing >> unsubscribes based on the "From:" address, rather than based on the >> "Apparently-To:" address. >> >> The email that triggers this has been removed from the list. We've also >> alerted Vade Secure about the bug. I've tested this over the past day >> and seen no notices. >> >> A big thanks to John Levine, who helped debug the issue, and Adrien >> Gendre at Vade Secure for helping us identify the email subscriber directly. >> >> If the issue persists, please do let me know directly - I'll continue to >> monitor unsubscribe requests to see if this pops up again. >> >> Joe (list admin) >> >> _______ >> 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. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 14:33:23 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 26 Aug 2016 17:33:23 -0400 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: > I can configure the system so I get a copy of the bounce messages, but I > get a very large number of these for too many reasons - and many aren't > useful. Oh, of course not. That's why modern list managers have bounce handlers that try and do it all automatically. Some, such as the late lamented MJ2, are really good, some less so. > E.g., the list has many addresses that are themselves lists, ... Wow, there's a blast from the past. R's, John From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 14:33:25 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:33:25 -0400 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <0cbdce4c-8992-e2fc-2d3e-0f2b9519a90c@meetinghouse.net> For what it's worth, I've used Sympa as my go-to list manager. It's just a little more cumbersome to set up and administer - but a lot more functional than Mailman, particularly when running multiple lists. Also FOSS, but with folks who are actually paid to maintain, update, and support it (out of INRIA, I believe - basically funded to support the French research community). It had a work-around for DMARC within a few days (thanks Steve!) while it took quite a bit longer for a patch to show up for Mailman. Miles On 8/26/16 4:32 PM, Joe Touch wrote: > > On 8/26/2016 1:28 PM, John Levine wrote: >>> The issue appears to be that one subscriber to this list was using a >>> commercial service that automates list removal. >> That's sort of the problem. The rest of it is that the address was at >> a domain that was abandoned years ago, and the entire domain is now a >> spamtrap. The address bounced for quite a while, so normal list >> bounce processing would have removed it. >> >> If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce >> pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. > We do use bounce processing, FWIW. It simply failed to work for this > address, for whatever reason. > > More modern Mailman software may be better at dealing with cases that > our version fails on. > > Joe > > _______ > 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 mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 14:35:48 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:35:48 -0400 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <4b679dbf-870b-744c-1236-4b99345c79a0@meetinghouse.net> On 8/26/16 4:55 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >>> If this list is like many other old mailman lists, it does no bounce >>> pruning at all, with predictably unfortunate results. >> We do use bounce processing, FWIW. It simply failed to work for this >> address, for whatever reason. > OK. Having looked at the bounce code in some list managers, I'm not > surprised. > > So since we're talking about Internet history anyway, ... > And what a great case study in Internet history this is! -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From touch at isi.edu Fri Aug 26 14:36:14 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 14:36:14 -0700 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <4d53ae1f-2870-0d76-e7c2-556b3e11683a@isi.edu> On 8/26/2016 2:33 PM, John R. Levine wrote: >> I can configure the system so I get a copy of the bounce messages, but I >> get a very large number of these for too many reasons - and many aren't >> useful. > > Oh, of course not. That's why modern list managers have bounce > handlers that try and do it all automatically. Some, such as the late > lamented MJ2, are really good, some less so. Even our 2002 software has this and it was already enabled on the list. In this particular case, it didn't work (though I'm not sure I want to try to figure out why). Joe From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 15:03:46 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 26 Aug 2016 22:03:46 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20160826220346.42909.qmail@ary.lan> >- list functions & behaviors (or we wouldn't be dealing with the impact >of DMARC on lists) That's definitely a losing battle. I've used list managers that do things like flattening HTML parts into text, and downcoding images to make them smaller. ARC is a crock but it will likely be good enough. >- the administrative realities of running mail systems and lists - such >as trying to track down things like who's sending bogus unsubscribe >requests, or who's been using their "spam" button as a delete key >(things that get very hard when, for example, someone is forwarding list >mail to a new address, but has left their old address on the list - I >can't tell you how many times I've been asked to remove someone from a >list, and simply can't find an address that remotely resembles the one >they send the removal request from) Commercial mailers solved these problems long ago, and discussion list managers have lagged beind. Commercial mailers send every recipient a separate copy of the message, usually with a unique bounce address and some tokens in the List-Unsubscribe or elsewhere that identify the recipient. For webmail spam buttons, if you have static IPs it is not hard to register your IP range with Hotmail and AOL, or your DKIM signing domains with Yahoo and automatically get copies of the mail that's reported as spam so you can turn them into unsubs. I've done that, even with the redaction some of them do it's not hard to automate. As far as I can tell, too many discussion lists are stuck in a 1996 mindset where separate copies are "inefficient" or "bandwidth hogs" which is ridiculous if you consider what a tiny slice of the Internet's bandwith mail takes, even including all the spam. For lists that have other lists subscribed, my advice is don't do that, or if you do, the sublist better handle its own bounces. I adjusted MJ2 to interface with qmail's VERP and the bounce management was pretty much perfect, could tie every bounce to a list and subscriber, and I could set policies to unsub after N bounces in M days or the like. Now I use Sympa, and if I ever have enough time I'd like to do the same. In the meantime, when I have to take out a mystery address, so long as they send me a copy of a message, it usually has a Received header with a sequence stamp added by the host to which I sent tne mail, so I can look at my logs and identify the guilty party. Yes, it's a pain, but it's less of a pain than repeated spam reports from unhappy subscribers. R's, John From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 15:29:29 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 26 Aug 2016 22:29:29 -0000 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <0cbdce4c-8992-e2fc-2d3e-0f2b9519a90c@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <20160826222929.43009.qmail@ary.lan> >For what it's worth, I've used Sympa as my go-to list manager. It's just >a little more cumbersome to set up and administer - but a lot more >functional than Mailman, particularly when running multiple lists. Also >FOSS, but with folks who are actually paid to maintain, update, and >support it (out of INRIA, I believe - basically funded to support the >French research community). It had a work-around for DMARC within a few >days (thanks Steve!) while it took quite a bit longer for a patch to >show up for Mailman. Not INRIA, Renater, which is the French national R+E network. I agree, it's a nice piece of software, with friendly and helpful bilingual support. I picked it both because I already run mysql and didn't want to install postgresql which mailman needs, and because I have some lists that operate in French. R's, John From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 15:35:17 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 18:35:17 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160826220346.42909.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160826220346.42909.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/26/16 6:03 PM, John Levine wrote: >> - list functions & behaviors (or we wouldn't be dealing with the impact >> of DMARC on lists) > That's definitely a losing battle. I've used list managers that do > things like flattening HTML parts into text, and downcoding images to > make them smaller. ARC is a crock but it will likely be good enough. > >> - the administrative realities of running mail systems and lists - such >> as trying to track down things like who's sending bogus unsubscribe >> requests, or who's been using their "spam" button as a delete key >> (things that get very hard when, for example, someone is forwarding list >> mail to a new address, but has left their old address on the list - I >> can't tell you how many times I've been asked to remove someone from a >> list, and simply can't find an address that remotely resembles the one >> they send the removal request from) > Commercial mailers solved these problems long ago, and discussion list > managers have lagged beind. Commercial mailers send every recipient a > separate copy of the message, usually with a unique bounce address and > some tokens in the List-Unsubscribe or elsewhere that identify the > recipient. For webmail spam buttons, if you have static IPs it is not > hard to register your IP range with Hotmail and AOL, or your DKIM > signing domains with Yahoo and automatically get copies of the mail > that's reported as spam so you can turn them into unsubs. I've done > that, even with the redaction some of them do it's not hard to > automate. > > As far as I can tell, too many discussion lists are stuck in a 1996 > mindset where separate copies are "inefficient" or "bandwidth hogs" > which is ridiculous if you consider what a tiny slice of the > Internet's bandwith mail takes, even including all the spam. For > lists that have other lists subscribed, my advice is don't do that, or > if you do, the sublist better handle its own bounces. It's not just bandwidth. It's also a matter of CPU cycles - at both ends (particularly when you factor in antivirus and antispam processing). I can't tell you what a pain it is to turn on VERP processing because the large hosts will tell you that someone marked a message as spam, but won't tell you who. The only way to deal with that is to send each recipient their own message, then go through and match message id's in the log file. What a waste. Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From paul at redbarn.org Fri Aug 26 15:55:03 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 15:55:03 -0700 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160826220346.42909.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160826220346.42909.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57C0C8C7.50603@redbarn.org> warning: content bears only oblique relationship to internet history. John Levine wrote: > Commercial mailers solved these problems long ago, and discussion list > managers have lagged beind. Commercial mailers send every recipient a > separate copy of the message, usually with a unique bounce address and > some tokens in the List-Unsubscribe or elsewhere that identify the > recipient. ... "commercial mailers operating at scale didn't like the way things worked, so they invented their own superset of smtp and then used their market power to ram these changes down everybody else's throat." > As far as I can tell, too many discussion lists are stuck in a 1996 > mindset where separate copies are "inefficient" or "bandwidth hogs" > which is ridiculous if you consider what a tiny slice of the > Internet's bandwith mail takes, even including all the spam. i didn't agree with envelope-per-recipient when djb proposed it, and it hasn't grown on me since then. the concern is engineering excellence, not efficiency per se, though the envelope-per-message method has both. not every clump of recipients has first-world bandwidth available. not every message is of a size that its recipients will call 'trivial'. my mailing list exploder can parse deliverability notices, as all should. -- P Vixie From paul at redbarn.org Fri Aug 26 16:00:50 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 16:00:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160826222929.43009.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160826222929.43009.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57C0CA22.2090403@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: > ... > I picked [Sympa] both because I already run mysql and didn't want to > install postgresql which mailman needs, ... nope. i wish it were so. -- P Vixie From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 18:29:37 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 01:29:37 -0000 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C0CA22.2090403@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <20160827012937.43374.qmail@ary.lan> >> I picked [Sympa] both because I already run mysql and didn't want to >> install postgresql which mailman needs, ... > >nope. i wish it were so. When I looked at mailmam a year or so ago, it said they do all the development with postgresql, but since it's SQL it should work with other SQL databases such as mysql, but they haven't tried it. Has that changed? That seems close enough to "needs" for practical purposes. From johnl at iecc.com Fri Aug 26 18:37:24 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 01:37:24 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> >It's not just bandwidth. It's also a matter of CPU cycles - at both >ends (particularly when you factor in antivirus and antispam processing). Having actually done this, I'd say that it's a rather unusual mail system if the extra processing to handle multiple copies of a message poses a problem. Have you tried measuring it? > The only way to deal with that is to send each >recipient their own message, then go through and match message id's in >the log file. What a waste. Please see previous message. Really, it's not 1996 any more, the extra bandwidth and processing for individual deliveries are trivial on today's Internet. Also, if figuring out redacted bounces is a problem, nobody will redact an x-fooble header with a base64 version of the recipient address. People at the mail systems that do the redaction have assured me it's purely to satisfy some odd lawyer privacy theory, the lawyers only care about plain text versions of addresses, they know it's trivially easy to encode the recipient in another header, and that's just dandy with them. That's the sort of thing I'll hack into Sympa if I ever have time. R's, John From paul at redbarn.org Fri Aug 26 19:17:43 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 19:17:43 -0700 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160827012937.43374.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160827012937.43374.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57C0F847.2090103@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: >>> I picked [Sympa] both because I already run mysql and didn't want to >>> install postgresql which mailman needs, ... >> nope. i wish it were so. > > When I looked at mailmam a year or so ago, it said they do all the > development with postgresql, but since it's SQL it should work with > other SQL databases such as mysql, but they haven't tried it. > > Has that changed? That seems close enough to "needs" for practical purposes. mailman 2 stores its config data in the file system, in *.pck files, which are basically persistent python hash tables. there is no SQL support. in fact, getting mailman to run with postfix when postfix is using SQL to store its config, is well nigh impossible. mailman 3 is not yet ready for prime time. it will use a shim layer than can be provided by postgresql. you do not need to think about mailman 3 yet. -- P Vixie From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 19:31:19 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 22:31:19 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> On 8/26/16 9:37 PM, John Levine wrote: >> It's not just bandwidth. It's also a matter of CPU cycles - at both >> ends (particularly when you factor in antivirus and antispam processing). > Having actually done this, I'd say that it's a rather unusual mail > system if the extra processing to handle multiple copies of a message > poses a problem. Have you tried measuring it? Well, on the outgoing side, one need only run antispam/virus on each message once. But, I would assume that if I send 100 copies of a message, to individual addresses at AOL, AOL will run antispam/virus on each copy - as opposed to receiving one copy with 100 addressees in the To: line. I could be wrong. > >> The only way to deal with that is to send each >> recipient their own message, then go through and match message id's in >> the log file. What a waste. > Please see previous message. Really, it's not 1996 any more, the > extra bandwidth and processing for individual deliveries are trivial > on today's Internet. > > Also, if figuring out redacted bounces is a problem, nobody will > redact an x-fooble header with a base64 version of the recipient > address. People at the mail systems that do the redaction have > assured me it's purely to satisfy some odd lawyer privacy theory, the > lawyers only care about plain text versions of addresses, they know > it's trivially easy to encode the recipient in another header, and > that's just dandy with them. That's the sort of thing I'll hack into > Sympa if I ever have time. > Well yes - but now we're back into sending individual copies of messages, rather than one copy with multiple addressees. Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 19:36:13 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 22:36:13 -0400 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C0F847.2090103@redbarn.org> References: <20160827012937.43374.qmail@ary.lan> <57C0F847.2090103@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <694f6a1b-042c-8b12-26ed-81df56584075@meetinghouse.net> On 8/26/16 10:17 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > > John Levine wrote: >>>> I picked [Sympa] both because I already run mysql and didn't want to >>>> install postgresql which mailman needs, ... >>> nope. i wish it were so. >> When I looked at mailmam a year or so ago, it said they do all the >> development with postgresql, but since it's SQL it should work with >> other SQL databases such as mysql, but they haven't tried it. >> >> Has that changed? That seems close enough to "needs" for practical purposes. > mailman 2 stores its config data in the file system, in *.pck files, > which are basically persistent python hash tables. there is no SQL > support. in fact, getting mailman to run with postfix when postfix is > using SQL to store its config, is well nigh impossible. > > mailman 3 is not yet ready for prime time. it will use a shim layer than > can be provided by postgresql. you do not need to think about mailman 3 yet. > Yes, my main reason for going with Sympa, back in the day, was that it used a database, while Mailman did not - making it far more cumbersome when a single subscriber belonged to multiple lists. For Mailman 3, the documentation says: "Mailman uses the SQLAlchemy ORM to provide persistence of data in a relational database. By default, Mailman uses Python?s built-in SQLite3 database, however, SQLAlchemy is compatible with PostgreSQL and MySQL, among possibly others." Currently, Mailman is known to work with either the default SQLite3 database, or PostgreSQL. (Volunteers to port it to other databases are welcome!)." Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From larrysheldon at cox.net Fri Aug 26 19:40:42 2016 From: larrysheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:40:42 -0500 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <2001139e-5d19-5887-b7b7-08df6eebeab5@cox.net> On 8/26/2016 15:55, John R. Levine wrote: > OK. Having looked at the bounce code in some list managers, I'm not > surprised. An aside that does not need discussion, as far as I can tell..... Some email make a big deal out the difference between a "rejection" where the email was thrown on the floor and the SENDER is notified while still connected; and a "bounce" where the mail is accepted and delivered to an SMTP handler and the connection is dropped, then subsequently thrown on the floor (by a spam handler, perhaps) and notice is emailed to the header FROM address (which is often some third party innocent of the goings on). Does anybody still send a delayed-in-queue trash? I see one every once in a while but it is always a genyouwine spammy bounce. > R's, > John > _______ And while we are talking about Olde Stuphe--am I the only on that uses the dash dash space EOL sentinel to signal EOM and start of .sig? > 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. > -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account. From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Aug 26 20:10:58 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 20:10:58 -0700 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <2001139e-5d19-5887-b7b7-08df6eebeab5@cox.net> References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> <2001139e-5d19-5887-b7b7-08df6eebeab5@cox.net> Message-ID: On 8/26/2016 7:40 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > And while we are talking about Olde Stuphe--am I the only on that uses > the dash dash space EOL sentinel > to signal EOM and start of .sig? definitely. no one else uses that anymore. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From lyndon at orthanc.ca Fri Aug 26 20:18:32 2016 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 20:18:32 -0700 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <05C47AFD-8A67-4EE2-BC9E-437FEF534CB0@orthanc.ca> > On Aug 26, 2016, at 7:31 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > But, I would assume that if I send 100 copies of a > message, to individual addresses at AOL, AOL will run antispam/virus on > each copy - as opposed to receiving one copy with 100 addressees in the > To: line. One optimization is to save a crypto-hash of the message body along with the spam/virus score. If you get 2nd or subsequent copies of the same message body, you can skip the heavy-weight processing of the message contents. --lyndon -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Fri Aug 26 20:48:22 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 23:48:22 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <05C47AFD-8A67-4EE2-BC9E-437FEF534CB0@orthanc.ca> References: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> <05C47AFD-8A67-4EE2-BC9E-437FEF534CB0@orthanc.ca> Message-ID: <06f49be1-df28-bf07-d307-54c776df99b6@meetinghouse.net> On 8/26/16 11:18 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: >> On Aug 26, 2016, at 7:31 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> >> But, I would assume that if I send 100 copies of a >> message, to individual addresses at AOL, AOL will run antispam/virus on >> each copy - as opposed to receiving one copy with 100 addressees in the >> To: line. > One optimization is to save a crypto-hash of the message body along with the spam/virus score. If you get 2nd or subsequent copies of the same message body, you can skip the heavy-weight processing of the message contents. > > Any idea how common that is? Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From lyndon at orthanc.ca Fri Aug 26 20:50:47 2016 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 20:50:47 -0700 Subject: [ih] history of bounce processing, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: References: <20160826202824.42677.qmail@ary.lan> <2001139e-5d19-5887-b7b7-08df6eebeab5@cox.net> Message-ID: <751E7C23-8FC2-41CE-9C68-1725956E4DE9@orthanc.ca> > On Aug 26, 2016, at 8:10 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > > On 8/26/2016 7:40 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> And while we are talking about Olde Stuphe--am I the only on that uses >> the dash dash space EOL sentinel >> to signal EOM and start of .sig? > > > definitely. no one else uses that anymore. > > d/ > -- Especially not us Rick Adams-style minimalists, who are too cheap to pay the freight for the pair of LFs in between. Let alone a sig. --lyndon -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: From randy at psg.com Fri Aug 26 21:03:32 2016 From: randy at psg.com (Randy Bush) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 13:03:32 +0900 Subject: [ih] update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C0CA22.2090403@redbarn.org> References: <20160826222929.43009.qmail@ary.lan> <57C0CA22.2090403@redbarn.org> Message-ID: i finally get it. all this discussion about unsub messages and mailing list managers is a very effective attempt to get people to manually unsubscribe from what is supposed to be a mailing list about internet history. randy From lyndon at orthanc.ca Fri Aug 26 21:36:27 2016 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:36:27 -0700 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <06f49be1-df28-bf07-d307-54c776df99b6@meetinghouse.net> References: <20160827013724.43433.qmail@ary.lan> <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> <05C47AFD-8A67-4EE2-BC9E-437FEF534CB0@orthanc.ca> <06f49be1-df28-bf07-d307-54c776df99b6@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: > On Aug 26, 2016, at 8:48 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > >> One optimization is to save a crypto-hash of the message body along with the spam/virus score. If you get 2nd or subsequent copies of the same message body, you can skip the heavy-weight processing of the message contents. >> >> > Any idea how common that is? Not common enough. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: From galmes at tamu.edu Sat Aug 27 06:41:38 2016 From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 08:41:38 -0500 Subject: [ih] John Ellenby's death Message-ID: <6318c4c3-6ee0-c6b3-9a65-80b3f3f0a4c4@tamu.edu> The NYT has an obit on John Ellenby. An interesting rehearsal of the late-70s early-80s efforts to commercialize the Alto/Dynabook idea. One interesting item in the article is that the name (Grid Systems) of Ellenby's company relates to an internet-ish vision. It quotes Marc Weber as saying "that the name Grid was derived from Mr. Ellenby?s vision of a gridlike network ? a precursor to the internet ? that would connect various computers with one another, allowing them to share files. The idea was to sell the system through a business services company. The company called the system Grid Central." This would have been at a time when Ellenby (who had been at Xerox PARC in the late 70s) would have been familiar with both the Alto, the Ethernet, and the ARPAnet. At one level, this is a reminder of that fertile environment. But I wonder if anyone on the list could comment on how Ellenby's "Grid" vision compared and contrasted with the emerging Internet. -- Guy From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 09:06:32 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 16:06:32 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <138a04ba-7723-1718-507d-641302077731@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <20160827160632.45649.qmail@ary.lan> >Well, on the outgoing side, one need only run antispam/virus on each >message once. But, I would assume that if I send 100 copies of a >message, to individual addresses at AOL, AOL will run antispam/virus on >each copy - as opposed to receiving one copy with 100 addressees in the >To: line. I could be wrong. You are right, but if the implication that the incremental load is something they care about or even notice, no, they don't. >> it's trivially easy to encode the recipient in another header, and >> that's just dandy with them. That's the sort of thing I'll hack into >> Sympa if I ever have time. >> >Well yes - but now we're back into sending individual copies of >messages, rather than one copy with multiple addressees. Right. They would much rather get the multiple copies and have more reliable spam reporting, since the cost of handing user complaints swamps any conceivable automated mail processing. R's, John From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 09:08:09 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 16:08:09 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <06f49be1-df28-bf07-d307-54c776df99b6@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <20160827160809.45670.qmail@ary.lan> >> One optimization is to save a crypto-hash of the message body along with the spam/virus score. If you get 2nd or subsequent >copies of the same message body, you can skip the heavy-weight processing of the message contents. >> >> >Any idea how common that is? I doubt anyone does it. The amount of mail from discussion lists like this one is a very tiny fraction of mail volume, although it is mail that the recipients care deeply about. They get vastly more mail from commercial mailers that customize each message per recipient so hashes wouldn't help. R's, John From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 09:12:24 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 16:12:24 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C0C8C7.50603@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> >not every clump of recipients has first-world bandwidth available. not >every message is of a size that its recipients will call 'trivial'... Of course not, but if that's an issue, it's an issue for all mail, not just mailing lists. In that situation, wouldn't it make more sense to put a mail server on a fast network and then relay the mail in compressed batches, like uucp did (still does, for that matter?) The multiple recipient vs. single recipient argument has long struck me as more religious than engineering, particularly now that recipient systems want to automate spam reports and opt-out as much as possible. R's, John From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 09:23:01 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 16:23:01 -0000 Subject: [ih] Craig Partridge on the IETF and IAB from 1987-1992 Message-ID: <20160827162301.45763.qmail@ary.lan> Sorry to talk about some actual history, but the current issue of Annals of the History of Computing has an article "The Restructuring of Internet Standards Governance: 1987-1992." It's about the background leading up to the Kyoto blowup and the immediate aftermath. It has 116 footnotes, many referencing people we all know. Anyone interested in Internet history should already subscribe but if you and ask nicely, I can send you a copy. R's, John From paul at redbarn.org Sat Aug 27 09:46:05 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 09:46:05 -0700 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: >> not every clump of recipients has first-world bandwidth available. not >> every message is of a size that its recipients will call 'trivial'... > > Of course not, but if that's an issue, it's an issue for all mail, not > just mailing lists. no. and i think this thread has lived too long and drifted too far. let's discuss over beer in paris. -- P Vixie From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 09:47:06 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 12:47:06 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> References: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> Message-ID: > and i think this thread has lived too long and drifted too far. let's discuss > over beer in paris. Sure. I'll be there, so long as the case at which I'm testifying the previous week stays on schedule. Regards, John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly From el at lisse.na Sat Aug 27 11:13:56 2016 From: el at lisse.na (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 19:13:56 +0100 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> References: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <16361BFC-FEA3-4025-94C2-DA6E03097B81@lisse.na> There always is the delete button... el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPad mini 4 > On 27 Aug 2016, at 17:46, Paul Vixie wrote: > > > > John Levine wrote: >>> not every clump of recipients has first-world bandwidth available. not >>> every message is of a size that its recipients will call 'trivial'... >> >> Of course not, but if that's an issue, it's an issue for all mail, not >> just mailing lists. > > no. > > and i think this thread has lived too long and drifted too far. let's > discuss over beer in paris. > > -- > P Vixie > _______ > 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 dave.walden.family at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 11:19:11 2016 From: dave.walden.family at gmail.com (dave.walden.family at gmail.com) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 14:19:11 -0400 Subject: [ih] Craig Partridge on the IETF and IAB from 1987-1992 In-Reply-To: <20160827162301.45763.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160827162301.45763.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <94132B53-2786-4924-9E72-B64D18F2C09E@gmail.com> The Annals issue has four networking related papers: Craig's mentioned below, one by John Day (who is on this list -- maybe Craig is too), one by a computing historian about network experiments before ARPANET and the Lincoln-SDC experiment, and one by computing historians who have been studying the series of ARPANET maps. Sent from my iPad On Aug 27, 2016, at 12:23 PM, "John Levine" wrote: > Sorry to talk about some actual history, but the current issue of > Annals of the History of Computing has an article "The Restructuring > of Internet Standards Governance: 1987-1992." It's about the > background leading up to the Kyoto blowup and the immediate aftermath. > It has 116 footnotes, many referencing people we all know. > > Anyone interested in Internet history should already subscribe but if > you and ask nicely, I can send you a copy. > > R's, > John > _______ > 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 paul at redbarn.org Sat Aug 27 12:23:45 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 12:23:45 -0700 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <16361BFC-FEA3-4025-94C2-DA6E03097B81@lisse.na> References: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> <16361BFC-FEA3-4025-94C2-DA6E03097B81@lisse.na> Message-ID: <57C1E8C1.9070802@redbarn.org> Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote: > There always is the delete button... eberhard, i don't intend to exclude you from a conversation about whether djb and VERP do more harm than good. if you'd like to come to paris for m3aawg i will buy all the beer you can drink and you can participate. however, i'm sensitive to the hundreds of people who would have to use their delete button every time we continue talking about not-internet not-history here, and i find that i just won't do it, and that i wish that others would likewise not do it. -- P Vixie From paul at redbarn.org Sat Aug 27 12:25:50 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 12:25:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) Message-ID: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) -- P Vixie From jeanjour at comcast.net Sat Aug 27 12:59:46 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 15:59:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. Take care, John Day > On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: > > richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). > > http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php > > (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) > > -- > P Vixie > _______ > 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 Sat Aug 27 13:11:36 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 16:11:36 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <57C1E8C1.9070802@redbarn.org> References: <20160827161224.45705.qmail@ary.lan> <57C1C3CD.8010708@redbarn.org> <16361BFC-FEA3-4025-94C2-DA6E03097B81@lisse.na> <57C1E8C1.9070802@redbarn.org> Message-ID: <6fe0c6e4-4d02-2780-f338-5701f82388e7@meetinghouse.net> On 8/27/16 3:23 PM, Paul Vixie wrote: > > Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote: >> There always is the delete button... > eberhard, i don't intend to exclude you from a conversation about > whether djb and VERP do more harm than good. if you'd like to come to > paris for m3aawg i will buy all the beer you can drink and you can > participate. > > however, i'm sensitive to the hundreds of people who would have to use > their delete button every time we continue talking about not-internet > not-history here, and i find that i just won't do it, and that i wish > that others would likewise not do it. > Unfortunately, I will NOT be in Paris, or I'd take you up on the beers. Meanwhile, it occurs to me to point out that the evolution of mail standards & software; and the people, technology, and business conditions that drive them; and the impacts thereof; all seem to be part and parcel of "Internet History." In fact, the impact of DMARC on IETF email lists, and on IETF communications, and the (slow) response of the community in responding, might make a particularly interesting case study. As might the more general impact and response of the community to DMARC. Rather than "not-internet not-history" - this thread might well be considered a first draft of Internet History. :-) Cheers, Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From johnl at iecc.com Sat Aug 27 13:41:12 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 27 Aug 2016 20:41:12 -0000 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <6fe0c6e4-4d02-2780-f338-5701f82388e7@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <20160827204112.46316.qmail@ary.lan> >In fact, the impact of DMARC on IETF email lists, and on IETF >communications, and the (slow) response of the community in responding, >might make a particularly interesting case study. As might the more >general impact and response of the community to DMARC. The IETF has been remarkably slow even to notice DMARC. Yahoo and AOL turned on DMARC policies for their freemail acounts in April and May 2014, while it only seems to have become an issue in the IETF a couple of months ago. Other lists noticed in about 30 seconds. I sure did, for all the Yahoo and AOL users on the non-technical lists I host, which is why I came up with a mostly-transparent name rewriting hack. The mailman developers came up with some rather ugly ones: rejecting addresses with DMARC policies, wrapping messages like one-message digests, and the dread putting the list's address on the From: line. I suppose this means there aren't a lot of AOL and Yahoo users on IETF lists. The DMARC problem became more apparently as corporate mail systems started to apply DMARC policies. Here's a wiki page that collects all of the anti-DMARC techniques I'm aware of. If you look at its history, you can see it was mostly written in 2014 with a few twiddles this year. http://wiki.asrg.sp.am/wiki/Mitigating_DMARC_damage_to_third_party_mail R's, John From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 14:18:05 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 09:18:05 +1200 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> Message-ID: <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting to CERN. JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. Its CERN link started before May 1975**. I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, University of Warwick, 2005. wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf Lots of gems in there. Brian Carpenter * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. Regards Brian On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: > Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) > > In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. > > Take care, > John Day > > >> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >> >> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >> >> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >> >> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >> >> -- >> P Vixie >> _______ >> 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. > From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Sat Aug 27 14:22:20 2016 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 17:22:20 -0400 Subject: [ih] more bounce management, was update about bogus list unsubcribe requests In-Reply-To: <20160827204112.46316.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160827204112.46316.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 8/27/16 4:41 PM, John Levine wrote: >> In fact, the impact of DMARC on IETF email lists, and on IETF >> communications, and the (slow) response of the community in responding, >> might make a particularly interesting case study. As might the more >> general impact and response of the community to DMARC. > The IETF has been remarkably slow even to notice DMARC. Yahoo and AOL > turned on DMARC policies for their freemail acounts in April and May > 2014, while it only seems to have become an issue in the IETF a couple > of months ago. > > Other lists noticed in about 30 seconds. I sure did, for all the > Yahoo and AOL users on the non-technical lists I host, which is why I > came up with a mostly-transparent name rewriting hack. The mailman > developers came up with some rather ugly ones: rejecting addresses > with DMARC policies, wrapping messages like one-message digests, and > the dread putting the list's address on the From: line. > > I suppose this means there aren't a lot of AOL and Yahoo users on IETF > lists. The DMARC problem became more apparently as corporate mail > systems started to apply DMARC policies. > > Here's a wiki page that collects all of the anti-DMARC techniques I'm > aware of. If you look at its history, you can see it was mostly > written in 2014 with a few twiddles this year. > > http://wiki.asrg.sp.am/wiki/Mitigating_DMARC_damage_to_third_party_mail > > Actually the list kind of noticed. I seem to remember a short exchange with Vint Cerf about his emails not getting through, or mail not getting to him, as well as some broader discussion on the list when mail first started disappearing into a black hole. If you happen to remember the date when p=reject first showed up bigtime, I could probably find those exchanges. Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 16:07:26 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 11:07:26 +1200 Subject: [ih] Fwd: [Dewayne-Net] The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol In-Reply-To: References: <190A311C-78F5-484C-B8F1-EA964A32122F@warpspeed.com> <6ed15ddd-3b62-74e2-e61b-2a34c2e3ba56@gmail.com> <7c2a6645-0fbd-ffca-8e8a-a4a84a3e8861@dcrocker.net> <76007d3b-976d-186f-8d59-1160be7b74dd@gmail.com> <8add7d52-fe7f-002c-2d4b-f7e8a9e292ad@gmail.com> Message-ID: <116578c5-0ecb-8450-e69b-1fd4c87e5024@gmail.com> I wrote: >I remember a public argument between Tim BL and Hermann Maurer* > (of Hyper-G fame) ... > *My memory says it was Maurer. Some Google hints suggest that it was his > student Frank Kappe. It was Kappe, and in 1994, after the release of Mosaic. I found the issue of the CERN weekly bulletin announcing the seminar: "Wednesday 14 September COMPUTING SEMINAR at 16.00 hrs - CN Auditorium bldg 31/3-005 Hyper-G : Better than WWW by Frank KAPPE / Institute for Information Processing and Computer Based new Media (IICM), Graz University of Technology" Regards Brian Carpenter On 21/08/2016 16:47, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > On 21/08/2016 14:54, Dave Crocker wrote: >> On 8/20/2016 6:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>> In fact, hypertext >>> specialists thought it was broken; > > The academics working on hypertext thought that a hypertext system > without bidirectional links and some kind of continuous completeness > checking (so that dead links would vanish automatically) wasn't > useful. I remember a public argument between Tim BL and Hermann Maurer* > (of Hyper-G fame) about this - I can't put an exact date on it, but > it was when Hermann gave a seminar about Hyper-G at CERN and I'm > guessing it was in 1993/94. (Maurer's later writings assert that Hyper-G > was built on WWW experience, but my recollection is that if so, that > can refer only to the very early pre-Mosaic web.) > > Tim made a very strong argument that a system with bidirectional links > and consistency checks was undeployable at large scale, and of course > he was right. > > *My memory says it was Maurer. Some Google hints suggest that it was his > student Frank Kappe. > > All the same, Maurer wrote in late 1994: > 'So is WWW the answer we all have been waiting for? Unfortunately, the answer is > again a clear: "NO".' > (elib.zib.de/pub/Workshops/TU_Berlin_1995/Maurer/Maurer.ps) > > Apparently, the Microcosm people at the University of Southampton had similar > criticisms of the WWW design. > >>> distributed systems designers thought it >>> was broken. > > In particular, they thought POST was broken because it didn't offer transactional > integrity. And they still do, I think. Google "RESTful considered harmful." > Or think about how disasters like XML-RPC and SOAP arose. > > Brian > >>> I suppose gopher was the same. This flatness actually made deployment >>> a great deal easier. >> >> >> No doubt I wasn't tracking any of this closely enough, but I don't >> recall hearing those complaints. >> >> But then, my framework for such things was thoroughly imprinted by >> having gotten access and becoming a longtime user of the Engelbart NLS >> system, starting in 1972. (My start; the system itself dated back to >> the 60s.) >> >> It had the same, at-will, direct, inter-document linking (albeit not >> inter-machine). Any place in any document could include a link to any >> other labeled/numbered place in any other document. > > From jeanjour at comcast.net Sat Aug 27 16:26:03 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2016 19:26:03 -0400 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> Message-ID: <8C1779C6-810A-4F28-A0F7-83AAF6652FAB@comcast.net> Yea, we (UIUC) were the conduit for a lot of that, which would have been 71 or 72 and on, basically as soon as were were up on the ?Net. The guys from the Illinois physics dept, Argonne (and later Batavia) were moving stuff from us to the Rutherford Lab and from there to CERN. For quite awhile, Illinois was the largest (must have been) network user (not user) at Rutherford. ;-) It was suppose to be illegal, but no one said anything. As you may or may not know, Illinois is pretty flat (understatement) and laid out on a grid of roads every mile in both directions. The physicists had worked out a ?back way? between Champaign and Argonne and later Batavia that stayed off the main highways and avoided the speed traps. ;-) They had a name for it, which escapes me now. But basically you could go a few miles East of Champaign and then head north all the way and save a lot of time. (It is one of the most boring 2.5 hour drives, so anything to lessen the time.) Take care, John > On Aug 27, 2016, at 17:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting > to CERN. JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. > Its CERN link started before May 1975**. > > I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: > British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, > University of Warwick, 2005. > wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf > > Lots of gems in there. > > Brian Carpenter > > * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ > > ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that > a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" > in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, > which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. > > Regards > Brian > > On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: >> Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) >> >> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. >> >> Take care, >> John Day >> >> >>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >>> >>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >>> >>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >>> >>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >>> >>> -- >>> P Vixie >>> _______ >>> 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. >> From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 21:15:42 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 16:15:42 +1200 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 28/08/2016 09:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting > to CERN. > > JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. > Its CERN link started before May 1975**. ... in 1972, in fact: "Computing by telephone ... The CERN link which can be used by UK teams who are involved in experiments at the PS and ISR is obviously more costly being of the order of ?14 000 per year. ... 