[ih] inter-network communication history

Sat Nov 9 11:10:11 PST 2019

I don't know whether Bob created that Internet Principle of Levelness or
if it came earlier, but he's the one who got me on board.  That led to
EGP as a key new element of the Internet architecture as a first tool to
enable multi-vendor implementation.

Somewhat later (a year or two?), I recall being asked to come to a
meeting in DC at DCA.  There were maybe a dozen or so people in the
room, and reps from some west coast startup pitching their product for
use in the government world. 

After the pitch there was lots of discussion.  At one point, one of the
DCA guys turned to me and asked "Will this work?".   I had my
DCA-sponsored Systems Engineering hat on at the time, so I looked at the
diagrams and said "Yes, it should."

BBN of course made routers too.  If there had been a Sales rep in the
room with me, you probably would have found me dead in the parking
lot.   The pitch was given by either Sandy Lerner or Len Bosack (can't
remember).   The new product was a router.  The company was cisco Systems.

IMHO, the multi-vendor nature of the router mesh is a distinguishing
characteristic of the Internet.  The other networks of the time, e.g.,
from IBM, DEC, BBN, NorTel, etc., all required that their nodes all be
from that vendor.  The Internet broke that lock and levelled at least
that part of the playing field - for a while.  Another possible
milestone for Internet History timelines.

/Jack

On 11/9/19 10:06 AM, Dan Lynch wrote:
> So Bob Kahn created the level playing field possibilities early on!  Bravo. I know the folks at Stanford were eager to build their own gateways. And at ISI my group were eager to get gateways that we could manipulate without the loving stranglehold hold of BBN. We were in development mode and couldn’t wait for “products”. 
>
> Dan
>
> Cell 650-776-7313
>
>> On Nov 8, 2019, at 11:08 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 11/8/19 10:12 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> If you are clever, you can build a standards-compliant management system that only works with your own kit.
>> Wow.   From "Rough Consensus and Running Code" to "Works Great, If You
>> Buy All Your Internet Stuff From Us".  
>>
>> Back in the early 80s, when I was in charge of the gateway work at BBN,
>> Bob Kahn collared me one day (in a subway car on the way to dinner) to
>> convince me that we had to do whatever it took to make it so that people
>> other than BBN could implement gateways and participate in a
>> multi-vendor Internet.   That was another Internet Principle like Jon's
>> catchphrase - no vendor lock-ins like the one that existed with the
>> ARPANET and its IMPs.   Bob was the Boss, so that's what we did.
>>
>> When did that Principle disappear?  It would make a good, if sad IMHO,
>> point on the Internet History timeline, marking the emergence of Walls
>> in the Internet Garden.
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
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