[ih] Recently restored and a small ARPANET was run using simulated IMP hardware. (was: TTL [was Exterior Gateway Protocol])
Jack Haverty
jack at 3kitty.org
Sun Sep 6 13:49:16 PDT 2020
Makes sense. That's why I said I didn't know the legal definition of
"wireless email". It's all about the words, and I remember in the
claims I dealt with, every word was subject to years-long debate and
argument, until possibly a Judge decided what it meant. /Jack
On 9/6/20 1:03 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow wrote:
> jack, vis-a-vis packet radio (PR) wireless email vs. the NTP/RIM
> litigation yours truly consulted on:
>
> For Sure there was an Internet connection in yours truly's experience:
>
> the first thing yours truly brought up was Norm Abramson's ALOHANET in
> the early 70's with respect to wireless email (over the ARPANET) --
> for which yours truly had first hand/personal experience during
> multiple "vacations" to Hawaii with telneting from/via the menehune
> application level gateway at UH Manoa to SRI-AI. :D
>
> BUT, in the NTP/RIM litigation case: the ALOHANET "experience" (or
> "prior art" if you will) didn't "count" against vis-a-vis the various
> NTP patents "legitimacy" -- for which there were multiple -- for each
> NTP patient had many claims in them and were constructed around
> "machine-to-machine" protocol "interaction" via/with an X.25 network,
> MTA's and a (one-way) paging wireless network vs. our collective
> ARPANET(NCP)/Internet(TCP/IP) Packet Radio net telnet/terminal
> "experiences" we all had in the 70's and 80's.
>
> geoff
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 9:39 AM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org
> <mailto:jack at 3kitty.org>> wrote:
>
> Hi Geoff - thanks for that bit of history and kudos!
>
> I think there's an Internet connection in your experience. I'm
> not sure what, legally, "wireless email" means. But I suspect
> that email was being sent and received, wirelessly, well before
> even 1982, if only to and from the SRI Packet Radio van that could
> occasionally be seen then roaming around the Bay Area.
>
> Of course, technically, that probably involved a Telnet
> connection, wirelessly, to some PDP-10 running an email program.
> But, legally, it might meet the court accepted definition of
> "wireless email". I learned from the lawyers that much of
> litigation involves arguing about the meaning of words and phrases.
>
> So, perhaps someone could have looked for mouldering Packet Radio
> (aka PR) hardware and software, and demonstrated wireless email
> circa 1978 over one or more PRNETs.
>
> Sadly, although I was pretty sure that interesting "prior art"
> would be found in the PR environment, we had little success 7
> years ago while trying to find anything that might show exactly
> how PR equipment "downloaded instructions".
>
> There's remarkably little readily discoverable material about lots
> of the computer and network systems of the 70s/80s, especially
> internal details of operation, tools, procedures, etc. Plenty of
> stuff on Routing, but little on other mechanisms, or other types
> of networks of that era, at least that the lawyers and I could
> find. IMHO, that's a huge gap even in Internet History, since
> the Internet did not evolve in a vacuum, was itself composed of
> more than the ARPANET, and was surrounded by competitors (remember
> multiprotocol routers).
>
> /Jack
>
> On 9/6/20 11:58 AM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow wrote:
>> Jack, you're a Most Eloquent purveyor of history and that WHY
>> explain is exactly what yours truly was hoping for... Thank You
>> for the elucidation! :D
>>
>> along the lines vis-a-vis:
>>
>> So, that's a bit about the "Why", for history to ponder. The
>> experience got me wondering about the "patent history" of The
>> Internet. Clearly there was a lot of innovation in those
>> days. My recollection is that very little was patented, even
>> if only to make sure no one else could. Maybe someone will
>> document the patent-related aspects of Internet History someday.
>>
>> please excuse/pardon this immodesty: yours truly had a kinda
>> similar "lawyered" experience with respect to WHO was the
>> purported "inventor"/originator of wireless email in a patent
>> litigation case and the "challenge" of finding/presenting any
>> extant legally submissive "artifactual proof" to that effect --
>> for which John Markoff at the New York Times wrote about in this
>> 2006 article:
>>
>> In Silicon Valley, a Man Without a Patent
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/business/technology/in-silicon-valley-a-man-without-a-patent.html
>>
>> for which some links of "proof" exist -- for some stuff mentioned
>> in the above NYT article -- on my
>> website https://iconia.com/ under "wireless email" (in case any
>> historians are duly interested)...
>>
>> geoff
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 8:24 AM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org
>> <mailto:jack at 3kitty.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Geoff,
>>
>> Dave's IEEE paper does an excellent job of the
>> Who/What/When/Where. He's right that it was about 7 years
>> ago. Time flies... but I guess it's still "recent" when
>> viewed as part of Internet History.
>>
>> For the curious, I can add a bit more about the Why.
