[ih] 13 the unlucky number

[Steve Crocker]

I don't know the answer and will be interested in hearing from someone who
does, but I seriously doubt it has anything to do with superstition.  More
likely, in my opinion, Postel held the number back because he had a plan
for how it was going to be used and it was premature to announce it.  The
fact that it was later assigned to Xerox would be consistent with this
thought.

Steve


On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:08 AM Alejandro Acosta via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hello list,
>
>    I have a question and one more time I believe this a good place to ask.
>
>    During the weekend I read the old RFC 790 (ASSIGNED NUMBERS). When
> reading it I noticed the following:
>
> {...}
>
>        009.rrr.rrr.rrr   BRAGG-PR      Ft. Bragg Packet Radio Net [JEM]
>        010.rrr.rrr.rrr   ARPANET       ARPANET [17,1,VGC]
>        011.rrr.rrr.rrr   UCLNET        University College London     [PK]
>        012.rrr.rrr.rrr   CYCLADES      CYCLADES [VGC]
>        013.rrr.rrr.rrr                 Unassigned [JBP]
>        014.rrr.rrr.rrr   TELENET       TELENET [VGC]
>        015.rrr.rrr.rrr   EPSS          British Post Office EPSS      [PK]
>        016.rrr.rrr.rrr   DATAPAC       DATAPAC [VGC]
>        017.rrr.rrr.rrr   TRANSPAC      TRANSPAC [VGC]
>        018.rrr.rrr.rrr   LCSNET        MIT LCS Network [43,10,DDC2]
>
> {...}
>
>
>    As you can see the 013.rrr.rrr.rrr was unassigned but some subsequent
> prefix were (014, 015 ..... ). Is there any reason for it?. I know 013
> was later assigned to XEROX-NET.
>
>    I wonder if 013 was skipped because some sort of superstitions?.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Alejandro,
>
>
>
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