From bpurvy at gmail.com  Mon Jul  5 17:06:34 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2021 17:06:34 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: How Plato Influenced the Internet
In-Reply-To: <77B70F1A-1652-422E-B1AF-766928AC8691@comcast.net>
References: <F578FFF1-229D-4EBA-B9B7-71ED6AFB6AE8@comcast.net>
 <77B70F1A-1652-422E-B1AF-766928AC8691@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVHjWu-LeA35_oj-zN1Qz86eO7O97KkSu1DbVLJct-xO9w@mail.gmail.com>

I just listened to the episode
<https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-computing/id1472463802?i=1000511301793>
about
PLATO on The History of Computing podcast, mostly because I'm being
interviewed for it tomorrow on my book
<https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Future-Albert-Cory/dp/1736298615/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=>
.

I know we've covered this before, but I think the "influence" of PLATO is a
bit overstated. I hesitate to be too dogmatic about that, but after all,
you would think I'd have heard more about it, being at the U of I at the
same time as he's talking about here. Maybe it had more influence at *other*
sites?

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 11:48 AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Forgot reply-all.
>
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
> > Subject: Re: [ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet
> > Date: June 10, 2021 at 14:46:35 EDT
> > To: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
> >
> > Plato had very little if any influence on the ARPANET. I can?t say about
> the other way.  We were the ARPANET node and saw very little of them. We
> were in different buildings on the engineering campus a couple of blocks
> from each other, neither of which was the CS building. This is probably a
> case of people looking at similar problems and coming to similar
> conclusions, or from the authors point of view, doing the same thing in
> totally different ways.
> >
> > I do remember once when the leader of our group, Pete Alsberg, was
> teaching an OS class and someone from Plato was taking it and brought up
> what they were doing for the next major system release. In class, they did
> a back of the envelope calculation of when the design would hit the wall.
> That weekend at a party, (Champaign-Urbana isn?t that big) Pete found
> himself talking to Bitzer and related the story from the class. Bitzer got
> kind of embarrassed and it turned out they had hit the wall a couple of
> days before as the class? estimate predicted.  ;-) Other than having
> screens we could use, we didn?t put much stock in their work.
> >
> > (The wikipedia page on Plato says it was first used Illiac I. It may be
> true, but it must not have done much because Illiac I had 40 bit words with
> 1K main memory on Willams tubes and about 12K on drum. Illiac I ( and II
> and III) were asynchronous hardware.)
> >
> > As Ryoko always said, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
> >
> > John
> >
> >> On Jun 10, 2021, at 11:48, Clem Cole via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> FWIW: Since Plato was just brought up, I'll point a vector to some
> folks.
> >> If you read Dear's book, it tends to credit the walled garden' system
> >> Plato with a lot of the things the Internet would eventually be known.
> How
> >> much truth there is, I can not say.  But there is a lot of good stuff in
> >> here and it really did impact a lot of us as we certainly had seen that
> >> scheme, when we started to do things later.
> >>
> >> So ... if  you have not yet read it, see if you can get a copy of Brian
> >> Dear's *The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System
> and
> >> the Dawn of Cyberculture* ISBN-10 1101871555
> >>
> >> In my own case, Plato was used for some Physics courses and I
> >> personally never was one of the 'Plato ga-ga' type folks, although I did
> >> take on course using it and thought the graphics were pretty slick.
> But, I
> >> had all the computing power I needed with full ARPANET access between
> the
> >> Computer Center and CMU's EE and CS Depts.  But I do have friends that
> were
> >> Physics, Chem E, and Mat Sci that all thought it was amazing and liked
> it
> >> much better than the required FORTRAN course they had to take using TSS
> on
> >> the IBM 360/67.
> >> --
> >> Internet-history mailing list
> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From geoff at iconia.com  Mon Jul  5 19:15:40 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2021 16:15:40 -1000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: How Plato Influenced the Internet
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVHjWu-LeA35_oj-zN1Qz86eO7O97KkSu1DbVLJct-xO9w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <F578FFF1-229D-4EBA-B9B7-71ED6AFB6AE8@comcast.net>
 <77B70F1A-1652-422E-B1AF-766928AC8691@comcast.net>
 <CAFq6nVHjWu-LeA35_oj-zN1Qz86eO7O97KkSu1DbVLJct-xO9w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrgKCZTXErXJX_=LhMfJgWOn6xTE_TtdoL5=ENyHv_LE9w@mail.gmail.com>

so your amazon link book description summarily sez:

"
Imagine a time before everyone stared at a screen, before fonts, icons,
mice, and laser printers, before Apple and Microsoft? But tucked away in El
Segundo and Palo Alto, Xerox engineers were dreaming and secretly building
the modern personal computer. Who were these people who changed the world,
and why did corporate management just want to sell copiers and printers?The
author, Albert Cory,* was one of the engineers, charged with making that
dream a reality and unknowingly starting a revolution. Inventing the Future
is based on the true story of the Xerox Star, the computer that changed
everything.
"

cough, Cough, COUGH... BUT, uhm, er, wasn't it, well, The Xerox Alto -- the
predecessor to the Xerox Star that summarily and actually really changed
everything...???

suggested alternative books on this take on history of personal computing
that changed everything:

#1.) Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First
Personal Computer
June 1, 1999
by Douglas K. Smith  (Author), Robert C. Alexander (Author)
https://amzn.to/3AxGYHB

"
Ask consumers and users what names they associate with the multibillion
dollar personal computer market, and they will answer IBM, Apple, Tandy, or
Lotus. The more knowledgable of them will add the likes of Microsoft,
Ashton-Tate, Compaq, and Borland. But no one will say Xerox. Fifteen years
after it invented personal computing, Xerox still means "copy." Fumbling
the Future tells how one of America's leading corporations invented the
technology for one of the fastest-growing products of recent times, then
miscalculated and mishandled the opportunity to fully exploit it. It is a
classic story of how innovation can fare within large corporate structures,
the real-life odyssey of what can happen to an idea as it travels from
inspiration to implementation. More than anything, Fumbling the Future is a
tale of human beings whose talents, hopes, fears, habits, and prejudices
determine the fate of our largest organizations and of our best ideas. In
an era in which technological creativity and economic change are so
critical to the competitiveness of the American economy, Fumbling the
Future is a parable for our times.
"


#2.) Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
April 5, 2000
by Michael A. Hiltzik  (Author)
https://amzn.to/3ypqbVt

"
In the bestselling tradition of The Soul of a New Machine, Dealers of
Lightning is a fascinating journey of intellectual creation. In the 1970s
and '80s, Xerox Corporation brought together a brain-trust of engineering
geniuses, a group of computer eccentrics dubbed PARC. This brilliant group
created several monumental innovations that triggered a technological
revolution, including the first personal computer, the laser printer, and
the graphical interface (one of the main precursors of the Internet), only
to see these breakthroughs rejected by the corporation. Yet, instead of
giving up, these determined inventors turned their ideas into empires that
radically altered contemporary life and changed the world.

Based on extensive interviews with the scientists, engineers,
administrators, and executives who lived the story, this riveting chronicle
details PARC's humble beginnings through its triumph as a hothouse for
ideas, and shows why Xerox was never able to grasp, and ultimately exploit,
the cutting-edge innovations PARC delivered. Dealers of Lightning offers an
unprecedented look at the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that
propelled Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoiy--and the corporate
machinations that almost prevented it from achieving greatness.
"


geoff

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 2:06 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I just listened to the episode
> <
> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-computing/id1472463802?i=1000511301793
> >
> about
> PLATO on The History of Computing podcast, mostly because I'm being
> interviewed for it tomorrow on my book
> <
> https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Future-Albert-Cory/dp/1736298615/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
> >
>


-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Mon Jul  5 19:28:01 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2021 19:28:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: How Plato Influenced the Internet
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrgKCZTXErXJX_=LhMfJgWOn6xTE_TtdoL5=ENyHv_LE9w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <F578FFF1-229D-4EBA-B9B7-71ED6AFB6AE8@comcast.net>
 <77B70F1A-1652-422E-B1AF-766928AC8691@comcast.net>
 <CAFq6nVHjWu-LeA35_oj-zN1Qz86eO7O97KkSu1DbVLJct-xO9w@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAEf-zrgKCZTXErXJX_=LhMfJgWOn6xTE_TtdoL5=ENyHv_LE9w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVGaESsEDqZYLyrHqDcs36Rr_X51SdOVXpsBm9qwA2cS1Q@mail.gmail.com>

cough, cough. I was there, Geoff. Were you?

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 7:16 PM the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <
geoff at iconia.com> wrote:

> so your amazon link book description summarily sez:
>
> "
> Imagine a time before everyone stared at a screen, before fonts, icons,
> mice, and laser printers, before Apple and Microsoft? But tucked away in El
> Segundo and Palo Alto, Xerox engineers were dreaming and secretly building
> the modern personal computer. Who were these people who changed the world,
> and why did corporate management just want to sell copiers and printers?The
> author, Albert Cory,* was one of the engineers, charged with making that
> dream a reality and unknowingly starting a revolution. Inventing the Future
> is based on the true story of the Xerox Star, the computer that changed
> everything.
> "
>
> cough, Cough, COUGH... BUT, uhm, er, wasn't it, well, The Xerox Alto --
> the predecessor to the Xerox Star that summarily and actually really
> changed everything...???
>
> suggested alternative books on this take on history of personal computing
> that changed everything:
>
> #1.) Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First
> Personal Computer
> June 1, 1999
> by Douglas K. Smith  (Author), Robert C. Alexander (Author)
> https://amzn.to/3AxGYHB
>
> "
> Ask consumers and users what names they associate with the multibillion
> dollar personal computer market, and they will answer IBM, Apple, Tandy, or
> Lotus. The more knowledgable of them will add the likes of Microsoft,
> Ashton-Tate, Compaq, and Borland. But no one will say Xerox. Fifteen years
> after it invented personal computing, Xerox still means "copy." Fumbling
> the Future tells how one of America's leading corporations invented the
> technology for one of the fastest-growing products of recent times, then
> miscalculated and mishandled the opportunity to fully exploit it. It is a
> classic story of how innovation can fare within large corporate structures,
> the real-life odyssey of what can happen to an idea as it travels from
> inspiration to implementation. More than anything, Fumbling the Future is a
> tale of human beings whose talents, hopes, fears, habits, and prejudices
> determine the fate of our largest organizations and of our best ideas. In
> an era in which technological creativity and economic change are so
> critical to the competitiveness of the American economy, Fumbling the
> Future is a parable for our times.
> "
>
>
> #2.) Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
> April 5, 2000
> by Michael A. Hiltzik  (Author)
> https://amzn.to/3ypqbVt
>
> "
> In the bestselling tradition of The Soul of a New Machine, Dealers of
> Lightning is a fascinating journey of intellectual creation. In the 1970s
> and '80s, Xerox Corporation brought together a brain-trust of engineering
> geniuses, a group of computer eccentrics dubbed PARC. This brilliant group
> created several monumental innovations that triggered a technological
> revolution, including the first personal computer, the laser printer, and
> the graphical interface (one of the main precursors of the Internet), only
> to see these breakthroughs rejected by the corporation. Yet, instead of
> giving up, these determined inventors turned their ideas into empires that
> radically altered contemporary life and changed the world.
>
> Based on extensive interviews with the scientists, engineers,
> administrators, and executives who lived the story, this riveting chronicle
> details PARC's humble beginnings through its triumph as a hothouse for
> ideas, and shows why Xerox was never able to grasp, and ultimately exploit,
> the cutting-edge innovations PARC delivered. Dealers of Lightning offers an
> unprecedented look at the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that
> propelled Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoiy--and the corporate
> machinations that almost prevented it from achieving greatness.
> "
>
>
> geoff
>
> On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 2:06 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> I just listened to the episode
>> <
>> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-computing/id1472463802?i=1000511301793
>> >
>> about
>> PLATO on The History of Computing podcast, mostly because I'm being
>> interviewed for it tomorrow on my book
>> <
>> https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Future-Albert-Cory/dp/1736298615/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
>> >
>>
>
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> living as The Truth is True
>
>
>
>


From geoff at iconia.com  Wed Jul  7 12:44:56 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2021 09:44:56 -1000
Subject: [ih] =?utf-8?q?In_defence_of_email=2C_the_tech_marvel_we_couldn?=
	=?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99t_do_without_=28Joanne_McNeil=29?=
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrjZ=m72B_bFGwV=Tmuz5DBzj21rXUinuo9XGC-uUcrRdg@mail.gmail.com>

*Don?t blame the medium for our inbox anxiety. The more fundamental issue
is how work dominates our lives*
EXCERPT:

I am about to defend the seemingly indefensible: email, the inbox, all of
it. And yes, I?m offering this case at a time when it might sound
especially unlikely. This is the season of holiday responder messages and
out-of-office replies. The back-and-forth of delayed communications makes
email an especially draining project during the summer.

I?m not unfamiliar with the paralysing anxiety that settles in when I see a
notification that my unread messages total some ungodly number. I probably
owe an email to a percentage of people reading this. (Sorry! Things are a
bit busy!) And I?d love to never see the words ?hope this message finds you
well? again in my life. But the decentralised wonder that is email isn?t
the cause of my stress; the real problem is work and too much of it, as
relayed through these messages. When it comes to communications systems,
email ? a technology that?s 50 years old this year ? is hard to beat.

Email is the product of a number of independently forged developments. In
1965, Tom Van Vleck and Noel Morris
<https://multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html> released a computer
messaging program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of
what?s known as a time-sharing system, users at individual terminals could
message other users that were all connected to the same mainframe computer.
Four years later, Charley Kline at UCLA and Bill Duvall at Stanford
Research Institute contacted each other
<https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114280698&t=1625224505210>
in
the first Arpanet connection. This was a publicly funded network system
powered by packet-switching ? a method of data transmission that would
become the basis for the internet. Their exchange could be compared to two
people with walkie-talkies ? you could only reach the other person holding
the device.

In 1971, the Arpanet programmer Ray Tomlinson
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/ray-tomlinson-email-inventor-and-selector-of-symbol-dies-aged-74>
put
these advances together when he sent a message that most closely resembles
email as we now know it. It combined the Arpanet packet-switching network
connection with the user-to-user communication that had been developed for
time-sharing systems. His program employed the ?@? symbol to distinguish
the recipient as a specific user at a specific computer location. This
messaging system grew popular, and over the following decade developers
refined email to include features such as folders, replies (Re:) and
autoresponders...

[...]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/06/email-inbox-anxiety-work

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From johnl at iecc.com  Wed Jul  7 18:11:54 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 7 Jul 2021 21:11:54 -0400
Subject: [ih] 
 =?utf-8?q?In_defence_of_email=2C_the_tech_marvel_we_couldn?=
 =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99t_do_without_=28Joanne_McNeil=29?=
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrjZ=m72B_bFGwV=Tmuz5DBzj21rXUinuo9XGC-uUcrRdg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210708011154.41D711E7B85A@ary.qy>

It appears that the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history <geoff at iconia.com> said:
>*Don?t blame the medium for our inbox anxiety. The more fundamental issue
>is how work dominates our lives*

It's an OK article, with some impressive comments.  Some in a good way, some otherwise.

>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/06/email-inbox-anxiety-work

R's,
John


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Wed Jul  7 19:58:32 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2021 19:58:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] 
 =?utf-8?q?In_defence_of_email=2C_the_tech_marvel_we_couldn?=
 =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99t_do_without_=28Joanne_McNeil=29?=
In-Reply-To: <20210708011154.41D711E7B85A@ary.qy>
References: <20210708011154.41D711E7B85A@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <a1f81f73-8cb5-d691-b29f-56bac7cdfb2a@dcrocker.net>

On 7/7/2021 6:11 PM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It's an OK article, with some impressive comments.  Some in a good way, some otherwise.

In the realm of yes-but, I wish it had mentioned the first reply command 
and the addition of mime.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From geoff at iconia.com  Wed Jul  7 22:20:02 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2021 19:20:02 -1000
Subject: [ih] 
	=?utf-8?q?In_defence_of_email=2C_the_tech_marvel_we_couldn?=
	=?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99t_do_without_=28Joanne_McNeil=29?=
In-Reply-To: <a1f81f73-8cb5-d691-b29f-56bac7cdfb2a@dcrocker.net>
References: <20210708011154.41D711E7B85A@ary.qy>
 <a1f81f73-8cb5-d691-b29f-56bac7cdfb2a@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrh0eRzPocZ2WR=O2ZN8z2z7+V5+yNWgXN4DVPEEHLrF4A@mail.gmail.com>

In the realm of Thank Heavens- so thankful of "you know who" it didn't
mention! :D

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 4:58 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 7/7/2021 6:11 PM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> > It's an OK article, with some impressive comments.  Some in a good way,
> some otherwise.
>
> In the realm of yes-but, I wish it had mentioned the first reply command
> and the addition of mime.
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From geoff at iconia.com  Thu Jul  8 16:31:50 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2021 13:31:50 -1000
Subject: [ih] Belgian boffins dump Starlink dish terminal's firmware,
 gain root access and a few ideas
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrh_bzLqj7p2zsRe2=QPdiMNx9u3yZY2=z_VFY+ir+zA5w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAEf-zrh_bzLqj7p2zsRe2=QPdiMNx9u3yZY2=z_VFY+ir+zA5w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrhDhQ6Ru6fkCR99R4bvt6urD2q7jrXfeh3CSHwMXqNiDw@mail.gmail.com>

*Extra-terrestrial service probed*
EXCERPT:

Belgian boffins have *published a teardown of the Starlink user terminal*
<https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/blog/dumping-and-extracting-the-spacex-starlink-user-terminal-firmware/>
?
also known as Dishy McFlatface ? in which they managed to dump the device's
firmware that was housed on a eMMC card upon the PCB.

For the the academics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven),
actually getting their hands on the firmware for later analysis proved to
be a somewhat fraught process.

Although the hardware came with a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver
Transmitter) port for USB debugging, SpaceX opted ? perhaps for obvious
reasons ? to restrict access to those entrusted with development
credentials. Still, it revealed some clues, particularly when it came to
the boot process, with integrity and authenticity checks used to ensure the
kernel had not been tampered with.

The KU Leuven researchers then turned their attention to the eMMC card,
which contained the system image. SpaceX left 10 test points on the circuit
board, which corresponded to the equivalent solder points on the eMMC chip.
The academics were then able to create an ad-hoc logic capture device,
using a memory card reader and a few carefully soldered wires and
resistors, allowing them to dump the contents of the storage in-circuit.

The next hurdle came when the researchers attempted to read the firmware?s
contents, as SpaceX uses a custom FIT (flattened image tree) format.
Fortunately, these changes were publicly accessible, as the company
deployed a modified version of U-Boot, and was forced to publish its
changes in order to remain GPL compliant...

[...]
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/08/belgian_boffins_dump_starlink_dish/

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From farzaneh.badii at gmail.com  Fri Jul 16 09:16:04 2021
From: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com (farzaneh badii)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 12:16:04 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
Message-ID: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>

Hi everyone,

Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.

Here is the link to the paper:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents

<https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents>


Farzaneh


From paf at frobbit.se  Fri Jul 16 10:32:22 2021
From: paf at frobbit.se (Patrik =?utf-8?b?RsOkbHRzdHLDtm0=?=)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 19:32:22 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>

Hi,

A good paper, but I miss your evaluation of the discussion about how to implement privacy and differentiated access that went on 1994-2000, specifically related to whois.

Technically one could express it in a simplified way like this. You have information describing something at one location, and you have whoever want to get information about that something at some other location. These two locations are on two different locations on the Internet.

To be able to get that information, the information must first be created, and then moved from the origin to whoever asks (or queries) for it.

