[ih] inter-network communication history

[Vint Cerf]

Don't forget CMIP, HEMS AND SNMP
V

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019, 16:30 Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 11/7/19 12:05 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow wrote:
>
> > jack, that was Really Excellent... say, in The Interest in further
> > documenting Internet History, could you please elucidate for us on
> > *The Internet "Control Panel"* and its functionality/workings (as
> > excerpted from your website -- http://3kitty.org/):
> >
> >      ... /(At one point back around 1980, the "control panel" for The
> >     Internet was on his desk!)/...
> >
> Thanks, Geoff.  Yes, there's lots of the history, perhaps most, that was
> never captured in RFCs.  Some of that was captured in various contract
> deliverables, e.g., the Quarterly Technical Reports that we all had to do.
>
> That comment about the "control panel on my desk" came from an offhand
> comment I made to someone who had asked about what I did back in the
> early Internet days.   The phrase was apparently a good sound bite.
>
> Here's what happened, as far as I can remember it.  There's a lot of
> detailed information about the early history in the QTRs we did at BBN
> (and e.g., SRI), much of which is available online from DTIC.
>
> From the November 1981 BBN QTR (DTIC ADA108783):
>
> "During this quarter, responsibility for  gateway maintenance and
> development was transferred from the Information Sciences Division to
> the Computer Systems Division (now Communications Systems Division).
> The motivation for this transfer was the need to emphasize the treatment
> of the gateways as an operational communications system, rather than a
> research tool to support the growing user community.  In this approach,
> we plan increasingly to treat the gateway system much as we do the
> ARPANET and SATNET systems in terms of monitoring and maintenance.  This
> will require increased emphasis on the development and enhancement of
> tools for the remote operation of the gateways."
>
> I remember writing that.  Vint had talked to me earlier that year to see
> if I was willing to take over the gateway work and fold it in to the
> "operations and maintenance" we had already been doing on the ARPANET
> for the previous 10 years as well as more recently SATNET.   I think
> Vint saw the need for the Internet to be up all the time, not just for
> experiments and demos, and for someone to be called to report problems.
>
> To me now, this was an inflection point in the history of the Internet
> -- when it went from being a research tool to being an operational 7x24
> service.  To accomplish that, we plagiarized eagerly from the ARPANET,
> introducing the same kinds of tools and processes that had evolved and
> been proven over the previous decade.   It also involved rewriting the
> gateways into assembly language from the earlier research implementation
> in BCPL.    Our Division had been running the ARPANET for a decade, and
> the NOC was just down the hall from the "Gateway Guys" offices, so
> technology transfer was straightforward.
>
> At some point in that process, the gateways were added to the repertoire
> of things that the ARPANET NOC operated on a 24x7 basis, and a gateway
> control terminal appeared inside the ARPANET/SATNET operations room, and
> the operator(s) on duty were responsible for also keeping the gateways
> running, just as they had been doing for the ARPANET and SATNET IMPs.
>
> Prior to that, of course we had to build and debug the appropriate
> software.  The "control console" was simply a terminal connected to the
> BBN PDP-10 where the management software ran.   Sorry, I can't remember
> the name of the software, or which BBN-xxx machine it was on.  You could
> "control the Internet" simply by connecting a terminal to that software,
> and your terminal became the "control console".
>
> So, as that quote says, at some point before it went to the NOC I'm sure
> I tried it out by connecting from the terminal on my desk.  I had a
> reputation for being able to find bugs within minutes after somebody
> declared something ready.
>
> However, it was much more likely that the control console was in use by
> somebody else, either working in my group or one of the ARPANET-related
> ones.  At the time, Bob Hinden, Mike Brescia, and Alan Sheltzer were
> working on gateway development, and writing the code.  David Floodpage
> had been developing the CMCC - Catenet Monitoring and Control Center,
> which was used to operate SATNET.  Marty Schoffstall was working on
> other pieces - e.g., what later became SNMP.  Lots of other people who I
> have probably missed.
>
> We pushed very hard on getting mechanisms into place in the IP/gateway
> world that reflected the tools that had proven useful in the ARPANET -
> things like Traps, Software Download (see XNET), traffic statistics,
> controls, patching, etc.  Lots of that stuff eventually made its way
> into RFCs et al, and also made the Internet into a 24x7 service.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> /Jack Haverty
>
>
>
> --
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