>>
>> Sometime in 2013, I got an email out of the blue from Charlie
>> Neuhauser, someone I didn't recognize or remember at all,
>> asking if I was the "Jack Haverty" who authored IEN 158 -
>> documenting the XNET protocol in 1980. Figuring that the
>> statute of limitations must have expired after 30+ years, I
>> cautiously said yes. Over the next few days, he hooked me up
>> with the lawyers who were involved in a patent dispute - one
>> that had been going on for several decades by then. In fact,
>> the patent involved had been issued, ran its 17 year
>> lifetime, and expired, but there was still litigation in
>> process about whether or not the patent was valid, and 17
>> years of violations were alleged cause for compensation in
>> the many millions. For the next few years I was involved in
>> the battles, working with the lawyers scattered all over the
>> country. I never met any of them. All our work was done by
>> email and telephone. No Zoom then or we probably would have
>> used it.
>>
>> The core issue in the patent battle concerned "downloading
>> instructions", mechanisms such as would be involved in
>> patching or issuing new software releases to remote
>> equipment. XNET seemed to them to possibly have something
>> to do with that, hence the interest. The goal was to find
>> hard evidence that such procedures were being done by 1980,
>> which would prove that prior art existed. Hard evidence
>> literally means "hard" - opinions help, but physical
>> equipment and running code is much more impressive in a
>> courtroom.
>>
>> They hadn't found any XNET artifacts, and I couldn't point
>> them to any surviving implementations. But I pointed out
>> that my XNET document simply captured the technology that we
>> "stole" from the ARPANET IMP experience, and that the IMPs
>> routinely "downloaded code" from their neighbors and the NOC
>> all during the life of the ARPANET.
>>
>> Since the IMPs had existed since the early 70s, that really
>> sparked their interest, and a search (worldwide) ensued to
>> find old IMPs, in the hope that just maybe one of them still
>> had the IMP software in its magnetic-core memory. A few IMPs
>> were located, but none were functional. The one in the
>> museum at UCLA seemed promising, but the owners were
>> reluctant to even hook it up to power after sitting idle for
>> so many years, expecting it might go up in smoke.
>>
>> Then I learned from the BBN alumni mailing list that an
>> ancient IMP listing had been found in a basement. The story
>> from that point is pretty well described in Dave's paper.
>>
>> Personally, it was an interesting experience. I worked
>> extensively with one lawyer in San Diego. I taught him how
>> computers and networks actually work; he taught me a lot
>> about the legal system regarding patents. IMHO, they are
>> equally convoluted and complex when viewed from the other's
>> perspective.
>>
>> I also learned a lot about the IMP code, which I had never
>> even looked at while I was at BBN. One task I took on was to
>> exhaustively analyze the parts of the IMP code that
>> implemented the "download new instructions" functionality,
>> writing up an instruction-by-instruction description of how
>> the code accomplished that by interacting with a neighboring
>> IMP. It was a very clever design, and extremely tight code,
>> even including self-modifying instructions. Not easy to
>> figure out (or explain in language amenable to a
>> non-technical judge or jury). So there was great interest in
>> being able to demonstrate the code in action using real
>> software from the 70s and hardware simulators. Tangible
>> evidence is much better than even expert opinions.
>>
>> The whole legal project came to a sudden end just a few
>> months prior to the first court date. I was looking
>> forward to going to Delaware (legal action was filed in
>> Federal court in Delaware), and finally meeting some of the
>> people. But the parties settled suddenly, the case was
>> dropped, and AFAIK the patent question was never resolved.
>>
>> So, that's a bit about the "Why", for history to ponder.
>> The experience got me wondering about the "patent history" of
>> The Internet. Clearly there was a lot of innovation in
>> those days. My recollection is that very little was
>> patented, even if only to make sure no one else could.
>> Maybe someone will document the patent-related aspects of
>> Internet History someday.
>>
>> /Jack Haverty
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/6/20 12:34 AM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow wrote:
>>> jack, you've raised my curiosity with respect to:
>>>
>>> ... There
>>> *is* ARPANET IMP software which was recently restored
>>> and a small
>>> ARPANET was run using simulated IMP hardware.
>>>
>>> Who/What/When/Where/Why?
>>>
>>> geoff
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 8:40 PM Jack Haverty via
>>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Lukasz,
>>>
>>> I think that the earliest implementations of TTL called
>>> it "Time", but
>>> I'm not aware that anyone actually used time per se in
>>> gateways, at
>>> least in the early days (1977-1982 or so).
>>>
>>> TCP implementations didn't do anything with TTL other
>>> than set it on
>>> outgoing datagrams, and at least in my implementation
>>> (TCP for Unix), it
>>> was just set to some arbitrary value. Until we had some
>>> data from
>>> experimentation it was hard to evaluate ideas about what
>>> routers, hosts,
>>> et al should actually do. The early TCPs did use time
>>> in handling
>>> retransmission timers, and there was work a bit later to
>>> incorporate
>>> time more powerfully into TCP behavior, e.g., Van
>>> Jacobson's work.