This can be done in two different ways. Either you move the data towards the party that queries for the information before it is queried for. Or to put it differently, you centralised the storage. Or you let the data stay as close to (or even stay at) the location where it is created, and instead send the query to the origin of the data when the query is issued.

The main reason for keeping data close to the origin was viewed as a need for non-centralisation, and that would also minimise the requirement to harmonise the data, and ultimately have the ability for whoever created the data that describes that something it described to have multiple descriptions and respond differently depending on who is sending the query.

This is a very extreme differentiated or tiered access that later was expressed as "just" tiered access in the protocols developed in IETF from 2000 and onwards. Still not deployed in large scale for reasons described in the paper.

You can for example look at RFC 1913, RFC 1834 and RFC 1835 for one example (Whois++) with centroids that did indeed lack many features required for the whois service, BUT, it did include a robust query routing mechanism for the queries. A routing of the queries that is required for the information to stay where it is created, which in turn enables the origination to manage differentiated access to the data.

And yes, I personally still think query routing for information is something we need to solve many issues related to not only privacy but also human rights. Increase the ability for whoever created information to decide what is responded to depending on who is asking.

I would like people like you and others that work with these issues start evaluating also these issues, how much (and far) is the information moved from the origin towards the querying party? This can also be viewed as the core of the discussion between search engines and news agencies (see court decisions in France for example). When is query routing (i.e. indexing and referrals) taking place and when is information moved from the origination? What is a citation and what is copying of information? Who is in control, and how can control be implemented?

   Patrik

On 16 Jul 2021, at 18:16, farzaneh badii via Internet-history wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>
> Here is the link to the paper:
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>
> <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents>
>
>
> Farzaneh
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 256 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210716/2efdb5cc/attachment.asc>

From farzaneh.badii at gmail.com  Fri Jul 16 10:43:17 2021
From: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com (farzaneh badii)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 13:43:17 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
Message-ID: <CAN1qJvARYWRACLqikhCFu9cMX0h+=Zv1Hw_PAhEhBayWrgUCDw@mail.gmail.com>

Very interesting Patrik, thanks for taking the time to provide feedback.
And thank you for giving us the idea for our next paper :)

On Friday, July 16, 2021, Patrik F?ltstr?m <paf at frobbit.se> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> A good paper, but I miss your evaluation of the discussion about how to
> implement privacy and differentiated access that went on 1994-2000,
> specifically related to whois.
>
> Technically one could express it in a simplified way like this. You have
> information describing something at one location, and you have whoever want
> to get information about that something at some other location. These two
> locations are on two different locations on the Internet.
>
> To be able to get that information, the information must first be created,
> and then moved from the origin to whoever asks (or queries) for it.
>
> This can be done in two different ways. Either you move the data towards
> the party that queries for the information before it is queried for. Or to
> put it differently, you centralised the storage. Or you let the data stay
> as close to (or even stay at) the location where it is created, and instead
> send the query to the origin of the data when the query is issued.
>
> The main reason for keeping data close to the origin was viewed as a need
> for non-centralisation, and that would also minimise the requirement to
> harmonise the data, and ultimately have the ability for whoever created the
> data that describes that something it described to have multiple
> descriptions and respond differently depending on who is sending the query.
>
> This is a very extreme differentiated or tiered access that later was
> expressed as "just" tiered access in the protocols developed in IETF from
> 2000 and onwards. Still not deployed in large scale for reasons described
> in the paper.
>
> You can for example look at RFC 1913, RFC 1834 and RFC 1835 for one
> example (Whois++) with centroids that did indeed lack many features
> required for the whois service, BUT, it did include a robust query routing
> mechanism for the queries. A routing of the queries that is required for
> the information to stay where it is created, which in turn enables the
> origination to manage differentiated access to the data.
>
> And yes, I personally still think query routing for information is
> something we need to solve many issues related to not only privacy but also
> human rights. Increase the ability for whoever created information to
> decide what is responded to depending on who is asking.
>
> I would like people like you and others that work with these issues start
> evaluating also these issues, how much (and far) is the information moved
> from the origin towards the querying party? This can also be viewed as the
> core of the discussion between search engines and news agencies (see court
> decisions in France for example). When is query routing (i.e. indexing and
> referrals) taking place and when is information moved from the origination?
> What is a citation and what is copying of information? Who is in control,
> and how can control be implemented?
>
>    Patrik
>
> On 16 Jul 2021, at 18:16, farzaneh badii via Internet-history wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols
> and human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
> >
> > Here is the link to the paper:
> > https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.
> 0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0
> 107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> >
> > <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.
> 0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0
> 107c#metadata_info_tab_contents>
> >
> >
> > Farzaneh
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Farzaneh


From woody at pch.net  Fri Jul 16 23:51:10 2021
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 23:51:10 -0700
Subject: [ih] "Toasternet Part I and II"
Message-ID: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>

I?ve often seen reference to:

"informal notes on IP addressing, ("Toasternet Part I and II"), circulated on the IETF mailing list during November 1991 and March 1992.?

?authored, presumably, by Robert Ullmann, since they led to RFCs 1475 and 1476 in the following year.

But I can?t find the actual documents.  Does anyone have them still in their mailbox?

                                -Bill

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210716/a1a6e47b/attachment.asc>

From sob at sobco.com  Sat Jul 17 03:49:41 2021
From: sob at sobco.com (Scott Bradner)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 06:49:41 -0400
Subject: [ih] "Toasternet Part I and II"
In-Reply-To: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>
References: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>
Message-ID: <079194B9-4520-40CB-8957-9076DEE45036@sobco.com>

From owner-ietf  Fri Dec 21 20:37:15 1990
Received: by venera.isi.edu (5.61/5.61+local)
        id <AA28122>; Fri, 21 Dec 90 17:35:15 -0800
Posted-Date: 21 Dec 90 20:36:02 EST
Received-Date: Fri, 21 Dec 90 17:35:12 -0800
Message-Id: <9012220135.AA28117 at venera.isi.edu>
Received: from RELAY.CS.NET by venera.isi.edu (5.61/5.61+local)
        id <AA28117>; Fri, 21 Dec 90 17:35:12 -0800
Received: from relay.prime.com by RELAY.CS.NET id aa19341; 21 Dec 90 20:34 EST
Received: (from user ARIEL) by Relay.Prime.COM; 21 Dec 90 20:36:02 EST
To: IETF list <ietf>
Cc: TCP/ISDN list <tcp-isdn%list.prime.com at RELAY.CS.NET>
From: Robert Ullmann <Ariel at RELAY.PRIME.COM>
Subject: re NSFNET growth and toasternet
Date: 21 Dec 90 20:36:02 EST

Hi,

about "toaster-net" ... :-)

If you are interested in where I think Internet protocols
might go in the next decade, into millions of nets and billions
of hosts (including toasters :-), get file:

tiger1.prime.com:pub/isdn/tpix.ps      (PostScript) or
tiger1.prime.com:pub/isdn/tpix.ps.Z    (PostScript, compressed)

sorry, only PostScript at this time. Oh, and this has evolved a *lot*;
if you haven't seen it in 6 months, you haven't seen it.

Best Regards,
Robert Ullmann
+1 508 620 2800 x1736


> On Jul 17, 2021, at 2:51 AM, Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I?ve often seen reference to:
> 
> "informal notes on IP addressing, ("Toasternet Part I and II"), circulated on the IETF mailing list during November 1991 and March 1992.?
> 
> ?authored, presumably, by Robert Ullmann, since they led to RFCs 1475 and 1476 in the following year.
> 
> But I can?t find the actual documents.  Does anyone have them still in their mailbox?
> 
>                                -Bill
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



From cabo at tzi.org  Sat Jul 17 04:13:35 2021
From: cabo at tzi.org (Carsten Bormann)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 13:13:35 +0200
Subject: [ih] "Toasternet Part I and II"
In-Reply-To: <079194B9-4520-40CB-8957-9076DEE45036@sobco.com>
References: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>
 <079194B9-4520-40CB-8957-9076DEE45036@sobco.com>
Message-ID: <CE9CE4D5-CCD9-424D-8D28-0D3F2EEA29CE@tzi.org>

On 2021-07-17, at 12:49, Scott Bradner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> tiger1.prime.com:pub/isdn/tpix.ps      (PostScript) or

A quick duckduckgo search finds

http://theobi.com/Networking/Papers/tpix.ps

Gr??e, Carsten



From karl at cavebear.com  Sat Jul 17 11:08:39 2021
From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:08:39 -0700
Subject: [ih] "Toasternet Part I and II"
In-Reply-To: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>
References: <15BF8131-9B7E-4B58-896C-34646358A845@pch.net>
Message-ID: <edde91a9-b023-7d3e-d124-3b89bb007b9b@cavebear.com>

I don't know about "Toasternet" but I do know about the original 
Internet toasters (both of 'em.)? Circa 1988 or 1989.

I integrated my (Epilogue) SNMP agent code into the larger code base of 
each.

I believe both used Sunbeam "Radiant" toasters - those would lower the 
bread into the toaster when the power was applied and eject the bread 
when the power was removed.? So the job of the controlling code was 
largely to control the timing and duration of the power.

Back in those days we didn't have convenient power controllers driven by 
computers, so these things weren't going to get UL approval.

The first was John Romkey's.? He used a laptop in which he had split the 
case and wired in electronics to control a rather large external power 
relay.? The OS was probably MS DOS or early Windows, probably with 
either PC/IP or PC/TCP stacks.? I think John did this when he was living 
in the Belmont, California hills and working for Epilogue.

The second was Simon Hackett's.? Simon used an M68xxxxx box, again with 
relays to control the power mains.? Much of the work was done in the 
carriage house at TGV in Santa Cruz where Simon was also doing the 
original Etherphones and remote controlled 100 CD jukebox (along with 
remote controlled stereo system - We would be working in the carriage 
house, listening to Adelaide radio over the net and Simon would [from 
Adelaide] mess with the controls.)

I think the two toasters used the same SNMP "toaster MIB" for control.? 
It had items such as one/two slices, type of bread (including 
pop-tarts), darkness, etc.

The toasters were calibrated on that most uniform of "bread" - Wonder Bread.

John's toaster was displayed at Interop.? I can't remember whether it 
was in the Epilogue Technologies booth.? But I do remember that in the 
chaos we all forgot to bring the critical ingredient - bread.? So we had 
to toast and re-toast the one slice. we had? That is until disaster 
struck - Ole J. came along, picked up a knife, and tried to apply butter 
to the already extremely brittle slice.? It shattered.

Later generations of the toaster involved a Lego robot to manage bread 
delivery and removal, weather stations with talking bears, etc.

(My favorite Interop hack was when we built an iSCSI RAID-5 unit using 
all the least appropriate technologies ranging from wi-fi to USB flash 
drives.? That was the year when I was trying to do a VoIP 
man-in-the-middle implementation that would detect the words "no" and 
"not" and drop the packets containing that word from the RTP stream - I 
never got it to work, but I could insert words into VoIP calls.)

Microsoft has since then used "Toaster MIB" in its documentation and 
such, leading to a belief that the Internet toasters were mere apocrypha.

 ??? ??? --karl--


On 7/16/21 11:51 PM, Bill Woodcock via Internet-history wrote:
> I?ve often seen reference to:
>
> "informal notes on IP addressing, ("Toasternet Part I and II"), circulated on the IETF mailing list during November 1991 and March 1992.?
>
> ?authored, presumably, by Robert Ullmann, since they led to RFCs 1475 and 1476 in the following year.
>
> But I can?t find the actual documents.  Does anyone have them still in their mailbox?
>
>                                  -Bill
>
>


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 15:11:55 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 15:11:55 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>

This is nearly unreadable (but I persevered). However, there are also more
serious flaws which I point out below.

My background: I was at 3Com in the late 80s, although I did not help with
TCP, DNS, BGP, or WHOIS. Later I led the group in 1994 that led to RFC 1697.

Unless I missed something in the authors' backgrounds, neither of you have
any Engineering training. So naturally, you think that adoption of a
technology *cannot* be because it just works or doesn't work. *Surely there
must be some political reason! It can't just be that something is correct
or incorrect!*

This is a critical failing when analyzing why TCP won out over OSI. TCP was
driven by rough consensus and running code, while OSI was driven by
international politics and giant telecommunications companies. TCP had the
advantage that people came together, brought their code, and interoperated
with other people's code.

Most famously, the ?warhorse? technological determinism of a Marxist
variant already present in classical political economy produced the
teleology of historical ?stages? powered by changes to a society's economic
forces.

Famous to whom? Marxist theorists?

Engineers may participate as individuals in the IETF, but it does not
follow that their contributions are equally individual. Instead,
participants?and especially the most influential individuals?are there with
the support of a firm with a direct interest in the outcome of the design
and deliberations.

This is completely wrong, although it may be more nearly correct if you
look at it from 1990 on.

In the early days of the IETF, the participants were *not* big companies.
The big companies mainly ignored it, or came as observers. The people
driving it were academics, for the most part, either professors or graduate
students; or else employees of research-oriented organizations like BBN,
Rand, and ISI. The driving force was personality more than corporate
interest (and, of course, being right, which doesn't factor into the
worldview of social scientists).

If you're sponsored by *any* organization, you're going to be influenced by
their priorities, of course. But the sponsors were mainly not giant
companies as they are now, and it was not obvious that there were trillions
of dollars at stake (even if there were).

Any protocol that contributed to the (DARPA) Internet's rapid ability to
scale was thus implicated in the struggle between a loosely DARPA-led group
of famously (but perhaps not altogether) technocratic or meritocratic
engineers and a far more open and multiconstituency decision-making process
at OSI. It was the expertise with which corporations sent skilled
representatives to derail negotiations and successfully push their
corporate interests that massively influenced OSI design and that was in
part responsible for OSI's delays and the victory of TCP/IP.


Utter nonsense again. Anyone could join the IETF discussions and many with
no institutional backing at all ended up with influence. As I said,
personality and technical smarts mattered more than corporate interest.

Corporations did not send "skilled representatives to derail negotiations
and successfully push their corporate interests." You are completely wrong
on that.


On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>
> Here is the link to the paper:
>
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>
> <
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> >
>
>
> Farzaneh
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From farzaneh.badii at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 15:29:13 2021
From: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com (farzaneh badii)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 18:29:13 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>

Thank you for  reading the paper and providing your feedback.

You said:

"Unless I missed something in the authors' backgrounds, neither of you have
any Engineering training. So naturally, you think that adoption of a
technology *cannot* be because it just works or doesn't work. *Surely there
must be some political reason! It can't just be that something is correct
or incorrect!"*


We actually said exactly the opposite. We said adoption of a technology can
be for a myriad of reasons and design decisions are not inherently
political. But perhaps since you don't like our style of writing it was not
clear to you.


Farzaneh


On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 6:12 PM Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is nearly unreadable (but I persevered). However, there are also more
> serious flaws which I point out below.
>
> My background: I was at 3Com in the late 80s, although I did not help with
> TCP, DNS, BGP, or WHOIS. Later I led the group in 1994 that led to RFC 1697.
>
> Unless I missed something in the authors' backgrounds, neither of you have
> any Engineering training. So naturally, you think that adoption of a
> technology *cannot* be because it just works or doesn't work. *Surely
> there must be some political reason! It can't just be that something is
> correct or incorrect!*
>
> This is a critical failing when analyzing why TCP won out over OSI. TCP
> was driven by rough consensus and running code, while OSI was driven by
> international politics and giant telecommunications companies. TCP had the
> advantage that people came together, brought their code, and interoperated
> with other people's code.
>
> Most famously, the ?warhorse? technological determinism of a Marxist
> variant already present in classical political economy produced the
> teleology of historical ?stages? powered by changes to a society's economic
> forces.
>
> Famous to whom? Marxist theorists?
>
> Engineers may participate as individuals in the IETF, but it does not
> follow that their contributions are equally individual. Instead,
> participants?and especially the most influential individuals?are there with
> the support of a firm with a direct interest in the outcome of the design
> and deliberations.
>
> This is completely wrong, although it may be more nearly correct if you
> look at it from 1990 on.
>
> In the early days of the IETF, the participants were *not* big companies.
> The big companies mainly ignored it, or came as observers. The people
> driving it were academics, for the most part, either professors or graduate
> students; or else employees of research-oriented organizations like BBN,
> Rand, and ISI. The driving force was personality more than corporate
> interest (and, of course, being right, which doesn't factor into the
> worldview of social scientists).
>
> If you're sponsored by *any* organization, you're going to be influenced
> by their priorities, of course. But the sponsors were mainly not giant
> companies as they are now, and it was not obvious that there were trillions
> of dollars at stake (even if there were).
>
> Any protocol that contributed to the (DARPA) Internet's rapid ability to
> scale was thus implicated in the struggle between a loosely DARPA-led group
> of famously (but perhaps not altogether) technocratic or meritocratic
> engineers and a far more open and multiconstituency decision-making process
> at OSI. It was the expertise with which corporations sent skilled
> representatives to derail negotiations and successfully push their
> corporate interests that massively influenced OSI design and that was in
> part responsible for OSI's delays and the victory of TCP/IP.
>
>
> Utter nonsense again. Anyone could join the IETF discussions and many with
> no institutional backing at all ended up with influence. As I said,
> personality and technical smarts mattered more than corporate interest.
>
> Corporations did not send "skilled representatives to derail negotiations
> and successfully push their corporate interests." You are completely wrong
> on that.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
>> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
>> list
>> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>>
>> Here is the link to the paper:
>>
>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>>
>> <
>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>> >
>>
>>
>> Farzaneh
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 16:08:45 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:08:45 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>

"adoption of a technology can be for a myriad of reasons" -- can you be
specific? Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
reasons? Particularly in the 80s.

