[ih] Early Internet history

[John Day]

;-) Understood. You were explaining the Internet, not the history.

Although their process to arrive at that solution is interesting.

> On Jul 6, 2018, at 15:47, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
> 
>> Indeed this is a good analogy of how the Internet worked. However, this approach of a connectionless datagram network layer with a reliable end-to-end transport originates in 1972 with the CYCLADES network.  CYCLADES was the first to have the classic 5 layer model.  The link layer was HDLC-like because of the error-prone lines of the time, over which ran a connectionless network layer, called Cigale. The primary purpose of the  end-to-end Transport Protocol, called TS, was end-to-end reliability with flow control and recovery from loss due to congestion.
> 
> I know about CYCLADES but this was already pushing how much nerdage I could put in a For Dummies book.
> 
> R's,
> John
> 
>>> On Jul 6, 2018, at 12:49, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In article <11fd50bf-d495-c4a5-ce77-06d96d04f14b at meetinghouse.net>,
>>> Miles Fidelman  <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
>>>> Kind of sounds like the international postal system.??? Or shipping
>>>> packages internationally.???
>>> 
>>> About 20 years ago, in Internet for Dummies, I analogized the
>>> operation of the Internet to paper mail.  The pre-TCP protocols were
>>> sort of like registered mail, where each package has great value* and
>>> is carefully logged in and out every time it is sorted or transported
>>> to be sure it doesn't get lost.
>>> 
>>> TCP is more like certified mail, where the package itself is of no
>>> value, only its message ("usually a letter from your insurance company
>>> saying your policy has been cancelled.")  Certified mail is only
>>> logged when mailed and delivered.  If it isn't delivered after a
>>> while, you just send another copy.
>>> 
>>> I further tortured the analogy by saying you were mailing a copy of
>>> the ten-pound manuscript of your novel, but the regulations limit each
>>> package to one pound so you divide it into pieces and mark each one
>>> PART 1, PART 2, and so forth.  The packages arrive in whatever order
>>> the post office delivers them, and the recipient puts them back in
>>> order.
>>> 
>>> R's,
>>> John
>>> 
>>> * - in the 1800s the government shipped gold bars by registered mail