>>>
>>> The early gateways, IIRC, used the terminology "time",
>>> but in practice
>>> used just hop counts, since time measurements were
>>> difficult to
>>> implement. The exception to that may be Dave Mills'
>>> Fuzzballs, since
>>> Dave was the implementor most interested in time and
>>> making precise
>>> measurements of network behavior. I *think* Dave may
>>> have used time
>>> values and delay-based routing amongst his "fuzzies".
>>>
>>> The BBN doc you're seeking might have been one of many
>>> that discussed
>>> the ARPANET internal mechanisms, e.g., ones with titles
>>> like "Routing
>>> Algorithm Improvements". The ARPANET internal
>>> mechanisms did use time.
>>> It was fairly simple in the IMPs, since the delay
>>> introduced by the
>>> synchronous communications lines could be easily
>>> predicted, and the
>>> other major component of delay was the time spent in
>>> queues, which could
>>> be measured fairly easily.
>>>
>>> I even found one BBN ARPANET Project QTR from circa 1975
>>> that discussed
>>> the merits of the new-fangled TCP proposal that some
>>> professor had
>>> published -- and seemed to conclude it couldn't possibly
>>> work.
>>>
>>> My involvement in implementations of TCPs and gateways
>>> lasted through
>>> about mid-1983, so I don't know much of the detail of
>>> subsequent
>>> implementations. For the various BBN gateway/router
>>> equipment, Bob
>>> Hinden would probably be a good source. The other major
>>> early player
>>> was MIT and spinoffs (Proteon), which perhaps Noel
>>> Chiappa will
>>> remember. There's also at least one paper on the
>>> Fuzzballs which may
>>> have some details.
>>>
>>> One thing I'd advise being careful of is the various
>>> "specifications" in
>>> RFCs. Much of the wording in those was intentionally
>>> non-prescriptive
>>> (use of "should" or "may" instead of "must"), to provide
>>> as much
>>> latitude as possible for experimentation with new ideas,
>>> especially
>>> within an AS. The Internet was an Experiment.
>>>
>>> Also, there was no consistent enforcement mechanism to
>>> assure that
>>> implementations actually even conformed to the "must"
>>> elements. So
>>> Reality could be very different from Specification.
>>>
>>> I don't know of any gateway implementations that have
>>> survived. There
>>> *is* ARPANET IMP software which was recently restored
>>> and a small
>>> ARPANET was run using simulated IMP hardware. I still
>>> have a ~1979
>>> listing of the TCP I wrote for Unix, but haven't scanned
>>> it into digital
>>> form yet.
>>>
>>> Jack
>>>
>>> On 9/5/20 7:38 PM, Łukasz Bromirski wrote:
>>> > Jack,
>>> >
>>> > I was reading a lot of old BBN PDFs thanks to all good
>>> souls on
>>> > this list that post nice URLs from time to time.
>>> >
>>> > I remember reading in at least one of them, that
>>> apparently first
>>> > TCP/IP implementations were indeed using TTL as
>>> literally “time”,
>>> > not hop count. I believe there somewhere there between
>>> PDP docs
>>> > and ARPANET docs I’ve read something to the effect
>>> “and from this
>>> > time we changed from measuring time to simply count
>>> routing hops”.
>>> > Of course, right now google-fu is failing me.
>>> >
>>> > Quoting RFC 1009 that was already brought up, there’s
>>> quite
>>> > direct “definition” of the field:
>>> >
>>> > "4.8. Time-To-Live
>>> >
>>> > The Time-to-Live (TTL) field of the IP header is
>>> defined to be a
>>> > timer limiting the lifetime of a datagram in the
>>> Internet. It is
>>> > an 8-bit field and the units are seconds. This would
>>> imply that
>>> > for a maximum TTL of 255 a datagram would time-out
>>> after about 4
>>> > and a quarter minutes. Another aspect of the
>>> definition requires
>>> > each gateway (or other module) that handles a datagram to
>>> > decrement the TTL by at least one, even if the
>>> elapsed time was
>>> > much less than a second. Since this is very often
>>> the case, the
>>> > TTL effectively becomes a hop count limit on how far
>>> a datagram
>>> > can propagate through the Internet."
>>> >
>>> > Were there any implementations that survived somewhere
>>> and actually
>>> > did exactly that - counted actual time/processing
>>> delay, not hops?
>>> > And if it took 2s to process packet, did they really
>>> decrement TTL
>>> > by two?
>>> >
>>> > Thanks for any pointers,
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
>>> living as The Truth is True
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
>> living as The Truth is True
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
>
>
>
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