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

Vint Cerf vint at google.com
Tue Feb 19 04:38:26 PST 2019


Barbara is right about the SRI role in the SAC tests - I may be
misremembering the reconsittution protocol solutions and would be happy to
get better information from Jim or Zaw-Sing if they are still around. I
think the tests I remember were done in 1982. Charlie Brown was involved as
an Air Force officer at the time.

Vint


On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 11:18 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> I vaguely remember being at a meeting sometime in the mid-80s.  Some
> government/military/contractor site, but can't remember where.  It was a
> large (15 or 20) group of people, none of whom I knew.  They were using
> lots of jargon I didn't recognize too.  I had come in a bit late.
>
> One of the terms that cropped up was "New Dets Per Second".  I knew what
> bits/second were, and kilobits/sec., and similar networky things, but had
> never heard "New Dets Per Second".
>
> After a while, the meaning became clear from context....  It was actually
> "NuDets/Second", shorthand for "Nuclear Detonations Per Second".
>
> I then finally realized I was in the wrong meeting.
>
> So someone was thinking about such things...
>
> /Jack
> On 2/18/19 6:10 PM, Barbara Denny wrote:
>
> I don't remember Radia Perlman's ideas for supporting network partitioning
> and coalescing.
>
> SRI did have a project where we did a few experiments at SAC demonstrating
> a solution to this problem using the ARPAnet and Packet Radio networks. We
> did go out to Offutt for demonstrations  using their aircraft.  This was in
> the mid 80's.  I also think I may have given a demonstration of the
> protocols during  IETF 4 at SRI to a few people.
>
> I believe Zaw-Sing Su and Jim Mathis worked on the design of the
> Reconstitution Protocols. I took part in the development and demonstration
> . Mark Lewis also participated in the project as a developer and maybe more
> since I was not part of the project initially.  I am pretty sure there was
> a paper at MILCOM about this work.
>
> I believe there was also a RFP in this same time frame asking for
> solutions to islands of connectivity that may happen as a result of
> military conflict.  I worked on the SRI proposal at least twice if my
> memory is correct. (I  think there may have been a protest to the original
> award so that is why the second proposal.) I don't remember if this project
> was ever awarded to anyone.
>
> barbara
>
>
> On Saturday, February 16, 2019, 9:26:54 AM PST,
> internet-history-request at postel.org <internet-history-request at postel.org>
> <internet-history-request at postel.org> wrote:
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: When did "32" bits for IP register as "not enough"?
>       (Craig Partridge)
>   2. Re: Fwd: Re: When the words Internet was design to survive a
>       nuclear war appeared for the first time? (John Day)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2019 09:35:10 -0700
> From: Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] When did "32" bits for IP register as "not enough"?
> To: Bob Hinden <bob.hinden at gmail.com>
> Cc: internet history <internet-history at postel.org>
> Message-ID:
>     <CAHQj4Cc_D5Ee4Oj1VTNKCoY3t4iAvLoY1mHRxOf=Smwxk7krjQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hi Bob:
>
> You are right about the implementations being in parallel for a while.  I'm
> going to get the dates slightly wrong but Bill's code came out in 4.1c
> (1982?) and BBN kept maintaining its implementation (Dennis Rockwell and
> then Bob Walsh) until c. 1985.  Indeed, as I recall there was a debate c.
> 1985 at DARPA about whether to force Berkeley to use the BBN code (which
> had been modified to use the sockets API, which everyone agreed was better
> -- I had a small part in the port to sockets).
>
> I believe that when the TCP/IP project transitioned to me (c. 1987?), I
> stopped effort on the BBN TCP/IP.  I think we had to maintain it a bit as
> we'd licensed it to a workstation vendor (Apollo????).  Karen Lam and David
> Waitzman switched to the BSD TCP/IP and we did things like help Steve
> Deering implement multicast and such.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Craig
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 9:24 AM Bob Hinden <bob.hinden at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Craig,
> >
> > > On Feb 15, 2019, at 12:38 PM, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Important historical nit.  I was the manager of the BBN UNIX TCP/IP
> > effort after Rob Gurwitz left (I think Rob inherited it from Jack
> Haverty,
> > but not sure).  The BSD stack with sockets *was not written by BBN*.  It
> > was written by Bill Joy at Berkeley -- using the earlier BBN 4BSD code
> as a
> > reference.  Entirely new code, but originally bug-for-bug compatible
> > (indeed, years later, when a bug was found in the BSD TCP, the BSD folks
> > stood up and said "that's a bug from BBN?)
