[ih] Local traffic

[Steve Crocker]

Vint,

The use of IMPs for local traffic emerged almost instantly.  In visits to
various sites before and during the first IMP installations, it was not
uncommon for someone to show me the network project they were working on.
These usually consisted of two or three machines that were not yet
connected to each other, but would be "real soon."

The arrival of an IMP completely solved their problems.  It subdivided the
work, and once each computer was connected to the IMP, they were able to
talk to each other.  At UCLA, it would have been impossible to get the
Sigma 7 and the IBM 360/91 connected directly to each other.

My favorite instance of an IMP providing local connectivity involved just
one host.  UCSB had an IBM 360/75.  They also had a long suffering effort
to provide interprocess communication between different partitions so two
jobs could talk to each other.  I don't believe they ever got it working.
However, once the IMP was installed, their problem was instantly solved.
Interprocess communication between partitions traveled into and back out of
the IMP.

Steve


On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 3:37 PM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> actually, transmissions between two hosts on the same IMP were normal and
> called "incestuous" traffic - we found that the bulk of UCLA traffic was
> between the 360/91 and the Sigma-7 on the same campus!
>