[ih] Interop as part of Internet History (was Re: Fwd: Fwd: List archives (Was: Exterior Gateway Protocol))

[Jack Haverty]

That "ACE Coaster" was handed out (by Dan, IIRC) at a small (dozen or so
people) meeting that Dan called, I think to mostly bounce off ideas
about a training/conference company.   Again IIRC this happened somewhat
before the first actual conference in Monterey, where Dan subsequently
stole the Internet using chocolate-chip cookies as bribes.   Vint never
served such cookies!

From my retro-perspective, it was an interesting progression of events.  

The ARPA "Internet Project" had started in the late 70s with a somewhat
disjoint set of network-building projects, and had congealed into a
network community, with quarterly meetings. 

At first, the "TCP Working Group" and the "Internet Working Group" met
separately.  Quickly we noticed that the TCP group kept coming up with
changes to the IP header, while the IP group saw things that needed to
be in the TCP header, and everyone in one group wanted to participate in
the other, so "layering" was cast aside and the Internet Project as a
single group was born.

Over a year or two of such quarterly meetings, the size of the
membership kept growing, and people had to plead with Vint for a
"ticket" to attend.  

It had become difficult to find a willing host that had a venue big
enough to handle the crowd for plenary and breakout sessions.   I hosted
one at BBN, and learned that it is a very bad idea to host a large
meeting in a newly renovated building with lots of free rooms and space,
but without first testing to make sure the brand-new sparkling bathrooms
actually worked.

The logistics of the quarterly meetings were becoming a serious
problem.   Then Dan stepped in.

Instead of a meeting where ARPA and some benefactor host venue paid the
costs and necessarily severely limited attendance, Dan rented (I assume
it wasn't free!) a hotel, opened up a "ticket booth" to the masses,
charged attendees a fee that didn't raise too many bean-counters'
alarms, and added a show floor for vendors too, for an appropriate fee
of course.   He also recruited many of the people who used to just
attend the quarterly Internet project meetings to provide the
entertainment for all the attendees, and called it training and program
presentations.

Not a bad solution to the problem, eh?  

I recall at first there was just a room with some tables and a handful
of vendors showing their wares.  That turned pretty quickly into a trade
show floor in Santa Clara, expanding into Moscone, and before long
heading to Vegas when Moscone was just too small.

All of this had the overriding mandate that there would be a strong
technical focus, a live network, and vendors had to connect their stuff
to it.  For a few years, I was on the Interop "Program Committee", which
met around a big table to decide which papers would be put into the
program.  It was common to look at a paper, see who was the author, and
if there was even a hint of "marketing" present, it quickly went to the
reject pile.   Sometimes all it took was a look at the authors' titles.

I remember a meeting where Dan took a few of us to Moscone, to meet with
the powers-that-be about possibly holding Interop there.  They were
cordial, but IMHO clearly thought this event-they-never-heard-of didn't
belong in Moscone.  A year later, after blowing out Santa Clara, they
were much more receptive.  Doing the "MazeWar" throughout the Interop
show floor was ... interesting.  I checked in to my hotel room on Sunday
at noon, and didn't get back until Tuesday night.   After a few years in
Moscone, it had become too small for Interop, so it was off to Vegas.

Fun times.  Interop was, IMHO, critical to getting the Internet out into
the real world.  Nobody else showed products actually working, and that
matters to the people who approve the POs.

But it's a good thing Dan didn't have more of the used-car-salesman
genes.  Otherwise we would have all left Interop each year with a new
vehicle.  Internet-ready, of course.

You were wrong, Dan. IMHO, you could have gotten more than 50%....