> >
> > My memory is that they both were maintained in parallel for several
> > years.  Also, Bill Joy's TCP stack also had the ?trailers? feature where
> > the headers were at the end of the packet.  Documented in RFC893 (
> > https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc893).  Probably not so good for packet
> > switching, but better performance on some host implementations.  That
> faded
> > away at some point.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> >
>
> --
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
> mailing lists.
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2019 12:18:27 -0500
> From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: Re: When the words Internet was design to
>     survive a nuclear war appeared for the first time?
> To: Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <32E6E6ED-2C77-47A4-B374-EAB335638B69 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> In the FWIW category, I remember that network partitions (between the East
> and West Coasts) occurred, not often but often enough to be noticeable,
> until the 3rd cross-country line went in. Then they were pretty much a
> rarity, if they occurred at all. Illinois was one of the jumping off points
> between East and West, so perhaps we just noticed them more.
>
> John
>
> > On Feb 16, 2019, at 11:25, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> >
> > My brother forwarded the appended thread.  It reminded me that I had
> previously been unsuccessful at joining this list, but I am now on the list.
> >
> > Over the years I have heard many times from many different people and
> also seen in print the idea that the Arpanet was motivated and built for
> nuclear survivability.  Moreover, Steve Lukasik, the director of (D)ARPA
> for several of the critical years, included this as one of his reasons for
> signing the checks for the Arpanet.
> >
> > I think it will be helpful to make a couple of distinctions regarding
> network survivability.  Let me offer two dimensions and at least two levels
> of disruption for each.
> >
> > Equipment outage: When a link or a router becomes unusable, it's
> necessary to route around the loss.  It makes a big difference if only a
> few links or routers are down versus a significant fraction are down.  In
> normal circumstances, it is expected some lines and some routers will be
> out of service from time to time.  In contrast, if there is an attack, the
> outages might be substantial and perhaps purposefully coordinated.
> >
> > Traffic level: In normal operation, the total traffic is within the
> capacity of the network.  In extraordinary times, the traffic level surges
> beyond the capacity of the system.  Surges happen for various reasons.
> There might be a very popular web site, e.g. the Victoria Secrets incident,
> or a DDoS attack.
> >
> > Arguably the Arpanet design addressed survivability for the case when a
> small number of links or routers were out and traffic levels were normal.
> Alex colorfully describes Frank Heart's concerns for the risks to
> individual IMPs placed in the very risky environments of universities.
> >
> > The Arpanet design did not address the issue of large scale outages nor
> did it include strategies for dealing with overload.  In contrast, a
> serious design to address post-nuclear operation would have had to address
> the combination of substantial loss of equipment and a huge spike in urgent
> traffic.
> >
> > In the conversations I've had with Lukasik on this matter, he says he
> had in mind the technology could lead to designs that would have that level
> of survivability, and that it was helpful to include this in defending the
> funding for the network.  And, as Vint says, subsequent projects explored
> reconstitution in the event of certain kinds of disconnections.  However, I
> believe the level of outages explored in those projects were well below the
> levels that would have occurred in a large scale nuclear confrontation.
> >
> > In 2017, I ran this question past Larry Roberts.  His short reply was he
> would have had to connect each IMP to four others instead of only two or
> three others.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > Subject:        Re: [ih] When the words Internet was design to survive a
> > nuclear war appeared for the first time?
> > Date:  Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:30:36 -0500
> > From:  Vint Cerf <vint at google.com <mailto:vint at google.com>>
> > To:    Alex McKenzie <aamsendonly396 at gmail.com <mailto:
> aamsendonly396 at gmail.com>>
> > CC:    internet history <internet-history at postel.org <mailto:
> internet-history at postel.org>>
> >
> >
> >
> > Alex is essentially correct. Paul Baran's work WAS aimed at post-nuclear
> > survival but he never got to try his ideas out as they
> > were rejected as unimplementable or uninteresting by a circuit-switching
> > oriented Defense Communications Agency.
> >
> > Larry Roberts was clear that the ARPANET was intended to support
> > resource sharing.