'Dial a computer' seems to be with us." - CERN Courier, Vol. 12 No. 12, p421-422, Dec. 1972. That was a remote login and RJE connection to the 360/195 at Rutherford Lab in the UK. A SERCnet (pre-JANET) packet switch was installed at CERN in 1982, according to the Rutherford Lab report: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/literature/annual_reports/p018.htm I see that SRCnet apparently interconnected to ARPANET in 1975, too: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/cisd/literature/p002.htm Enough Googling for one day. Brian Carpenter > > I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: > British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, > University of Warwick, 2005. > wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf > > Lots of gems in there. > > Brian Carpenter > > * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ > > ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that > a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" > in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, > which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. > > Regards > Brian > > On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: >> Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) >> >> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. >> >> Take care, >> John Day >> >> >>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >>> >>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >>> >>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >>> >>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >>> >>> -- >>> P Vixie >>> _______ >>> 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. >> From jeanjour at comcast.net Sun Aug 28 03:50:32 2016 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2016 06:50:32 -0400 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> Message-ID: <9128FCCB-B519-4023-9552-A19C13BCFA53@comcast.net> Yea, not to play one-upmanship, But in 1951 Illinois had a contract with the US Army to build a machine that was called ORDVAC, a vacuum tube machine. The contract allowed them to build a copy for themselves which was called Illiac I. (It and Illiac II, a transistor machine, used asynchronous logic.) I was really surprised to read (on the Illiac I wiki page) that between delivering ORDVAC and getting Illiac I built they had a leased line to ORDVAC for time on the machine at night. I have no idea what that means! Was it for transferring paper tape that an operator then took and entered into the machine or what! ;-) Or was it directly loaded to the machine? No idea. But everyone was trying to do it fairly soon. John > On Aug 28, 2016, at 00:15, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > > On 28/08/2016 09:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting >> to CERN. >> >> JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. >> Its CERN link started before May 1975**. > > ... in 1972, in fact: > > "Computing by telephone > ... > The CERN link which can be used > by UK teams who are involved in > experiments at the PS and ISR is > obviously more costly being of the > order of ?14 000 per year. > ... > 'Dial a computer' seems to be > with us." > > - CERN Courier, Vol. 12 No. 12, p421-422, Dec. 1972. > > That was a remote login and RJE connection to the 360/195 at Rutherford Lab in > the UK. A SERCnet (pre-JANET) packet switch was installed at CERN in 1982, > according to the Rutherford Lab report: > http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/literature/annual_reports/p018.htm > > I see that SRCnet apparently interconnected to ARPANET in 1975, too: > http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/cisd/literature/p002.htm > > Enough Googling for one day. > > Brian Carpenter > >> >> I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: >> British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, >> University of Warwick, 2005. >> wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf >> >> Lots of gems in there. >> >> Brian Carpenter >> >> * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ >> >> ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that >> a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" >> in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, >> which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. >> >> Regards >> Brian >> >> On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: >>> Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) >>> >>> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. >>> >>> Take care, >>> John Day >>> >>> >>>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >>>> >>>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >>>> >>>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >>>> >>>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >>>> >>>> -- >>>> P Vixie >>>> _______ >>>> 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. >>> > From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Sun Aug 28 13:04:16 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:04:16 +1200 Subject: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) In-Reply-To: <9128FCCB-B519-4023-9552-A19C13BCFA53@comcast.net> References: <57C1E93E.40508@redbarn.org> <6D64FED4-A042-41D2-8CDA-9A7242266CA8@comcast.net> <49570ddf-5143-3348-0588-205745772168@gmail.com> <9128FCCB-B519-4023-9552-A19C13BCFA53@comcast.net> Message-ID: <5c9fe891-cc83-f9f6-914e-1605118e0e34@gmail.com> On 28/08/2016 22:50, John Day wrote: > Yea, not to play one-upmanship, But in 1951 Illinois had a contract with the US Army to build a machine that was called ORDVAC, a vacuum tube machine. The contract allowed them to build a copy for themselves which was called Illiac I. (It and Illiac II, a transistor machine, used asynchronous logic.) > > I was really surprised to read (on the Illiac I wiki page) that between delivering ORDVAC and getting Illiac I built they had a leased line to ORDVAC for time on the machine at night. Good going. Of course, the SIGINT people had transatlantic data links going by 1944, so I guess the idea was in the wind in the military computing community. Brian > > I have no idea what that means! Was it for transferring paper tape that an operator then took and entered into the machine or what! ;-) Or was it directly loaded to the machine? No idea. But everyone was trying to do it fairly soon. > > John > > >> On Aug 28, 2016, at 00:15, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> >> On 28/08/2016 09:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>> JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting >>> to CERN. >>> >>> JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. >>> Its CERN link started before May 1975**. >> >> ... in 1972, in fact: >> >> "Computing by telephone >> ... >> The CERN link which can be used >> by UK teams who are involved in >> experiments at the PS and ISR is >> obviously more costly being of the >> order of ?14 000 per year. >> ... >> 'Dial a computer' seems to be >> with us." >> >> - CERN Courier, Vol. 12 No. 12, p421-422, Dec. 1972. >> >> That was a remote login and RJE connection to the 360/195 at Rutherford Lab in >> the UK. A SERCnet (pre-JANET) packet switch was installed at CERN in 1982, >> according to the Rutherford Lab report: >> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/literature/annual_reports/p018.htm >> >> I see that SRCnet apparently interconnected to ARPANET in 1975, too: >> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/cisd/literature/p002.htm >> >> Enough Googling for one day. >> >> Brian Carpenter >> >>> >>> I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: >>> British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, >>> University of Warwick, 2005. >>> wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf >>> >>> Lots of gems in there. >>> >>> Brian Carpenter >>> >>> * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ >>> >>> ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that >>> a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" >>> in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, >>> which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. >>> >>> Regards >>> Brian >>> >>> On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: >>>> Does this qualify for internetworking? I may have beat you by a few months. ;-) >>>> >>>> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET. ;-) Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. >>>> >>>> Take care, >>>> John Day >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >>>>> >>>>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >>>>> >>>>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >>>>> >>>>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> P Vixie >>>>> _______ >>>>> 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. >>>> >> > > From touch at isi.edu Mon Aug 29 14:26:37 2016 From: touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 14:26:37 -0700 Subject: [ih] list was down - now back Message-ID: Hi, all, ISI's servers experienced a hard drive failure last night. The mail servers have been back up since 11:30am PDT, but some other services will take some time to restore (including access to www.postel.org). FYI. Joe From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Mon Aug 29 15:44:01 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 15:44:01 -0700 Subject: [ih] list was down - now back In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2604a255-e000-dfd1-0c1d-43651d8b3700@dcrocker.net> On 8/29/2016 2:26 PM, Joe Touch wrote: > ISI's servers experienced a hard drive failure last night. Such a nostalgic type of effect, for a modern tech history list... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Tue Aug 30 20:13:29 2016 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 03:13:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo.? BTW, the SFgate article didn't make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used to reach SRI.? The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET,? to make it a 3 network test. barbara How the internet was invented | | | | | | | | | | | How the internet was invented By Ben Tarnoff In 40 years, the internet has morphed from a military communication network into a vast global cyberspace. And i... | | | | From: "internet-history-request at postel.org" To: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 12:00 PM Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 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: "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our ? ? ? lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) (Brian E Carpenter) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 08:04:16 +1200 From: Brian E Carpenter Subject: Re: [ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of ??? our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE) To: John Day Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" Message-ID: <5c9fe891-cc83-f9f6-914e-1605118e0e34 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 On 28/08/2016 22:50, John Day wrote: > Yea, not to play one-upmanship, But in 1951 Illinois had a contract with the US Army to build a machine that was called ORDVAC, a vacuum tube machine.? The contract allowed them to build a copy for themselves which was called Illiac I.? (It and Illiac II, a transistor machine, used asynchronous logic.) > > I was really surprised to read (on the Illiac I wiki page) that between delivering ORDVAC and getting Illiac I built they had a leased line to ORDVAC for time on the machine at night. Good going. Of course, the SIGINT people had transatlantic data links going by 1944, so I guess the idea was in the wind in the military computing community. ? ? Brian > > I have no idea what that means!? Was it for transferring paper tape that an operator then took and entered into the machine or what! ;-) Or was it directly loaded to the machine?? No idea.? But everyone was trying to do it fairly soon. > > John > >? >> On Aug 28, 2016, at 00:15, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >> >> On 28/08/2016 09:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote: >>> JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting >>> to CERN. >>> >>> JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974. >>> Its CERN link started before May 1975**. >> >> ... in 1972, in fact: >> >> "Computing by telephone >> ... >> The CERN link which can be used >> by UK teams who are involved in >> experiments at the PS and ISR is >> obviously more costly being of the >> order of ?14 000 per year. >> ... >> 'Dial a computer' seems to be >> with us." >> >> - CERN Courier, Vol. 12 No. 12, p421-422, Dec. 1972. >> >> That was a remote login and RJE connection to the 360/195 at Rutherford Lab in >> the UK. A SERCnet (pre-JANET) packet switch was installed at CERN in 1982, >> according to the Rutherford Lab report: >> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/literature/annual_reports/p018.htm >> >> I see that SRCnet apparently interconnected to ARPANET in 1975, too: >> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/cisd/literature/p002.htm >> >> Enough Googling for one day. >> >>? Brian Carpenter >> >>> >>> I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence: >>> British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter, >>> University of Warwick, 2005. >>> wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf >>> >>> Lots of gems in there. >>> >>>? ? Brian Carpenter >>> >>> * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/ >>> >>> ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that >>> a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )" >>> in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre, >>> which was part of my job responsibility ten years later. >>> >>> Regards >>>? Brian >>> >>> On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote: >>>> Does this qualify for internetworking?? I may have beat you by a few months.? ;-) >>>> >>>> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET.? ;-)? Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin. >>>> >>>> Take care, >>>> John Day >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie wrote: >>>>> >>>>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today). >>>>> >>>>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php >>>>> >>>>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.) >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> P Vixie >>>>> _______ >>>>> 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. >>>> >> > > ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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. End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 ************************************************* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ocl at gih.com Wed Aug 31 00:33:40 2016 From: ocl at gih.com (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:33:40 +0200 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: > For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet > Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo. BTW, the SFgate article didn't > make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used > to reach SRI. The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET, > to make it a 3 network test. > > barbara > > How the internet was invented > Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really that closely related to TCP/IP? Kindest regards, Olivier -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From craig at aland.bbn.com Wed Aug 31 06:50:48 2016 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:50:48 -0400 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> Message-ID: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> Hi Olivier: What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. Thanks! Craig PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I believe) 1977. > On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote: > > > > On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo. BTW, the SFgate article didn't make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used to reach SRI. The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET, to make it a 3 network test. >> >> barbara >> >> How the internet was invented > > Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really that closely related to TCP/IP? > Kindest regards, > > Olivier > _______ > 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: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 1856 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Aug 31 07:17:36 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 07:17:36 -0700 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks around the world. How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, connecting them. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From ocl at gih.com Wed Aug 31 07:22:50 2016 From: ocl at gih.com (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:22:50 +0200 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <52bcdc97-12fb-8f01-64df-e99cb55024a4@gih.com> Dear Craig, thanks, that's helpful. I've learnt something today. :-) Now I am aware of the AMPR's work (nicely summarised on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet ). It hints at TCP/IP & a non routeable Class A being allocated to the AMPR network, with some people using NAT to carry traffic across -- but was that really done on a larger scale? I recall regulatory issues at the time, where Packet Radio was seen as a broadcast medium & you needed your radio license to operate a TNC. Thus whilst it was legally possible to send out an email to the Internet from a Packet Radio node, as you held a license to do so, it was deemed illegal to receive your emails from the Internet to your TNC - as the sender did not hold a radio license. I am speaking of 1989 so 10+ years later than Bob Kahn's work. Is the restriction still in place now? Kindest regards, Olivier On 31/08/2016 15:50, Craig Partridge wrote: > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the > answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks > (and some other > types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. > > >> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > wrote: >> >> >> >> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet >>> Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo. BTW, the SFgate article didn't >>> make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used >>> to reach SRI. The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, >>> SATNET, to make it a 3 network test. >>> >>> barbara >>> >>> How the internet was invented >>> >> >> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my >> interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am >> somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand >> the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really >> that closely related to TCP/IP? >> Kindest regards, >> >> Olivier >> _______ >> 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. > -- Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From el at lisse.NA Wed Aug 31 07:26:17 2016 From: el at lisse.NA (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:26:17 +0100 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 In-Reply-To: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <9bbb4cfc-b714-e5a7-4d94-aa1f1369e654@lisse.NA> Ah, I remember fondly when they used to have a routing for North America which made their addresses look like something.NA and that then bounced up and down UUCP over the telephone line a few times. greetings, el On 2016-08-31 14:50, Craig Partridge wrote: > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was > the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio > networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like > ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was > in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint > needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the > TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. [...] -- Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) el at lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell) PO Box 8421 \ / Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/ From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Wed Aug 31 09:17:55 2016 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:17:55 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <498329247.2897074.1472660275367@mail.yahoo.com> I believe you are thinking of a different packet radio.? There was one by the radio community that used AX.25.? Packet radio was an ARPA/DARPA effort that developed its own suite of protocols that were improved over time. These protocols were usually referred to as CAP followed by a version number (e.g. CAP 6).? If my memory isn't faulty,? CAP stood for Channel Access Protocol.? It was a MANET.? The August demo did show off the use of the Internet transport. My memory of what I have been told in the past agrees with what Craig mentioned: The development of the DARPA packet radio network (PRnet) was a motivator for TCP. ? I would have to check with others to see about the timing of the distinct layering as I joined the packet radio project later.? BTW, I am using the phrase Internet transport deliberately. I chatted with Don Nielson recently about the Guardian article and he used that phrase for the demo. barbara From: "internet-history-request at postel.org" To: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 7:26 AM Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 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: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Craig Partridge) ? 2. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Dave Crocker) ? 3. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 ? ? ? (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) ? 4. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 ? ? ? (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:50:48 -0400 From: Craig Partridge Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond Cc: Craig Partridge , ??? "internet-history at postel.org" ,??? Barbara ??? Denny Message-ID: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A at aland.bbn.