On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 3:29 PM farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thank you for  reading the paper and providing your feedback.
>
> You said:
>
> "Unless I missed something in the authors' backgrounds, neither of you
> have any Engineering training. So naturally, you think that adoption of a
> technology *cannot* be because it just works or doesn't work. *Surely
> there must be some political reason! It can't just be that something is
> correct or incorrect!"*
>
>
> We actually said exactly the opposite. We said adoption of a technology
> can be for a myriad of reasons and design decisions are not inherently
> political. But perhaps since you don't like our style of writing it was not
> clear to you.
>
>
> Farzaneh
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 6:12 PM Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is nearly unreadable (but I persevered). However, there are also
>> more serious flaws which I point out below.
>>
>> My background: I was at 3Com in the late 80s, although I did not help
>> with TCP, DNS, BGP, or WHOIS. Later I led the group in 1994 that led to RFC
>> 1697.
>>
>> Unless I missed something in the authors' backgrounds, neither of you
>> have any Engineering training. So naturally, you think that adoption of a
>> technology *cannot* be because it just works or doesn't work. *Surely
>> there must be some political reason! It can't just be that something is
>> correct or incorrect!*
>>
>> This is a critical failing when analyzing why TCP won out over OSI. TCP
>> was driven by rough consensus and running code, while OSI was driven by
>> international politics and giant telecommunications companies. TCP had the
>> advantage that people came together, brought their code, and interoperated
>> with other people's code.
>>
>> Most famously, the ?warhorse? technological determinism of a Marxist
>> variant already present in classical political economy produced the
>> teleology of historical ?stages? powered by changes to a society's economic
>> forces.
>>
>> Famous to whom? Marxist theorists?
>>
>> Engineers may participate as individuals in the IETF, but it does not
>> follow that their contributions are equally individual. Instead,
>> participants?and especially the most influential individuals?are there with
>> the support of a firm with a direct interest in the outcome of the design
>> and deliberations.
>>
>> This is completely wrong, although it may be more nearly correct if you
>> look at it from 1990 on.
>>
>> In the early days of the IETF, the participants were *not* big
>> companies. The big companies mainly ignored it, or came as observers. The
>> people driving it were academics, for the most part, either professors or
>> graduate students; or else employees of research-oriented organizations
>> like BBN, Rand, and ISI. The driving force was personality more than
>> corporate interest (and, of course, being right, which doesn't factor into
>> the worldview of social scientists).
>>
>> If you're sponsored by *any* organization, you're going to be influenced
>> by their priorities, of course. But the sponsors were mainly not giant
>> companies as they are now, and it was not obvious that there were trillions
>> of dollars at stake (even if there were).
>>
>> Any protocol that contributed to the (DARPA) Internet's rapid ability to
>> scale was thus implicated in the struggle between a loosely DARPA-led group
>> of famously (but perhaps not altogether) technocratic or meritocratic
>> engineers and a far more open and multiconstituency decision-making process
>> at OSI. It was the expertise with which corporations sent skilled
>> representatives to derail negotiations and successfully push their
>> corporate interests that massively influenced OSI design and that was in
>> part responsible for OSI's delays and the victory of TCP/IP.
>>
>>
>> Utter nonsense again. Anyone could join the IETF discussions and many
>> with no institutional backing at all ended up with influence. As I said,
>> personality and technical smarts mattered more than corporate interest.
>>
>> Corporations did not send "skilled representatives to derail negotiations
>> and successfully push their corporate interests." You are completely wrong
>> on that.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
>>> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>>> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
>>> list
>>> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>>>
>>> Here is the link to the paper:
>>>
>>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>>>
>>> <
>>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> Farzaneh
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>
>>


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Jul 17 18:15:25 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 18:15:25 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a4af14bc-a390-9b31-e6c9-aab317672458@3kitty.org>

Like Bob, I struggled through much of the paper, so I have no comments 
except on the discussion of the case study of EGP where I have personal 
historical experience.? On page 390, it states:

"DARPA directed its contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman to begin cre-
ating the framework for autonomous systems in the late 1970s"

I was the "Program Manager" at BBN on the receiving end of that DARPA 
direction, So I think I can provide some personal experience to the case 
study.?? It was actually the early 80s.? I was there.

For the curious, I wrote up an informal summary of that event in 
Internet History which is still available here:

http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2010-February/001219.html

The EGP discussion is somewhat near the end.

------

At the time EGP was defined, there were lots of unsolved problems and 
lots of people with ideas about how to solve them.? It seemed that 
everyone wanted to build a Gateway (aka today as "router") so they could 
try out their own ideas.?? At the same time, there was a growing 
community of users demanding a reliable stable communications 
infrastructure, especially the groups in Europe who were dependent on 
the fledgling Internet for their work with colleagues in the US. ? No 
one knew how to run a stable service while at the same time 
experimenting with all sorts of new ideas. The Internet was still a 
Research activity, but also expected to work all the time.

Bob's direction was to try to find a way which would enable people other 
than the "Gateway Group" at BBN to build their own Gateways, able to 
interoperate with the rest of the Internet, but keep the "core" Internet 
gateways reliable and available 24x7.?? It had to be possible for people 
other than BBN to build a gateway.? That's what Bob asked me to do.

So, back at BBN, I recruited Dr. Eric Rosen and we spent a day or two 
talking about it, and came up with the notion of "Autonomous Systems", 
which were collections of Gateways (not networks as the paper says) 
managed by a single operator.? Eric wrote up EGP as the simplest 
possible protocol to permit Autonomous Systems to interconnect so that 
others could try out their ideas in their own research sandboxes, and 
interoperate with other ASes.

Since at BBN we were responsible for making the "core" gateways operate 
reliably, the focus, and primary purpose, of EGP for us was to make it 
*possible* for any one AS to insulate itself from disruptive activity of 
some other AS, while we at BBN focussed on making the core system of the 
Internet as reliable as the ARPANET had become.?? We needed EGP in order 
to keep our core gateways reliable.

The paper says - "Autonomous systems insulated routing errors within 
each autonomous system".?? That's not true, and wasn't a goal.? EGP did 
not guarantee such insulation, but simply made it *possible* for any AS 
to internally implement whatever firewalls and sanity checks its 
designers thought necessary as "insulation".? The RFC defining EGP 
states this on the cover:

"It is proposed to establish a standard for Gateway to Gateway 
procedures that allow the Gateways to be mutually suspicious."

Note "allow".? EGP didn't guarantee it or have any mechanisms itself to 
implement "suspicion".

Subsequently Eric wrote several documents (these may have been RFCs or 
IENs) which detailed design ideas considered for use within the 
BBN-operated AS of the "core" gateways.?? I don't recall ever seeing any 
descriptions of what other gateway builders did to insulate their own 
ASes from outside disruption.?? But I may have just missed them as I 
went on to other projects.

The paper also says:

"As such, it was a part of handing organizations far more freedom and 
autonomy to organize their own networks. Yet in helping ensure the 
victory of TCP/IP (TCP/IP), it also reduced freedom by helping impose a 
network architecture that resulted in a fairly homogenous system of IP 
and Ethernet, rather than the heterogenous mix of local networks and 
addressing systems originally envisioned.52"

Huh??? What did TCP/IP defeat??? ASes could contain any kind of network, 
not limited to Ethernets. E.g., SATNET, the WideBandNet, ARPANET, X.25, 
LANs, and others were part of the Internet.? Yes, everything was based 
on IP, but each network had its own addressing and transport protocols 
(even carrier pigeons!).

Again, the Internet was a *Research Project* at the time, and EGP was 
intended as a mechanism to allow different, and sometimes competing, 
research ideas to proceed in parallel, with the particular ideas that 
were observed to work best being folded into the definition of the next 
generation of the TCP/IP/ICMP/etc protocols.??? Rough consensus and 
running code....

At the time, there were many unsolved issues and concerns about the 
mechanisms of the Internet.?? Some issues had "placeholder" mechanisms 
defined into the protocols, where there was still much concern that a 
particular mechanism would work as the Internet grew and was used in 
many ways.? Examples include the "Source Quench", "URGent Pointer", 
Fragmentation/Reassembly, Type-Of-Service, and Time-To-Live.?? There was 
rough consensus that all of these mechanisms had serious omissions or 
flaws, and must be replaced when someone figured out a better approach.? 
The creation of ASes and EGP was intended to make faster progress on 
such issues, by enabling multiple players to perform their own 
independent experimentation.

As far as I remember, there was never any discussion or consideration of 
"human rights", other than some concern about the US-centric nature of 
the research.? We were just trying to get the %^$^%$# thing to work.? 
The general feeling was that the Internet was a research project, which 
would be replaced by OSI networks, as soon as those committees got such 
systems defined, deployed and working.

As Bob said, TCP/IP "won" largely because it worked well enough for it 
to be useful. ? Also various companies, mostly startups, built things 
that people could buy, and educational institutions delivered a constant 
stream of entry-level engineers who knew how to use it when they went 
out and got jobs.

All of the above refers to the earliest period of the Internet, up until 
1983 or so.? After that, as commercial and other interests came into the 
picture, things no doubt changed.

/Jack Haverty
MIT 1970-1977
BBN 1977-1990
Oracle 1990-1998




From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 18:20:09 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 21:20:09 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <a4af14bc-a390-9b31-e6c9-aab317672458@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <a4af14bc-a390-9b31-e6c9-aab317672458@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_Wf2-kkwcJNKtag3gbQnJ1EJe5DQOnN31fTMTGODCEKyw@mail.gmail.com>

thanks jack, as usual, a helpful contribution.
The paper has a POV and stretches to make it stick.

v


On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 9:15 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Like Bob, I struggled through much of the paper, so I have no comments
> except on the discussion of the case study of EGP where I have personal
> historical experience.  On page 390, it states:
>
> "DARPA directed its contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman to begin cre-
> ating the framework for autonomous systems in the late 1970s"
>
> I was the "Program Manager" at BBN on the receiving end of that DARPA
> direction, So I think I can provide some personal experience to the case
> study.   It was actually the early 80s.  I was there.
>
> For the curious, I wrote up an informal summary of that event in
> Internet History which is still available here:
>
>
> http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2010-February/001219.html
>
> The EGP discussion is somewhat near the end.
>
> ------
>
> At the time EGP was defined, there were lots of unsolved problems and
> lots of people with ideas about how to solve them.  It seemed that
> everyone wanted to build a Gateway (aka today as "router") so they could
> try out their own ideas.   At the same time, there was a growing
> community of users demanding a reliable stable communications
> infrastructure, especially the groups in Europe who were dependent on
> the fledgling Internet for their work with colleagues in the US.   No
> one knew how to run a stable service while at the same time
> experimenting with all sorts of new ideas. The Internet was still a
> Research activity, but also expected to work all the time.
>
> Bob's direction was to try to find a way which would enable people other
> than the "Gateway Group" at BBN to build their own Gateways, able to
> interoperate with the rest of the Internet, but keep the "core" Internet
> gateways reliable and available 24x7.   It had to be possible for people
> other than BBN to build a gateway.  That's what Bob asked me to do.
>
> So, back at BBN, I recruited Dr. Eric Rosen and we spent a day or two
> talking about it, and came up with the notion of "Autonomous Systems",
> which were collections of Gateways (not networks as the paper says)
> managed by a single operator.  Eric wrote up EGP as the simplest
> possible protocol to permit Autonomous Systems to interconnect so that
> others could try out their ideas in their own research sandboxes, and
> interoperate with other ASes.
>
> Since at BBN we were responsible for making the "core" gateways operate
> reliably, the focus, and primary purpose, of EGP for us was to make it
> *possible* for any one AS to insulate itself from disruptive activity of
> some other AS, while we at BBN focussed on making the core system of the
> Internet as reliable as the ARPANET had become.   We needed EGP in order
> to keep our core gateways reliable.
>
> The paper says - "Autonomous systems insulated routing errors within
> each autonomous system".   That's not true, and wasn't a goal.  EGP did
> not guarantee such insulation, but simply made it *possible* for any AS
> to internally implement whatever firewalls and sanity checks its
> designers thought necessary as "insulation".  The RFC defining EGP
> states this on the cover:
>
> "It is proposed to establish a standard for Gateway to Gateway
> procedures that allow the Gateways to be mutually suspicious."
>
> Note "allow".  EGP didn't guarantee it or have any mechanisms itself to
> implement "suspicion".
>
> Subsequently Eric wrote several documents (these may have been RFCs or
> IENs) which detailed design ideas considered for use within the
> BBN-operated AS of the "core" gateways.   I don't recall ever seeing any
> descriptions of what other gateway builders did to insulate their own
> ASes from outside disruption.   But I may have just missed them as I
> went on to other projects.
>
> The paper also says:
>
> "As such, it was a part of handing organizations far more freedom and
> autonomy to organize their own networks. Yet in helping ensure the
> victory of TCP/IP (TCP/IP), it also reduced freedom by helping impose a
> network architecture that resulted in a fairly homogenous system of IP
> and Ethernet, rather than the heterogenous mix of local networks and
> addressing systems originally envisioned.52"
>
> Huh?   What did TCP/IP defeat?   ASes could contain any kind of network,
> not limited to Ethernets. E.g., SATNET, the WideBandNet, ARPANET, X.25,
> LANs, and others were part of the Internet.  Yes, everything was based
> on IP, but each network had its own addressing and transport protocols
> (even carrier pigeons!).
>
> Again, the Internet was a *Research Project* at the time, and EGP was
> intended as a mechanism to allow different, and sometimes competing,
> research ideas to proceed in parallel, with the particular ideas that
> were observed to work best being folded into the definition of the next
> generation of the TCP/IP/ICMP/etc protocols.    Rough consensus and
> running code....
>
> At the time, there were many unsolved issues and concerns about the
> mechanisms of the Internet.   Some issues had "placeholder" mechanisms
> defined into the protocols, where there was still much concern that a
> particular mechanism would work as the Internet grew and was used in
> many ways.  Examples include the "Source Quench", "URGent Pointer",
> Fragmentation/Reassembly, Type-Of-Service, and Time-To-Live.   There was
> rough consensus that all of these mechanisms had serious omissions or
> flaws, and must be replaced when someone figured out a better approach.
> The creation of ASes and EGP was intended to make faster progress on
> such issues, by enabling multiple players to perform their own
> independent experimentation.
>
> As far as I remember, there was never any discussion or consideration of
> "human rights", other than some concern about the US-centric nature of
> the research.  We were just trying to get the %^$^%$# thing to work.
> The general feeling was that the Internet was a research project, which
> would be replaced by OSI networks, as soon as those committees got such
> systems defined, deployed and working.
>
> As Bob said, TCP/IP "won" largely because it worked well enough for it
> to be useful.   Also various companies, mostly startups, built things
> that people could buy, and educational institutions delivered a constant
> stream of entry-level engineers who knew how to use it when they went
> out and got jobs.
>
> All of the above refers to the earliest period of the Internet, up until
> 1983 or so.  After that, as commercial and other interests came into the
> picture, things no doubt changed.
>
> /Jack Haverty
> MIT 1970-1977
> BBN 1977-1990
> Oracle 1990-1998
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From johnl at iecc.com  Sat Jul 17 19:32:12 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 17 Jul 2021 22:32:12 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
Message-ID: <20210718023214.123F524AC480@ary.qy>

Do you think I should send this to the list?

This paper is embarassingly bad, but we've already seen that.

R's,
John

From: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg at mail.gmail.com>
Organization: Taughannock Networks
Cc: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com

It appears that farzaneh badii via Internet-history <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com> said:
>Hi everyone,
>
>Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
>human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
>and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.

I unfortunately also found the paper turgid to the point of unreadability.

It missed how little the HRPC research group had to do with the actual
activity of the IETF. The authors of RFC 8280 were both using the IETF
as a topic for their PhD theses, in ten Oever's case putting himself
into the IETF's processes and using the IETF as unwilling human
research subjects in ways I found quite unethical. The HRPC RG had and
still has a painfully cramped idea of "human rights" limited to issues
of expression and anonymity. I stood up in a couple of their meetings,
pointed out that they were paying attention to only two of the 28
articles of the UDHR, so how about the other 26? What about attacks on
honor and reputation (Art 12), or being arbitrarily deprived of their
property (Art 17), both of which are big problems on the Internet? Oh,
they're important too, said the chair, but nothing changed. 

Some of the HRPC members attempted to do "human rights considerations"
reviews of proposed standards, which mostly revealed that they had no
idea what they were reading. A spec about a technique to transmit
credentials, e.g., for a chartered bank to register for a banking service,
was misinterpreted as a mandatory way for oppressive governments to
track their citizens. It was not a positive experience for anyone.

I also can't help but note that the article gets the title of Tom
Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" wrong in different
ways in two different places which makes it appear that this piece has
not been proofread or otherwise had meaningful review.

R's,
John




From farzaneh.badii at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 20:27:08 2021
From: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com (farzaneh badii)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 23:27:08 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <20210718023214.123F524AC480@ary.qy>
References: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
 <20210718023214.123F524AC480@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <CAN1qJvDawXvUesQBuw_GFR2wEdEQ-+OQxUJuoBA5o8ptKsDKTQ@mail.gmail.com>

Well ? seems like you did send the email to the list John. Mistakes
happpen. But that?s ok.

We were for two years getting this paper reviewed and polished. I think you
should read it. We were vigorously peer reviewed and got very helpful
technical feedback. If you read the paper you find out that we are arguing
against those who want to bake values into Internet architecture. We don?t
think the methods at  HRPC actually work. We argue that it is very
difficult if not impossible to bake these values into Internet
architecture, something that the Infrastructuralist  crowd want to do. I
have even written another paper called requiem for a dream that vigorously
criticizes the HRPC and enforcing human rights through Internet
architecture.

Many members of the Internet community have tried to dishearten me to leave
them alone in their echo chamber. But I will remain in my place. People
warned me about interacting with this mailing list, which is saying
something. But I do believe that we can benefit from each other?s point of
views. And I am grateful for those who took the time to read it. And I
invite others to send their feedback to this list. If being professionally
active in the Internet community as a legal and policy scholar has taught
me one thing, it is not to be intimidated.




On Saturday, July 17, 2021, John Levine via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Do you think I should send this to the list?
>
> This paper is embarassingly bad, but we've already seen that.
>
> R's,
> John
>
> From: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] A paper
> In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55
> yTe+pjg at mail.gmail.com>
> Organization: Taughannock Networks
> Cc: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com
>
> It appears that farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
> farzaneh.badii at gmail.com> said:
> >Hi everyone,
> >
> >Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
> >human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> >greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
> list
> >and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>
> I unfortunately also found the paper turgid to the point of unreadability.
>
> It missed how little the HRPC research group had to do with the actual
> activity of the IETF. The authors of RFC 8280 were both using the IETF
> as a topic for their PhD theses, in ten Oever's case putting himself
> into the IETF's processes and using the IETF as unwilling human
> research subjects in ways I found quite unethical. The HRPC RG had and
> still has a painfully cramped idea of "human rights" limited to issues
> of expression and anonymity. I stood up in a couple of their meetings,
> pointed out that they were paying attention to only two of the 28
> articles of the UDHR, so how about the other 26? What about attacks on
> honor and reputation (Art 12), or being arbitrarily deprived of their
> property (Art 17), both of which are big problems on the Internet? Oh,
> they're important too, said the chair, but nothing changed.
>
> Some of the HRPC members attempted to do "human rights considerations"
> reviews of proposed standards, which mostly revealed that they had no
> idea what they were reading. A spec about a technique to transmit
> credentials, e.g., for a chartered bank to register for a banking service,
> was misinterpreted as a mandatory way for oppressive governments to
> track their citizens. It was not a positive experience for anyone.
>
> I also can't help but note that the article gets the title of Tom
> Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" wrong in different
> ways in two different places which makes it appear that this piece has
> not been proofread or otherwise had meaningful review.
>
> R's,
> John
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Farzaneh


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Jul 17 20:32:49 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 20:32:49 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <357aac5e-346c-2555-3e0e-e95cbe9b95b8@3kitty.org>

Oops....? naming conflict, too many Bobs.? I've changed the text to make 
clear Bob Purvy or Bob Kahn.? /Jack

Like Bob (Purvy), I struggled through much of the paper, so I have no 
comments except on the discussion of the case study of EGP where I have 
personal historical experience.? On page 390, it states:

"DARPA directed its contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman to begin cre-
ating the framework for autonomous systems in the late 1970s"

I was the "Program Manager" at BBN on the receiving end of that DARPA 
direction, So I think I can provide some personal experience to the case 
study.?? It was actually the early 80s.? I was there.

For the curious, I wrote up an informal summary of that event in 
Internet History which is still available here:

http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2010-February/001219.html

The EGP discussion is somewhat near the end.

------

At the time EGP was defined, there were lots of unsolved problems and 
lots of people with ideas about how to solve them.? It seemed that 
everyone wanted to build a Gateway (aka today as "router") so they could 
try out their own ideas.?? At the same time, there was a growing 
community of users demanding a reliable stable communications 
infrastructure, especially the groups in Europe who were dependent on 
the fledgling Internet for their work with colleagues in the US. ? No 
one knew how to run a stable service while at the same time 
experimenting with all sorts of new ideas. The Internet was still a 
Research activity, but also expected to work all the time.

Bob (Kahn)'s direction was to try to find a way which would enable 
people other than the "Gateway Group" at BBN to build their own 
Gateways, able to interoperate with the rest of the Internet, but keep 
the "core" Internet gateways reliable and available 24x7.?? It had to be 
possible for people other than BBN to build a gateway. That's what Bob 
(Kahn) asked me to do.

