[ih] "Pings" on the ARPAnet

Wed Aug 12 17:49:58 PDT 2020

I remember there was much complaining when the NMC announced that the ARPANET had grown to the point that they would no longer support the well-known socket that printed a network map of which hosts were up and down on a Teletype, because it would no longer fit on one sheet of paper.

Which brings up the other ‘unofficial’ well-known sockets that existed. I remember there was a ‘one-liner’ socket at BBN.  I never did learn the significance of ’There goes a big red fire engine.’

What else was there?

> On Aug 12, 2020, at 20:07, Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> The NCP protocol had Echo and Echo Reply commands, which I think were used on occasions to determine whether an other Host was "up" enough to be connected to the ARPAnet and running its NCP.  This may be what you are thinking of.
> Alex
> 
>    On Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 5:35:48 PM EDT, 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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