[ih] NCP, TCP/IP question

Steve Bunch steve.bunch at gmail.com
Tue Mar 10 06:00:32 PDT 2020 

Steve Holmgren wrote the kernel portion of the NCP, which was the connection data passing portion.  Gary Grossman wrote the user-level NCP daemon that took care of initialization, and connection establishment and teardown.  I wrote the kernel memory management code.

Since this was the third NCP being written by Gary and Steve H (ANTS and ANTS II)., it took only a few weeks to write and bring up.

Steve

> On Mar 10, 2020, at 8:51 AM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Holmgren wrote the NCP under the close watch of Gary Grossman and I believe Steve Bunch got into the picture at some point. Grossman was lead on the TCP implementations but they eventually went over to Dave Healy.
> 
>> On Mar 10, 2020, at 08:46, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> there were at least two NCP implementations for UNIX...  one was written by
>> Steve Zucker at RAND and the other was (perhaps?) written by Steve Holmgren
>> at the University of illinois Urbana-Champaign.
>> 
>> yours truly had interactions with both of these NCP implementations --
>> with Steve Holmgren integrating the Network Virtual Terminals into the
>> kernel (from the telnetd pty processes).
>> 
>> the Rand NCP implementation (in Peter Weiner's RAND-ISD lab) "lost" and to
>> yours trulys knowledge didn't get adopted outside of RAND.
>> 
>> geoff
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 10:29 PM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> If memory serves, prior to Multics and Unix and with the exception of the
>>> Burrough’s computers, operating systems were written in the assembly
>>> language of the machine.  This includes the Sigma 7 (host 1), the SDS 940
>>> (host 2), the IBM 360 (host 3) and Tenex (host 4).  The NCP (“Network
>>> Control *Program*") was an addition to the existing code of the operating
>>> system and, I believe, written in the same language as the operating
>>> system.  I think C appeared with Unix.  I don't think C was used or
>>> available on Tenex, but I'm not the most authoritative source.  I don't
>>> know much about the later implementations of NCP.  PDP-11s became popular
>>> and there were several operating systems written for them.  ELF (Dave Retz
>>> in Santa Barbara) and ANTS (University of Illinois) come to mind, and I
>>> think there were others.  At the time, I had the impression writing network
>>> compatible operating systems for the PDP-11 was a cottage industry.
>>> 
>>> It would be interesting to compare the timelines of the transition from NCP
>>> to TCP/IP with the evolution of hosts from the Tenex era to the Unix era.
>>> 
>>> Steve
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 2:09 AM Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> NCP was probably done in assembly language for most operating systems -
>>>> adding steve crocker for comment
>>>> TCP was written in BCPL at Stanford for PDP-11/40. Probaby C for Tenex.
>>>> PL/1 (?) for 360's???
>>>> 
>>>> Let me ask the Internet History list.
>>>> 
>>>> v
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 2:03 AM Steve Kirsch <stk at m10.io> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Was it written in C? you’d think only a small part would have to be
>>>>> customized for the operating system?!
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> *From:* Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
>>>>> *Sent:* Monday, March 9, 2020 1:59 AM
>>>>> *To:* Steve Kirsch <stk at m10.io>
>>>>> *Subject:* Re: NCP, TCP/IP question
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1. NCP was written individually for each operating system
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2. TCP was also written for each operating system but UNIX propagated
>>>>> most widely; TENEX version was popular for PDP-10s.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Bob Braden did the TCP for IBM 360/91 and I think that got ported to
>>>>> 360/75 at UCSB. Berkeley BSD 4.2 and follow-ons was most widely spread
>>> for
>>>>> UNIX.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> v
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 4:15 AM Steve Kirsch <stk at m10.io> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>  1. Did UCLA provide the source code for NCP and TCP/IP for various
>>>>>  places to run?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>  1. Or did everyone write their own implementation based on the spec?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> If the latter, was that problematic? Would it have been easier if
>>>>> everyone ran Unix and there was C source code that was distributed to
>>>>> everyone to run? Is that in fact what in fact happened? Why UCLA lost
>>> their
>>>>> SEX and became EUNUCHs… I mean UNIX?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>>> 
>>>>> New postal address:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Google
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Reston, VA 20190
>>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+%0D%0A+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> New postal address:
>>>> Google
>>>> 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>> Reston, VA 20190
>>>> <
>>> https://www.google.com/maps/search/1875+Explorer+Street,+10th+Floor+Reston,+VA+20190?entry=gmail&source=g
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>> living as The Truth is True
>> http://geoff.livejournal.com
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