> >
> > By the time Bob Kahn and I started working on Internet with its focus on
> > command/control, the issue of survivability
> > was back on the table.  The multi-network design contemplated multiple
> > networks operated by distinct entities
> > (in the DoD perspective it was multiple countries or aggregates like
> > NATO) and resilience was important. I went
> > so far as to commission a test in which we flew packet radios in
> > Strategic Air Command aircraft, artificially "broke"
> > the ARPANET up into fragments and re-integrated them through ground to
> > air packet radio connectivity. I was
> > particularly worried about the partitioning of a constituent network
> > which would cause great confusion for  the
> > routing algorithm (a source gateway might know know to which "half" of
> > the fragmented network a packet should
> > be sent. My hazy recollection is that Radia Perlman came up with a way
> > to solve that problem that involved
> > creating new autonomous systems out of each "piece" and re-enabling
> > routing algorithms.
> >
> > vint
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:18 PM Alex McKenzie <aamsendonly396 at gmail.com
> <mailto:aamsendonly396 at gmail.com>
> > <mailto:aamsendonly396 at gmail.com <mailto:aamsendonly396 at gmail.com>>>
> wrote:
> >
> >      Miles,
> >
> >      I believe the emphasis on survivability came from Frank Heart.
> >      Building the early ARPAnet was a very risky project, in the sense
> >      that there was a tight deadline, it would be easy to see if it
> >      worked or not, and most people didn't believe it would work.
> >      Frank's reputation was very much on the line.  The ruggedized IMP
> >      cabinet was part of his emphasis on controlling everything the team
> >      could control, to minimize risk.  But the particular risks the
> >      ruggedized cabinet was intended to protect against were:
> >      - careless site personnel, who cared about their own computers but
> >      might be expected to stick the IMP in a storage closet where
> >      maintenance workers would bump it, and
> >      - graduate students who might be inclined to study it, perhaps with
> >      destructive results. (Lest this seem outlandish, the TIP in Hawaii
> >      was a sore spot of unreliability  when I was running the NCC -
> >      turned out a graduate student was crashing it every day by taping
> >      into its power supply which was just right for his project.  The TIP
> >      was NOT in a ruggedized box.)
> >      The group was not trying to protect against EMP.
> >
> >      More generally, if the ARPAnet had been designed to survive a
> >      nuclear attack it would have been necessary to insure that the
> >      IMP-to_IMP circuits did not go through the small number of Telco
> >      offices which made up the Telco backbone.  No effort was made to
> >      influence the provisioning of these circuits, and it can be presumed
> >      that loss of only a few major cities would have resulted in most of
> >      the leased lines disappearing.
> >
> >      Cheers,
> >      Alex
> >
> >      On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 10:48 AM Miles Fidelman
> >      <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>>>
> wrote:
> >
> >          Bernie,
> >
> >          On 2/14/19 9:28 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote:
> >
> > >        On February 14, 2019 09:13:42 Alejandro Acosta
> > >        <alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com <mailto:
> alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com>>
> > >        <mailto:alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com <mailto:
> alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >>          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 take on that is that there were two lines of thought
> > >        leading up to the
> > >        ARPAnet.  very very roughly: one was paul baran's, who was
> > >        thinking
> > >        about how the military command and control might be able to
> > >        continue functioning in the event of an attack, and JCR
> > >        Licklider, who was thinking
> > >        about how wide-spread researchers could share resources, ideas
> > >        and results
> > >        to better collaborate.
> > >
> > >        when the ARPAnet got funded by the DoD, Baran's story was the
> > >        easier to
> > >        understand to the average person, raather than the more
> > >        diaphanous idea
> > >        of researcher collaboration.  so Baran's take kinda caught the
> > >        public
> > >        imagination, but the reality for those of us working on it was
> > >        the it was
> > >        {somehow  :o)} to be a research tool.
> > >
> >          You were involved a lot earlier than I was.  Perhaps you could
> >          comment on how much folks thought about fault-tolerance in the
> >          early days.  It's always struck me that things like
> >          continuity-of-operations, in the face of node & link outages,
> >          and no-single-point-of-failure, were baked in from the
> >          beginning. You know - all the stuff that would allow the net to
> >          survive everything from backhoes to natural disasters, and
> >          coincidentally, nuclear war.
> >
> >          On the physical side, the early IMPs were pretty rugged boxes
> >          (not so much C/30s and such).  Were any of the IMPs built to
> >          withstand EMP?
> >
> >          Miles
> >
> >
> >
> >          --        In theory, there is no difference between theory and
> > practice.
> >          In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
> >
> >          _______
> >          internet-history mailing list
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> >
> >
> > --
> > New postal address:
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> > Reston, VA 20190
> >
> > --
> > Dave Crocker
> > Brandenburg InternetWorking
> > bbiw.net <http://bbiw.net/>
> > <Attached.txt>_______
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