/Jack Haverty




On 9/8/20 2:48 PM, Dan Lynch via Internet-history wrote:
> Craig, I think you did not copy the list.  And while I’m at it, a small edit.  I paid the tutors 15% , a full 50% more than the competition. I also charged everybody 50% more than the competition because I felt it was worth it!  I even charged the vendors 50% more than the competition. I turned out that I was right. 
>
> Dan
>
> Cell 650-776-7313
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
>> Date: September 8, 2020 at 1:14:05 PM PDT
>> To: Dan Lynch <dan at lynch.com>
>> Cc: Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Subject: Re:  [ih] Fwd: List archives (Was: Exterior Gateway Protocol)
>>
>> 
>> Dan was kind enough to mention me, which makes it a little harder to send this note but I'll do it anyway.
>>
>> I think Dan underplays how radical Interop was.  Vendors had to connect their equipment to the show network.  There was a team of Internet wizards who helped setup the show network for each show.  (I recall stories of laying things out on netting in a warehouse so that it could easily be transferred to the show floor).  But it meant products actually worked.
>>
>> And then there was the education component, which as Dan tells, started things.  Dan took the view that he tried to hire the top instructors in the field and compensate them properly. At a time when competitors were paying 10% of the gross or $2K, whichever was less, Dan paid $2K or 10% of the gross, whichever was more.  That meant Interop's courses, instead of being taught by a grad student or a professor trying out a new course idea, were taught by folks like Doug Comer and Scott Bradner and Radia Perlman, teaching their areas of expertise.  As a result, the educational program was immense -- many thousands of students.  And because the instructors were already in town, Dan could recruit us to come do a panel session for the main program as well.  The panels were often also huge.  (I still remember a session I led that included Dave Clark and a couple of other key folks -- the room was packed -- probably 5,000 people -- and was so jammed that someone stepped on the tablecloth for the projector, dumping all our slides [this was pre-Powerpoint real-time projection] on the floor!  So I had to talk w/o slides while the other speakers ran to the back to reinsert their slides!).
>>
>> Attending Interop was a full week affair -- you got trained and then went to the showfloor and conference sessions, while grabbing a handful of the old Doubletree cookies (twice the size they are today) during the breaks.
>>
>> The transitions in size were wild.  We went from Monterrey, to the Santa Clara TechMart, to the San Jose Convention center to the Moscone Center in SF in rapid succession.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 12:52 PM Dan Lynch via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> SoJack, you are asking me to recount how Interop came to be. I shall do that as quickly as I can here. 
>>>
>>> In the early 80s I was at ISI in charge of the computer facility. After a year or so there came to be a term New Computing Environment to describe the advent of personal computers and the death of timesharing!  I think Keith Uncapher coined the term, tho maybe Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf had a hand in it. Anyway fast forward a few years and I was back in Silicon Valley looking to start a company like my pals at Stanford had been doing. I looked around and noticed that the Internet was gaining traction but the nascent companies had not quite got it right. So I convinced Barry Leiner who was a program manager there in 85/86 to let me convene a 3 day workshop on TCP/IP protocols to explain them to the hundred or so implementation teams out there. I got the actual protocol designers to come to Monterrey California for 3 days. There was no company name then. I had no idea where this was going then. Needless to say the event was a success. The researchers learned of real life problems the early vendors we’re experiencing and the vendors learned a lot more about the Internet and what worked and what still needed further steps. 
>>>
>>> I now had a business of teaching (through others) the vendors and advanced customers how the Internet works. I needed a name. I took the old name above and called it Advanced Computing Environment. 
>>>
>>> A few years in to this the world really wanted to see working systems and I decided to try a trade show, with one critical addition: the systems had to be connected to an actual working Internet!  And while I was on the phone with one of my brilliant tutor people from BBN, Craig Partridge, as were were concluding the call he blurted out “I’ll see you at Interop “. I hung up the phone and called my lawyer to register the name immediately!  I had been calling it The TCP/IP Interoperability Conference and Exhibition!  Ah, simplicity. 
>>>
>>> That was in September of 1988. It had 50 vendors and 5000 attendees. In 1990 it had grown to 200 vendors and 30,000 attendees. Clearly this Internet stuff was catching on, eh?  
>>>
>>> So I sold the company and stayed on for 5 more years as the PR guy and growing it into Europe and Asia. 
>>>
>>> 30 years later it still exists in about 10 locations I. The world. Not quite the same, but still stressing interoperability. 
>>>
>>> Thanks for asking, Jack. 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>> Cell 650-776-7313
>>>
>>>> On Sep 5, 2020, at 1:28 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks Dan!
>>>>
>>>> There's so much of the history that didn't get recorded in RFCs and
>>>> such, and mail list archives from that era are rare.  We weren't very
>>>> good about documenting things, especially the "why" of how decisions
>>>> were made.
>>>>
>>>> There's plenty of room for more participation!   Perhaps you can provide
>>>> the story behind this artifact of the early Internet?
>>>>
>>>> ACE Coaster
>>>>
>>>> That coaster has been sitting on my desk for close to 40 years.  The
>>>> lettering is fading, after too many attacks by marauding coffee mugs
>>>> over the decades, and a few trips to the floor courtesy of a roaming cat.
>>>>
>>>> The story of ACE, and Interop which followed, is an important part of
>>>> Internet history.  There tends to be a focus on protocols and
>>>> algorithms, but innovations like Interop were, IMHO, equally important
>>>> to the success of the Internet by making it accessible to the masses and
>>>> emphasizing the importance of working systems. 
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps more important.   Tell us the story.
>>>>
>>>> /Jack
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 9/5/20 12:10 PM, Dan Lynch via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>> Forgot to copy the fantastic list!
>>>>>
>>>>> Dan
>>>>>
>>>>> Cell 650-776-7313
>>>>>
>>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>>
>>>>>> From: Dan Lynch <dan at lynch.com>
>>>>>> Date: September 5, 2020 at 11:42:36 AM PDT
>>>>>> To: Joseph Touch <touch at strayalpha.com>
>>>>>> Subject: Re:  [ih] List archives (Was: Exterior Gateway Protocol)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Great!  These discussions are amazing, considering that they are being done by the actual inventors of much of the Internet some 3 or 4 decades later. We were young then, eh?  Of course they must be open to the world. Thank you Noel, Miles, Brian, Tony, Vint, Jack, and others I’ve forgotten just now. 
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dan
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cell 650-776-7313
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2020, at 8:06 AM, Joseph Touch via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> HI, all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2020, at 7:58 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> From: Joseph Touch
>>>>>>>>> FYI - we moved the archives here.
>>>>>>>> I've just noticed that the archives are now only accessible to list members?
>>>>>>> They should have been open. If anything changed recently, this is the first I heard. Either way, the setting has been updated to allow public access. 
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Please let me know if you continue to find otherwise.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Joe (as list admin)
>>>>>>> -- 
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>>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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>>
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