[ih] sad news: Peter Kirstein
Jack Haverty
jack at 3kitty.org
Fri Jan 10 15:48:05 PST 2020
Thanks Vint, I hope it gives them some insight into Peter's work life.
I remembered another anecdote that might also be interesting...
Peter was the primary contact I knew on the EU side of the US/EU
partnership. I never knew the details, but I suspect there was lots of
diplomacy, negotiations and agreements involved involving the several
governments. Some of them of course involved money - who would pay for
this new experimental Internet thing.
Some time after the initial gateway linkage made the Internet cross the
Atlantic, we put a second pathway into place, by using the public X.25
network as just another network subsumed by the Internet.
This was called the "VAN Gateway". After it was put into operation,
Internet traffic between the EU and US could traverse the satellite
network, that ARPA paid for, or it could traverse the international X.25
network.
The X.25 network consumed money differently than the ARPA-funded parts
of the Internet. In particular, the monthly cost of using the X.25
pathway was unpredictable. Since the X.25 world evolved from
traditional telephone companies, it had retained the notion of "calls",
and charged based on how long each call was connected. So a simple
5-minute call would be inexpensive, while a large file transfer that
might take a day or more to complete would be quite expensive. It all
depended on what those pesky Users (like Peter and his crew) did as they
used the Internet.
The ARPA beancounters weren't too comfortable with unpredictable and
uncontrollable monthly expenses. So we (BBN) brainstormed about what
we might do to mitigate that risk.
So....... The gateways couldn't really predict what future traffic
might appear. It depended on what those pesky Users did. The
algorithm we implemented did its best to be somewhat efficient in using
that expensive X.25 service. When a datagram arrived that was to be
sent over the X.25 path, the gateway would see if the "call" between the
two gateways was still active from previous traffic. If not, it would
"dial up" the other end and then send the datagram on its way, and also
start, or reset, a timer. After a while when the timer expired due to
inactivity the gateway would simply "hang up", to prevent the per-minute
charges from piling up.
That would help, but if someone did a huge file transfer it could still
run up a lot of charges for ARPA. More brainstorming....
So, ...... We simply configured the timer on the US side to be very
short - just long enough to get one datagram across the Atlantic.
probably about 1 second. We set the corresponding timer on the EU side
somewhat longer - a minute or so, so it would hang up quickly when the
user traffic subsided.
The X.25 mechanisms behaved like the traditional telephone system, the
bill for each "call" would go to whichever party "dialed the phone".
With the timers set so differently, almost all of the calls of any
duration would be initiated by the gateway on the EU side of the
Atlantic, regardless of where the associated TCP connection was created.
So, ....The result was that most of the expense of using the X.25
pathway, and almost all of the unpredictability, fell onto the EU side
of the partnership.
Somewhere in my education, I learned that "Management is the Art of
Moving Your Expenses Into Someone Else's Budget." I've wondered for
years how much of ARPA's expenses we moved into Peter's UCL budget. And
whether Peter or anyone else realized what was happening.
/Jack Haverty
On 1/9/20 8:06 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> thanks for this reminiscence - I am sharing with Peter's family whom
> we will see on Saturday.
>
> vint
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 5:11 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>
> 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
> <mailto: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
> <mailto: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
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> --
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