[ih] First Eurociscos [was Ethernet, was Why TCP]

[Jack Haverty]

On 09/03/2016 12:13 PM, John Day wrote:
> No reason either one should have been on the Internet in the 1980s. Neither one was a DoD contractor or had grant money from DoD.

In the 1980s there were several European organizations on the Internet 
who (as I understood at the time) were part of joint international 
projects.  E.g., I remember UCL (London), RSRE (somewhere in the UK 
Cotswolds), NDRE (Norway), and DFVLR (Germany), all of which hosted 
Internet meetings during that era.

IIRC, these organizations were all somehow associated with their related 
governments who had some kind of MOU in place with the US for joint 
research.   I suspect you'd have to find those ancient MOUs to see what 
the restrictions were on who could be online from where, and who was 
funding what.  Even if they didn't have direct US DoD funds, a European 
organization involved in a project might have been funded by a European 
government arm, which in turn was working with the US, and would have 
authority to be on the Internet.

Our focus at the time was on just getting transatlantic Internet to 
work.  It would be interesting to see a historical account of what those 
organizations were doing, why they had joined in to the Internet 
research, and how they fared in the ITU/CCITT/ISO presence in Europe.

At least some of the work was US DoD funded, e.g., in Norway:

www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=AD0691010

It would be fascinating to see a comprehensive list of who was doing 
what back then on the early Internet.

I think it's important for historians to remember that the early 1980s, 
when much of the basic machinery of the Internet was created, was also 
the time of the Cold War, Star Wars (aka Strategic Defense Initiative), 
and a plethora of related projects.  IMHO, most of the funding for The 
Internet in those early days came from military needs and desires, and 
had nothing to do with building a world-wide communications system for 
the entire population.

The serendipitous adoption of the technology to create the Internet we 
know today was enabled by that landmark decision that Vint and Bob made 
to make the technology open.  Otherwise we might still be struggling 
with dozens of incompatible and competing walled gardens....

/Jack