[ih] sad news: Peter Kirstein

John Day jeanjour at comcast.net
Sat Jan 11 03:08:41 PST 2020 

Along these lines, I remember seeing statistics somewhere that the Illinois node was the largest user (probably of the ARPANET hosts) of the 360 at the Rutherford High Energy Lab. It was Argonne and Illinois physics people I assume running code there and exchanging stuff with CERN.  This would have been before and about the time Batavia (FermiLab) was being built.

As some of you know, the country roads in Illinois tend to follow the section lines (1 mile squares). So there tends to be a grid of roads a mile apart. And you probably know that Central Illinois between Urbana and Chicago is pretty flat. (10 meters would be a significant hill if it existed which I doubt.) It is normal to be able to see all the way to the horizon. 

Before Interstates, the highway between Champaign and Chicago was two lane and very slow. Argonne is almost directly due North of Urbana about 140 miles. Although, the country roads are (sort of) 2-lane black top, there is very little traffic and you can generally see cross traffic coming for miles before they crossed. The physics dept had figured out how to considerably cut the driving time down by using the back country roads between Urbana and Argonne. There was a nickname for the route which I am drawing a blank on.  Wish I could remember.

Take care,
John

> On Jan 10, 2020, at 20:43, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Jack,
> 
>> 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.
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Peter knew and decided to keep quiet. This was presumably around 1980? The transatlantic "who pays?" discussions got very explicit when NSFnet entered the picture a few years later.
> 
> UCL was monitoring usage as early as 1975:
> Monitoring and access control of the London node of ARPANET
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499799.1499882
> As for many years afterwards, the bulk of traffic was from the US towards Europe, and most of the sessions were started by European users. (I happened to notice this paper since one of Peter's co-authors was later in my team at CERN.)
> 
> For proof that Peter was aware of the X.25 cost issue before too long, see the bottom of page 10 at http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/kirstein-arpanet.pdf
> "The access control was because we were
> incurring IPSS traffic charges on out-going traffic; the logging was because the
> funding agencies wanted to know how to allocate costs."
> 
> Regards
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 11-Jan-20 12:48, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> 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
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>    <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> ---
>>>>>> tte at cs.fau.de <mailto:tte at cs.fau.de>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>    <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>> --
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>    <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>    -- 
>>>    Internet-history mailing list
>>>    Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>    <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>    https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> New postal address:
>>> Google
>>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>>> Reston, VA 20190
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

More information about the Internet-history mailing list