So, back at BBN, I recruited Dr. Eric Rosen and we spent a day or two 
talking about it, and came up with the notion of "Autonomous Systems", 
which were collections of Gateways (not networks as the paper says) 
managed by a single operator.? Eric wrote up EGP as the simplest 
possible protocol to permit Autonomous Systems to interconnect so that 
others could try out their ideas in their own research sandboxes, and 
interoperate with other ASes.

Since at BBN we were responsible for making the "core" gateways operate 
reliably, the focus, and primary purpose, of EGP for us was to make it 
*possible* for any one AS to insulate itself from disruptive activity of 
some other AS, while we at BBN focussed on making the core system of the 
Internet as reliable as the ARPANET had become.?? We needed EGP in order 
to keep our core gateways reliable.

The paper says - "Autonomous systems insulated routing errors within 
each autonomous system".?? That's not true, and wasn't a goal.? EGP did 
not guarantee such insulation, but simply made it *possible* for any AS 
to internally implement whatever firewalls and sanity checks its 
designers thought necessary as "insulation".? The RFC defining EGP 
states this on the cover:

"It is proposed to establish a standard for Gateway to Gateway 
procedures that allow the Gateways to be mutually suspicious."

Note "allow".? EGP didn't guarantee it or have any mechanisms itself to 
implement "suspicion".

Subsequently Eric wrote several documents (these may have been RFCs or 
IENs) which detailed design ideas considered for use within the 
BBN-operated AS of the "core" gateways.?? I don't recall ever seeing any 
descriptions of what other gateway builders did to insulate their own 
ASes from outside disruption.?? But I may have just missed them as I 
went on to other projects.

The paper also says:

"As such, it was a part of handing organizations far more freedom and 
autonomy to organize their own networks. Yet in helping ensure the 
victory of TCP/IP (TCP/IP), it also reduced freedom by helping impose a 
network architecture that resulted in a fairly homogenous system of IP 
and Ethernet, rather than the heterogenous mix of local networks and 
addressing systems originally envisioned.52"

Huh??? What did TCP/IP defeat??? ASes could contain any kind of network, 
not limited to Ethernets. E.g., SATNET, the WideBandNet, ARPANET, X.25, 
LANs, and others were part of the Internet.? Yes, everything was based 
on IP, but each network had its own addressing and transport protocols 
(even carrier pigeons!).

Again, the Internet was a *Research Project* at the time, and EGP was 
intended as a mechanism to allow different, and sometimes competing, 
research ideas to proceed in parallel, with the particular ideas that 
were observed to work best being folded into the definition of the next 
generation of the TCP/IP/ICMP/etc protocols.??? Rough consensus and 
running code....

At the time, there were many unsolved issues and concerns about the 
mechanisms of the Internet.?? Some issues had "placeholder" mechanisms 
defined into the protocols, where there was still much concern that a 
particular mechanism would work as the Internet grew and was used in 
many ways.? Examples include the "Source Quench", "URGent Pointer", 
Fragmentation/Reassembly, Type-Of-Service, and Time-To-Live.?? There was 
rough consensus that all of these mechanisms had serious omissions or 
flaws, and must be replaced when someone figured out a better approach.? 
The creation of ASes and EGP was intended to make faster progress on 
such issues, by enabling multiple players to perform their own 
independent experimentation.

As far as I remember, there was never any discussion or consideration of 
"human rights", other than some concern about the US-centric nature of 
the research.? We were just trying to get the %^$^%$# thing to work.? 
The general feeling was that the Internet was a research project, which 
would be replaced by OSI networks, as soon as those committees got such 
systems defined, deployed and working.

As Bob (Purvy) said, TCP/IP "won" largely because it worked well enough 
for it to be useful. ? Also various companies, mostly startups, built 
things that people could buy, and educational institutions delivered a 
constant stream of entry-level engineers who knew how to use it when 
they went out and got jobs.

All of the above refers to the earliest period of the Internet, up until 
1983 or so.? After that, as commercial and other interests came into the 
picture, things no doubt changed.

/Jack Haverty
MIT 1970-1977
BBN 1977-1990
Oracle 1990-1998


-- 
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history




From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 20:56:06 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 20:56:06 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDawXvUesQBuw_GFR2wEdEQ-+OQxUJuoBA5o8ptKsDKTQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
 <20210718023214.123F524AC480@ary.qy>
 <CAN1qJvDawXvUesQBuw_GFR2wEdEQ-+OQxUJuoBA5o8ptKsDKTQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVHSFtdhZy7ufvqOnK7OLbOEA32P_J8kjbSAiGN+TB9DEQ@mail.gmail.com>

"vigorously peer-reviewed" ? by whom? Other legal scholars?

There is definitely a way for a policy-maker to interact with technical
people who do things he or she doesn't understand. However, I don't think
you've found it.

On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 8:27 PM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Well ? seems like you did send the email to the list John. Mistakes
> happpen. But that?s ok.
>
> We were for two years getting this paper reviewed and polished. I think you
> should read it. We were vigorously peer reviewed and got very helpful
> technical feedback. If you read the paper you find out that we are arguing
> against those who want to bake values into Internet architecture. We don?t
> think the methods at  HRPC actually work. We argue that it is very
> difficult if not impossible to bake these values into Internet
> architecture, something that the Infrastructuralist  crowd want to do. I
> have even written another paper called requiem for a dream that vigorously
> criticizes the HRPC and enforcing human rights through Internet
> architecture.
>
> Many members of the Internet community have tried to dishearten me to leave
> them alone in their echo chamber. But I will remain in my place. People
> warned me about interacting with this mailing list, which is saying
> something. But I do believe that we can benefit from each other?s point of
> views. And I am grateful for those who took the time to read it. And I
> invite others to send their feedback to this list. If being professionally
> active in the Internet community as a legal and policy scholar has taught
> me one thing, it is not to be intimidated.
>
>
>
>
> On Saturday, July 17, 2021, John Levine via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Do you think I should send this to the list?
> >
> > This paper is embarassingly bad, but we've already seen that.
> >
> > R's,
> > John
> >
> > From: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
> > To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > Subject: Re: [ih] A paper
> > In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55
> > yTe+pjg at mail.gmail.com>
> > Organization: Taughannock Networks
> > Cc: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com
> >
> > It appears that farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
> > farzaneh.badii at gmail.com> said:
> > >Hi everyone,
> > >
> > >Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols
> and
> > >human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> > >greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
> > list
> > >and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
> >
> > I unfortunately also found the paper turgid to the point of
> unreadability.
> >
> > It missed how little the HRPC research group had to do with the actual
> > activity of the IETF. The authors of RFC 8280 were both using the IETF
> > as a topic for their PhD theses, in ten Oever's case putting himself
> > into the IETF's processes and using the IETF as unwilling human
> > research subjects in ways I found quite unethical. The HRPC RG had and
> > still has a painfully cramped idea of "human rights" limited to issues
> > of expression and anonymity. I stood up in a couple of their meetings,
> > pointed out that they were paying attention to only two of the 28
> > articles of the UDHR, so how about the other 26? What about attacks on
> > honor and reputation (Art 12), or being arbitrarily deprived of their
> > property (Art 17), both of which are big problems on the Internet? Oh,
> > they're important too, said the chair, but nothing changed.
> >
> > Some of the HRPC members attempted to do "human rights considerations"
> > reviews of proposed standards, which mostly revealed that they had no
> > idea what they were reading. A spec about a technique to transmit
> > credentials, e.g., for a chartered bank to register for a banking
> service,
> > was misinterpreted as a mandatory way for oppressive governments to
> > track their citizens. It was not a positive experience for anyone.
> >
> > I also can't help but note that the article gets the title of Tom
> > Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" wrong in different
> > ways in two different places which makes it appear that this piece has
> > not been proofread or otherwise had meaningful review.
> >
> > R's,
> > John
> >
> >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
>
>
> --
> Farzaneh
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Jul 17 21:54:59 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 16:54:59 +1200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDawXvUesQBuw_GFR2wEdEQ-+OQxUJuoBA5o8ptKsDKTQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <2FFF8925-4F4C-4A12-AD42-B02A4CA08B8C@frobbit.se>
 <20210718023214.123F524AC480@ary.qy>
 <CAN1qJvDawXvUesQBuw_GFR2wEdEQ-+OQxUJuoBA5o8ptKsDKTQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6a03151c-e867-6d18-232c-db81720a2af9@gmail.com>

One of the downsides of open access publication is that critical reviews are also out in public. But I spent some time looking to see what all the 
fuss was about, so here is my quick review. TL;DR: Written in Martian as far most techies are concerned. But I agree with the overall conclusion.

It is a bit hard to figure out at first what this paper is trying to say. 
For a start, the Abstract says: "Internet protocols do not single handedly mitigate human rights on the Internet..." I have no idea what "mitigate" means in this. None of the options in Merriam-Webster seem to apply to "human rights":

1 : to cause to become less harsh or hostile : mollify
2a : to make less severe or painful
 b : extenuate

So the key idea expressed in the Abstract is literally meaningless in the 
English language.

Then we read "ViD [Values in design] scholars operate under the assumption that Internet protocols (IPs) can be designed such that their use will necessarily and durably promote human rights..."

This is of course an utterly ridiculous assumption from a technical viewpoint. There's no citation for where it comes from, despite a generic incantation of "Lessig and DeNardis". I have criticised DeNardis's "The Global War for Internet governance" elsewhere (https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/DeNardisCrit.html), and Tom Vest documented the failings of her "Protocol Politics" (page 40 in https://ipj.dreamhosters.com/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/ipj12-4.pdf). Lessig has of course done great work. But I 
cannot see how either of them can be accused of the assumption above.

To be clear, Internet technology is inevitably a dual use technology. Nowhere is that clearer than in the cryptography and privacy debates. Anywhere you can find a legitimate use for a security feature, you can also find a criminal use, a military use, and a repressive use.

Continuing...
"participants seek to institutionalize this mode of thinking within Internet standards bodies, particularly the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), thereby adding an explicit political dimension to their work."

The Mission Statement of the IETF already says "The Internet isn't value-neutral, and neither is the IETF.  We want the Internet to be useful for communities that share our commitment to openness and fairness." Thus there is already an explicit policy statement right there. But the mission statement also recognises reality: "[An IETF standard] does not imply any attempt by the IETF to mandate its use, or any attempt to police its usage." IMNSHO the whole human rights issue is declared *right there* to be a 
societal problem and not a technical problem.

Then...
"perhaps their most influential publication, Request for Comment (RFC) 8280". I am far from certain that this RFC (dated October 2017) has been influential. According to Google Scholar it has been cited twice (once by one of the current authors). It has also been cited in only two Internet-Drafts (outside the HRPC research group itself). I have no real problems with that RFC; but I don't think it has had much effect.

About 15 pages later (having skipped prose written in terms that my geek brain simply cannot interpret, almost as bad as reading a semiotics text) 
I did find something that I strongly agree with:

"The problem we identify above is not merely a logical consideration; it
may have serious institutional consequences. We are concerned that it will
be impossible ?to make conscious and explicit design decisions that take
into account the human rights protocol considerations guidelines.? 
In
keeping with our analysis above, this would require a superhuman level of
awareness of one?s unconscious, and the unconscious of others. It 
would
also require that we divine which components of a protocol were truly
responsible for the political impact."

Exactly! Or in other words, "the assumption that Internet protocols (IPs) 
can be designed such that their use will necessarily and durably promote human rights" is codswallop and balderdash.

Then the paper continues to its case studies. Skipping to the d?nouement of the EGP/BGP case: "Ultimately, the intentions behind the design decisions, behind the design, and behind the impact of EGP and BGP are opaque." I disagree. Firstly, everybody knew that Cisco repeatedly pushed their proprietary solutions into the market, to lock in customers, at the same time as sending people to standards meetings because some procurements (especially government procurements) required support of standards. They weren't the only companies playing that game of course; they just played it better. Secondly, the techies knew that BGP was *technically necessary* to handle the expected growth, and in due course (by about 1993) they 
knew that BGP4 was essential for the same reason. Now the *design* of BGP4 is very interesting, but you have to remember that the push for "policy 
based routing" came from large US government agencies that required it. Whether the BGP4 designers realised the extent to which BGP4 would encourage and mediate market forces once commercial ISPs appeared is less clear to me, but you could always ask them.

I skipped the DNS and WHOIS case studies (well, it's Sunday afternoon here) but it is absolutely true that decisions taken during DNS design had very unintended consequences, which I tend to blame on Ira Magaziner and the very capitalistic way that ICANN was set up. Certainly the DNS designers could not have predicted that.

"Conclusion

IPs have human rights consequences, and they are political artifacts. This much is obvious, and probably uncontroversial."

I'm assuming that the "they" refers to the protocols, not the consequences. If that's not what you mean, have a word with your copy editor.

The human rights consequences are undeniable, as are those of inventing cooking, clothes and the wheel. But *in no way* can you assert that protocols are political artefacts. That's only true in the *very* limited sense 
that the Internet is connectionless and the previous networks (telegraph, 
telephone) were connection-oriented, and that difference did have very significant commercial, societal and political effects. The Internet vs OSI 
protocol wars were very much a result of that, especially in Europe. The Internet's victory had direct societal impact, seen most clearly in the early 1990s when the whole of Eastern Europe rushed to connect to the Internet as soon as the Soviets left town.

"Our arguments about why further human rights considerations may harm the 
IETF are hypothetical and may not happen."

I wouldn't lose any sleep about it. The IETF has survived 3.5 years of RFC8280 without any adverse impact.

"Imposing lofty political considerations on the activities of protocol designers politicizes the act of creating protocols that do not necessarily 
have a political dimension."

We agree.

Regards,
    Brian Carpenter

On 18-Jul-21 15:27, farzaneh badii via Internet-history wrote:
> Well ? seems like you did send the email to the list John. Mistakes
> happpen. But that?s ok.
> 
> We were for two years getting this paper reviewed and polished. I think 
you
> should read it. We were vigorously peer reviewed and got very helpful
> technical feedback. If you read the paper you find out that we are arguing
> against those who want to bake values into Internet architecture. We don?t
> think the methods at  HRPC actually work. We argue that it is very
> difficult if not impossible to bake these values into Internet
> architecture, something that the Infrastructuralist  crowd want to do. I
> have even written another paper called requiem for a dream that vigorously
> criticizes the HRPC and enforcing human rights through Internet
> architecture.
> 
> Many members of the Internet community have tried to dishearten me to leave
> them alone in their echo chamber. But I will remain in my place. People
> warned me about interacting with this mailing list, which is saying
> something. But I do believe that we can benefit from each other?s point of
> views. And I am grateful for those who took the time to read it. And I
> invite others to send their feedback to this list. If being professionally
> active in the Internet community as a legal and policy scholar has taught
> me one thing, it is not to be intimidated.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Saturday, July 17, 2021, John Levine via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> Do you think I should send this to the list?
>>
>> This paper is embarassingly bad, but we've already seen that.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>>
>> From: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
>> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> Subject: Re: [ih] A paper
>> In-Reply-To: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55
>> yTe+pjg at mail.gmail.com>
>> Organization: Taughannock Networks
>> Cc: farzaneh.badii at gmail.com
>>
>> It appears that farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
>> farzaneh.badii at gmail.com> said:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols 
and
>>> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>>> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
>> list
>>> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>>
>> I unfortunately also found the paper turgid to the point of unreadability.
>>
>> It missed how little the HRPC research group had to do with the actual
>> activity of the IETF. The authors of RFC 8280 were both using the IETF
>> as a topic for their PhD theses, in ten Oever's case putting himself
>> into the IETF's processes and using the IETF as unwilling human
>> research subjects in ways I found quite unethical. The HRPC RG had and
>> still has a painfully cramped idea of "human rights" limited to issues
>> of expression and anonymity. I stood up in a couple of their meetings,
>> pointed out that they were paying attention to only two of the 28
>> articles of the UDHR, so how about the other 26? What about attacks on
>> honor and reputation (Art 12), or being arbitrarily deprived of their
>> property (Art 17), both of which are big problems on the Internet? Oh,
>> they're important too, said the chair, but nothing changed.
>>
>> Some of the HRPC members attempted to do "human rights considerations"
>> reviews of proposed standards, which mostly revealed that they had no
>> idea what they were reading. A spec about a technique to transmit
>> credentials, e.g., for a chartered bank to register for a banking service,
>> was misinterpreted as a mandatory way for oppressive governments to
>> track their citizens. It was not a positive experience for anyone.
>>
>> I also can't help but note that the article gets the title of Tom
>> Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" wrong in different
>> ways in two different places which makes it appear that this piece has
>> not been proofread or otherwise had meaningful review.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>>
>>
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
> 
> 



From johnl at iecc.com  Sat Jul 17 22:10:44 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Date: 18 Jul 2021 01:10:44 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper that has something to to with the Internet
Message-ID: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>

> We were for two years getting this paper reviewed and polished. I think you
> should read it.

If it wasn't clear I did read it but the writing makes it difficult to tell what
point(s) you are trying to make.

> Many members of the Internet community have tried to dishearten me to leave
> them alone in their echo chamber. But I will remain in my place.

Oh, please.  Nobody here thinks that the Internet is perfect or that there's
nothing more to be said about its history.  (I think some of Corinne Cath's work
is pretty good.)  But an author needs at least a basic grasp of the technology
to say insightful things about it rather than guessing.

This paper keeps finding deep political mysteries in decisions for which the
motivation was and is obvious.  For example, on page 393, why was the DNS built
as a rooted hierarchy?  It's not a big secret, it's because there was and is no
other design that can be updated and scaled efficiently, certainly not on the
computers and networks available in the 1980s.  It might be interesting to ask
Paul Mockapetris if he considered other topologies (he does answer his mail) but
I doubt he did.  FYI, footnote 63 on that page is wrong, SQL is not
hierarchical, it's relational, and while SQL dates from the 1970s at IBM, there
was no ANSI version until 1986, long after the shape of the DNS was set.

And finally, with respect to reviews, I really have to wonder how reviewers who
didn't recognize the name of one of the best known history of science books ever
written or obvious errors like the footnote I mentioned could provide meaningful
reviews for this history of technology paper.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly


From paf at frobbit.se  Sat Jul 17 23:55:14 2021
From: paf at frobbit.se (Patrik =?utf-8?b?RsOkbHRzdHLDtm0=?=)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 08:55:14 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>

On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:

> Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical reasons? Particularly in the 80s.

I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990. Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in IAB, arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the technologies had).

   Patrik
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 256 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210718/acd7aacc/attachment.asc>

From agmalis at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 06:47:36 2021
From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 09:47:36 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
Message-ID: <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>

I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet writing
IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
knowledge here. :-)

IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something that
worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work happening
in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain and
play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught to
other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially the
various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations, either
free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!

Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
what was freely available for TCP/IP.

The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
been better (earlier rather than later).

Cheers,
Andy



On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>
> > Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
> reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
>
> I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
> Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in IAB,
> arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
> perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
> arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
> economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
> technologies had).
>
>    Patrik
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 07:57:03 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 10:57:03 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>

TCP/IP benefitted from the NCP work on ARPANET and the application
protocols that were developed such as TELNET, FTP and eventually SMTP among
others. The first paper on TCP was published in May 1974 and detailed TCP
specifications were the product of a team working at Stanford with visitors
from Norway, France, Japan and Xerox PARC and were released as RFC 675 in
December 1974. Implementation started in 1975 at Stanford, BBN, University
College London and SRI International. In the Fall of 1976, I joined Bob
Kahn at ARPA and implementation and refinement of the protocols continued.
During these formative years leading up to the TCP/IP flag day on January
1, 1983, I do not recall anything but pragmatics driving the development.
We were all focused on getting internetworking to work with different
packet networking technologies and different computer types and operating
systems. The original Network Working Group philosophy permeated this
effort as did the subsequent International Network Working Group which
later became IFIP 6.1. The protocol architecture was deliberately kept open
to new ideas and participation expanded from those under research contract
to DARPA to a broader community as the capability became more widely
available through research and education networks, commercial sources, and
open implementations for operating systems from IBM, Digital Equipment
Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Berkeley (ATT/UNIX), BBN's TENEX, 3COM, SUN
Microsystems and others.

