[ih] Early Internet history

[Clem Cole]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 3:58 PM, Paul Vixie <paul at redbarn.org> wrote:

>
>
> Clem Cole wrote:
>
>>     neither usenet nor the uucp network could have existed without the
>>     other.
>>
>> I don't think that is really correct, because they can into being
>> differently.
>>
>
> i agree that they came into being differently. but without usenet, the
> distribution of horton's maps would not have been possible, and without
> uucpnet, replies to newsgroup postings would not have been possible. so i
> ought to have said "neither could have achieved the scale it did without
> the other". thanks for this correction.
>
>> Interresting...  Paul I think you are referring to on the issue UUCPnet
that should have been a sign for the Internet.

The UUCPnet grew incredibly fast because it was easy and reasonably cheap
to attach ... but quickly the 'routing problem' emerged.  In traditional
UNIX style, UUCP had been design without worrying about some problems --
UUCP was thinking small scale so how mail (packets or whatever got there)
was not an issue.  You did your own routing.   But with many, thousands of
nodes, this was a huge problem.

Netnews gets layered on top of UUCP and because of the growth, and the wild
nature, this lack of support for routinr quickly becomes an issue.  So as
Paul mentioned the 'mapping project' got started and there became an effort
to layer some concept of sanity of routing (at least for news messages).
 But message/network sub-routing was never really well thought, much less a
solved.

Years later the actual same issue would show up, with networking routing
once it became cheap to add to the IP network.   But, it just took maybe 10
years because the technology to attach many, many IP networks cheaply over
long distances had to drop in cost enough before IP hit the same wall.




> incidentally, when uunet technologies (a non-profit) recast itself as
> uunet communications services (a for-profit), the money left over was used
> to launch internet systems consortium (a non-profit).

+1 ​Indeed, as a one time President of USENIX, the whole UUNET/ISC, Open
Access for all documents legacy are some of a many cools things I'm very
proud of the organizations legacy.

Clem​

ᐧ
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