[ih] Interop as part of Internet History (was Re: Fwd: Fwd: List archives (Was: Exterior Gateway Protocol))
Barbara Denny
b_a_denny at yahoo.com
Thu Sep 10 13:02:01 PDT 2020
Late For the Train was the restaurant. It had wonderful blintzes. I got introduced to it when I was still working at BBN. There was a packet radio meeting at SRI and the BBN contingent wanted to eat there. Unfortunately it closed years ago.
barbara
On Thursday, September 10, 2020, 12:52:26 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
I'll take a look, it easily could have been at SRI. BTW, when I say
"meeting" it wasn't necessarily some formal session. We had lots of
informal impromptu "meetings". I vaguely remember that there was some
restaurant near SRI that was popular where people used to gather.
Something to do with a train station; the tracks were right next to the
building. Also a pancake/breakfast venue -- maybe "Ken's".
/Jack
On 9/10/20 11:27 AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> Could that meeting have been at SRI? I have a memory of listening to a discussion regarding the creation of the IETF and the IRTF. I could be wrong about this maybe being the meeting where it happened but I thought it might help you if you look through your notes.
> barbara
> On Thursday, September 10, 2020, 11:11:55 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Vint,
>
> I concur that the genesis of TCP was in 1973, and spawned a collection
> of separate projects, e.g., Packet Radio, Atlantic Satellite, etc.
> which along with the ARPANET were forming the core of what we now call
> Internet.
>
> What I was remembering is that the moniker "Internet Project" didn't
> become permanent until the later 70s, with "internet" replacing the
> earlier term "catenet", as described in 1978 in:
>
> http://catenet.org/index.php/IEN_48_-_THE_CATENET_MODEL_FOR_INTERNETWORKING
>
> I recall some meeting, probably 1978/9, where there was a discussion of
> what to call our new conglomeration of networks. The term "catenet" was
> proposed, but the general feeling was that it would cause people to
> envision herds of cats, and the term "internet" achieved the "rough
> consensus" stage as the best candidate for a name. We already had
> running code!
>
> The ICCB/IAB was also a key element of history, especially as the
> creator of the IETF and IRTF. Somewhere I have my notes of the ICCB (or
> was it IAB by then...?) meeting where that happened.
>
> Pandemics provide rare opportunities to dig through old boxes in the
> basement...
>
> /Jack
>
> On 9/10/20 2:55 AM, vinton cerf wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 12:22 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>
>> 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!
>>
>> no, but I did offer champagne for winners of the TCP/IP Hackathons.
>>
>>
>> >From my retro-perspective, it was an interesting progression of
>> events.
>>
>> The ARPA "Internet Project" had started in the late 70s with a
>> somewhat
>>
>> no, it started in 1973.
>>
>> 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,
>>
>> This is only half correct. Dan indeed opened Internet up to the public
>> but as I recall, the Internet research program continued in parallel.
>> The Internet Configuration Control Board (1979) morphed into the
>> Internet Advisory Board in 1984 with 10 Task Forces after Barry Leiner
>> took over
>> the program management of the Internet Project at DARPA. In 1986, IAB
>> become the Internet Activities Board under Dennis Perry's program
>> management
>> at DARPA. see https://www.iab.org/about/history/IAB and IETF and IRTF
>> continue as
>> does INTEROP after its sale by Dan Lynch to Masayoshi Son (when?)
>>
>> 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
>> <mailto:craig at tereschau.net>>
>> >> Date: September 8, 2020 at 1:14:05 PM PDT
>> >> To: Dan Lynch <dan at lynch.com <mailto:dan at lynch.com>>
>> >> Cc: Craig Partridge via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> <mailto: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
>> <mailto: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
>> <mailto: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 <mailto:dan at lynch.com>>
>> >>>>>> Date: September 5, 2020 at 11:42:36 AM PDT
>> >>>>>> To: Joseph Touch <touch at strayalpha.com
>> <mailto: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
>> <mailto: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
>> <mailto: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)
>> >>>>>>> --
>> >>>>>>> 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
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> *****
>> >> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society
>> activities and mailing lists.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
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>> <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
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