[ih] sad news: Peter Kirstein

[Jack Haverty]

Peter was, IMHO, possibly the most important driving force behind
getting the fledgling Internet to actually work!   Peter (and his group)
was the only "real" User of the Internet back in 1981.   Or at least the
most memorable to me.

Summer/Fall 1981 was when Vint added an "Internet" task to my group's
contract at BBN, with the assignment to make the Internet work reliably
as a 24x7 communications service, just like we had been doing for the
ARPANET for a decade.  The Internet then was just a handful or so of
"gateways" (now called "routers") interconnecting networks.  

Most "Internet traffic" then actually moved across the ARPANET, which
was not only reliable but also rarely did nasty things like dropping IP
datagrams, reordering them, and otherwise mangling datagram flows.  The
neonatal TCP implementations, running over the ARPANET, didn't have much
real work to do in moving users' data.   The ARPANET did most of the
heavy lifting for them.

However, Peter and the UCL group were actually trying to use an Internet
path which involved at least 2 resource-starved gateways and several
networks of different speeds, delays, etc.   Unlike most users, the
Internet was supporting Peter's group's everyday activities, not just
occasional network experiments.  And they really used it.  And they
exposed lots of problems.

Being on the EU side of the Atlantic, they always had a 5 hour or so
headstart on us every day.  So there were often problems, waiting for
BBN to "fix the Internet" every morning - especially after it became
known that BBN was tasked to make the Internet work as a 24x7 reliable
service.

IMHO, that pressure from real users with real problems was a key driver
to all the things we had to do to get the Internet out of the "research
lab" to come online as a reliable communications service.

Peter made (us make) the Internet work...

/Jack Haverty



On 1/8/20 8:09 PM, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> Looking at this from a different perspective, we had Peter in our midst and
> contributing heavily to networking successes and spread from about 1967
> when I first met him while at UCLA. That's over half a century. What a
> gift! His work is still evident and his story of collaboration undiminished
> by his departure from our midst. Yes, another giant has left us, but his
> work remains to remind us of what we can do when we work together. None of
> that is gone though we shall not see him again in this world.
>
> I am glad to have called him "friend" for many, many years.
> vint
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 9:27 PM Bob Hinden via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>> On Jan 8, 2020, at 11:38 AM, Toerless Eckert via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 08:26:00AM +1300, Brian E Carpenter via
>> Internet-history wrote:
>>>> This is really bad news. And don't forget his team's true pioneering in
>> video-conferencing over the Internet too.
>>> Indeed
>> Yes, very sad news indeed.  Sigh...
>>
>> Bob
>>
>>> All MICE and friends will miss him dearly, and keep fond memories.
>>>
>>> Toerless
>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>   Brian Carpenter
>>>>
>>>> On 09-Jan-20 06:17, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>> I am sorry to relay the sad news that Peter Kirstein passed away this
>>>>> morning (London time). He was a key implementer and promoter of
>> networking,
>>>>> participating in both the ARPANET and Internet developments as well as
>> the
>>>>> UK Coloured Book and Open Systems Interconnection protocols.
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._Kirstein
>>>>>
>>>>> vint cerf
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> --
>>> ---
>>> tte at cs.fau.de
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>