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Hi Olivier: What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. Thanks! Craig PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I believe) 1977. > On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote: > > > > On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo.? BTW, the SFgate article didn't make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used to reach SRI.? The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET,? to make it a 3 network test. >> >> barbara >> >> How the internet was invented > > Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really that closely related to TCP/IP? > Kindest regards, > > Olivier > _______ > 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://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 1856 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/smime-0001.bin ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 07:17:36 -0700 From: Dave Crocker Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 To: Craig Partridge ,??? Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond ??? Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" , ??? Barbara Denny Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: ? ? ? Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks around the world.? How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. ? ? ? TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, connecting them. d/ -- ? Dave Crocker ? Brandenburg InternetWorking ? bbiw.net ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:22:50 +0200 From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 To: Craig Partridge Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" , ??? Barbara Denny Message-ID: <52bcdc97-12fb-8f01-64df-e99cb55024a4 at gih.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Dear Craig, thanks, that's helpful. I've learnt something today. :-) Now I am aware of the AMPR's work (nicely summarised on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet ). It hints at TCP/IP & a non routeable Class A being allocated to the AMPR network, with some people using NAT to carry traffic across -- but was that really done on a larger scale? I recall regulatory issues at the time, where Packet Radio was seen as a broadcast medium & you needed your radio license to operate a TNC. Thus whilst it was legally possible to send out an email to the Internet from a Packet Radio node, as you held a license to do so, it was deemed illegal to receive your emails from the Internet to your TNC - as the sender did not hold a radio license. I am speaking of 1989 so 10+ years later than Bob Kahn's work. Is the restriction still in place now? Kindest regards, Olivier On 31/08/2016 15:50, Craig Partridge wrote: > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the > answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks > (and some other > types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. > > >> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > wrote: >> >> >> >> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet >>> Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo.? BTW, the SFgate article didn't >>> make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used >>> to reach SRI.? The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, >>> SATNET,? to make it a 3 network test. >>> >>> barbara >>> >>> How the internet was invented >>> >> >> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my >> interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am >> somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand >> the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really >> that closely related to TCP/IP? >> Kindest regards, >> >> Olivier >> _______ >> 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. > -- Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/2e7ee393/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:26:17 +0100 From: Dr Eberhard W Lisse Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 To: craig at aland.bbn.com, ocl at gih.com Cc: internet-history at postel.org, b_a_denny at yahoo.com, el at lisse.NA Message-ID: <9bbb4cfc-b714-e5a7-4d94-aa1f1369e654 at lisse.NA> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Ah, I remember fondly when they used to have a routing for North America which made their addresses look like something.NA and that then bounced up and down UUCP over the telephone line a few times. greetings, el On 2016-08-31 14:50, Craig Partridge wrote: > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was > the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio > networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like > ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was > in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint > needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the > TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. [...] -- Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse? \? ? ? ? / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) el at lisse.NA? ? ? ? ? ? / *? ? |? Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell) PO Box 8421? ? ? ? ? ? \? ? / Bachbrecht, Namibia? ? ;____/ ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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. End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 ************************************************* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nigel at channelisles.net Wed Aug 31 10:25:17 2016 From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:25:17 +0100 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 In-Reply-To: <498329247.2897074.1472660275367@mail.yahoo.com> References: <498329247.2897074.1472660275367@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0704d617-dd98-908c-44f8-71bec65c4a49@channelisles.net> AX.25 was based on X.25 and was used at slow (300-1200baud) speeds over HF radio. On 31/08/16 17:17, Barbara Denny wrote: > I believe you are thinking of a different packet radio. There was one > by the radio community that used AX.25. Packet radio was an ARPA/DARPA > effort that developed its own suite of protocols that were improved over > time. These protocols were usually referred to as CAP followed by a > version number (e.g. CAP 6). If my memory isn't faulty, CAP stood for > Channel Access Protocol. It was a MANET. > > The August demo did show off the use of the Internet transport. My > memory of what I have been told in the past agrees with what Craig > mentioned: The development of the DARPA packet radio network (PRnet) was > a motivator for TCP. I would have to check with others to see about > the timing of the distinct layering as I joined the packet radio project > later. BTW, I am using the phrase Internet transport deliberately. I > chatted with Don Nielson recently about the Guardian article and he used > that phrase for the demo. > > barbara > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* "internet-history-request at postel.org" > > *To:* internet-history at postel.org > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 31, 2016 7:26 AM > *Subject:* internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 > > 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: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Craig Partridge) > 2. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Dave Crocker) > 3. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) > 4. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:50:48 -0400 > From: Craig Partridge > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > Cc: Craig Partridge >, > "internet-history at postel.org " > >, > Barbara > Denny > > Message-ID: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A at aland.bbn.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the > answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks > (and some other > types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. > > >> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > wrote: >> >> >> >> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet > Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo. BTW, the SFgate article didn't make > it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used to reach > SRI. The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET, to make it > a 3 network test. >>> >>> barbara >>> >>> How the internet was invented > >> >> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my > interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am > somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand the > packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really that > closely related to TCP/IP? >> Kindest regards, >> >> Olivier >> _______ >> 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://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/attachment-0001.html > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: smime.p7s > Type: application/pkcs7-signature > Size: 1856 bytes > Desc: not available > Url : > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/smime-0001.bin > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 07:17:36 -0700 > From: Dave Crocker > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Craig Partridge >, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > > Cc: "internet-history at postel.org " > >, > Barbara Denny > > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > > On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > > This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: > > Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks > around the world. How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that > they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. > > TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, > connecting them. > > d/ > > -- > > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:22:50 +0200 > From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Craig Partridge > > Cc: "internet-history at postel.org " > >, > Barbara Denny > > Message-ID: <52bcdc97-12fb-8f01-64df-e99cb55024a4 at gih.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > Dear Craig, > > thanks, that's helpful. I've learnt something today. :-) > > Now I am aware of the AMPR's work (nicely summarised on > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet > ). It hints at TCP/IP & a non > routeable Class A being allocated to the AMPR network, with some people > using NAT to carry traffic across -- but was that really done on a > larger scale? I recall regulatory issues at the time, where Packet Radio > was seen as a broadcast medium & you needed your radio license to > operate a TNC. Thus whilst it was legally possible to send out an email > to the Internet from a Packet Radio node, as you held a license to do > so, it was deemed illegal to receive your emails from the Internet to > your TNC - as the sender did not hold a radio license. I am speaking of > 1989 so 10+ years later than Bob Kahn's work. > Is the restriction still in place now? > Kindest regards, > > Olivier > > On 31/08/2016 15:50, Craig Partridge wrote: >> Hi Olivier: >> >> What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the >> answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks >> (and some other >> types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? >> >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Craig >> >> PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call >> IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I >> believe) 1977. >> >> >>> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond >>> >> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet >>>> Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo. BTW, the SFgate article didn't >>>> make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used >>>> to reach SRI. The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, >>>> SATNET, to make it a 3 network test. >>>> >>>> barbara >>>> >>>> How the internet was invented >>>> > >>> >>> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my >>> interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am >>> somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand >>> the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really >>> that closely related to TCP/IP? >>> Kindest regards, >>> >>> Olivier >>> _______ >>> 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. >> > > -- > Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD > http://www.gih.com/ocl.html > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/2e7ee393/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:26:17 +0100 > From: Dr Eberhard W Lisse > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: craig at aland.bbn.com , ocl at gih.com > > Cc: internet-history at postel.org , > b_a_denny at yahoo.com , el at lisse.NA > > Message-ID: <9bbb4cfc-b714-e5a7-4d94-aa1f1369e654 at lisse.NA > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > > Ah, > > I remember fondly when they used to have a routing for North America > which made their addresses look like something.NA and that then > bounced up and down UUCP over the telephone line a few times. > > greetings, el > > On 2016-08-31 14:50, Craig Partridge wrote: >> Hi Olivier: >> >> What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was >> the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio >> networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like >> ARPANET? >> >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was >> in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint >> needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the >> TCP paper. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Craig >> >> PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call >> IP. IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I >> believe) 1977. > [...] > -- > Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) > el at lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 > 124 6733 (cell) > PO Box 8421 \ / > Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/ > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > > > End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 > ************************************************* > > > > > _______ > 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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com Wed Aug 31 12:50:51 2016 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:50:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 35 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <756771667.3036563.1472673051980@mail.yahoo.com> For those wanting to learn more about packet radio, IEEE produced a Special Issue on Packet Radio Networks in 1987.? Efforts/demos continued after this date but this is the most available resource I can think of off the top of my head. barbara From: "internet-history-request at postel.org" To: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 12:00 PM Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 35 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: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 (Nigel Roberts) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:25:17 +0100 From: Nigel Roberts Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <0704d617-dd98-908c-44f8-71bec65c4a49 at channelisles.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed AX.25 was based on X.25 and was used at slow (300-1200baud) speeds over HF radio. On 31/08/16 17:17, Barbara Denny wrote: > I believe you are thinking of a different packet radio.? There was one > by the radio community that used AX.25.? Packet radio was an ARPA/DARPA > effort that developed its own suite of protocols that were improved over > time. These protocols were usually referred to as CAP followed by a > version number (e.g. CAP 6).? If my memory isn't faulty,? CAP stood for > Channel Access Protocol.? It was a MANET. > > The August demo did show off the use of the Internet transport. My > memory of what I have been told in the past agrees with what Craig > mentioned: The development of the DARPA packet radio network (PRnet) was > a motivator for TCP.? I would have to check with others to see about > the timing of the distinct layering as I joined the packet radio project > later.? BTW, I am using the phrase Internet transport deliberately. I > chatted with Don Nielson recently about the Guardian article and he used > that phrase for the demo. > > barbara > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* "internet-history-request at postel.org" > > *To:* internet-history at postel.org > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 31, 2016 7:26 AM > *Subject:* internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 > > 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: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Craig Partridge) >? 2. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 (Dave Crocker) >? 3. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 >? ? ? (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) >? 4. Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 >? ? ? (Dr Eberhard W Lisse) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 09:50:48 -0400 > From: Craig Partridge > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > Cc: Craig Partridge >, >? ? "internet-history at postel.org " > >, > Barbara >? ? Denny > > Message-ID: <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A at aland.bbn.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > Hi Olivier: > > What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the > answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks > (and some other > types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? > > As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in > the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to > solve the > interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > Thanks! > > Craig > > PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call > IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I > believe) 1977. > > >> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > wrote: >> >> >> >> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet > Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo.? BTW, the SFgate article didn't make > it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used to reach > SRI.? The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, SATNET,? to make it > a 3 network test. >>> >>> barbara >>> >>> How the internet was invented > >> >> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my > interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am > somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand the > packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really that > closely related to TCP/IP? >> Kindest regards, >> >> Olivier >> _______ >> 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://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/attachment-0001.html > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: smime.p7s > Type: application/pkcs7-signature > Size: 1856 bytes > Desc: not available > Url : > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/d75e7f11/smime-0001.bin > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 07:17:36 -0700 > From: Dave Crocker > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Craig Partridge >,? ? Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond >? ? > > Cc: "internet-history at postel.org " > >, >? ? Barbara Denny > > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > > On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > > This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: > >? ? ? Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks > around the world.? How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that > they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. > >? ? ? TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, > connecting them. > > d/ > > -- > >? Dave Crocker >? Brandenburg InternetWorking >? bbiw.net > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:22:50 +0200 > From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: Craig Partridge > > Cc: "internet-history at postel.org " > >, >? ? Barbara Denny > > Message-ID: <52bcdc97-12fb-8f01-64df-e99cb55024a4 at gih.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > Dear Craig, > > thanks, that's helpful. I've learnt something today. :-) > > Now I am aware of the AMPR's work (nicely summarised on > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet > ). It hints at TCP/IP & a non > routeable Class A being allocated to the AMPR network, with some people > using NAT to carry traffic across -- but was that really done on a > larger scale? I recall regulatory issues at the time, where Packet Radio > was seen as a broadcast medium & you needed your radio license to > operate a TNC. Thus whilst it was legally possible to send out an email > to the Internet from a Packet Radio node, as you held a license to do > so, it was deemed illegal to receive your emails from the Internet to > your TNC - as the sender did not hold a radio license. I am speaking of > 1989 so 10+ years later than Bob Kahn's work. > Is the restriction still in place now? > Kindest regards, > > Olivier > > On 31/08/2016 15:50, Craig Partridge wrote: >> Hi Olivier: >> >> What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was the >> answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio networks >> (and some other >> types of networks) to a network like ARPANET? >> >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Craig >> >> PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call >> IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I >> believe) 1977. >> >> >>> On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:33 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond >>> >> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 31/08/2016 05:13, Barbara Denny wrote: >>>> For those interested, here is another article related to the Packet >>>> Radio/ARPANET August Internet demo.? BTW, the SFgate article didn't >>>> make it clear that another packet radio located at Stanford was used >>>> to reach SRI.? The November 1977 demo also added a satellite, >>>> SATNET,? to make it a 3 network test. >>>> >>>> barbara >>>> >>>> How the internet was invented >>>> > >>> >>> Thanks for this link. The mentioning of packet radio raised my >>> interest and I was not aware of the Stanford experiments. Yet I am >>> somehow puzzled as packet radio used AX.25. Thus whilst I understand >>> the packet transmission of data was proven, is packet radio really >>> that closely related to TCP/IP? >>> Kindest regards, >>> >>> Olivier >>> _______ >>> 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. >> > > -- > Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD > http://www.gih.com/ocl.html > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/2e7ee393/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 15:26:17 +0100 > From: Dr Eberhard W Lisse > > Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 30 > To: craig at aland.bbn.com , ocl at gih.com > > Cc: internet-history at postel.org , > b_a_denny at yahoo.com , el at lisse.NA > > Message-ID: <9bbb4cfc-b714-e5a7-4d94-aa1f1369e654 at lisse.NA > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > > Ah, > > I remember fondly when they used to have a routing for North America > which made their addresses look like something.NA and that then > bounced up and down UUCP over the telephone line a few times. > > greetings, el > > On 2016-08-31 14:50, Craig Partridge wrote: >> Hi Olivier: >> >> What the article hints at, but doesn?t quite say, is that TCP was >> the answer to a question, namely how to do we link packet radio >> networks (and some other types of networks) to a network like >> ARPANET? >> >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was >> in the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint >> needed to solve the interconnection problem and that motivated the >> TCP paper. >> >> Thanks! >> >> Craig >> >> PS: Footnote ? originally TCP contained both TCP and what we now call >> IP.? IP was made a standalone protocol after a hallway debate in (I >> believe) 1977. > [...] > -- > Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse? \? ? ? ? / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) > el at lisse.NA ? ? ? ? ? ? / *? ? |? Telephone: +264 81 > 124 6733 (cell) > PO Box 8421? ? ? ? ? ? \? ? / > Bachbrecht, Namibia? ? ;____/ > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > > > End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 > ************************************************* > > > > > _______ > 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. End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 35 ************************************************* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 14:43:24 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 14:43:24 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> [I changed the subject because I hate unsearchable subjects like "...internet history digest..."] I think Dave's observation is a really important fact for future historians - the Internet did not evolve in a vacuum. ARPANET was one of the first packet networks (I'll let others argue about which was First...), but it was preceded by networks based on phone lines and modems interconnecting terminals and computers. The ARPA Packet Radio net enabled communications between mobile computers, moving around in jeeps and helicopters, by radio links. But it was preceded by AlohaNet in Hawaii, which interconnected the various islands by radio. AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet. In the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet. I remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. Later, SATNET interconnected sites using satellite links, also obviously using radio for communications. Unlike the packet radio environment, the path of the satellites was highly predictable, and the massive dish antennas on the ground didn't move at all. SATNET was subsequently adapted to create MATNET, a Navy project, that used satellite dishes on ships for communication. Ships moved of course, but not as rapidly or spasmodically as jeeps and aircraft. Ethernet was evolved by Xerox PARC into its own "internet", with multiple LANs interconnecting by radio links or telephone lines. During the early 80s, The Internet which we still use today was running in parallel with the PARC internet (I can't recall what they called it), using PUP where we used TCP. As Dave noted, we got used to hearing that the mission of the Internet Project (as driven by the IAB/ICCB under Vint's direction) was to develop the infrastructure technology, i.e., protocols and algorithms and standards, to interconnect these networks, both the existing types and anything else that someone might dream up in the future. If some new type of network could carry packets from point A to point B, it should be possible to incorporate it into the Internet --- without requiring the host computers to change any software (which would be hard), or change all of the routers in the Internet (only the ones that directly interface to the new network need to change to be able to use it) We even mused about extreme networking. For example, TCP/IP should be able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper containing one packet of data. As far as I know, no one ever did that.... But it was one of the scenarios that came up in the brainstorming discussions to prevent us from changing the technical mechanisms in a way that precluded PigeonNet's use. On another extreme, we mused about incorporating another Internet into The Internet, i.e., using some existing set of routers and lines (Internet 1), as a means to interconnect routers in an overlaid internet (Internet 2). After all, a fragment of an internet meets the definition of a network - a communications mechanism that can carry packets. As far as I know, such multi-layer Internet-of-Internets *did* happen. It was used in some secure environments and I think also used as a technique to implement the IP4 to IP6 transition (are we there yet...it's been more than 30 years!???) So, as Dave noted, TCP/IP was developed as an overlay that would run over all existing, or future, networks. That goal often came up during the meetings and discussions as something akin to a Prime Directive. ============== IMHO, future historians might also like to know *why* that was the Prime Directive. In other words, Why TCP? The intransigence of people to settle on a single technology and protocol was important as a motivator, but IMHO only part of it. My introduction to TCP was in 1977. I had been working in the ARPANET environment, doing things like email et al at MIT. I moved to BBN in 1977 and my first task was to write the first TCP for Unix, which was needed as part of an ARPA project. At that time, TCP was at the version 2.5 stage. Over the next year or so, we made a lot of changes to create TCP 3 and then TCP 4. Creating a technology that could incorporate any kind of network was a big part of the mission. But there were others. For example, it was desirable that the infrastructure support different types of user traffic. Ideally, the TCP infrastructure would support all types of user traffic in a way similar to its ability to utilize any type of network that might appear. Specifically, voice traffic - realtime human-human speech - was found to not work very well over a TCP connection. With our traditional uses, e.g., FTP/Telnet/Email, getting all of the data there intact was the overriding goal. In speech, getting the data there in a timely fashion was most important, and some loss of snippets of speech was acceptable. That, among other things, motivated the split of TCP into TCP/IP, allowing the creation of UDP and "higher" protocols to carry things like speech and video. ======================= All of these internet-history discussions tend to revolve around technology - protocols, algorithms, etc., which isn't surprising since a lot of the people on this list were deeply involved in creating that technology. But for the benefit of historians, there's another "layer" of discussion that seems important - Why TCP? In other words, why was it so important to create a whole new infrastructure with such capabilities. The Departments of Defense (note plural) put quite a lot of money into the efforts to develop the Internet technology. ARPA, part of the US military, was a large player, acting as a conduit for funds from the various parts of the military - Army, Navy, Air Force, etc. But other players from other countries were there too - RSRE (UK), NDRE (Norway), DFVLR (Germany), and CNUCE (Italy) are ones I remember. So, .... the interesting question is "Why did they send money, and keep sending it, to create the TCP/IP technology"? Why did they care about being able to interconnect all sorts of networks? The answer of course is because they needed it to solve their own communications problems. During that TCP2-->4 evolution period, I remember that we were continuously aware of stereotypical military scenarios in which TCP was supposed to operate. The military folks didn't really care about bits, bytes, packets, etc. They just knew what they wanted to be able to do with it all. The scenario I remember most was what I heard on joining the fray in 1977 and learning what exactly this "TCP" thing and associated projects were all about. It was a "Command and Control" scenario, which is the bread-and-butter of the military world. The notion was that someone "out in the field", perhaps a scout in a jeep, would see something interesting, and need to report it up the command chain. "I see a column of tanks coming along the river valley". The jeep of course couldn't be wired into an IMP port on the ARPANET. But it could have a radio, and that radio should be able to communicate with another jeep, or tank, or whatever else might be around. And they might be able to communicate with the field headquarters, possibly several miles away. But everyone had to be able to move, often rapidly and unpredictably. So, .... here's some money....make it work... and Packet Radio networks were born. With lots of jeeps, or helicopters, or whatever, and their eyes and ears, the field headquarters could be connected back to the Pentagon over the ARPANET and all of that information could be used to figure out what to do about it. But somehow we need to have messages flow from the Packet Radio to the ARPANET... So, .... here's some money....make it work.... and gateways (aka routers) were born. Back at the Pentagon, looking at all the reports, it might become clear that the Army guys in the jeeps needed a little help as waves of tanks approached them. Perhaps there's a ship offshore, with some big guns, and a carrier full of nasty airplanes. But they're over the horizon, too far away for the Packet Radio to reach, or for wires to an IMP port. But they do have satellite dishes, and can talk to other dishes halfway around the planet if necessary. If only their computers could talk with everybody else... So, here's some money....make it work.... and SATNET and MATNET were born. The USS Carl Vinson was on The Internet. When things get frenetic, messages and email just aren't fast enough. Real time voice communication is critical (remember, no cell phones in those days). But voice over TCP isn't working well. So, here's some money....make it work.... and TCP is split into TCP and IP, UDP is defined, and the obstacle to realtime voice is removed. Hey, it should even work for video someday. We can't do video, but graphics are a big help. A general might be able to view a map while talking with commanders in the field who see the same map. Even use a pointer to highlight specific areas of the map as he gives instructions. "Unit A, you move here (pointing somewhere), and Ship B, you fire at this location (pointing somewhere else)". It's really important that the "pointing" actions in the graphics are well-synchronized with the speech giving the commands...... So, the real-time UDP speech needs to be time-synched with the graphics images over TCP. So, here's some money....make it work....and .... mechanisms such as NTP (thank you Dave Mills!) are created to provide high-accuracy global time. But I have no idea if the voice/graphics synching is guaranteed even today. Sure hope so... There were a number of these scenarios that drove our thinking about the problems. I was an initial member of Vint's IAB (then called ICCB), and these kinds of scenarios played a significant role in those discussions, which complemented the technical discussions in the larger Internet group meetings. The IAB in part acted as a conduit to translate the desires of the guys with the money into the technical goals that drove the creation of the TCP/IP protocols and machinery. Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None of the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. So, that's why we have TCP! As usual, I've written a lot, sorry about that. It just seems important to get this written down somewhere to capture some of the "why" part of the Internet history. The existence of concrete scenarios was key in focusing the technical work on actual real-world problems to be solved. That permeated the culture of the Internet developers. Instead of writing documents, we wrote code... /Jack Haverty August 31, 2016 On 08/31/2016 07:17 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > > This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: > > Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks > around the world. How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that > they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. > > TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, > connecting them. > > d/ > From vint at google.com Wed Aug 31 15:29:05 2016 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:29:05 -0400 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > > We even mused about extreme networking. For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that... yeah, they did - there's even an RFC about it, I think, from UK. see also YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCZH9Lp8uo The audio and auto-caption is hilariously disconnected. https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1934251/pigeon-protocol-finds-a-practical-purpose http://www.cnet.com/news/pigeon-powered-internet-takes-flight/ v -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Wed Aug 31 15:31:16 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 10:31:16 +1200 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <50804405-fff3-c6cb-421a-44d1bf08ab2c@gmail.com> On 01/09/2016 09:43, Jack Haverty wrote: ... > For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that.... Of coure they did: http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/writeup/ Brian From vint at google.com Wed Aug 31 15:35:06 2016 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:35:06 -0400 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the deciding parties at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve Lukasic as DARPA Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. v -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ocl at gih.com Wed Aug 31 15:48:24 2016 From: ocl at gih.com (Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 00:48:24 +0200 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <0d3d7120-44be-e985-a654-2b2e0f2a8e34@gih.com> On 01/09/2016 00:29, Vint Cerf wrote: > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > > > We even mused about extreme networking. For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of > paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that... > > > yeah, they did - there's even an RFC about it, I think, from UK. Not UK - wrong Cambridge. :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers Kindest regards, Olivier -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 16:29:06 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:29:06 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Hi Vint, Wow, a great list of names from the early days. I know they all supported the ARPANET and Internet, especially by directing funding in the right direction. But I was curious about who made the decision to make all of the work open and freely available. There were several companies and organizations back in the 80s developing their own way of interconnecting networks - Xerox, IBM, Novell, Banyan, etc. As far as I remember, all of them made it difficult for others to use or evolve their technology, with various techniques of secrecy, patents, licenses, etc. They naturally wanted to protect their investment and competitive advantage. The government, and especially the military, with its understandable tendency to keep things secret, usually had such work also kept even more private for all sorts of reasons. Development plans of a new fighter jet, or the specifications of the capabilities of a new tank, and other such technology infrastructure work, was (I think) usually kept very secret. But in the case of computer networking technology, the work we now know as The Internet was (mostly) done in a very open and collaborative fashion, much more so than any company or organization I can remember. I have for a long time wondered who made that decision...IMHO it made a huge difference. I've also wondered if they, or their successors, now regret it. IMHO, networking technology has started regressing from that openness. Protocols are less open (so how exactly does Netflix/whatever work...?) Core functions are no longer universal and compatible (so many different ways to send messages inside various closed gardens of Social Media). Etc. Etc. It's interesting to look back at the 40 years or so of networks, but it's hard to see where it's going, and how the loss of openness will affect things. But that's for internet-future, not internet-history. /Jack On 08/31/2016 03:35 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > > Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the > deciding parties > at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve > Lukasic as DARPA > Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. > > v > > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Aug 31 16:34:42 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:34:42 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <0a7d5cb4-6d51-622e-eac3-1cb10a0f2efa@dcrocker.net> On 8/31/2016 2:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet. In > the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the > hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet. I > remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. As I've heard it, Bob was staying at my brother's place and during their chatting, Bob outlined the problem he was trying to solve. Steve had a copy of the Alohanet paper handy and showed it to him. (Steve says that Bob confirms this story.) At the time, I was living 2 doors down from my brother and was not just uninvolved but mostly unaware of the various datacom efforts that were underway. However Steve got quite excited when he heard about Alohanet, and almost stormed into my place describing it to me. Then he paused as said this was why it was important to fund research in lots of different kinds of places. I was confused by the transition from details of a project to a higher-level theory of research funding and asked for an explanation. He said Alohanet was completely undisciplined and could never have been invented east of the Mississippi... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From vint at google.com Wed Aug 31 16:39:46 2016 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:39:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Bob Kahn and I made that decision. v On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > Hi Vint, > > Wow, a great list of names from the early days. I know they all supported > the ARPANET and Internet, especially by directing funding in the right > direction. But I was curious about who made the decision to make all of > the work open and freely available. > > There were several companies and organizations back in the 80s developing > their own way of interconnecting networks - Xerox, IBM, Novell, Banyan, > etc. As far as I remember, all of them made it difficult for others to use > or evolve their technology, with various techniques of secrecy, patents, > licenses, etc. They naturally wanted to protect their investment and > competitive advantage. > > The government, and especially the military, with its understandable > tendency to keep things secret, usually had such work also kept even more > private for all sorts of reasons. Development plans of a new fighter jet, > or the specifications of the capabilities of a new tank, and other such > technology infrastructure work, was (I think) usually kept very secret. > > But in the case of computer networking technology, the work we now know as > The Internet was (mostly) done in a very open and collaborative fashion, > much more so than any company or organization I can remember. > > I have for a long time wondered who made that decision...IMHO it made a > huge difference. I've also wondered if they, or their successors, now > regret it. > > IMHO, networking technology has started regressing from that openness. > Protocols are less open (so how exactly does Netflix/whatever work...?) > Core functions are no longer universal and compatible (so many different > ways to send messages inside various closed gardens of Social Media). Etc. > Etc. > > It's interesting to look back at the 40 years or so of networks, but it's > hard to see where it's going, and how the loss of openness will affect > things. But that's for internet-future, not internet-history. > > /Jack > > > On 08/31/2016 03:35 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > >> >> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > > wrote: >> >> >> Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, >> and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the >> technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None >> of >> the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, >> etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the >> military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their >> problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. >> >> >> Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the >> deciding parties >> at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve >> Lukasic as DARPA >> Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. >> >> v >> >> >> >> -- >> New postal address: >> Google >> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor >> Reston, VA 20190 >> > -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 16:53:15 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:53:15 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <0a7d5cb4-6d51-622e-eac3-1cb10a0f2efa@dcrocker.net> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> <0a7d5cb4-6d51-622e-eac3-1cb10a0f2efa@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <62d589c9-e2cb-5640-3929-d3cf557e9efa@3kitty.org> Wow. So many serendipitous interconnections that we weren't even aware of back then. That paper that Bob got from Steve is probably what Bob showed us back at MIT. Both Bob and I were in Licklider's group, which had the ARPANET IMP and did lots of associated networking projects, e.g., Bob designed and built the IMP interface for the PDP-10. Alohanet had more probability in its genes than East Coasters were used to -- so it seems "undisciplined". But IMHO Alohanet couldn't be done on the East Coast because we didn't feel the same pain there as those in Hawaii. Too many separate islands in Hawaii with very deep ocean separating them. Wires were out of the question, so radio was the only choice if they wanted to communicate. That was the "scenario" that motivated creating whatever they could get to work and try unconventional, undisciplined, approaches that weren't needed where you could easily get more wires from the phone company. If all the states east of the Mississippi were separated by deep submarine canyons, Alohanet might have been developed there... /Jack On 08/31/2016 04:34 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/31/2016 2:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: >> AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet. In >> the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the >> hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet. I >> remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. > > > As I've heard it, Bob was staying at my brother's place and during their > chatting, Bob outlined the problem he was trying to solve. Steve had a > copy of the Alohanet paper handy and showed it to him. (Steve says that > Bob confirms this story.) > > At the time, I was living 2 doors down from my brother and was not just > uninvolved but mostly unaware of the various datacom efforts that were > underway. However Steve got quite excited when he heard about Alohanet, > and almost stormed into my place describing it to me. Then he paused as > said this was why it was important to fund research in lots of different > kinds of places. > > I was confused by the transition from details of a project to a > higher-level theory of research funding and asked for an explanation. > > He said Alohanet was completely undisciplined and could never have been > invented east of the Mississippi... > > d/ > From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 17:25:27 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 17:25:27 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Everyone on the planet owes you and Bob their gratitude for this decision. Or perhaps, in Internet tradition, a beer. (Well, OK, a nice cab...) I know there are some actual historians monitoring this list, and probably more in the future. Lots of choices and decisions are to be captured for the historical record. IMHO, this was one of the most important decisions ever in creating The Internet. Please, historians, capture it in the history books. If you're looking for milestones, this was a big one. TCP/IP technology is fine, but there were numerous other ways to define the technical mechanisms that could have evolved into The Internet. The people driving all those technologies had to make a similar decision. They all made the wrong choice, and their technologies have all but disappeared. You and Bob made the right one. Thanks for making