[ih] inter-network communication history

[Jack Haverty]

My recollection, circa 1979, is that the goal of the Internet project
was to develop and demonstrate the technology that would allow any kind
of computer, attached to any kind of communications system (aka
"network"), to communicate with any other such computer.

So the definition of "Internet" would be in terms of computers talking
to other computers, and being able to talk to all other computers, once
the appropriate interconnections (gateways/routers) and software were
put in place.

Networks such as ARPANET, Packet-Radio Net, SATNET, XNS, etc., were not
themselves early stages of the Internet, since there was no well-defined
way to get computers on those different systems to communicate -- until
TCP was defined. 

TCP started the Internet going.  I wasn't there, but I remember hearing
that the first interacting computers involving 2 networks happened on
the Packet Radio Network and the ARPANET - neither of which was itself
the beginning of The Internet.  It happened somewhere around 1976.   IP
was added (more accurately, split off from TCP) a few years later.

It takes two to Internet....

/Jack Haverty




-- 
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history