Attempts to retrofit political motivations onto what was a pragmatic
engineering effort strike me as strained and artificial.  Speaking for
myself, in the late 1980s, I felt a personal motivation to see the
technology commercialized and welcomed INTEROP and the eventual permission
to interconnect the commercial MCI Mail system (along with others) to the
Internet because I hoped an economic engine could be ignited to support
access to the Internet by the general public and private sector. I was
enthusiastic about the founding of the Internet Society, partly as a legal
home for the IETF/IRTF/IAB and also as a means to promote a philosophy
(policy) of open networking. Perhaps more political elements can be
discerned especially with the arrival of the World Wide Web and the
numerous applications that capability spawned.


On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 9:48 AM Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet writing
> IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
> transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
> them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
> which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
> before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
> knowledge here. :-)
>
> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
> grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something that
> worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
> prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
> ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
> to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
> refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work happening
> in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
> accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain and
> play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught to
> other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
> broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
> adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially the
> various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations, either
> free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
> Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!
>
> Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
> specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
> implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
> what was freely available for TCP/IP.
>
> The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
> ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
> implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
> been better (earlier rather than later).
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> > > Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
> > reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
> >
> > I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
> > Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in IAB,
> > arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
> > perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
> > arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
> > economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
> > technologies had).
> >
> >    Patrik
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 08:37:32 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 08:37:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>

I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's awesome
summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.

As Patrik said, after 1990 or so, you did start to see some commercial
considerations creeping it. Interestingly enough, my own 1994 effort (RFC
1697) had *all* the major commercial RDBMS vendors participating.
Fortunately for me (and I don't hold this up as an example to anyone else),
I realized that an SNMP MIB was not critical to anyone's business, and the
vendors' representatives just wanted to finish so they could tell their
bosses they'd accomplished something. So I *was* able to get them all to
cooperate in about nine months.

Had this been an OSI effort, though, everyone's pet idea would have had to
be incorporated, and it would have taken ten times that long.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 7:57 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> TCP/IP benefitted from the NCP work on ARPANET and the application
> protocols that were developed such as TELNET, FTP and eventually SMTP among
> others. The first paper on TCP was published in May 1974 and detailed TCP
> specifications were the product of a team working at Stanford with visitors
> from Norway, France, Japan and Xerox PARC and were released as RFC 675 in
> December 1974. Implementation started in 1975 at Stanford, BBN, University
> College London and SRI International. In the Fall of 1976, I joined Bob
> Kahn at ARPA and implementation and refinement of the protocols continued.
> During these formative years leading up to the TCP/IP flag day on January
> 1, 1983, I do not recall anything but pragmatics driving the development.
> We were all focused on getting internetworking to work with different
> packet networking technologies and different computer types and operating
> systems. The original Network Working Group philosophy permeated this
> effort as did the subsequent International Network Working Group which
> later became IFIP 6.1. The protocol architecture was deliberately kept open
> to new ideas and participation expanded from those under research contract
> to DARPA to a broader community as the capability became more widely
> available through research and education networks, commercial sources, and
> open implementations for operating systems from IBM, Digital Equipment
> Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Berkeley (ATT/UNIX), BBN's TENEX, 3COM, SUN
> Microsystems and others.
>
> Attempts to retrofit political motivations onto what was a pragmatic
> engineering effort strike me as strained and artificial.  Speaking for
> myself, in the late 1980s, I felt a personal motivation to see the
> technology commercialized and welcomed INTEROP and the eventual permission
> to interconnect the commercial MCI Mail system (along with others) to the
> Internet because I hoped an economic engine could be ignited to support
> access to the Internet by the general public and private sector. I was
> enthusiastic about the founding of the Internet Society, partly as a legal
> home for the IETF/IRTF/IAB and also as a means to promote a philosophy
> (policy) of open networking. Perhaps more political elements can be
> discerned especially with the arrival of the World Wide Web and the
> numerous applications that capability spawned.
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 9:48 AM Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet
> writing
> > IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
> > transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
> > them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
> > which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
> > before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
> > knowledge here. :-)
> >
> > IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> > TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
> > grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something
> that
> > worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
> > prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
> > ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
> > to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
> > refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work
> happening
> > in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
> > accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain
> and
> > play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught
> to
> > other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
> > broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
> > adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially
> the
> > various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations,
> either
> > free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
> > Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!
> >
> > Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
> > specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
> > implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
> > what was freely available for TCP/IP.
> >
> > The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
> > ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
> > implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
> > been better (earlier rather than later).
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
> > >
> > > > Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
> > > reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
> > >
> > > I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
> > > Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in
> IAB,
> > > arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
> > > perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
> > > arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
> > > economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
> > > technologies had).
> > >
> > >    Patrik
> > > --
> > > Internet-history mailing list
> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> > >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 13:45:02 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 08:45:02 +1200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>

Andy,

Thanks (and Vint) for that injection of facts. I'd like to qualify one remark, though.

> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.

It does slightly depend on where you were sitting though. Where I was sitting from
early 1985 (the networking group at CERN) our main motivation was to get from a
horribly diverse set of protocols to a standard set, and that pushed us very hard
towards OSI, and that was our official policy. We changed that policy a few years
later when it was clear that TCP/IP was much more widely supported by our 
vendors
than OSI. That was all entirely pragmatic and technically based. However, 
there
was tremendous pressure from two quarters against that choice, purely on political
grounds: from European Commission officials and from the incumbent telecom carriers
(i.e. the PTTs). Of course that wasn't anything to do with human rights impact,
but only to do with defending European industrial interests against perceived
US high-tech hegemony, and defending the incumbent telcos' monopolies. So 
it
was also bound up with the general push towards telco deregulation. Another factor
was the ITU (just down the road from CERN) defending its territory against the
encroachment of the cheeky Internet upstarts.

Retro-fitting a human rights argument to any of this is counterfactual. I 
would
say it was at least 1995 before any human rights argument became relevant.
(That's fact-based. The first time I recall any rights related argument being
raised was during the ITU-organised Geneva Internet Day in March 1995, when
someone asked the panel of white males on stage why there were no women
involved in the Internet. Fortunately I was able to answer that there were
some, but too few, with examples.)

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 19-Jul-21 01:47, Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history wrote:
> I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet writing
> IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
> transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
> them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
> which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
> before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
> knowledge here. :-)
> 
> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
> grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something that
> worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
> prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
> ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
> to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
> refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work happening
> in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
> accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain and
> play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught 
to
> other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
> broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
> adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially the
> various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations, either
> free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
> Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!
> 
> Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
> specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
> implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
> what was freely available for TCP/IP.
> 
> The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
> ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
> implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
> been better (earlier rather than later).
> 
> Cheers,
> Andy
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
>> reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
>>
>> I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
>> Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in IAB,
>> arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
>> perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
>> arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
>> economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
>> technologies had).
>>
>>    Patrik
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>



From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 13:50:42 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 16:50:42 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_We5UB_6+CbGD_pS1BUnSr5ZoA1RKR8bC4pPB41Gsa-Qg@mail.gmail.com>

Brian,
I completely agree that the OSI - TCP/IP battle was heavily political. I
was responding to the apparent argument that the TCP/IP design originated
from political motivations.

v


On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 4:45 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Andy,
>
> Thanks (and Vint) for that injection of facts. I'd like to qualify one
> remark, though.
>
> > IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
>
> It does slightly depend on where you were sitting though. Where I was
> sitting from
> early 1985 (the networking group at CERN) our main motivation was to get
> from a
> horribly diverse set of protocols to a standard set, and that pushed us
> very hard
> towards OSI, and that was our official policy. We changed that policy a
> few years
> later when it was clear that TCP/IP was much more widely supported by our
> vendors
> than OSI. That was all entirely pragmatic and technically based. However,
> there
> was tremendous pressure from two quarters against that choice, purely on
> political
> grounds: from European Commission officials and from the incumbent telecom
> carriers
> (i.e. the PTTs). Of course that wasn't anything to do with human rights
> impact,
> but only to do with defending European industrial interests against
> perceived
> US high-tech hegemony, and defending the incumbent telcos' monopolies. So
> it
> was also bound up with the general push towards telco deregulation.
> Another factor
> was the ITU (just down the road from CERN) defending its territory against
> the
> encroachment of the cheeky Internet upstarts.
>
> Retro-fitting a human rights argument to any of this is counterfactual. I
> would
> say it was at least 1995 before any human rights argument became relevant.
> (That's fact-based. The first time I recall any rights related argument
> being
> raised was during the ITU-organised Geneva Internet Day in March 1995, when
> someone asked the panel of white males on stage why there were no women
> involved in the Internet. Fortunately I was able to answer that there were
> some, but too few, with examples.)
>
> Regards
>    Brian Carpenter
>
> On 19-Jul-21 01:47, Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history wrote:
> > I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet
> writing
> > IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
> > transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
> > them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
> > which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
> > before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
> > knowledge here. :-)
> >
> > IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> > TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
> > grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something
> that
> > worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
> > prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
> > ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
> > to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
> > refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work
> happening
> > in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
> > accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain
> and
> > play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught
> to
> > other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
> > broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
> > adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially
> the
> > various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations,
> either
> > free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
> > Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!
> >
> > Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
> > specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
> > implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
> > what was freely available for TCP/IP.
> >
> > The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
> > ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
> > implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
> > been better (earlier rather than later).
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
> >>
> >>> Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
> >> reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
> >>
> >> I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
> >> Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in
> IAB,
> >> arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
> >> perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
> >> arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
> >> economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
> >> technologies had).
> >>
> >>    Patrik
> >> --
> >> Internet-history mailing list
> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Jul 18 14:07:04 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 14:07:04 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1360b0e6-eea5-7164-4508-040649554141@dcrocker.net>

On 7/18/2021 7:57 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> Attempts to retrofit political motivations onto what was a pragmatic
> engineering effort strike me as strained and artificial.


As opposed to being an entirely willful fantasy, without any objective 
foundation?

But correlation IS causation and two data points are enough for correlation.

The paper cites work by Mueller.  That was to be expected, I suspect. 
For example:

      https://bbiw.net/musings.html#rootreview

(The exchange noted there, that followed the review, was possibly as 
interesting to me as doing the review.)

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From ajs at crankycanuck.ca  Sun Jul 18 14:23:52 2021
From: ajs at crankycanuck.ca (Andrew Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 17:23:52 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>

[I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for any duplicates.]

Dear colleagues,

In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
observation.  

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's awesome
>summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.

I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
rather than just Internet recollections.

In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
"That's not what happened, because I was _there_."

Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
is arguing.

Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
"is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
(For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.

Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
organizational decision other than "political".

Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
Internet.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Jul 18 14:39:03 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 14:39:03 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <1360b0e6-eea5-7164-4508-040649554141@dcrocker.net>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <1360b0e6-eea5-7164-4508-040649554141@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <d5313290-52f0-bb2d-5d84-a113c27ac20f@dcrocker.net>

On 7/18/2021 2:07 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> 
> The paper cites work by Mueller.? That was to be expected, I suspect. 
> For example:
> 
> https://bbiw.net/musings.html#rootreview


drat.  hadn't realized the that the entry there has stale links to the 
review and the rejoinders.

Wayback to the rescue:

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-4/book_reviews.html

and

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_6-1/letters_to_the_editor.html


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Jul 18 14:53:32 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 14:53:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <d5313290-52f0-bb2d-5d84-a113c27ac20f@dcrocker.net>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <1360b0e6-eea5-7164-4508-040649554141@dcrocker.net>
 <d5313290-52f0-bb2d-5d84-a113c27ac20f@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <9b3d58d2-5a7a-1d1d-3de6-c1e817e3f227@dcrocker.net>

On 7/18/2021 2:39 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 7/18/2021 2:07 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>> The paper cites work by Mueller.? That was to be expected, I suspect. 
>> For example:
>>
>> https://bbiw.net/musings.html#rootreview
> 
> 
> drat. 

Double drat.  And sorry.  I didn't give the full wayback URLs.

This should work.  No, really, they should...


https://web.archive.org/web/20110608042105/http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-4/book_reviews.html

and

https://web.archive.org/web/20070101142544/http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_6-1/letters_to_the_editor.html


d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 16:57:02 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 19:57:02 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>

Andrew: The Internet
approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
organizational decision other than "political".

Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!

v


On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 5:24 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for any
> duplicates.]
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
> observation.
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history
> wrote:
> >I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's awesome
> >summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
>
> I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> rather than just Internet recollections.
>
> In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
> the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
>
> Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
> is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> is arguing.
>
> Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> "is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
> Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
> Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
> been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
>
> Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
> admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
> approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> organizational decision other than "political".
>
> Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
> protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
> people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
> Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> Internet.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 17:09:05 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 17:09:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVGb5vWN_KKotgs2ZTJtUsMoai8Sy1OL1SUoW0JUA2L_rQ@mail.gmail.com>

Also Andrew:

I'm not sure what to call that kind of organizational decision other than
"political".


This is what someone who is not a practicing engineer would say:
"everything is political."

No, Andrew, some people just want to get the job done.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 4:57 PM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Andrew: The Internet
> approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> organizational decision other than "political".
>
> Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 5:24 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for any
> > duplicates.]
> >
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> > organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> > also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> > the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
> > observation.
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history
> > wrote:
> > >I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's
> awesome
> > >summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
> >
> > I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> > point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> > important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> > rather than just Internet recollections.
> >
> > In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> > I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> > history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> > is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
> > the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> > they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> > "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
> >
> > Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> > We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> > retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> > what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> > are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
> > is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> > is arguing.
> >
> > Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> > people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> > who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> > "is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
> > Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> > (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> > to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> > that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
> > Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> > justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> > historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> > things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> > were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
> > been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> > there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> > that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
> >
> > Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> > problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> > fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> > could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> > people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
> > admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> > in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> > and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> > in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
> > approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> > as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> > organizational decision other than "political".
> >
> > Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> > is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
> > protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> > political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> > inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> > values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> > documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
> > people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> > politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
> > Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> > fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> > a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> > Internet.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > A
> >
> > --
> > Andrew Sullivan
> > ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From darius.kazemi at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 17:17:09 2021
From: darius.kazemi at gmail.com (Darius Kazemi)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 17:17:09 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>

Most of you probably don't know me. I'm an engineer by trade and amateur
historian for kicks. I spend a lot of time acting as a kind of translator
of technology history for people who work as engineers today, because I
don't want my colleagues to repeat the mistakes of the past and would
rather they learn from its successes. I spend a lot of time reading old
RFCs and other documents from the 60s-80s because I'd rather learn from
your hard earned wisdom than shoot myself in the foot when I'm working on
decentralized protocols and applications. (I'm currently devouring
Padlipsky's 1985 "Elements of Networking Style", a political document if
there ever was one.)

Anyhow, I'd like to chime in and say:

1) thank you to Andrew Sullivan for writing most of what I was planning to
spend a good hour composing for this list tonight

2) I often describe a protocol as "an agreement between parties about the
way things are expected to be done". A protocol that no one agrees to use
is dead in the water, as you all know. I don't believe etymology is
deterministic but it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic protocol!
Regardless, it is difficult for me to envision an agreement between parties
as anything but political. I'll note that I don't mean political in the
sense of campaigns and government spending. I mean it in the broad sense of
humans organizing to do things. I think some of the misunderstanding here
is that we are working off different definitions of "political".

3) It seems the paper has been misread by a number of people on the list
(though correctly read by others who have provided fair criticism). It is
specifically arguing that you can't bake human rights values into protocol
design. The absolute meat of the paper is in its last two sentences, which
I think most people here would completely agree with:

> Focusing solely on [Internet protocol] developers and encouraging them to
consider human rights does not help to create a human rights?enabling
environment on the Internet. Imposing lofty political considerations on the
activities of protocol designers politicizes the act of creating protocols
that do not necessarily have a political dimension.

It really feels like some of you saw the word "politics", saw that this was
written by people who aren't engineers, and assumed they were coming from a
position antagonistic to yours. If anything, this paper is highly
antagonistic to the over-politicization of technology! That you personally
cannot read the article and parse it isn't anyone's fault, for the same
reason that you can't expect a nontechnical person to read RFC 114 and make
heads or tails of it.

Anyway it's been pretty frustrating to see everyone talking at cross
purposes when I think folks are mostly aligned! And then we could have
productive discussions about the context of specific claims in the paper.

-Darius

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 4:57 PM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Andrew: The Internet
> approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> organizational decision other than "political".
>
> Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 5:24 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for any
> > duplicates.]
> >
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> > organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> > also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> > the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
> > observation.
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history
> > wrote:
> > >I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's
> awesome
> > >summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
> >
> > I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> > point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> > important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> > rather than just Internet recollections.
> >
> > In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> > I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> > history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> > is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
> > the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> > they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> > "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
> >
> > Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> > We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> > retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> > what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> > are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
> > is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> > is arguing.
> >
> > Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> > people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> > who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> > "is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
> > Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> > (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> > to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> > that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
> > Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> > justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> > historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> > things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> > were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
> > been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> > there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> > that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
> >
> > Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> > problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> > fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> > could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> > people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
> > admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> > in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> > and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> > in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
> > approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> > as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> > organizational decision other than "political".
> >
> > Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> > is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
> > protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> > political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> > inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> > values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> > documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
> > people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> > politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
> > Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> > fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> > a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> > Internet.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > A
> >
> > --
> > Andrew Sullivan
> > ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From vint at google.com  Sun Jul 18 17:24:47 2021
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 20:24:47 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggdcKmm3PGAps22QG7r3aZ_h32wEkywgnTGt6zrCEEPfRQ@mail.gmail.com>

thanks for pointing out that last bit, Darius.
v


On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 8:17 PM Darius Kazemi via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Most of you probably don't know me. I'm an engineer by trade and amateur
> historian for kicks. I spend a lot of time acting as a kind of translator
> of technology history for people who work as engineers today, because I
> don't want my colleagues to repeat the mistakes of the past and would
> rather they learn from its successes. I spend a lot of time reading old
> RFCs and other documents from the 60s-80s because I'd rather learn from
> your hard earned wisdom than shoot myself in the foot when I'm working on
> decentralized protocols and applications. (I'm currently devouring
> Padlipsky's 1985 "Elements of Networking Style", a political document if
> there ever was one.)
>
> Anyhow, I'd like to chime in and say:
>
> 1) thank you to Andrew Sullivan for writing most of what I was planning to
> spend a good hour composing for this list tonight
>
> 2) I often describe a protocol as "an agreement between parties about the
> way things are expected to be done". A protocol that no one agrees to use
> is dead in the water, as you all know. I don't believe etymology is
> deterministic but it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic protocol!
> Regardless, it is difficult for me to envision an agreement between parties
> as anything but political. I'll note that I don't mean political in the
> sense of campaigns and government spending. I mean it in the broad sense of
> humans organizing to do things. I think some of the misunderstanding here
> is that we are working off different definitions of "political".
>
> 3) It seems the paper has been misread by a number of people on the list
> (though correctly read by others who have provided fair criticism). It is
> specifically arguing that you can't bake human rights values into protocol
> design. The absolute meat of the paper is in its last two sentences, which
> I think most people here would completely agree with:
>
> > Focusing solely on [Internet protocol] developers and encouraging them to
> consider human rights does not help to create a human rights?enabling
> environment on the Internet. Imposing lofty political considerations on the
> activities of protocol designers politicizes the act of creating protocols
> that do not necessarily have a political dimension.
>
> It really feels like some of you saw the word "politics", saw that this was
> written by people who aren't engineers, and assumed they were coming from a
> position antagonistic to yours. If anything, this paper is highly
> antagonistic to the over-politicization of technology! That you personally
> cannot read the article and parse it isn't anyone's fault, for the same
> reason that you can't expect a nontechnical person to read RFC 114 and make
> heads or tails of it.
>
> Anyway it's been pretty frustrating to see everyone talking at cross
> purposes when I think folks are mostly aligned! And then we could have
> productive discussions about the context of specific claims in the paper.
>
> -Darius
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 4:57 PM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Andrew: The Internet
> > approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> > as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> > organizational decision other than "political".
> >
> > Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!
> >
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 5:24 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > > [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for any
> > > duplicates.]
> > >
> > > Dear colleagues,
> > >
> > > In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> > > organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> > > also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> > > the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
> > > observation.
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via
> Internet-history
> > > wrote:
> > > >I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's
> > awesome
> > > >summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
> > >
> > > I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> > > point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> > > important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> > > rather than just Internet recollections.
> > >
> > > In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> > > I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> > > history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> > > is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
> > > the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> > > they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> > > "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
> > >
> > > Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> > > We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> > > retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> > > what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> > > are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
> > > is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> > > is arguing.
> > >
> > > Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> > > people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> > > who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> > > "is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
> > > Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> > > (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> > > to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> > > that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
> > > Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> > > justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> > > historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> > > things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> > > were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
> > > been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> > > there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> > > that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
> > >
> > > Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> > > problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> > > fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> > > could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> > > people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
> > > admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> > > in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> > > and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> > > in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
> > > approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> > > as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> > > organizational decision other than "political".
> > >
> > > Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> > > is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
> > > protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> > > political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> > > inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> > > values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> > > documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
> > > people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> > > politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
> > > Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> > > fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> > > a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> > > Internet.
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > >
> > > A
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andrew Sullivan
> > > ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
> > > --
> > > Internet-history mailing list
> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> > >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
1435 Woodhurst Blvd
McLean, VA 22102
703-448-0965

until further notice


From ajs at crankycanuck.ca  Sun Jul 18 17:37:26 2021
From: ajs at crankycanuck.ca (Andrew Sullivan)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 20:37:26 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVGb5vWN_KKotgs2ZTJtUsMoai8Sy1OL1SUoW0JUA2L_rQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210719003726.m3rainrbyls6wiug@crankycanuck.ca>

Hi,

More than one reply at once.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 07:57:02PM -0400, vinton cerf wrote:
>
>Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!

