[ih] 13 the unlucky number
the keyboard of geoff goodfellow
geoff at iconia.com
Wed Aug 12 15:02:00 PDT 2020
UCLA-CCN (an IBM 360/91) has a "bug" (or some "issue") in its NCP, that
whenever a connection was made to it with FTP/MAIL, TELNET, RJE, et al from
Tenex the logtty (tty0:) would spew out an "NCP ERROR" message...
this was "handy" in that when there was a network "issue" or "problem"
where no hosts responded to outgoing connection requests with FTP/TELNET,
et al. one could "tell" that the net interface was "properly working" and
at least able to get a packet out to a remote host -- in this case,
UCLA-CCN.
at that point, you knew The Problem/Issue was "elsewhere"... :D
geoff
On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 11:36 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> I've been trying to remember how we did "pings" on the ARPANET. You
> couldn't send datagrams or packets directly, so the common way to see if
> everything was "up" was to just try to connect to some remote computer.
>
> The earliest "debugging tool" precursor to Ping that I can remember is
> the "SURVEY" program, written by Marc Seriff and running on the MIT-DM
> machine. It was included in the demos that attendees could try
> themselves at the ICCC '72 networking conference in Washington DC.
> SURVEY ran as a background daemon and repeatedly did connection attempts
> to a bunch of ARPANET host computers and recorded the results in a
> database which could be queried by curious Users.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 8/11/20 10:01 PM, Louis Mamakos wrote:
> > The timing here lines up with Dave Mills' fuzzball code we had
> > running at University of Maryland (where Dave was a visiting
> > professor for a "special topics" networking class.) I do
> > fondly recall Fuzzball PING and it was certainly a well-used
> > tool for the initial debugging of the UNIVAC TCP/IP stack that
> > Mike Petry and I started implementing at that time - fall 1980.
> >
> > It was also around that time that we added the initial Ethernet
> > support in the Fuzzball code, adding ARP and a QBus InterLAN
> > interface. Once again, PING was the universal debugging tool.
> >
> > I do recall seeing "Packet InterNet Groper" in the Fuzzball
> > source code.
> >
> > louie
> >
> > On 11 Aug 2020, at 16:21, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >> Ping may have been released in 1983 but it was in use long before
> >> that. When I was in charge of keeping the "core gateways" running,
> >> Dave Mills was famous for doing lots of experiments that often gave us
> >> heartburn. I clearly recall him telling us at some Internet meeting
> >> about his experiments and the tool he used - he called it "Ping", and
> >> explained it was an acronym for "Packet InterNet Groper". This was
> >> probably 1979/80 or thereabouts. I don't know that Dave invented
> >> "ping", but I believe that's where I first heard about it.
> >>
> >> /Jack
> >>
> >>
> >> On 8/11/20 1:06 PM, Alejandro Acosta via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> uh, good question.
> >>>
> >>> Based on the days of the firsts networks and the release of ping the
> >>> answer is none, afaik, ping was released in 1983
> >>>
> >>> On 8/11/20 2:43 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>> A related question, if you're exploring Internet History, might be
> >>>> "Which of the early networks were ever actually operational nets on
> >>>> The
> >>>> Internet, i.e., nets that you could ping and get a response?"
> >>>>
> >>>> I was involved in the 77-80s timeframe, and as I recall, many of those
> >>>> low numbered networks were assigned numbers, but didn't actually ever
> >>>> get connected to the operational Internet.
> >>>>
> >>>> /Jack Haverty
> >>>>
> >>>> On 8/11/20 10:53 AM, Alejandro Acosta via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>> Hello All,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> First, really thanks for your comments.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I read a little bit more about the network 13. I supposed I should
> >>>>> have done this before sending the email.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> As I said, it does not appear in RFC 790 (Sep 81), and it does not
> >>>>> appear until RFC 990 (Nov 1986 assigned to XEROX)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> However, I just realized that actually network 13 was first
> >>>>> seen in
> >>>>> RFC 739 assigned to National Physical Laboratory and last seen in RFC
> >>>>> 776.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thanks again & sorry for the noise.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Alejandro,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 8/11/20 12:45 PM, Alex McKenzie via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>>> Alejandro,
> >>>>>> I don't think any of us can speak for Jon Postel, who assigned the
> >>>>>> numbers, and sadly he is no longer with us to speak for himself. I
> >>>>>> knew Jon pretty well and he showed no evidence of being a
> >>>>>> superstitious person. I think Steve Crocker's explanation that the
> >>>>>> number was assigned to an entity that could not yet be made
> >>>>>> public on
> >>>>>> the date RFC 790 was released is the most likely answer.
> >>>>>> For what its worth,Alex McKenzie
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 9:08:58 AM EDT, 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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>
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>
--
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True
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