[ih] Packet Radio Software

[Barbara Denny]

 It does look like the packet radios developed under the Packet Radio Program did not have over the air loading of software updates.  However there is a MILCOM 1990 paper entitled "Accomplishments of the DARPA SURAN Program" by David A. Beyer that mentions this capability (Dave provided the reference).  I also think I made use of this capability while preparing what may have been the last demo utilizing packet radios, in particular the LPRs. This demo was in Germany at the Warrior Prep Center.   Radios were deployed in the field for this demo and one node was at Ramstein. I might be able to track down the date for this demo if anyone is interested.

By the way, I believe the Packet Radio Program and SURAN Program had their own series of technical notes called PRTNs and SRNTNs.  SRNTNs definitely existed because there is a reference to a yet to be completed SRTN for the automatic over the air loading of software in Dave's paper.   This might help people in searches for information.
barbara



    On Wednesday, September 9, 2020, 3:21:48 AM PDT, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:  
 
 "upgraded packet radio"
v

On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 7:31 PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

 Hi
Thanks for the ien78 reference! It brings back memories, especially looking at the pictures. I will take a more detailed look soon. 
BTW, in doing some quick wikipedia lookups regarding packet radio I noticed what may be a mistake.  I have heard of the EPR, VPR, IPR, and the LPR as names for the different Packet Radio hardware.  A Wikipedia entry for prnet mentioned a UPR.  I have never heard of it before. Anyone out there know about this one?  Given that same article doesn't mention the VPR  I wonder if an error got propagated somehow. 
barbara 
    On Tuesday, September 8, 2020, 09:29:38 AM PDT, Lawrence Stewart via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  

 I was peripherally involved in the PRNet activities in the Bay Area and went to a few quarterly meetings at SRI.  (I built an 1822 interface for the Alto and we used it to encapsulate PUP packets for transit over PRNet, linking two Xerox sites in Palo Alto*)

The radios and radio software was built by Rockwell (nee Collins Radio) and my youthful read on the vibes at meetings was that the SRI/Arpa people did not think much of the software development practices.  One story I heard was that Rockwell management insisted on very tight control of the top secret source code.  This meant that the master copy was to be kept on punch cards in the manager’s office.

So it seems unlikely to me that the radios would be reloading their software from neighbors, at least until after other folks were able to make modifications.

* http://www.watersprings.org/pub/rfc/ien/ien78.pdf <http://www.watersprings.org/pub/rfc/ien/ien78.pdf>

-L

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