I think so, too, but I rather hope it isn't contentious to suggest
that there are organizational politics that are sometimes involved in
how one tackles an engineering problem.  One of my persistent
annoyances, actually, is the tendency of people who show up with a
design to burn everything down and start over because of "technical
considerations".  It might even be _true_ that what they propose is
technically better in some measure, but deployed base is not merely a
technical fact to be dealt with: it's also an economic and political
fact.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 05:09:05PM -0700, Bob Purvy wrote:
>
>
>This is what someone who is not a practicing engineer would say:
>"everything is political."
>
>No, Andrew, some people just want to get the job done.

I think I rather explicitly said that I do _not_ think everything is
political.  But "just want to get the job done" is a phrase that (when
I was doing engineering work) I often found was used to suppress some
inconvenient consideration.  A lot of abuses and security
vulnerabilities have come from "just get on with it", so I don't find
such an argument to be terribly convincing on its own.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca


From vint at google.com  Sun Jul 18 17:45:38 2021
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 20:45:38 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <20210719003726.m3rainrbyls6wiug@crankycanuck.ca>
References: <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVGb5vWN_KKotgs2ZTJtUsMoai8Sy1OL1SUoW0JUA2L_rQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210719003726.m3rainrbyls6wiug@crankycanuck.ca>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggdR0hoQbqZ2GV5N9D_qdU06RsHsR5CDtrJQbJyu=Ae+uQ@mail.gmail.com>

thanks Andrew.

There were definitely some interesting political dynamics for TCP/IP -
getting HP, Digital Equipment Corp and IBM LABS to implement was a very
deliberate political effort.
Of course the OSI/TCP debates were heavy with politics. Getting the USG to
move away from its absolute insistence on ISO was political. Getting DOD to
formally adopt TCP/IP in 1982 was political. Getting NIST to do a blue
ribbon panel review of TCP/IP vs TP was political. Getting DOE, NSF, NASA
and DARPA to form the FRICC and then the FNC was political. ..... :-))))

v




On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 8:38 PM Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> More than one reply at once.
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 07:57:02PM -0400, vinton cerf wrote:
> >
> >Vint: huh? I thought that was good engineering!
>
> I think so, too, but I rather hope it isn't contentious to suggest
> that there are organizational politics that are sometimes involved in
> how one tackles an engineering problem.  One of my persistent
> annoyances, actually, is the tendency of people who show up with a
> design to burn everything down and start over because of "technical
> considerations".  It might even be _true_ that what they propose is
> technically better in some measure, but deployed base is not merely a
> technical fact to be dealt with: it's also an economic and political
> fact.
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 05:09:05PM -0700, Bob Purvy wrote:
> >
> >
> >This is what someone who is not a practicing engineer would say:
> >"everything is political."
> >
> >No, Andrew, some people just want to get the job done.
>
> I think I rather explicitly said that I do _not_ think everything is
> political.  But "just want to get the job done" is a phrase that (when
> I was doing engineering work) I often found was used to suppress some
> inconvenient consideration.  A lot of abuses and security
> vulnerabilities have come from "just get on with it", so I don't find
> such an argument to be terribly convincing on its own.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at crankycanuck.ca
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
1435 Woodhurst Blvd
McLean, VA 22102
703-448-0965

until further notice


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Jul 18 18:03:23 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 18:03:23 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
Message-ID: <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for a very cogent explanation.

There's a few observations I think many people haven't considered.

IMHO, the time period of the early Internet, roughly 70s/80s, was a 
unique time in history.? The traditional methods of scientific 
discussion and debate had relied on papers, letters, 
conferences/proceedings, and other such "documentation" for centuries.?? 
But that changed with the advent of computer networking.?? I was a 
student, and later a staff member, in Professor Licklider's group at 
MIT, and so thoroughly indoctrinated in his vision of using computers 
and networks to augment human interaction.?? So that's what we did.

As the ARPANET grew, we naturally shifted our behavior to use "the net" 
as much as possible.?? Instead of writing papers, we wrote emails.?? 
Instead of publishing documents, we put them on FTP servers.?? The 
traditional methods increasingly atrophied, within the "ARPANET 
Community", as electronic interactions improved.??? As a student, few of 
us could afford many subscriptions to journals, and the library stacks 
where you could read them much less convenient than the timesharing 
terminal down the hall, a portal into the net.? As the Internet emerged, 
and in particular CSNET and NSFNET expanded the connectivity into 
institutions not involved in building the network, I suspect the same 
transition occurred.

Unfortunately, computer storage was expensive, so you couldn't put too 
much online or keep it there for posterity.? Sadly, a lot of that 
"documentation" from the 70s/80s has now disappeared.???? By the 90s, 
computer storage costs had dropped dramatically, and most importantly 
the World Wide Web entered the scene.?? That made it possible for people 
to put much of their "documentation" readily available online and 
perhaps fragile mechanisms such as archive.org are preserving it for 
posterity.?? Sadly, few of the organizations managing the computers of 
the day apparently saw any need to preserve things like archives of 
mailing lists or email exchanges or contents of the FTP servers.?? Even 
the Datacomputer, where the mail system I built in the early 70s 
deposited much "documentation" for safekeeping, apparently didn't 
preserve it.?? At least not that I know of.

So, IMHO there is a period of perhaps 15-20 years in the 70s/80s where 
much of the "documentation" to support historians is simply lost, except 
for "interviews and recollections".?? Formal documentation was sparse, 
and the newfangled informal documentation transiting the network has 
been lost.?? That may be a cause of the scenarios you describe of 
students experiencing the "I was there" reaction.

Even before the 'net, I think the historical record is incomplete with 
just the formalities of public "documentation" like papers as sources.? 
In particular, many organizations don't publish much of their activity, 
whether for protection of their Intellectual Property or to avoid 
embarassment, or simply because there's no business advantage in 
spending your resources on it.?? So IMHO we mostly don't know what they 
did or why, yet their actions probably had a strong influence on history.

Personally I spent quite a few hours on the phone a few years ago with 
Brad Fidler relating my experiences with developments like EGP.?? My 
comments on the paper were primarily trying to get the facts right about 
that chunk of history.?? Like much of the activities in the 70s/80s, you 
won't find much that was in formal "documentation" about that; all we 
have is personal recollections.

IMHO, the 70s/80s was a unique period of time because of that transition 
that the network triggered.

A second observation concerns "what we were doing".?? IMHO this is often 
misunderstood.?? People seem to think that we were building the Internet 
we have today, and want to know why we screwed it up in some way.

I can only speak from personal experience.?? But I certainly thought we 
were building a system targeted toward government and military needs, 
deploying it to see what worked, and expecting the results of such 
research to be possibly folded into the subsequent "real" mechanisms 
that were being developed by traditional means and organizations.

The Internet was a research project, and its deployment was an 
experiment.? AFAIK, few of the people involved in implementing the 
network mechanisms had significant prior experience in building network 
equipment.? The contractors were organizations such as MIT, BBN, SRI, 
and such.? None of the names you'd associate with data communications 
(e.g., ATT) were involved.?? We were expected to "think outside the 
box", and to try new ideas.?? If there were two candidate solutions to 
some problem, one that we knew could work from others' experience, and 
one new, untried, idea, often the choice was to try something new.? We 
implemented such mechanisms not because we knew it would work, but 
because we didn't know that it wouldn't work.

I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that we were building the 
communications infrastructure that would survive for 50+ years and 
blanket the entire planet.?? That was OSI's job, but we could keep our 
research network going for a few years until they were ready. If we 
"defeated" the other guys, we didn't even know we were at war.?? At 
least I didn't...

A third observation is on the "politics" of the environment, or perhaps 
what were the mechanisms and motivations that moved it along.

My perspective is that the early years (70s/early 80s) the main driving 
force was a "benevolent dictatorship", where ARPA was the dictator and 
exerted its influence by simple control of funding. Within that 
dictatorship, there was a lot of freedom to explore your interests, as 
long as they were plausible steps toward the research goals.?? For 
example, since the Internet was (still is?) an experiment, there was a 
desire to run some tests.?? Those tests required measuring time, which 
was not an easy thing to do in a system spanning thousands of miles, and 
no GPS satellites yet. Most of us were happy with the resolution of a 
second or so that could be obtained by the classic "synchronize your 
watches" approach and a telephone.?? That wasn't good enough for Dave 
Mills, who exerted tremendous effort to create NTP so that the computers 
on the network could synchronize to milliseconds.?? IMHO, Dave's the 
reason your smartphone and computers today know what time it is.

As the Internet expanded, more players appeared, and commercial 
interests extered their influence, things changed.? Personally, I have 
no idea today how decisions are made that cause changes in the operating 
Internet that we all use.?? From the "documentation", you might believe 
that it involves the IETF process which creates Standards.?? But I've 
occasionally asked the question -- How many of the protocols and 
algorithms documented in RFCs are actually present and operating in the 
Internet machinery that I'm using right now? I've never gotten much of 
an answer, or seen much "documentation" that reveals how the design 
decisions actually are made to create the network machinery I'm using 
right now.?? Or who makes those decisions.

So, not knowing what that process is, or who is actually making 
decisions, I find it difficult to judge how "political" it might be.

Personally, I agree that the Internet today needs regulation - as long 
as it operates in some way as effective as, and reminiscent of the 
"benevolent dictatorship" of the ARPA/NSF days.? Maybe that's just not 
possible though.?? One of the design principles of the network (which 
may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have 
any single point of control, no one in charge.? One tangible result of 
that principle was EGP.

That was important for survivability in military scenarios, so perhaps 
now we're simply stuck with it.

Or maybe OSI will appear next year.

Thanks for reading,
/Jack Haverty




On 7/18/21 2:23 PM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.? Apologies for 
> any duplicates.]
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> the paper that has caused so much discussion.? But I have an
> observation.
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via 
> Internet-history wrote:
>> I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's 
>> awesome
>> summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
>
> I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> rather than just Internet recollections.
>
> In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> is now "science and technology studies").? Young historians working on
> the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
>
> Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> what it meant.? That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.? And that
> is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> is arguing.
>
> Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> "is only") a political instrument.? This is one interpretation of
> Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)? The
> Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> were doing at the time.? I don't know about you, but my experience has
> been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> there.? This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
>
> Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> people shipped first, and so that's what took over.? And it must be
> admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.? The Internet
> approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> as widely as possible.? I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> organizational decision other than "political".
>
> Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> is legible in any particular protocol.? To move from, "Some Internet
> protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> documented in the historical record.? That might not be surprising to
> people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> politics by other means when designing the networks.? But I think
> Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> Internet.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>




From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 18:37:00 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 18:37:00 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVExLxPhfbVYbgkvoaLPWXtnR-3fG72kVkK2rxYhjvQc1w@mail.gmail.com>

Thanks, Jack.

It's probably a good thing that we / they / you didn't realize it was
going to blanket the planet. No one can design with that much pressure. If
you do turn something out that way, it'll probably be a costly flop.

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 6:03 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hello Andrew,
>
> Thanks for a very cogent explanation.
>
> There's a few observations I think many people haven't considered.
>
> IMHO, the time period of the early Internet, roughly 70s/80s, was a
> unique time in history.  The traditional methods of scientific
> discussion and debate had relied on papers, letters,
> conferences/proceedings, and other such "documentation" for centuries.
> But that changed with the advent of computer networking.   I was a
> student, and later a staff member, in Professor Licklider's group at
> MIT, and so thoroughly indoctrinated in his vision of using computers
> and networks to augment human interaction.   So that's what we did.
>
> As the ARPANET grew, we naturally shifted our behavior to use "the net"
> as much as possible.   Instead of writing papers, we wrote emails.
> Instead of publishing documents, we put them on FTP servers.   The
> traditional methods increasingly atrophied, within the "ARPANET
> Community", as electronic interactions improved.    As a student, few of
> us could afford many subscriptions to journals, and the library stacks
> where you could read them much less convenient than the timesharing
> terminal down the hall, a portal into the net.  As the Internet emerged,
> and in particular CSNET and NSFNET expanded the connectivity into
> institutions not involved in building the network, I suspect the same
> transition occurred.
>
> Unfortunately, computer storage was expensive, so you couldn't put too
> much online or keep it there for posterity.  Sadly, a lot of that
> "documentation" from the 70s/80s has now disappeared.     By the 90s,
> computer storage costs had dropped dramatically, and most importantly
> the World Wide Web entered the scene.   That made it possible for people
> to put much of their "documentation" readily available online and
> perhaps fragile mechanisms such as archive.org are preserving it for
> posterity.   Sadly, few of the organizations managing the computers of
> the day apparently saw any need to preserve things like archives of
> mailing lists or email exchanges or contents of the FTP servers.   Even
> the Datacomputer, where the mail system I built in the early 70s
> deposited much "documentation" for safekeeping, apparently didn't
> preserve it.   At least not that I know of.
>
> So, IMHO there is a period of perhaps 15-20 years in the 70s/80s where
> much of the "documentation" to support historians is simply lost, except
> for "interviews and recollections".   Formal documentation was sparse,
> and the newfangled informal documentation transiting the network has
> been lost.   That may be a cause of the scenarios you describe of
> students experiencing the "I was there" reaction.
>
> Even before the 'net, I think the historical record is incomplete with
> just the formalities of public "documentation" like papers as sources.
> In particular, many organizations don't publish much of their activity,
> whether for protection of their Intellectual Property or to avoid
> embarassment, or simply because there's no business advantage in
> spending your resources on it.   So IMHO we mostly don't know what they
> did or why, yet their actions probably had a strong influence on history.
>
> Personally I spent quite a few hours on the phone a few years ago with
> Brad Fidler relating my experiences with developments like EGP.   My
> comments on the paper were primarily trying to get the facts right about
> that chunk of history.   Like much of the activities in the 70s/80s, you
> won't find much that was in formal "documentation" about that; all we
> have is personal recollections.
>
> IMHO, the 70s/80s was a unique period of time because of that transition
> that the network triggered.
>
> A second observation concerns "what we were doing".   IMHO this is often
> misunderstood.   People seem to think that we were building the Internet
> we have today, and want to know why we screwed it up in some way.
>
> I can only speak from personal experience.   But I certainly thought we
> were building a system targeted toward government and military needs,
> deploying it to see what worked, and expecting the results of such
> research to be possibly folded into the subsequent "real" mechanisms
> that were being developed by traditional means and organizations.
>
> The Internet was a research project, and its deployment was an
> experiment.  AFAIK, few of the people involved in implementing the
> network mechanisms had significant prior experience in building network
> equipment.  The contractors were organizations such as MIT, BBN, SRI,
> and such.  None of the names you'd associate with data communications
> (e.g., ATT) were involved.   We were expected to "think outside the
> box", and to try new ideas.   If there were two candidate solutions to
> some problem, one that we knew could work from others' experience, and
> one new, untried, idea, often the choice was to try something new.  We
> implemented such mechanisms not because we knew it would work, but
> because we didn't know that it wouldn't work.
>
> I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that we were building the
> communications infrastructure that would survive for 50+ years and
> blanket the entire planet.   That was OSI's job, but we could keep our
> research network going for a few years until they were ready. If we
> "defeated" the other guys, we didn't even know we were at war.   At
> least I didn't...
>
> A third observation is on the "politics" of the environment, or perhaps
> what were the mechanisms and motivations that moved it along.
>
> My perspective is that the early years (70s/early 80s) the main driving
> force was a "benevolent dictatorship", where ARPA was the dictator and
> exerted its influence by simple control of funding. Within that
> dictatorship, there was a lot of freedom to explore your interests, as
> long as they were plausible steps toward the research goals.   For
> example, since the Internet was (still is?) an experiment, there was a
> desire to run some tests.   Those tests required measuring time, which
> was not an easy thing to do in a system spanning thousands of miles, and
> no GPS satellites yet. Most of us were happy with the resolution of a
> second or so that could be obtained by the classic "synchronize your
> watches" approach and a telephone.   That wasn't good enough for Dave
> Mills, who exerted tremendous effort to create NTP so that the computers
> on the network could synchronize to milliseconds.   IMHO, Dave's the
> reason your smartphone and computers today know what time it is.
>
> As the Internet expanded, more players appeared, and commercial
> interests extered their influence, things changed.  Personally, I have
> no idea today how decisions are made that cause changes in the operating
> Internet that we all use.   From the "documentation", you might believe
> that it involves the IETF process which creates Standards.   But I've
> occasionally asked the question -- How many of the protocols and
> algorithms documented in RFCs are actually present and operating in the
> Internet machinery that I'm using right now? I've never gotten much of
> an answer, or seen much "documentation" that reveals how the design
> decisions actually are made to create the network machinery I'm using
> right now.   Or who makes those decisions.
>
> So, not knowing what that process is, or who is actually making
> decisions, I find it difficult to judge how "political" it might be.
>
> Personally, I agree that the Internet today needs regulation - as long
> as it operates in some way as effective as, and reminiscent of the
> "benevolent dictatorship" of the ARPA/NSF days.  Maybe that's just not
> possible though.   One of the design principles of the network (which
> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
> any single point of control, no one in charge.  One tangible result of
> that principle was EGP.
>
> That was important for survivability in military scenarios, so perhaps
> now we're simply stuck with it.
>
> Or maybe OSI will appear next year.
>
> Thanks for reading,
> /Jack Haverty
>
>
>
>
> On 7/18/21 2:23 PM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> > [I think I sent this earlier from the wrong address.  Apologies for
> > any duplicates.]
> >
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > In the sprit of full disclosure, I will note both that I work for the
> > organization that hosts this list but I'm speaking for myself, and
> > also that I have a personal relationship with one of the authors of
> > the paper that has caused so much discussion.  But I have an
> > observation.
> > On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via
> > Internet-history wrote:
> >> I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's
> >> awesome
> >> summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
> >
> > I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
> > point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
> > important for anything pretending to be an Interhet _history_ list,
> > rather than just Internet recollections.
> >
> > In a previous career, I thought I was going to be an academic, and
> > I knew a lot of historians because I worked on what was then called
> > history and philosophy of science and technology (I think the jargon
> > is now "science and technology studies").  Young historians working on
> > the 1960s and 1970s kept having trouble publishing papers because
> > they'd submit to a journal and get back a review that said in effect,
> > "That's not what happened, because I was _there_."
> >
> > Now, the problem with our past selves is that we can't interview them.
> > We can only interview our present selves, who have all the
> > retrospective knowledge and story-telling about what we did _then_ and
> > what it meant.  That isn't to say such interviews and recollections
> > are not valuable, but they're also not documentary evidence.  And that
> > is I think an important point that is related to something the paper
> > is arguing.
> >
> > Regardless of what people doing engineering think, there are a lot of
> > people today who believe the Internet needs plenty of regulation, and
> > who have become convinced that the Internet is (or maybe I should say
> > "is only") a political instrument.  This is one interpretation of
> > Laura DeNardis's slogan, "Protocols are politics by other means."
> > (For whatever it's worth, I think that interpretation doesn't hold up
> > to a close reading of DeNardis's original text, but I have not noticed
> > that popular discourse is much affected by close readings.)  The
> > Badiei-Fidler paper is making the point that such a claim is poorly
> > justified given the history of several protocols, and that indeed the
> > historical record doesn't make it plain that the people designing
> > things _themselves_ had perfectly clear interpretations of what they
> > were doing at the time.  I don't know about you, but my experience has
> > been that I often only really know where I am going after I get
> > there.  This is in part because it is the effort of doing the work
> > that reveals what compromises need to be made in a technology.
> >
> > Indeed, as several have pointed out in this thread, that was one basic
> > problem behind the OSI approach: it appeared to want a
> > fully-worked-out design that "everyone" could agree on before anything
> > could be built and shipped, and the result was that the Internet
> > people shipped first, and so that's what took over.  And it must be
> > admitted, I think, that there is something at least partly political
> > in such a decision: one approach valued Officially Approved Agreement
> > and controlled distribution of documents over getting working things
> > in the hands of those trying to make stuff work.  The Internet
> > approach instead was to try things in the open and share documents
> > as widely as possible.  I'm not sure what to call that kind of
> > organizational decision other than "political".
> >
> > Yet, as Badiei and Fidler argue, there's no _inherent_ politics that
> > is legible in any particular protocol.  To move from, "Some Internet
> > protocols have politics built in," or even, "There is a fundamentally
> > political decision in any organizational form," to, "All protocols are
> > inherently political and must be designed to promote certain kinds of
> > values," is hard to square with the history of several protocols as
> > documented in the historical record.  That might not be surprising to
> > people on this list, who problably didn't think they were practicing
> > politics by other means when designing the networks.  But I think
> > Badiei and Fidler are trying to make that case to scholars in other
> > fields, who are busy interpreting the history that many here lived in
> > a way that might not be good for the future of innovation on the
> > Internet.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > A
> >
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sun Jul 18 19:14:48 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 14:14:48 +1200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>

