[ih] When the words Internet was design to survive a nuclear war appeared for the first time?

[Miles Fidelman]

On 2/14/19 8:44 AM, Alejandro Acosta wrote:

> Hello All,
>
>    Today I was reading some news about Internet and in one of them I
> found the phrase (that all of you have listened before):  "Internet
> (ARPANET) was intended to survive a nuclear war", however, as far as I
> know, this is kind of a myth, right?, ARPANET was intended as a research
> network and the "war" part if very far away from the thuth.
>
>    My question would be: when the words "designed to survive a nuclear
> war" appeared for the first time?
>
Speaking as someone who spent a number of years at BBN - at the time we 
split the Defense Data Network off from the ARPANET (but not really)...

It's kind of funny, I don't think "survive a nuclear war" was officially 
part of the design specs or goals - but people certainly talked a lot 
about survivability in general.  The IMPs & routing algorithms were all 
designed to keep passing traffic despite failure & destruction of nodes 
& links.  The network management systems were designed for monitoring 
more than control (you could blow up all three operations centers and 
the net would just keep humming along).  We paid a lot attention to 
diverse routing for circuits (boy was everyone pissed, back in 1986, 
when a single cable cut took out all of the ARPANET's connectivity to 
New England).

I expect that, at some point, somebody made a comment like "you could 
blow up 90% of the network and the packets would just keep flowing over 
what's left" - and that got picked up, in a presentation, an interview, 
whatever.  Or it could be that somebody wrote as much in a funding 
proposal, or a contract award justification.

Or maybe, when the Church Committee led to ARPA's mission being focused 
on Defense (hence DARPA), somebody had to justify why they were funding 
some of the more researchy parts of ARPANET.

Miles Fidelman




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