[ih] MATNET [Was Protocol numbers (was IP version 7)]

Mon Dec 28 10:26:01 PST 2020

 Barbara,
As noted in my first message, the E-Systems group that was the prime contractor on MATNET when I was involved was in St Petersburg FL, next to Tampa.
Cheers,Alex

    On Monday, December 28, 2020, 1:22:25 PM EST, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  

  Was E-systems near Tampa?  I do remember going there for a meeting but can't remember for which project.  It could have been Metanet since it was shortly after I joined SRI.
barbara
    On Sunday, December 27, 2020, 10:27:42 PM PST, Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  

  I believe the prime contractor on the MATNET project I was involved with was E-Systems.

    On Thursday, December 24, 2020, 1:34:22 PM EST, Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  

  Vint,
It may be possible that the MATNET project eventually morphed into thev METANET work, but I don't know.
I was involved in MATNET so I can say a bit about it, although my memory is rusty.  I think some of the money came from DARPA and some from NOSC in San Diego.  It is possible that Frank Deckelman (Navy) was the project sponsor.  The idea was to connect ships to each other and to the shore using a low bandwidth (19.6 kbs) channel on a military satellite, using the shared channel reservation system developed in the SATNET project.  I do not recall any worries about emission control issues; I do recall that on each ship the radio channel was useless every time the ship's radar swept over the satellite antenna.  The prime contractor was a radio company (the name escapes me) headquartered in St Petersburg FL which made the WSK-3 (Whisky 3) radios that were on the ships.  BBN was a subcontractor providing expertise in 2 areas:  the shared use of the satellite channel, and the use of encryption technology that let the packet headers go in the clear while ensuring that the data was encrypted (from the PLI project).
One odd thing that I remember about the project - the BBN people hated the high humidity and temperature of Florida summers, and the radio people hated the snow, ice, and cold of New England winters.  But for some perverse reason the prime contractor scheduled all the winter project meetings at BBN and all the summer meetings in St Petersburg.
I left the project before it was completed, so I don't know whether there was ever a working system, or what happened next.
Happy Holidays!Alex

    On Thursday, December 24, 2020, 1:15:07 PM EST, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  

  I don't think so.  I don't remember the name MATNET. If any knows, I think it would be Jim (Mathis).
Craig, as far as I know the  Metanet project only involved SRI. 
Happy Holidays everyone!
barbara
    On Thursday, December 24, 2020, 06:53:01 AM PST, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:  

 was there any relationship between METANET (which I do not remember) and MATNET (which I do remember)?
v

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 9:40 AM Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 7:09 PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>  I will throw out a guess about the mystery EMCON protocol number
> assignment.  It might be related to SRI's work for the Navy. We had a
> project called  Metanet that was looking at how to support TCP/IP
> networking when ships were under emission control.  In 1984, I gave a
> presentation about the work at a Gateway Special Interest Group Meeting
> hosted by Jon Postel at ISI (see RFC 898).  I don't remember us asking for
> a protocol number yet but we could have. I also wonder if Jon may have
> created a placeholder for us. I was working on the Ada implementation of
> the gateway at that point in time.  I don't think we had the EMCON details
> worked out yet.  The project got cancelled unexpectedly and on short notice
> due to a change in personnel if I remember correctly.
> barbara
>

Hey Barbara:

I didn't know you worked on METANET! That was my first project as a new
employee at BBN in 1983.  The job on the BBN side was to figure out if
different network topologies worked more or less well for shipboard command
centers.  As I recall, Ken Pogran was the initial PM and got TCP/IP working
on a bus network (Ungermann-Bass?) and then transitioned to something else,
so Ben Woznick took over and I was hired to get TCP/IP working on the 80MB
Proteon Ring. That was grand fun.  Rick Adams at Seismo also had a Proteon
Ring and I gave him my driver for his network.  And I swapped email for the
first time with Noel Chiappa -- as I recall, I was using another
Proteon network interface driver for guidance and its comments noted that
an old version of some Proteon board had a real halt and catch fire feature
(if you set the initialization word wrong, smoke happened) and Noel
observed that the comment was no longer valid. And I had the fastest
network in Cambridge all to myself (but, alas, had nothing much to run on
it).

Craig

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