On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
...
> One of the design principles of the network (which 
> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have 
> any single point of control, no one in charge.

That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.

I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down explicitly,
way before ARPANET was conceived.

[BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]

    Brian


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Jul 18 21:15:59 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 21:15:59 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fc861ce6-6cda-991a-01fc-fe2493d3551b@dcrocker.net>


>> One of the design principles of the network (which
>> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
>> any single point of control, no one in charge.
 >
> That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
> for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
> remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.


Note that BGP was the final brick in that design house.  Until then, 
there was officially a central backbone service, but with BGP it became 
official that there wasn't.

As 'politics' go, that was a particularly liberating functional enhancement.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From paf at frobbit.se  Sun Jul 18 21:24:57 2021
From: paf at frobbit.se (=?utf-8?Q?Patrik_F=C3=A4ltstr=C3=B6m?=)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 06:24:57 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
References: <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <04F5FF0E-0AC3-4F0E-A328-D4D2CBC94B1A@frobbit.se>

The situation in Europe that lead to creation of EBONE and earlier than that networks like NORDUNET and SUNET (as multi protocol networks) is I think best described in the Amsterdam section in the travel log by Carl Malamud. Page 109 in the PDF (page 95 if you look at the printed page numbers) that you can find here:

https://public.resource.org/eti/eti-hardcover.pdf

   Patrik

> 18 juli 2021 kl. 22:45 skrev Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>:
> 
> ?Andy,
> 
> Thanks (and Vint) for that injection of facts. I'd like to qualify one remark, though.
> 
>> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> 
> It does slightly depend on where you were sitting though. Where I was sitting from
> early 1985 (the networking group at CERN) our main motivation was to get from a
> horribly diverse set of protocols to a standard set, and that pushed us very hard
> towards OSI, and that was our official policy. We changed that policy a few years
> later when it was clear that TCP/IP was much more widely supported by our 
> vendors
> than OSI. That was all entirely pragmatic and technically based. However, 
> there
> was tremendous pressure from two quarters against that choice, purely on political
> grounds: from European Commission officials and from the incumbent telecom carriers
> (i.e. the PTTs). Of course that wasn't anything to do with human rights impact,
> but only to do with defending European industrial interests against perceived
> US high-tech hegemony, and defending the incumbent telcos' monopolies. So 
> it
> was also bound up with the general push towards telco deregulation. Another factor
> was the ITU (just down the road from CERN) defending its territory against the
> encroachment of the cheeky Internet upstarts.
> 
> Retro-fitting a human rights argument to any of this is counterfactual. I 
> would
> say it was at least 1995 before any human rights argument became relevant.
> (That's fact-based. The first time I recall any rights related argument being
> raised was during the ITU-organised Geneva Internet Day in March 1995, when
> someone asked the panel of white males on stage why there were no women
> involved in the Internet. Fortunately I was able to answer that there were
> some, but too few, with examples.)
> 
> Regards
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
>> On 19-Jul-21 01:47, Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history wrote:
>> I WAS there in the 80s, at BBN, where I worked first on the ARPAnet writing
>> IMP code, and then later I managed, at DARPA's direction, the ARPAnet
>> transition from NCP to TCP/IP. I also wrote reports for the DoD to help
>> them plan their "eventual" transition from TCP/IP to ISO/GOSIP/CLNP/TP4,
>> which as we all know never actually happened. I was also writing RFCs
>> before the IETF was even established. So I've got some amount of personal
>> knowledge here. :-)
>> 
>> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
>> TCP/IP won over OSI because it was designed by a group of people (largely
>> grad students at the time) that were interested in creating something that
>> worked, and once they had a protocol design, they wrote the code for
>> prototypes and tested it out both in locally in their labs and using the
>> ARPAnet as a testbed for making it work over a WAN, which they had access
>> to as they were students. They saw what worked and what didn't, and then
>> refined the specs and implementations to match. All of this work happening
>> in the open arena resulted in the relatively rapid development of freely
>> accessible specifications and implementations that anyone could obtain and
>> play with. As has been said elsewhere, that resulted in it being taught 
> to
>> other students, and them playing with it in their labs, resulting in a
>> broad knowledge base entering industry. Meanwhile, the free code was
>> adopted by and incorporated into the major OSes of the day, especially the
>> various flavors of UNIX, or was available as add-on implementations, either
>> free or commercial (such as FTP Software's stack for DOS and early
>> Windows). And much of this happened even before the IETF existed!
>> 
>> Meanwhile, OSI kept plodding along, but you had to pay for the
>> specifications in order to just read them., and at the time whatever
>> implementations that existed weren't free, and couldn't hold a candle to
>> what was freely available for TCP/IP.
>> 
>> The folks working on OSI were very aware of TCP/IP and had a lot of good
>> ideas for improvements, and could have won if their specifications and
>> implementations had also been freely available, and if their timing had
>> been better (earlier rather than later).
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Andy
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 2:55 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>>>> On 18 Jul 2021, at 1:08, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Are there some decisions you think were *not* made for technical
>>> reasons? Particularly in the 80s.
>>> 
>>> I was not present in standardisation in the 80s. I started around 1990.
>>> Over time, I saw, specifically when later being area director and in IAB,
>>> arguments be other parameters visible in market economy. From my
>>> perspective, calendaring was the first real situation when technical
>>> arguments did not have any role at all in the IETF. It was just market
>>> economy (and the ability to expand the market the sponsors of the
>>> technologies had).
>>> 
>>>   Patrik
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> 
> 


From geoff at iconia.com  Sun Jul 18 21:42:23 2021
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 18:42:23 -1000
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrg-bcBTfHQTJr0ez=sBYfzTORodtKj6v9L3w_86htiDXA@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 4:15 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> ..
> > One of the design principles of the network (which
> > may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
> > any single point of control, no one in charge.
>
> That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
> for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
> remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
>

and in furthermore of the above a John Gilmore quip comes to mind:

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".

https://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html


-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Jul 18 23:00:16 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 23:00:16 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>

I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point was a 
technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central computer that 
was managing the network by performing functions such as setting 
routes.??? That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET IMPs, where 
no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the 
remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a functional network.

What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion 
that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization 
"managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of 
the day, were under a single organization's control.?? The Internet 
tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design 
principle.?? EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that 
policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply to make 
it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment, while 
keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.

As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something like a 
"right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the Internet.?? 
But we didn't really think about that at the time.?? You still had to 
find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire connecting 
their router to yours.

Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way too long 
ago....

/Jack



On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> ...
>> One of the design principles of the network (which
>> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
>> any single point of control, no one in charge.
> That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
> for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
> remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
>
> I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down explicitly,
> way before ARPANET was conceived.
>
> [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
> Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
>
>      Brian




From vgcerf at gmail.com  Mon Jul 19 04:52:57 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 07:52:57 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>

Jack,

at DARPA request around 1975 (?), Paul B and I (and perhaps others)
prepared a paper regarding the disposition of the Arpanet. We proposed that
the IMPs become the property of the various participants and that the
operation become a cooperative. DARPA decided instead to simply carry on
with central management by handing operational responsibility to DCA and,
finally, to shut the system down in 1990. It isn't clear that the
cooperative idea would actually have worked but it's indicative of Paul's
proclivity for distributed operation.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 2:00 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point was a
> technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central computer that
> was managing the network by performing functions such as setting
> routes.    That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET IMPs, where
> no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the
> remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a functional network.
>
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> the day, were under a single organization's control.   The Internet
> tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
> principle.   EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that
> policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply to make
> it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment, while
> keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.
>
> As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something like a
> "right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the Internet.
> But we didn't really think about that at the time.   You still had to
> find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire connecting
> their router to yours.
>
> Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way too long
> ago....
>
> /Jack
>
>
>
> On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > ...
> >> One of the design principles of the network (which
> >> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
> >> any single point of control, no one in charge.
> > That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
> > for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
> > remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
> >
> > I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down explicitly,
> > way before ARPANET was conceived.
> >
> > [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
> > Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
> >
> >      Brian
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From steve at shinkuro.com  Mon Jul 19 04:59:40 2021
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 07:59:40 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvJrEiD7VERzfpb3VwpKyGOD4Q0RZZjDBg=voWEgPyMBNQ@mail.gmail.com>

I was in the DARPA office 1971-74.  Once when Baran visited the office we
chatted briefly.  He talked about having each IMP be its own business.  I
gave it a moment's thought and couldn't see how that made sense.

Steve


On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:53 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Jack,
>
> at DARPA request around 1975 (?), Paul B and I (and perhaps others)
> prepared a paper regarding the disposition of the Arpanet. We proposed that
> the IMPs become the property of the various participants and that the
> operation become a cooperative. DARPA decided instead to simply carry on
> with central management by handing operational responsibility to DCA and,
> finally, to shut the system down in 1990. It isn't clear that the
> cooperative idea would actually have worked but it's indicative of Paul's
> proclivity for distributed operation.
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 2:00 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point was a
> > technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central computer that
> > was managing the network by performing functions such as setting
> > routes.    That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET IMPs, where
> > no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the
> > remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a functional
> network.
> >
> > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> > "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> > the day, were under a single organization's control.   The Internet
> > tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
> > principle.   EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that
> > policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply to make
> > it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment, while
> > keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.
> >
> > As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something like a
> > "right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the Internet.
> > But we didn't really think about that at the time.   You still had to
> > find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire connecting
> > their router to yours.
> >
> > Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way too long
> > ago....
> >
> > /Jack
> >
> >
> >
> > On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > > On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > > ...
> > >> One of the design principles of the network (which
> > >> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
> > >> any single point of control, no one in charge.
> > > That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
> > > for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
> > > remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
> > >
> > > I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down
> explicitly,
> > > way before ARPANET was conceived.
> > >
> > > [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
> > > Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
> > >
> > >      Brian
> >
> >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From ocl at gih.com  Mon Jul 19 08:42:56 2021
From: ocl at gih.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olivier_MJ_Cr=c3=a9pin-Leblond?=)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 18:42:56 +0300
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9d27afaf-8521-176b-d9d9-ab16fbeae4ec@gih.com>



On 18/07/2021 23:45, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> Thanks (and Vint) for that injection of facts. I'd like to qualify one remark, though.
>
>> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> It does slightly depend on where you were sitting though. Where I was sitting from
> early 1985 (the networking group at CERN) our main motivation was to get from a
> horribly diverse set of protocols to a standard set, and that pushed us very hard
> towards OSI, and that was our official policy. We changed that policy a few years
> later when it was clear that TCP/IP was much more widely supported by our
> vendors
> than OSI. That was all entirely pragmatic and technically based. However,
> there
> was tremendous pressure from two quarters against that choice, purely on political
> grounds: from European Commission officials and from the incumbent telecom carriers
> (i.e. the PTTs). Of course that wasn't anything to do with human rights impact,
> but only to do with defending European industrial interests against perceived
> US high-tech hegemony, and defending the incumbent telcos' monopolies. So
> it
> was also bound up with the general push towards telco deregulation. Another factor
> was the ITU (just down the road from CERN) defending its territory against the
> encroachment of the cheeky Internet upstarts.

There were two points of view in the early 90s. On the one hand, 
technical, the people actually using the computing resources had a 
choice between the ITU protocols on big mainframes that were cumbersome 
to use (try X.400 email addressing) and that necessitated hacks like 
Kermit to get files transferred across to their PCs. On the other, a 
multiplication of free software like KA9Q & other pc-based software 
allowed for a TCP-IP stack on a PC. Technically it wasn't even a choice. 
It seems to me the ITU protocols lost the battle, the moment personal 
computers became commonplace.
But politically in Europe, what you described above was *exactly* what 
was going on - even in the UK, when it was time to evolve JANET in the 
early 90s.
Kindest regards,

Olivier


From bpurvy at gmail.com  Mon Jul 19 09:58:01 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 09:58:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <9d27afaf-8521-176b-d9d9-ab16fbeae4ec@gih.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
 <9d27afaf-8521-176b-d9d9-ab16fbeae4ec@gih.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVESzLQ_nT0A0xXUYRUammFPywQ6DDVwr0bthTwpn3md7g@mail.gmail.com>

since we're winding down here:

I personally worked on an X.400 gateway to 3Com's mail system, and got a
trip to Paris out of it. This was in 1989, so at least some people still
thought X.400 was still going to be important.

It was never deployed (and from a personal standpoint, I would not say I
covered myself with glory on that one, either).

The world had plenty of chances to embrace this CCITT standard (since the
first version was released in 1984), and they rejected it. X.500 fared a
little better, in that we now have LDAP.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 8:43 AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 18/07/2021 23:45, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> > Thanks (and Vint) for that injection of facts. I'd like to qualify one
> remark, though.
> >
> >> IMHO, NONE of the decisions made at the time were "political" in nature.
> > It does slightly depend on where you were sitting though. Where I was
> sitting from
> > early 1985 (the networking group at CERN) our main motivation was to get
> from a
> > horribly diverse set of protocols to a standard set, and that pushed us
> very hard
> > towards OSI, and that was our official policy. We changed that policy a
> few years
> > later when it was clear that TCP/IP was much more widely supported by our
> > vendors
> > than OSI. That was all entirely pragmatic and technically based. However,
> > there
> > was tremendous pressure from two quarters against that choice, purely on
> political
> > grounds: from European Commission officials and from the incumbent
> telecom carriers
> > (i.e. the PTTs). Of course that wasn't anything to do with human rights
> impact,
> > but only to do with defending European industrial interests against
> perceived
> > US high-tech hegemony, and defending the incumbent telcos' monopolies. So
> > it
> > was also bound up with the general push towards telco deregulation.
> Another factor
> > was the ITU (just down the road from CERN) defending its territory
> against the
> > encroachment of the cheeky Internet upstarts.
>
> There were two points of view in the early 90s. On the one hand,
> technical, the people actually using the computing resources had a
> choice between the ITU protocols on big mainframes that were cumbersome
> to use (try X.400 email addressing) and that necessitated hacks like
> Kermit to get files transferred across to their PCs. On the other, a
> multiplication of free software like KA9Q & other pc-based software
> allowed for a TCP-IP stack on a PC. Technically it wasn't even a choice.
> It seems to me the ITU protocols lost the battle, the moment personal
> computers became commonplace.
> But politically in Europe, what you described above was *exactly* what
> was going on - even in the UK, when it was time to evolve JANET in the
> early 90s.
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Jul 19 14:13:32 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 14:13:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJrEiD7VERzfpb3VwpKyGOD4Q0RZZjDBg=voWEgPyMBNQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABf5zvJrEiD7VERzfpb3VwpKyGOD4Q0RZZjDBg=voWEgPyMBNQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <259f5d36-3d2b-6cc4-474e-714f3938e294@3kitty.org>

Fascinating.? I had never heard of those proposals and decisions until 
yesterday.?? I wonder if it was a "political" or technical or some other 
motivation involved in the decision to migrate to DCA.

IMHO, most people don't really understand the "system level" view of 
ARPANET technology.?? The internals, e.g., the "routing algorithm" and 
such have gotten a lot of scientific attention and mathematical 
analysis, and the IMPs plausibly pioneered the notion of "no central 
control point" and demonstrated its viability.??? No IMP in the ARPANET 
was "special".? They all ran the exact same code.

But the IMPs were surrounded by a management system that kept the 
network running and evolving.?? My office at BBN was "down the hall" 
from the ARPANET NOC, where there was often a flurry of activity 
involved in "operating" the net.?? Much of that involved fixing problems 
such as circuit failures, and orchestrating changes like deployment of 
new software releases.

In addition to the operators, there was a rather large group of network 
analysts who would examine all of the data collected about network 
behavior, and figure out what to do about it, hopefully and usually in 
advance of problems appearing to the network users.? That would include 
changes to the IMP code resulting in a new release to be invisibly (to 
the users) deployed throughout the collection of IMPs without 
disruptions.?? It would also include changes to the topology of the net, 
ordering new circuits, rearranging the interconnects between IMPs, 
etc.?? The ARPANET, and the other networks of IMPs that we deployed, 
were constantly changing.