us not have to suffer through endless chaotic decades of struggling to get one computer to talk to another. Even my new attic fan has an IP address..... /Jack On 08/31/2016 04:39 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > Bob Kahn and I made that decision. > > v > > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 7:29 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > > Hi Vint, > > Wow, a great list of names from the early days. I know they all > supported the ARPANET and Internet, especially by directing funding > in the right direction. But I was curious about who made the > decision to make all of the work open and freely available. > > There were several companies and organizations back in the 80s > developing their own way of interconnecting networks - Xerox, IBM, > Novell, Banyan, etc. As far as I remember, all of them made it > difficult for others to use or evolve their technology, with various > techniques of secrecy, patents, licenses, etc. They naturally > wanted to protect their investment and competitive advantage. > > The government, and especially the military, with its understandable > tendency to keep things secret, usually had such work also kept even > more private for all sorts of reasons. Development plans of a new > fighter jet, or the specifications of the capabilities of a new > tank, and other such technology infrastructure work, was (I think) > usually kept very secret. > > But in the case of computer networking technology, the work we now > know as The Internet was (mostly) done in a very open and > collaborative fashion, much more so than any company or organization > I can remember. > > I have for a long time wondered who made that decision...IMHO it > made a huge difference. I've also wondered if they, or their > successors, now regret it. > > IMHO, networking technology has started regressing from that > openness. Protocols are less open (so how exactly does > Netflix/whatever work...?) Core functions are no longer universal > and compatible (so many different ways to send messages inside > various closed gardens of Social Media). Etc. Etc. > > It's interesting to look back at the 40 years or so of networks, but > it's hard to see where it's going, and how the loss of openness will > affect things. But that's for internet-future, not internet-history. > > /Jack > > > On 08/31/2016 03:35 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > >> wrote: > > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of > this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and > make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to > use. None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, > IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered > that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could > solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > > Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the > closest to the > deciding parties > at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve > Lukasic as DARPA > Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. > > v > > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > > > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Aug 31 18:21:09 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:21:09 -0700 Subject: [ih] Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <62d589c9-e2cb-5640-3929-d3cf557e9efa@3kitty.org> References: <2144299268.2585311.1472613209553@mail.yahoo.com> <4148256b-42cf-8c1e-0a9c-50c6301cddeb@gih.com> <14316BEF-D99C-4F91-8182-6FC0B08DF31A@aland.bbn.com> <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93@3kitty.org> <0a7d5cb4-6d51-622e-eac3-1cb10a0f2efa@dcrocker.net> <62d589c9-e2cb-5640-3929-d3cf557e9efa@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <5951af0d-bc83-aeaf-7374-e4ff9499e3d5@dcrocker.net> On 8/31/2016 4:53 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > Alohanet had more probability in its genes than East Coasters were used > to -- so it seems "undisciplined". But IMHO Alohanet couldn't be done > on the East Coast because we didn't feel the same pain there as those in > Hawaii. Too many separate islands in Hawaii with very deep ocean > separating them. Wires were out of the question, so radio was the only > choice if they wanted to communicate. To me, the interesting part was the lack of a token mechanism, to establish disciplined access. Sometime later, I saw the hardware for the UC Irvine Ring and a quarter of its real-estate was spent on the token-establishment mechanism. So if one wanted a cheaper mechanism, tossing out the extreme discipline made sense to me. We always hear about computing/storage tradeoffs. This was a cost/channel-efficiency tradeoff. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From johnl at iecc.com Wed Aug 31 19:09:27 2016 From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine) Date: 1 Sep 2016 02:09:27 -0000 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <5951af0d-bc83-aeaf-7374-e4ff9499e3d5@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> >So if one wanted a cheaper mechanism, tossing out the extreme discipline >made sense to me. We always hear about computing/storage tradeoffs. >This was a cost/channel-efficiency tradeoff. It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that Ethernet sounded too good to be true. If it were heavily loaded, all those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in a predictable way. As we all know, Ethernets worked just fine. A lot of people didn't believe it until they saw it, and sometimes not even then. R's, John From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Wed Aug 31 19:29:57 2016 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 02:29:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] Packet Radio and Why TCP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <952689980.3225941.1472696998029@mail.yahoo.com> In case people are interested,? various packet radio efforts did actually have demos for the military that utilized a hummer or an Air Force airplane besides the SRI bread/mobile van which is now sitting outside the Computer History Museum. I am not aware of any packet radio demos with helicopters.? I think power, weight, size issues probably prevented this but feel free to correct if anyone knows otherwise.? Helicopters have been used in more recent MANET program demos for DARPA.? barbara p.s.Packet radios may have ended up on a boat too before I started working on the project.? I believe SRI had access to a research vessel. From: "internet-history-request at postel.org" To: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 3:35 PM Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 37 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. Why TCP? (Jack Haverty) ? 2. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) ? 3. Re: Why TCP? (Brian E Carpenter) ? 4. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 14:43:24 -0700 From: Jack Haverty Subject: [ih] Why TCP? To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93 at 3kitty.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed [I changed the subject because I hate unsearchable subjects like "...internet history digest..."] I think Dave's observation is a really important fact for future historians - the Internet did not evolve in a vacuum. ARPANET was one of the first packet networks (I'll let others argue about which was First...), but it was preceded by networks based on phone lines and modems interconnecting terminals and computers. The ARPA Packet Radio net enabled communications between mobile computers, moving around in jeeps and helicopters, by radio links.? But it was preceded by AlohaNet in Hawaii, which interconnected the various islands by radio.? AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet.? In the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet.? I remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. Later, SATNET interconnected sites using satellite links, also obviously using radio for communications.? Unlike the packet radio environment, the path of the satellites was highly predictable, and the massive dish antennas on the ground didn't move at all. SATNET was subsequently adapted to create MATNET, a Navy project, that used satellite dishes on ships for communication.? Ships moved of course, but not as rapidly or spasmodically as jeeps and aircraft. Ethernet was evolved by Xerox PARC into its own "internet", with multiple LANs interconnecting by radio links or telephone lines. During the early 80s, The Internet which we still use today was running in parallel with the PARC internet (I can't recall what they called it), using PUP where we used TCP. As Dave noted, we got used to hearing that the mission of the Internet Project (as driven by the IAB/ICCB under Vint's direction) was to develop the infrastructure technology, i.e., protocols and algorithms and standards, to interconnect these networks, both the existing types and anything else that someone might dream up in the future. If some new type of network could carry packets from point A to point B, it should be possible to incorporate it into the Internet --- without requiring the host computers to change any software (which would be hard), or change all of the routers in the Internet (only the ones that directly interface to the new network need to change to be able to use it) We even mused about extreme networking.? For example, TCP/IP should be able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper containing one packet of data. As far as I know, no one ever did that....? But it was one of the scenarios that came up in the brainstorming discussions to prevent us from changing the technical mechanisms in a way that precluded PigeonNet's use. On another extreme, we mused about incorporating another Internet into The Internet, i.e., using some existing set of routers and lines (Internet 1), as a means to interconnect routers in an overlaid internet (Internet 2).? After all, a fragment of an internet meets the definition of a network - a communications mechanism that can carry packets. As far as I know, such multi-layer Internet-of-Internets *did* happen. It was used in some secure environments and I think also used as a technique to implement the IP4 to IP6 transition (are we there yet...it's been more than 30 years!???) So, as Dave noted, TCP/IP was developed as an overlay that would run over all existing, or future, networks.? That goal often came up during the meetings and discussions as something akin to a Prime Directive. ============== IMHO, future historians might also like to know *why* that was the Prime Directive.? In other words, Why TCP?? The intransigence of people to settle on a single technology and protocol was important as a motivator, but IMHO only part of it. My introduction to TCP was in 1977.? I had been working in the ARPANET environment, doing things like email et al at MIT.? I moved to BBN in 1977 and my first task was to write the first TCP for Unix, which was needed as part of an ARPA project.? At that time, TCP was at the version 2.5 stage. Over the next year or so, we made a lot of changes to create TCP 3 and then TCP 4. Creating a technology that could incorporate any kind of network was a big part of the mission.? But there were others.? For example, it was desirable that the infrastructure support different types of user traffic.? Ideally, the TCP infrastructure would support all types of user traffic in a way similar to its ability to utilize any type of network that might appear. Specifically, voice traffic - realtime human-human speech - was found to not work very well over a TCP connection.? With our traditional uses, e.g., FTP/Telnet/Email, getting all of the data there intact was the overriding goal.? In speech, getting the data there in a timely fashion was most important, and some loss of snippets of speech was acceptable. That, among other things, motivated the split of TCP into TCP/IP, allowing the creation of UDP and "higher" protocols to carry things like speech and video. ======================= All of these internet-history discussions tend to revolve around technology - protocols, algorithms, etc., which isn't surprising since a lot of the people on this list were deeply involved in creating that technology. But for the benefit of historians, there's another "layer" of discussion that seems important - Why TCP?? In other words, why was it so important to create a whole new infrastructure with such capabilities. The Departments of Defense (note plural) put quite a lot of money into the efforts to develop the Internet technology.? ARPA, part of the US military, was a large player, acting as a conduit for funds from the various parts of the military - Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.? But other players from other countries were there too - RSRE (UK), NDRE (Norway), DFVLR (Germany), and CNUCE (Italy) are ones I remember. So, .... the interesting question is "Why did they send money, and keep sending it, to create the TCP/IP technology"?? Why did they care about being able to interconnect all sorts of networks? The answer of course is because they needed it to solve their own communications problems. During that TCP2-->4 evolution period, I remember that we were continuously aware of stereotypical military scenarios in which TCP was supposed to operate.? The military folks didn't really care about bits, bytes, packets, etc.? They just knew what they wanted to be able to do with it all. The scenario I remember most was what I heard on joining the fray in 1977 and learning what exactly this "TCP" thing and associated projects were all about. It was a "Command and Control" scenario, which is the bread-and-butter of the military world.? The notion was that someone "out in the field", perhaps a scout in a jeep, would see something interesting, and need to report it up the command chain.? "I see a column of tanks coming along the river valley". The jeep of course couldn't be wired into an IMP port on the ARPANET. But it could have a radio, and that radio should be able to communicate with another jeep, or tank, or whatever else might be around.? And they might be able to communicate with the field headquarters, possibly several miles away.? But everyone had to be able to move, often rapidly and unpredictably. So, .... here's some money....make it work... and Packet Radio networks were born. With lots of jeeps, or helicopters, or whatever, and their eyes and ears, the field headquarters could be connected back to the Pentagon over the ARPANET and all of that information could be used to figure out what to do about it.? But somehow we need to have messages flow from the Packet Radio to the ARPANET... So, .... here's some money....make it work.... and gateways (aka routers) were born. Back at the Pentagon, looking at all the reports, it might become clear that the Army guys in the jeeps needed a little help as waves of tanks approached them. Perhaps there's a ship offshore, with some big guns, and a carrier full of nasty airplanes.? But they're over the horizon, too far away for the Packet Radio to reach, or for wires to an IMP port.? But they do have satellite dishes, and can talk to other dishes halfway around the planet if necessary.? If only their computers could talk with everybody else... So, here's some money....make it work.... and SATNET and MATNET were born.? The USS Carl Vinson was on The Internet. When things get frenetic, messages and email just aren't fast enough. Real time voice communication is critical (remember, no cell phones in those days).? But voice over TCP isn't working well. So, here's some money....make it work.... and TCP is split into TCP and IP, UDP is defined, and the obstacle to realtime voice is removed.? Hey, it should even work for video someday. We can't do video, but graphics are a big help.? A general might be able to view a map while talking with commanders in the field who see the same map.? Even use a pointer to highlight specific areas of the map as he gives instructions.? "Unit A, you move here (pointing somewhere), and Ship B, you fire at this location (pointing somewhere else)". It's really important that the "pointing" actions in the graphics are well-synchronized with the speech giving the commands...... So, the real-time UDP speech needs to be time-synched with the graphics images over TCP. So, here's some money....make it work....and .... mechanisms such as NTP (thank you Dave Mills!) are created to provide high-accuracy global time.? But I have no idea if the voice/graphics synching is guaranteed even today.? Sure hope so... There were a number of these scenarios that drove our thinking about the problems.? I was an initial member of Vint's IAB (then called ICCB), and these kinds of scenarios played a significant role in those discussions, which complemented the technical discussions in the larger Internet group meetings.? The IAB in part acted as a conduit to translate the desires of the guys with the money into the technical goals that drove the creation of the TCP/IP protocols and machinery. Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use.? None of the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, etc.) did that.? So when the rest of the world discovered that the military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. So, that's why we have TCP! As usual, I've written a lot, sorry about that.? It just seems important to get this written down somewhere to capture some of the "why" part of the Internet history.? The existence of concrete scenarios was key in focusing the technical work on actual real-world problems to be solved. That permeated the culture of the Internet developers.? Instead of writing documents, we wrote code... /Jack Haverty August 31, 2016 On 08/31/2016 07:17 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >> solve the >> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. > > > This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: > >? ? ? Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks > around the world.? How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that > they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. > >? ? ? TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, > connecting them. > > d/ > ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:29:05 -0400 From: Vint Cerf Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? To: Jack Haverty Cc: internet history Message-ID: ??? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > > We even mused about extreme networking.? For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that... yeah, they did - there's even an RFC about it, I think, from UK. see also YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCZH9Lp8uo The audio and auto-caption is hilariously disconnected. https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1934251/pigeon-protocol-finds-a-practical-purpose http://www.cnet.com/news/pigeon-powered-internet-takes-flight/ v -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/30aad3c0/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 10:31:16 +1200 From: Brian E Carpenter Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? To: Jack Haverty Cc: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <50804405-fff3-c6cb-421a-44d1bf08ab2c at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 On 01/09/2016 09:43, Jack Haverty wrote: ... > For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that.... Of coure they did: http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/writeup/ ? Brian ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:35:06 -0400 From: Vint Cerf Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? To: Jack Haverty Cc: internet history Message-ID: ??? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use.? None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that.? So when the rest of the world discovered that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the deciding parties at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve Lukasic as DARPA Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. v -- New postal address: Google 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor Reston, VA 20190 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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URL: From lyndon at orthanc.ca Wed Aug 31 19:32:38 2016 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:32:38 -0700 Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 In-Reply-To: <0704d617-dd98-908c-44f8-71bec65c4a49@channelisles.net> References: <498329247.2897074.1472660275367@mail.yahoo.com> <0704d617-dd98-908c-44f8-71bec65c4a49@channelisles.net> Message-ID: <524374CE-1070-4B40-BFE9-B41CC93CA7B4@orthanc.ca> > On Aug 31, 2016, at 10:25 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote: > > AX.25 was based on X.25 and was used at slow (300-1200baud) speeds over > HF radio. It's *very* loosely based on X.25, and tends to be used as a link layer datagram protocol for other stream oriented applications (not protocols). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 20:23:09 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:23:09 -0700 Subject: [ih] Packet Radio and Why TCP In-Reply-To: <952689980.3225941.1472696998029@mail.yahoo.com> References: <952689980.3225941.1472696998029@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I wasn't directly involved in Packet Radio itself, but heard about it, mostly from Jim Mathis and (IIRC) Holly Nelson who were at most of the meetings. Helicopters were definitely in the thought experiments, and even faster low-altitude aircraft, as users of communications. But I think you're right that probably only land-mobile and high-altitude aircraft was possible to actually demo, at least at first. There were many problems to be solved (we all had lots of lists of "things that need to be worked on"), and packet radio with higher speed mobile platforms was probably one of them. It involved not only power/weight/size but also things like routing protocols, which would likely have to be much faster to respond to changes. I never have heard how (or if) that early Packet Radio work evolved into "real" use in modern military systems. E.G., do drones still use TCP, do they communicate with Packet Radio protocols, etc. There's probably a good history story there for some future historian to uncover. /Jack On 08/31/2016 07:29 PM, Barbara Denny wrote: > In case people are interested, various packet radio efforts did > actually have demos for the military that utilized a hummer or an Air > Force airplane besides the SRI bread/mobile van which is now sitting > outside the Computer History Museum. I am not aware of any packet radio > demos with helicopters. I think power, weight, size issues probably > prevented this but feel free to correct if anyone knows otherwise. > Helicopters have been used in more recent MANET program demos for DARPA. > > barbara > > p.s. > Packet radios may have ended up on a boat too before I started working > on the project. I believe SRI had access to a research vessel. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* "internet-history-request at postel.org" > > *To:* internet-history at postel.org > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 31, 2016 3:35 PM > *Subject:* internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 37 > > 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. Why TCP? (Jack Haverty) > 2. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) > 3. Re: Why TCP? (Brian E Carpenter) > 4. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 14:43:24 -0700 > From: Jack Haverty > > Subject: [ih] Why TCP? > To: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93 at 3kitty.org > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > [I changed the subject because I hate unsearchable subjects like > "...internet history digest..."] > > I think Dave's observation is a really important fact for future > historians - the Internet did not evolve in a vacuum. > > ARPANET was one of the first packet networks (I'll let others argue > about which was First...), but it was preceded by networks based on > phone lines and modems interconnecting terminals and computers. > > The ARPA Packet Radio net enabled communications between mobile > computers, moving around in jeeps and helicopters, by radio links. But > it was preceded by AlohaNet in Hawaii, which interconnected the various > islands by radio. AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet. In > the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the > hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet. I > remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. > > Later, SATNET interconnected sites using satellite links, also obviously > using radio for communications. Unlike the packet radio environment, > the path of the satellites was highly predictable, and the massive dish > antennas on the ground didn't move at all. > > SATNET was subsequently adapted to create MATNET, a Navy project, that > used satellite dishes on ships for communication. Ships moved of > course, but not as rapidly or spasmodically as jeeps and aircraft. > > Ethernet was evolved by Xerox PARC into its own "internet", with > multiple LANs interconnecting by radio links or telephone lines. > During the early 80s, The Internet which we still use today was running > in parallel with the PARC internet (I can't recall what they called it), > using PUP where we used TCP. > > As Dave noted, we got used to hearing that the mission of the Internet > Project (as driven by the IAB/ICCB under Vint's direction) was to > develop the infrastructure technology, i.e., protocols and algorithms > and standards, to interconnect these networks, both the existing types > and anything else that someone might dream up in the future. > > If some new type of network could carry packets from point A to point B, > it should be possible to incorporate it into the Internet --- without > requiring the host computers to change any software (which would be > hard), or change all of the routers in the Internet (only the ones that > directly interface to the new network need to change to be able to use it) > > We even mused about extreme networking. For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that.... But it was one of the > scenarios that came up in the brainstorming discussions to prevent us > from changing the technical mechanisms in a way that precluded > PigeonNet's use. > > On another extreme, we mused about incorporating another Internet into > The Internet, i.e., using some existing set of routers and lines > (Internet 1), as a means to interconnect routers in an overlaid internet > (Internet 2). After all, a fragment of an internet meets the > definition of a network - a communications mechanism that can carry packets. > > As far as I know, such multi-layer Internet-of-Internets *did* happen. > It was used in some secure environments and I think also used as a > technique to implement the IP4 to IP6 transition (are we there > yet...it's been more than 30 years!???) > > So, as Dave noted, TCP/IP was developed as an overlay that would run > over all existing, or future, networks. That goal often came up during > the meetings and discussions as something akin to a Prime Directive. > > ============== > > IMHO, future historians might also like to know *why* that was the Prime > Directive. In other words, Why TCP? The intransigence of people to > settle on a single technology and protocol was important as a motivator, > but IMHO only part of it. > > My introduction to TCP was in 1977. I had been working in the ARPANET > environment, doing things like email et al at MIT. I moved to BBN in > 1977 and my first task was to write the first TCP for Unix, which was > needed as part of an ARPA project. At that time, TCP was at the version > 2.5 stage. > > Over the next year or so, we made a lot of changes to create TCP 3 and > then TCP 4. > > Creating a technology that could incorporate any kind of network was a > big part of the mission. But there were others. For example, it was > desirable that the infrastructure support different types of user > traffic. Ideally, the TCP infrastructure would support all types of > user traffic in a way similar to its ability to utilize any type of > network that might appear. > > Specifically, voice traffic - realtime human-human speech - was found to > not work very well over a TCP connection. With our traditional uses, > e.g., FTP/Telnet/Email, getting all of the data there intact was the > overriding goal. In speech, getting the data there in a timely fashion > was most important, and some loss of snippets of speech was acceptable. > > That, among other things, motivated the split of TCP into TCP/IP, > allowing the creation of UDP and "higher" protocols to carry things like > speech and video. > > ======================= > > All of these internet-history discussions tend to revolve around > technology - protocols, algorithms, etc., which isn't surprising since a > lot of the people on this list were deeply involved in creating that > technology. > > But for the benefit of historians, there's another "layer" of discussion > that seems important - Why TCP? In other words, why was it so important > to create a whole new infrastructure with such capabilities. > > The Departments of Defense (note plural) put quite a lot of money into > the efforts to develop the Internet technology. ARPA, part of the US > military, was a large player, acting as a conduit for funds from the > various parts of the military - Army, Navy, Air Force, etc. But other > players from other countries were there too - RSRE (UK), NDRE (Norway), > DFVLR (Germany), and CNUCE (Italy) are ones I remember. > > So, .... the interesting question is "Why did they send money, and keep > sending it, to create the TCP/IP technology"? Why did they care about > being able to interconnect all sorts of networks? > > The answer of course is because they needed it to solve their own > communications problems. > > During that TCP2-->4 evolution period, I remember that we were > continuously aware of stereotypical military scenarios in which TCP was > supposed to operate. The military folks didn't really care about bits, > bytes, packets, etc. They just knew what they wanted to be able to do > with it all. > > The scenario I remember most was what I heard on joining the fray in > 1977 and learning what exactly this "TCP" thing and associated projects > were all about. > > It was a "Command and Control" scenario, which is the bread-and-butter > of the military world. The notion was that someone "out in the field", > perhaps a scout in a jeep, would see something interesting, and need to > report it up the command chain. "I see a column of tanks coming along > the river valley". > > The jeep of course couldn't be wired into an IMP port on the ARPANET. > But it could have a radio, and that radio should be able to communicate > with another jeep, or tank, or whatever else might be around. And they > might be able to communicate with the field headquarters, possibly > several miles away. But everyone had to be able to move, often rapidly > and unpredictably. > > So, .... here's some money....make it work... and Packet Radio networks > were born. > > With lots of jeeps, or helicopters, or whatever, and their eyes and > ears, the field headquarters could be connected back to the Pentagon > over the ARPANET and all of that information could be used to figure out > what to do about it. But somehow we need to have messages flow from the > Packet Radio to the ARPANET... > > So, .... here's some money....make it work.... and gateways (aka > routers) were born. > > Back at the Pentagon, looking at all the reports, it might become clear > that the Army guys in the jeeps needed a little help as waves of tanks > approached them. > > Perhaps there's a ship offshore, with some big guns, and a carrier full > of nasty airplanes. But they're over the horizon, too far away for the > Packet Radio to reach, or for wires to an IMP port. But they do have > satellite dishes, and can talk to other dishes halfway around the planet > if necessary. If only their computers could talk with everybody else... > > So, here's some money....make it work.... and SATNET and MATNET were > born. The USS Carl Vinson was on The Internet. > > When things get frenetic, messages and email just aren't fast enough. > Real time voice communication is critical (remember, no cell phones in > those days). But voice over TCP isn't working well. > > So, here's some money....make it work.... and TCP is split into TCP and > IP, UDP is defined, and the obstacle to realtime voice is removed. Hey, > it should even work for video someday. > > We can't do video, but graphics are a big help. A general might be able > to view a map while talking with commanders in the field who see the > same map. Even use a pointer to highlight specific areas of the map as > he gives instructions. "Unit A, you move here (pointing somewhere), > and Ship B, you fire at this location (pointing somewhere else)". > > It's really important that the "pointing" actions in the graphics are > well-synchronized with the speech giving the commands...... > > So, the real-time UDP speech needs to be time-synched with the graphics > images over TCP. > > So, here's some money....make it work....and .... mechanisms such as NTP > (thank you Dave Mills!) are created to provide high-accuracy global > time. But I have no idea if the voice/graphics synching is guaranteed > even today. Sure hope so... > > There were a number of these scenarios that drove our thinking about the > problems. I was an initial member of Vint's IAB (then called ICCB), and > these kinds of scenarios played a significant role in those discussions, > which complemented the technical discussions in the larger Internet > group meetings. The IAB in part acted as a conduit to translate the > desires of the guys with the money into the technical goals that drove > the creation of the TCP/IP protocols and machinery. > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > So, that's why we have TCP! > > As usual, I've written a lot, sorry about that. It just seems important > to get this written down somewhere to capture some of the "why" part of > the Internet history. The existence of concrete scenarios was key in > focusing the technical work on actual real-world problems to be solved. > That permeated the culture of the Internet developers. Instead of > writing documents, we wrote code... > > /Jack Haverty > August 31, 2016 > > > > > On 08/31/2016 07:17 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: >> On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >>> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >>> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >>> solve the >>> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. >> >> >> This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: >> >> Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks >> around the world. How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that >> they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. >> >> TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, >> connecting them. >> >> d/ >> > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:29:05 -0400 > From: Vint Cerf > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet history > > Message-ID: > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > >> >> We even mused about extreme networking. For example, TCP/IP should be >> able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for >> transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper >> containing one packet of data. >> >> As far as I know, no one ever did that... > > > yeah, they did - there's even an RFC about it, I think, from UK. > > > see also YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCZH9Lp8uo > > The audio and auto-caption is hilariously disconnected. > > https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1934251/pigeon-protocol-finds-a-practical-purpose > > http://www.cnet.com/news/pigeon-powered-internet-takes-flight/ > > v > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/30aad3c0/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 10:31:16 +1200 > From: Brian E Carpenter > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <50804405-fff3-c6cb-421a-44d1bf08ab2c at gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > On 01/09/2016 09:43, Jack Haverty wrote: > ... >> For example, TCP/IP should be >> able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for >> transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper >> containing one packet of data. >> >> As far as I know, no one ever did that.... > > Of coure they did: > http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/writeup/ > > Brian > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:35:06 -0400 > From: Vint Cerf > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet history > > Message-ID: > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > >> >> Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, >> and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the >> technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use. None of >> the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, >> etc.) did that. So when the rest of the world discovered that the >> military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their >> problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > > Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the > deciding parties > at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve Lukasic > as DARPA > Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. > > v > > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/86df189e/attachment.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > > > End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 37 > ************************************************* > > > > > _______ > 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 paul at redbarn.org Wed Aug 31 20:29:38 2016 From: paul at redbarn.org (Paul Vixie) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:29:38 -0700 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <57C7A0A2.70601@redbarn.org> John Levine wrote: > It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that > Ethernet sounded too good to be true. If it were heavily loaded, all > those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and > performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in > a predictable way. david boggs had, posted on his office window at DECWRL, a photocopy of an internal D|I|G|I|T|A|L memorandum from the head of the DEC Office Connect project, who was looking for a way to connect office computers that wasn't twisted-pair. boggs used a yellow "highlighter" to illuminate one key passage which i shall never forget: "Ethernet is a laboratory toy. Its random exponential backoff mechanism is clear evidence that ." somehow DEC ended up adopting ethernet, and hiring boggs, in spite of this memo. later when DECWRL visited the main "NAC" (Networks and Communications) office building to give a series of technical talks, someone came into a conference room where boggs was sitting and told him they had the room reserved. boggs should not have had to leave. it was the Metcalfe and Boggs conference room, after all. later on, DEC poured billions (that's like millions except with a "b") of dollars into DECnet Phase V, proving after all that they, and not the community, knew what the future of networking was going to look like. (they should have saved the money so that Compaq could have it.) anyway the list of things that can't be done, and the naysayers who have proved those negatives, continues to get longer every few minutes. -- P Vixie From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Wed Aug 31 20:40:56 2016 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 15:40:56 +1200 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: On 01/09/2016 14:09, John Levine wrote: >> So if one wanted a cheaper mechanism, tossing out the extreme discipline >> made sense to me. We always hear about computing/storage tradeoffs. >> This was a cost/channel-efficiency tradeoff. > > It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that > Ethernet sounded too good to be true. If it were heavily loaded, all > those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and > performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in > a predictable way. > > As we all know, Ethernets worked just fine. A lot of people didn't > believe it until they saw it, and sometimes not even then. There was a paper around 1984 from either UCB or LBL that showed (by simulations, I think) that the performance curves were the same shape for Ethernet or (IBM) Token Ring. For Ethernet the drop-off was caused by collisions on the wire, for Token Ring by I/O buffer overflows. At that time memory wasn't dirt cheap, so buffer sizes tended to be small. At CERN we were bombarded by DEC with reasons why we should choose Ethernet and by IBM with reasons why we should use Token Ring. Being CERN, we chose both (Ethernet for general purpose use, and Token Ring for the control system of LEP, the machine that preceded the LHC). When I spent a couple of years in 2001-3 at the IBM Zurich Lab, where the IBM Token Ring was conceived, the wounds were still raw. Many IBM sites were still on Token Ring then. I had to travel with PCMCIA cards for both Ethernet and TR, plus an adaptor for sites that ran Ethernet over the IBM Cabling System instead of RJ45/UTP5. I think Token Ring really failed because the IBM Cabling System was too good, and therefore very expensive. The Ethernet discourse (one simple coax cable goes everywhere) was very persuasive, especially when Cheapernet (thin coax) came along. Regards Brian From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Aug 31 21:29:50 2016 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 21:29:50 -0700 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> References: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <0b9473d6-3f51-b74b-cfd6-df2049f93aef@3kitty.org> There was a paper, also in that early 80s timeframe, where someone analyzed the wire-level protocols with queuing theory and other magic, and came to an elegant mathematical conclusion. Unfortunately I can't remember whether it applied to Ethernet or Alohanet, or what the elegant conclusion was, or the title/author. It proved mathematically something like "the system remains stable as long as you keep this key timer below a value of 1/e". Hence there would be no performance collapse on Ethernets if you followed the rules. Curiously, in the neighboring world of TCP and Internets at the time, there was a similar conclusion reached about stability albeit not very well quantified or elegant. Something like "everything will be fine as long as there is a lot more capacity in the network than the amount of traffic being carried". Another one was that packet loss rates of 1% on a TCP connection were OK and could be handled with no problems. As I recall, there was no blackboard full of equations involved. We just went around the room and 1% seemed reasonable to most people. Rough consensus and running code..... /Jack On 08/31/2016 07:09 PM, John Levine wrote: >> So if one wanted a cheaper mechanism, tossing out the extreme discipline >> made sense to me. We always hear about computing/storage tradeoffs. >> This was a cost/channel-efficiency tradeoff. > > It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that > Ethernet sounded too good to be true. If it were heavily loaded, all > those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and > performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in > a predictable way. > > As we all know, Ethernets worked just fine. A lot of people didn't > believe it until they saw it, and sometimes not even then. > > R's, > John > _______ > 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 agmalis at gmail.com Wed Aug 31 21:34:49 2016 From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 12:34:49 +0800 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: <57C7A0A2.70601@redbarn.org> References: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> <57C7A0A2.70601@redbarn.org> Message-ID: On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 11:29 AM, Paul Vixie wrote: > later on, DEC poured billions (that's like millions except with a "b") > of dollars into DECnet Phase V, proving after all that they, and not the > community, knew what the future of networking was going to look like. > (they should have saved the money so that Compaq could have it.) > DECnet Phase V gave us IS-IS, which was later standardized by ISO and is now in wide use throughout the Internet. It?s probably the most popular intra-AS routing protocol in use today by Internet backbone providers. So it wasn?t a total waste. :-) Cheers, Andy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Aug 31 22:08:06 2016 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 22:08:06 -0700 Subject: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? In-Reply-To: References: <20160901020927.13520.qmail@ary.lan> Message-ID: <780f268b-e5ca-ef44-6ac9-0700aa901e3d@dcrocker.net> On 8/31/2016 8:40 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote: > There was a paper around 1984 from either UCB or LBL that showed (by > simulations, I think) that the performance curves were the same shape for > Ethernet or (IBM) Token Ring. For Ethernet the drop-off was caused by > collisions on the wire, for Token Ring by I/O buffer overflows. At that > time memory wasn't dirt cheap, so buffer sizes tended to be small. Though I never had anything to do with LAN technology (other than working for a LAN company installing a TCP stack), my graduate years were around Farber and osmosis being what it is... For some years there were lots of studies comparing contention vs. token, in all sorts of ways. And 1984 was pretty late in that game.) I remember what visiting prof proudly showing how he could have a second token rotating in the other direction, so that inactive links could get used. When the Q/A started one of the first questions was "how much benefit does this produce in access or throughput for a given host" and he just shrugged. Didn't know and clearly really didn't care about the pragmatics. Most comparisons that showed no or slight differences looked at aggregate performance. Token is better when more predictable access is needed, especially at higher loads. Ethernet can produce unfair access, sometime even blocking out individual hosts. But contention is just so much /simpler/ and therefore /cheaper/ and most people don't run their nets at the limit. > When I spent a couple of years in 2001-3 at the IBM Zurich Lab, where > the IBM Token Ring was conceived, the wounds were still raw. Many IBM ... > I think Token Ring really failed because the IBM Cabling System was > too good, and therefore very expensive. ... Farber had a contract with IBM, so had a road show, touting their impending TR product, and did a presentation to us, describing it in great detail. It was an insertion ring design When the presenter got done, there was a silent competition among Farber's students, to make the comment that insertion ring designs add a full packet delay per node and therefore scale really badly. (By contrast the UCI design added one /bit/ time delay per node...) As for the DEC note that Paul cited, given how history has evaluated the pervasive and paradigmatic utility (and simplicity) of exponential backoff... well... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Wed Aug 31 22:18:14 2016 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 05:18:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] Packet Radio and Why TCP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <639865597.3278892.1472707094469@mail.yahoo.com> SRI had a project with ITT to take SINCGARS, a combat net radio, and transform it into a MANET. The prototype used the packet radio protocols for a baseline but they needed to be modified to fit the characteristics of SINCGARS. I believe Mike Pursley (Clemson) also participated. This development effort involved creating a box that provided a packet overlay on the voice channel besides the protocol support. We did demo the prototype to the military. ITT subsequently did a lot of development under internal R&D and I believe put the results into the next generation of SINCGARS. I think General Dynamics also supported those protocols once they became a supplier of SINCGARS. After the contract with ITT ended, I heard very little about what ITT did. (I do believe routing was significantly changed but this is only because I was asked to attend a meeting where this was discussed. )? CECOM, Fort Monmouth, was our POC.? Mark Lewis was the original lead from SRI and I became involved later. He can probably supply more info.? He is still at SRI. This is the only one I can directly tie to packet radio.? I don't know if this is what is currently used.? This work was done in the 80s. barbara From: "internet-history-request at postel.org" To: internet-history at postel.org Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2016 8:41 PM Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 40 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: internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 (Lyndon Nerenberg) ? 2. Re: Packet Radio and Why TCP (Jack Haverty) ? 3. Re: Ethernet, was Why TCP? (Paul Vixie) ? 4. Re: Ethernet, was Why TCP? (Brian E Carpenter) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:32:38 -0700 From: Lyndon Nerenberg Subject: Re: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 33 To: Nigel Roberts Cc: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <524374CE-1070-4B40-BFE9-B41CC93CA7B4 at orthanc.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > On Aug 31, 2016, at 10:25 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote: > > AX.25 was based on X.25 and was used at slow (300-1200baud) speeds over > HF radio. It's *very* loosely based on X.25, and tends to be used as a link layer datagram protocol for other stream oriented applications (not protocols). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail Url : http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/eb8a7a94/signature-0001.bin ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:23:09 -0700 From: Jack Haverty Subject: Re: [ih] Packet Radio and Why TCP To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed I wasn't directly involved in Packet Radio itself, but heard about it, mostly from Jim Mathis and (IIRC) Holly Nelson who were at most of the meetings.? Helicopters were definitely in the thought experiments, and even faster low-altitude aircraft, as users of communications.? But I think you're right that probably only land-mobile and high-altitude aircraft was possible to actually demo, at least at first. There were many problems to be solved (we all had lots of lists of "things that need to be worked on"), and packet radio with higher speed mobile platforms was probably one of them.? It involved not only power/weight/size but also things like routing protocols, which would likely have to be much faster to respond to changes. I never have heard how (or if) that early Packet Radio work evolved into "real" use in modern military systems.? E.G., do drones still use TCP, do they communicate with Packet Radio protocols, etc.? There's probably a good history story there for some future historian to uncover. /Jack On 08/31/2016 07:29 PM, Barbara Denny wrote: > In case people are interested,? various packet radio efforts did > actually have demos for the military that utilized a hummer or an Air > Force airplane besides the SRI bread/mobile van which is now sitting > outside the Computer History Museum. I am not aware of any packet radio > demos with helicopters.? I think power, weight, size issues probably > prevented this but feel free to correct if anyone knows otherwise. > Helicopters have been used in more recent MANET program demos for DARPA. > > barbara > > p.s. > Packet radios may have ended up on a boat too before I started working > on the project.? I believe SRI had access to a research vessel. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* "internet-history-request at postel.org" > > *To:* internet-history at postel.org > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 31, 2016 3:35 PM > *Subject:* internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 37 > > 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. Why TCP? (Jack Haverty) >? 2. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) >? 3. Re: Why TCP? (Brian E Carpenter) >? 4. Re: Why TCP? (Vint Cerf) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 14:43:24 -0700 > From: Jack Haverty > > Subject: [ih] Why TCP? > To: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <87d2d00a-361a-8ec1-b1cd-2e047a40df93 at 3kitty.org > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > [I changed the subject because I hate unsearchable subjects like > "...internet history digest..."] > > I think Dave's observation is a really important fact for future > historians - the Internet did not evolve in a vacuum. > > ARPANET was one of the first packet networks (I'll let others argue > about which was First...), but it was preceded by networks based on > phone lines and modems interconnecting terminals and computers. > > The ARPA Packet Radio net enabled communications between mobile > computers, moving around in jeeps and helicopters, by radio links.? But > it was preceded by AlohaNet in Hawaii, which interconnected the various > islands by radio.? AlohaNet was also the inspiration for Ethernet.? In > the early 1970s, Bob Metcalfe's office at MIT was three doors down the > hallway from mine as he wrote his thesis that spawned Ethernet.? I > remember hearing about AlohaNet from him. > > Later, SATNET interconnected sites using satellite links, also obviously > using radio for communications.? Unlike the packet radio environment, > the path of the satellites was highly predictable, and the massive dish > antennas on the ground didn't move at all. > > SATNET was subsequently adapted to create MATNET, a Navy project, that > used satellite dishes on ships for communication.? Ships moved of > course, but not as rapidly or spasmodically as jeeps and aircraft. > > Ethernet was evolved by Xerox PARC into its own "internet", with > multiple LANs interconnecting by radio links or telephone lines. > During the early 80s, The Internet which we still use today was running > in parallel with the PARC internet (I can't recall what they called it), > using PUP where we used TCP. > > As Dave noted, we got used to hearing that the mission of the Internet > Project (as driven by the IAB/ICCB under Vint's direction) was to > develop the infrastructure technology, i.e., protocols and algorithms > and standards, to interconnect these networks, both the existing types > and anything else that someone might dream up in the future. > > If some new type of network could carry packets from point A to point B, > it should be possible to incorporate it into the Internet --- without > requiring the host computers to change any software (which would be > hard), or change all of the routers in the Internet (only the ones that > directly interface to the new network need to change to be able to use it) > > We even mused about extreme networking.? For example, TCP/IP should be > able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for > transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper > containing one packet of data. > > As far as I know, no one ever did that....? But it was one of the > scenarios that came up in the brainstorming discussions to prevent us > from changing the technical mechanisms in a way that precluded > PigeonNet's use. > > On another extreme, we mused about incorporating another Internet into > The Internet, i.e., using some existing set of routers and lines > (Internet 1), as a means to interconnect routers in an overlaid internet > (Internet 2).? After all, a fragment of an internet meets the > definition of a network - a communications mechanism that can carry packets. > > As far as I know, such multi-layer Internet-of-Internets *did* happen. > It was used in some secure environments and I think also used as a > technique to implement the IP4 to IP6 transition (are we there > yet...it's been more than 30 years!???) > > So, as Dave noted, TCP/IP was developed as an overlay that would run > over all existing, or future, networks.? That goal often came up during > the meetings and discussions as something akin to a Prime Directive. > > ============== > > IMHO, future historians might also like to know *why* that was the Prime > Directive.? In other words, Why TCP?? The intransigence of people to > settle on a single technology and protocol was important as a motivator, > but IMHO only part of it. > > My introduction to TCP was in 1977.? I had been working in the ARPANET > environment, doing things like email et al at MIT.? I moved to BBN in > 1977 and my first task was to write the first TCP for Unix, which was > needed as part of an ARPA project.? At that time, TCP was at the version > 2.5 stage. > > Over the next year or so, we made a lot of changes to create TCP 3 and > then TCP 4. > > Creating a technology that could incorporate any kind of network was a > big part of the mission.? But there were others.? For example, it was > desirable that the infrastructure support different types of user > traffic.? Ideally, the TCP infrastructure would support all types of > user traffic in a way similar to its ability to utilize any type of > network that might appear. > > Specifically, voice traffic - realtime human-human speech - was found to > not work very well over a TCP connection.? With our traditional uses, > e.g., FTP/Telnet/Email, getting all of the data there intact was the > overriding goal.? In speech, getting the data there in a timely fashion > was most important, and some loss of snippets of speech was acceptable. > > That, among other things, motivated the split of TCP into TCP/IP, > allowing the creation of UDP and "higher" protocols to carry things like > speech and video. > > ======================= > > All of these internet-history discussions tend to revolve around > technology - protocols, algorithms, etc., which isn't surprising since a > lot of the people on this list were deeply involved in creating that > technology. > > But for the benefit of historians, there's another "layer" of discussion > that seems important - Why TCP?? In other words, why was it so important > to create a whole new infrastructure with such capabilities. > > The Departments of Defense (note plural) put quite a lot of money into > the efforts to develop the Internet technology.? ARPA, part of the US > military, was a large player, acting as a conduit for funds from the > various parts of the military - Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.? But other > players from other countries were there too - RSRE (UK), NDRE (Norway), > DFVLR (Germany), and CNUCE (Italy) are ones I remember. > > So, .... the interesting question is "Why did they send money, and keep > sending it, to create the TCP/IP technology"?? Why did they care about > being able to interconnect all sorts of networks? > > The answer of course is because they needed it to solve their own > communications problems. > > During that TCP2-->4 evolution period, I remember that we were > continuously aware of stereotypical military scenarios in which TCP was > supposed to operate.? The military folks didn't really care about bits, > bytes, packets, etc.? They just knew what they wanted to be able to do > with it all. > > The scenario I remember most was what I heard on joining the fray in > 1977 and learning what exactly this "TCP" thing and associated projects > were all about. > > It was a "Command and Control" scenario, which is the bread-and-butter > of the military world.? The notion was that someone "out in the field", > perhaps a scout in a jeep, would see something interesting, and need to > report it up the command chain.? "I see a column of tanks coming along > the river valley". > > The jeep of course couldn't be wired into an IMP port on the ARPANET. > But it could have a radio, and that radio should be able to communicate > with another jeep, or tank, or whatever else might be around.? And they > might be able to communicate with the field headquarters, possibly > several miles away.? But everyone had to be able to move, often rapidly > and unpredictably. > > So, .... here's some money....make it work... and Packet Radio networks > were born. > > With lots of jeeps, or helicopters, or whatever, and their eyes and > ears, the field headquarters could be connected back to the Pentagon > over the ARPANET and all of that information could be used to figure out > what to do about it.? But somehow we need to have messages flow from the > Packet Radio to the ARPANET... > > So, .... here's some money....make it work.... and gateways (aka > routers) were born. > > Back at the Pentagon, looking at all the reports, it might become clear > that the Army guys in the jeeps needed a little help as waves of tanks > approached them. > > Perhaps there's a ship offshore, with some big guns, and a carrier full > of nasty airplanes.? But they're over the horizon, too far away for the > Packet Radio to reach, or for wires to an IMP port.? But they do have > satellite dishes, and can talk to other dishes halfway around the planet > if necessary.? If only their computers could talk with everybody else... > > So, here's some money....make it work.... and SATNET and MATNET were > born.? The USS Carl Vinson was on The Internet. > > When things get frenetic, messages and email just aren't fast enough. > Real time voice communication is critical (remember, no cell phones in > those days).? But voice over TCP isn't working well. > > So, here's some money....make it work.... and TCP is split into TCP and > IP, UDP is defined, and the obstacle to realtime voice is removed.? Hey, > it should even work for video someday. > > We can't do video, but graphics are a big help.? A general might be able > to view a map while talking with commanders in the field who see the > same map.? Even use a pointer to highlight specific areas of the map as > he gives instructions.? "Unit A, you move here (pointing somewhere), > and Ship B, you fire at this location (pointing somewhere else)". > > It's really important that the "pointing" actions in the graphics are > well-synchronized with the speech giving the commands...... > > So, the real-time UDP speech needs to be time-synched with the graphics > images over TCP. > > So, here's some money....make it work....and .... mechanisms such as NTP > (thank you Dave Mills!) are created to provide high-accuracy global > time.? But I have no idea if the voice/graphics synching is guaranteed > even today.? Sure hope so... > > There were a number of these scenarios that drove our thinking about the > problems.? I was an initial member of Vint's IAB (then called ICCB), and > these kinds of scenarios played a significant role in those discussions, > which complemented the technical discussions in the larger Internet > group meetings.? The IAB in part acted as a conduit to translate the > desires of the guys with the money into the technical goals that drove > the creation of the TCP/IP protocols and machinery. > > Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, > and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the > technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use.? None of > the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, > etc.) did that.? So when the rest of the world discovered that the > military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their > problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > So, that's why we have TCP! > > As usual, I've written a lot, sorry about that.? It just seems important > to get this written down somewhere to capture some of the "why" part of > the Internet history.? The existence of concrete scenarios was key in > focusing the technical work on actual real-world problems to be solved. > That permeated the culture of the Internet developers.? Instead of > writing documents, we wrote code... > > /Jack Haverty > August 31, 2016 > > > > > On 08/31/2016 07:17 AM, Dave Crocker wrote: >> On 8/31/2016 6:50 AM, Craig Partridge wrote: >>> As I recall the story (I arrived on the scene later), Bob Kahn was in >>> the process of funding Packet Radio Networks and he and Vint needed to >>> solve the >>> interconnection problem and that motivated the TCP paper. >> >> >> This is a variant of the broader problem statement I was used to hearing: >> >>? ? ? Even by 1972 there already were a variety of independent networks >> around the world.? How to interconnect them, since it was unlikely that >> they would all agree to switch over to someone else's network protocols. >> >>? ? ? TCP was developed as an overlay that would run on all of them, >> connecting them. >> >> d/ >> > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:29:05 -0400 > From: Vint Cerf > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet history > > Message-ID: >? ? > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > >> >> We even mused about extreme networking.? For example, TCP/IP should be >> able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for >> transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper >> containing one packet of data. >> >> As far as I know, no one ever did that... > > > yeah, they did - there's even an RFC about it, I think, from UK. > > > see also YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCZH9Lp8uo > > The audio and auto-caption is hilariously disconnected. > > https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1934251/pigeon-protocol-finds-a-practical-purpose > > http://www.cnet.com/news/pigeon-powered-internet-takes-flight/ > > v > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/30aad3c0/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 10:31:16 +1200 > From: Brian E Carpenter > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet-history at postel.org > Message-ID: <50804405-fff3-c6cb-421a-44d1bf08ab2c at gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > On 01/09/2016 09:43, Jack Haverty wrote: > ... >> For example, TCP/IP should be >> able to utilize a "network" implemented using carrier pigeons for >> transport, with each pigeon carrying a small tube with a strip of paper >> containing one packet of data. >> >> As far as I know, no one ever did that.... > > Of coure they did: > http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/writeup/ > >? Brian > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 18:35:06 -0400 > From: Vint Cerf > > Subject: Re: [ih] Why TCP? > To: Jack Haverty > > Cc: internet history > > Message-ID: >? ? > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jack Haverty > wrote: > >> >> Someone (I wish I knew who) made the decision to do all of this work, >> and spend all of that money, in an open environment, and make the >> technology freely available and standardized for anyone to use.? None of >> the competing Internet architectures (Xerox, Novell, DEC, IBM, ISO, >> etc.) did that.? So when the rest of the world discovered that the >> military TCP/IP technology not only worked but also could solve their >> problems, the ascension of the Internet was natural. > > > Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts and Dave Russell are probably the closest to the > deciding parties > at the IPTO level but one has to credit George Heilmeier and Steve Lukasic > as DARPA > Directors for their strong support for ARPANET and then Internet. > > v > > > > -- > New postal address: > Google > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20160831/86df189e/attachment.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > > > End of internet-history Digest, Vol 105, Issue 37 > ************************************************* > > > > > _______ > 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. > ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:29:38 -0700 From: Paul Vixie Subject: Re: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <57C7A0A2.70601 at redbarn.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed John Levine wrote: > It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that > Ethernet sounded too good to be true.? If it were heavily loaded, all > those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and > performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in > a predictable way. david boggs had, posted on his office window at DECWRL, a photocopy of an internal D|I|G|I|T|A|L memorandum from the head of the DEC Office Connect project, who was looking for a way to connect office computers that wasn't twisted-pair. boggs used a yellow "highlighter" to illuminate one key passage which i shall never forget: "Ethernet is a laboratory toy. Its random exponential backoff mechanism is clear evidence that ." somehow DEC ended up adopting ethernet, and hiring boggs, in spite of this memo. later when DECWRL visited the main "NAC" (Networks and Communications) office building to give a series of technical talks, someone came into a conference room where boggs was sitting and told him they had the room reserved. boggs should not have had to leave. it was the Metcalfe and Boggs conference room, after all. later on, DEC poured billions (that's like millions except with a "b") of dollars into DECnet Phase V, proving after all that they, and not the community, knew what the future of networking was going to look like. (they should have saved the money so that Compaq could have it.) anyway the list of things that can't be done, and the naysayers who have proved those negatives, continues to get longer every few minutes. -- P Vixie ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2016 15:40:56 +1200 From: Brian E Carpenter Subject: Re: [ih] Ethernet, was Why TCP? To: John Levine , internet-history at postel.org Cc: dcrocker at bbiw.net Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 On 01/09/2016 14:09, John Levine wrote: >> So if one wanted a cheaper mechanism, tossing out the extreme discipline >> made sense to me.? We always hear about computing/storage tradeoffs. >> This was a cost/channel-efficiency tradeoff. > > It is my recollection that at the time a lot of people thought that > Ethernet sounded too good to be true.? If it were heavily loaded, all > those collisions would surely cause a storm of interference and > performance collapse, unlike a token ring that shared the capacity in > a predictable way. > > As we all know, Ethernets worked just fine.? A lot of people didn't > believe it until they saw it, and sometimes not even then. There was a paper around 1984 from either UCB or LBL that showed (by simulations, I think) that the performance curves were the same shape for Ethernet or (IBM) Token Ring. For Ethernet the drop-off was caused by collisions on the wire, for Token Ring by I/O buffer overflows. At that time memory wasn't dirt cheap, so buffer sizes tended to be small. At CERN we were bombarded by DEC with reasons why we should choose Ethernet and by IBM with reasons why we should use Token Ring. Being CERN, we chose both (Ethernet for general purpose use, and Token Ring for the control system of LEP, the machine that preceded the LHC). When I spent a couple of years in 2001-3 at the IBM Zurich Lab, where the IBM Token Ring was conceived, the wounds were still raw. Many IBM sites were still on Token Ring then. I had to travel with PCMCIA cards for both Ethernet and TR, plus an adaptor for sites that ran Ethernet over the IBM Cabling System instead of RJ45/UTP5. I think Token Ring really failed because the IBM Cabling System was too good, and therefore very expensive. The Ethernet discourse (one simple coax cable goes everywhere) was very persuasive, especially when Cheapernet (thin coax) came along. Regards ? ? Brian ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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. 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