All of that system engineering was accomplished by having a single point 
of management, i.e., often the BBN NOC and nearby analysts. Some 
IMP-network owners took over operational control, and staffed their own 
NOC, but still relied on the BBN Analysts to help them make the 
decisions involved in evolving their networks.

It's hard to see how that would have all been accomplished if every IMP 
in the ARPANET was owned and managed by its particular site. Perhaps the 
"cooperative" of IMP owners would have been primarily a financial 
construct to allocate costs, with some kind of committee or contracted 
group (e.g., BBN) to perform the system management. Still, IMHO that 
would have been a single point of control where system-level decisions 
were made.

When Vint asked me if I'd be willing to take on the task of making the 
Internet into an operational service, as reliable as the ARPANET, I 
agreed, and attacked the task by following the lead of the ARPANET, 
which of course was natural since the ARPANET was literally down the 
hall.? That started with getting the NOC operators to do 24x7 monitoring 
of the Gateways, with the "Gateway Group" recruiting some people with 
ARPANET experience to provide the analysts and programming functions.

IMHO, the decision to follow the lead of the ARPANET was analagous to 
ARPA's decision to move the ARPANET to DCA.?? With the task to "make the 
Gateways 24x7 operational", I made the decision to accomplish that by 
plagiarizing (the politically correct term was "technology transfer") as 
much of the ARPANET "management" mechanisms as we could.?? I don't 
recall anyone at ARPA directing me to fold the Gateways into the ARPANET 
ecosystem, but that could probably have been predicted as a consequence 
of moving the Gateway project into the same group within BBN that was 
responsible for the ARPANET.? Vint may remember more about that event in 
Internet History and what the motivations were.

My decision was purely pragmatic; it seemed to be the obvious way to 
make the Internet into a stable service.?? Even so, decades later, I 
learned that some of the people within BBN thought that I had "stolen" 
the project by lobbying ARPA to move it to my group.?? That wasn't true, 
but I can see how people might have thought it was. Perhaps some 
historian will even find such a claim in some obscure report in the 
"documentation" and have tangible proof of a decision driven by office 
politics.?? As Olivier pointed out, history often looks different when 
viewed from different perspectives, even as it is happening.?? You can't 
always trust the "documentation."

Bob Kahn disrupted that evolutionary path that the Internet was on, by 
setting a task to enable groups other than BBN to build Gateways and 
manage their own chunks of the global Internet.?? That resulted in Eric 
and I inventing "Autonomous Systems" and EGP.?? But we didn't know that 
it was even possible to build a reliable Internet which was a 
cooperating set of separately managed ASes.? We did think that we could 
use EGP to insulate our own "core gateways" to keep them functioning 
despite what might be happening in other ASes.?? That was sufficient to 
enable the people who were clamoring to build their own gateways to do 
so, all as part of the Internet Experiment.?? We thought there might be 
as many as a dozen or so ASes that would appear; at BBN, we could even 
use a second AS to try out our own new ideas, with confidence it 
wouldn't disrupt the core service.

We did have concerns about having multiple managers, because we had seen 
problems in the operational Internet.?? One example I vaguely recall is 
when two academic sites (this was probably after NSFNET entered the 
Internet) were physically close but topologically distant in the net.?? 
To support some collaborative project, they decided, on their own, to 
interconnect two of their own gateways with a 9.6kb circuit.?? They 
expected that to result in better performance on file transfers between 
their sites.

What actually happened, because of the primitive nature of the 
"hop-based" routing in the Internet, was that their skinny 9.6kb circuit 
suddenly became the best route for much of the cross-country traffic in 
the entire Internet.? Chaos ensued.? Such events were expected to worsen 
with more and more ASes in the picture, but we expected that at least we 
could keep the core system running well by creating appropriate 
"insulation" on our own gateway code.

I lost track of the Internet "plumbing" as my work moved "up the stack", 
and I haven't been involved in operating any part of the Internet for 
20+ years.? Imagine my surprise recently when I learned that there were 
now thousands of ASes, and they all somehow seem to mostly work together 
to create the Internet we all use.?? I do wonder now how that all 
actually works, who's managing the pieces, and who's making the 
decisions, and whether it's for pragmatic, technical, or political 
reasons, and how events such as the one I just described are avoided.

Whatever and however it happened, it at least appears that Baran and 
Kahn were right.?? So far.

/Jack Haverty


On 7/19/21 4:59 AM, Steve Crocker wrote:
> I was in the DARPA office 1971-74.? Once when Baran visited the office 
> we chatted briefly.? He talked about having each IMP be its own 
> business.? I gave it a moment's thought and couldn't see how that made 
> sense.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:53 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>
>     Jack,
>
>     at DARPA request around 1975 (?), Paul B and I (and perhaps others)
>     prepared a paper regarding the disposition of the Arpanet. We
>     proposed that
>     the IMPs become the property of the various participants and that the
>     operation become a cooperative. DARPA decided instead to simply
>     carry on
>     with central management by handing operational responsibility to
>     DCA and,
>     finally, to shut the system down in 1990. It isn't clear that the
>     cooperative idea would actually have worked but it's indicative of
>     Paul's
>     proclivity for distributed operation.
>
>     On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 2:00 AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
>     internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>
>     > I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point
>     was a
>     > technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central
>     computer that
>     > was managing the network by performing functions such as setting
>     > routes.? ? That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET
>     IMPs, where
>     > no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the
>     > remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a
>     functional network.
>     >
>     > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision --
>     the notion
>     > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
>     organization
>     > "managing the network".? ?The ARPANET, and IIRC all other
>     networks of
>     > the day, were under a single organization's control. ?The Internet
>     > tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
>     > principle.? ?EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that
>     > policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply
>     to make
>     > it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment,
>     while
>     > keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.
>     >
>     > As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something
>     like a
>     > "right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the
>     Internet.
>     > But we didn't really think about that at the time.? ?You still
>     had to
>     > find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire
>     connecting
>     > their router to yours.
>     >
>     > Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way
>     too long
>     > ago....
>     >
>     > /Jack
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>     > > On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>     > > ...
>     > >> One of the design principles of the network (which
>     > >> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must
>     not have
>     > >> any single point of control, no one in charge.
>     > > That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its
>     necessity
>     > > for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
>     > > remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
>     > >
>     > > I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down
>     explicitly,
>     > > way before ARPANET was conceived.
>     > >
>     > > [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE
>     Trans. on
>     > > Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
>     > >
>     > >? ? ? Brian
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > 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
>     <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
>     <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
>



From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Jul 19 14:25:50 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 19 Jul 2021 17:25:50 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
Message-ID: <20210719212551.5A5A424BA4E1@ary.qy>

It appears that Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <ajs at crankycanuck.ca> said:
>On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>>I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's awesome
>>summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
>
>I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
>point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
>important for anything pretending to be an Internet _history_ list,
>rather than just Internet recollections.

I agree that there is a useful paper lurking within this document, but in its current
form it's counterproductive.  It's full of misunderstandings, wrong guesses, and plain
errors of fact which discredit whatever it's trying to say.

There is a dismaying history of non-technical authors trying to write
about Internet history, making serious errors, and trying to brazen it
out. Dave's note a few messages back was about his review of Milt
Mueller's book "Ruling the Root." Dave, who was of course there at the
time, found that Milt faked a lot of the references. The review and
Milt's unpersuasive responses are fun to read for some version of fun.
Another paper full of errors just confirms the belief that the
Internet history crowd have nothing to say.

If the authors found some mentors and reviewers who know the subject
area, perhaps from this list, and went through and checked the
assumptions and conclusions and footnotes, and got the facts right and
the conclusions better supported, I think they could turn it into an
OK paper with a persuasive point, with which I happen to agree.

R's,
John

PS: I note that the lead author is a law student. I have read a lot of
law review articles, and I have tried to read this paper, and a
writing coach could greatly broaden their audience.



From bill.n1vux at gmail.com  Mon Jul 19 15:10:20 2021
From: bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 18:10:20 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAbKA3XO9J4Tk1QY01Scx2XgDDK3Bxtex-3DAE9T3pveD-7WHw@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 8:17 PM Darius Kazemi via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Most of you probably don't know me. I'm an engineer by trade and amateur
> historian for kicks. I spend a lot of time acting as a kind of translator
> of technology history for people who work as engineers today, because I
> don't want my colleagues to repeat the mistakes of the past and would
> rather they learn from its successes. I spend a lot of time reading old
> RFCs and other documents from the 60s-80s because I'd rather learn from
> your hard earned wisdom than shoot myself in the foot when I'm working on
> decentralized protocols and applications.


Sensible!

> (I'm currently devouring
> Padlipsky's 1985 "Elements of Networking Style", a political document if
> there ever was one.)
>

Mike might have quibbled that debunking nonsense is political only if the
purveyors of nonsense make it so.
But indeed, that was the case - he (we) knew at the time it was politically
dangerous to discuss the emperor's new fashion sense publicly. He had the
good sense and/or good fortune to be doing so from a place that DoD had
chartered to speak Truth to Power on other weightier matters, which
provided some amount of protection (until they came for the
tobacco-addicts).

I'm glad you're "devouring" and I hope you're enjoying MAP's "Elements".
(I am personally to blame for introducing Mike to the acquiring field
editor; but it's my prior office-mate's lousy timing on his Hawaii office
rotation that initiated the coincidences.)

2) I often describe a protocol as "an agreement between parties about the
> way things are expected to be done". A protocol that no one agrees to use
> is dead in the water, as you all know. I don't believe etymology is
> deterministic but it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic protocol!
>

Nicely put!  I feel Mike would have approved. (speaking /ex cathedra/)

> Regardless, it is difficult for me to envision an agreement between parties
> as anything but political. I'll note that I don't mean political in the
> sense of campaigns and government spending. I mean it in the broad sense of
> humans organizing to do things. I think some of the misunderstanding here
> is that we are working off different definitions of "political".
>

Indeed.
In much of engineering usage, "political" is the antonym of "technical" and
generally refers to circuses like Sales and/or Marketing attempting to
blame Engineering for building what was requested not what was wanted, or
the Peter-Principle'd PHBs having turf wars for their own petty purposes.
Using the same word for real-world electoral/diplomatic politics is indeed
confusing to the mind trained over decades to sny away from anything
"political" in a "technical" discussion.

> 3) It seems the paper has been misread ...
>  The absolute meat of the paper is in its last two sentences, which


In which case the most important feedback to the authors is
DO NOT BURY THE LEDE.
If we knew it would end with those sentences, we might have finished
reading it.
Seems like a conclusion that would be worth including in the abstract.

It really feels like some of you saw the word "politics", saw that this was
> written by people who aren't engineers, and assumed they were coming from a
> position antagonistic to yours.


In the current milieu with refrain "Tech is not Neutral", that is an often
correct assumption.

(OTOH I will agree with those making political points e.g. against lack of
diversity in VC-funded development (OxyFlo clip meters) or against Machine
Learning, wherein they are /inter alia/ pointing out that it likely will
learn the human biases in the training set. I've preferred AI with
explanatory mechanisms since the prior AI Scare. Research like "Weapons of
Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality" is a welcome ally to
my long-held position. It's not a political position to say a rigged demo
that only appears fit for purpose shouldn't be put in production, which i
would claim fits under MAP's Technico-Aesthetic Criticism, but there are
political positions that reach the same conclusion by observing downstream
outcomes.)

> If anything, this paper is highly
> antagonistic to the over-politicization of technology!


That is a pleasant surprise.
Pray, authors, surprise me sooner!

> That you personally
> cannot read the article and parse it isn't anyone's fault,


I probably could if suitably motivated ...
but the abstract and a fast scroll didn't provide that.

> for the same
> reason that you can't expect a nontechnical person to read RFC 114 and make
> heads or tails of it.
>

A number of technical folks have complained of reading Padlipsky, too. :-D

(I for one do like an author who challenges the reader.
But I would, wouldn't I.)

> Anyway it's been pretty frustrating to see everyone talking at cross
> purposes


One might suggest that talking at cross purposes was the original purpose
of the Internet,
and Cat pictures only a fortuitous later discovery. (Citation: SF-LOVERS,
the entire run.)

Bill Ricker
The Literary & Spiritous Estate of Michael A Padlipsky
https://n1vux.github.io/articles/MAP/


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Mon Jul 19 16:04:14 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:04:14 +1200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <a7a47f7a-9cd1-17f4-2911-6a59c8fa2db3@gmail.com>

Jack, fortunately the RAND Corp. is more enlightened than the IEEE.
I think this is identical:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html

There's more at https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3767.html

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 19-Jul-21 18:00, Jack Haverty wrote:
> I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point was a 
> technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central computer that 
> was managing the network by performing functions such as setting 
> routes.??? That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET IMPs, where 
> no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the 
> remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a functional network.
> 
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion 
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization 

> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of 
> the day, were under a single organization's control.?? The Internet 
> tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design 
> principle.?? EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that 
> policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply to make 
> it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment, while 
> keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.
> 
> As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something like a 
> "right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the Internet.?? 
> But we didn't really think about that at the time.?? You still had to 
> find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire connecting 
> their router to yours.
> 
> Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way too long 

> ago....
> 
> /Jack
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> ...
>>> One of the design principles of the network (which
>>> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
>>> any single point of control, no one in charge.
>> That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
>> for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
>> remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
>>
>> I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down explicitly,
>> way before ARPANET was conceived.
>>
>> [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
>> Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
>>
>>      Brian
> 
> 
> .
> 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Jul 19 16:28:46 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 16:28:46 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>

On 7/18/21 5:17 PM, Darius Kazemi via Internet-history wrote:
> it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic protocol!

It may be older than that.?? I recall at one of the early Internet 
meetings, circa 1978, Vint explained to all of us that the "Protocol" in 
TCP was descended from the ancient Greek "protokolon", which was the 
name of the short section of writing at the beginning of a scroll of 
papyrus, containing an explanation of what was in the rest of the scroll 
and how it was intended to be used.?? So you could find what you wanted 
without unrolling the whole scroll.

So a "protokolon" was essentially a set of rules and information that 
allowed someone to use the contents of a papyrus scroll.?? Kind of like 
how a protocol tells us how to use the bits that follow. The word is 
still in some use today - I've seen "protokolon" used in descriptions of 
ancient papyrus unearthed by archaeologists that I've stumbled across.?? 
But I don't know if it had anything to do with ancient politics.

/Jack




From vgcerf at gmail.com  Mon Jul 19 16:34:11 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 19:34:11 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_USRRG2LU5AXbQe6bac6jkb0PbWttkkrArvzMmFO6cVnQ@mail.gmail.com>

not so much ancient politics - just that you needed a header (protokollon)
on a scroll to know what was in it just like you needed headers on packets
to know where they were to go, etc. And both diplomatic and medical
protocols were all about the agreements on behaviors, formats for
interaction, etc.

v


On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:28 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 7/18/21 5:17 PM, Darius Kazemi via Internet-history wrote:
> > it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> > literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic
> protocol!
>
> It may be older than that.   I recall at one of the early Internet
> meetings, circa 1978, Vint explained to all of us that the "Protocol" in
> TCP was descended from the ancient Greek "protokolon", which was the
> name of the short section of writing at the beginning of a scroll of
> papyrus, containing an explanation of what was in the rest of the scroll
> and how it was intended to be used.   So you could find what you wanted
> without unrolling the whole scroll.
>
> So a "protokolon" was essentially a set of rules and information that
> allowed someone to use the contents of a papyrus scroll.   Kind of like
> how a protocol tells us how to use the bits that follow. The word is
> still in some use today - I've seen "protokolon" used in descriptions of
> ancient papyrus unearthed by archaeologists that I've stumbled across.
> But I don't know if it had anything to do with ancient politics.
>
> /Jack
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Jul 19 17:28:45 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:28:45 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_USRRG2LU5AXbQe6bac6jkb0PbWttkkrArvzMmFO6cVnQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_USRRG2LU5AXbQe6bac6jkb0PbWttkkrArvzMmFO6cVnQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <87f5feee-a92f-7672-91ba-f6b4d893c93c@3kitty.org>

Ahah!?? So the Ancient Greeks invented Packet Switching, complete with 
headers, but called their packets "scrolls"!

Errr, hmmm, maybe it was actually the Egyptians, or Assyrians, or ...??? 
And the Greeks simply gave the headers a new name.

/Jack

On 7/19/21 4:34 PM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> not so much ancient politics - just that you needed a header (protokollon)
> on a scroll to know what was in it just like you needed headers on packets
> to know where they were to go, etc. And both diplomatic and medical
> protocols were all about the agreements on behaviors, formats for
> interaction, etc.
>
> v
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:28 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> On 7/18/21 5:17 PM, Darius Kazemi via Internet-history wrote:
>>> it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
>>> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic
>> protocol!
>>
>> It may be older than that.   I recall at one of the early Internet
>> meetings, circa 1978, Vint explained to all of us that the "Protocol" in
>> TCP was descended from the ancient Greek "protokolon", which was the
>> name of the short section of writing at the beginning of a scroll of
>> papyrus, containing an explanation of what was in the rest of the scroll
>> and how it was intended to be used.   So you could find what you wanted
>> without unrolling the whole scroll.
>>
>> So a "protokolon" was essentially a set of rules and information that
>> allowed someone to use the contents of a papyrus scroll.   Kind of like
>> how a protocol tells us how to use the bits that follow. The word is
>> still in some use today - I've seen "protokolon" used in descriptions of
>> ancient papyrus unearthed by archaeologists that I've stumbled across.
>> But I don't know if it had anything to do with ancient politics.
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>




From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Jul 19 17:32:43 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:32:43 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <a7a47f7a-9cd1-17f4-2911-6a59c8fa2db3@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <a7a47f7a-9cd1-17f4-2911-6a59c8fa2db3@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <931394ee-ceb2-bf38-b641-b9654109992b@3kitty.org>

Thanks Brian - I just read it quickly and as I recalled, it really just 
talks about the second-by-second management of network operation - i.e., 
not the same as the day/week/month kind of management tasks I was 
referencing, which are also critical to continued network reliability.
/Jack

On 7/19/21 4:04 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Jack, fortunately the RAND Corp. is more enlightened than the IEEE.
> I think this is identical:
> https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html
>
> There's more at https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3767.html
>
> Regards
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 19-Jul-21 18:00, Jack Haverty wrote:
>> I don't have access to the IEEE archives, but IIRC Baran's point was a
>> technical one - that there shouldn't be any single central computer that
>> was managing the network by performing functions such as setting
>> routes.??? That's true, and was incorporated in the ARPANET IMPs, where
>> no IMP was "in charge" and if any IMP (or even the NOC) failed, the
>> remaining IMPs could continue operating just fine as a functional network.
>>
>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>> the day, were under a single organization's control.?? The Internet
>> tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
>> principle.?? EGP/BGP was part of the technology to implement that
>> policy, although at the time the motivation for EGP was simply to make
>> it possible for other people to build a gateway and experiment, while
>> keeping the "core" at least safe from disruption.
>>
>> As a side effect, such mechanisms may have introduced something like a
>> "right to connect" enabling anyone with a router to join the Internet.
>> But we didn't really think about that at the time.?? You still had to
>> find someone already inside the network willing to add a wire connecting
>> their router to yours.
>>
>> Apologies if I got the Baran info wrong; I read that paper way too long
>> ago....
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/18/21 7:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>> On 19-Jul-21 13:03, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> ...
>>>> One of the design principles of the network (which
>>>> may not appear in "documentation") was that the network must not have
>>>> any single point of control, no one in charge.
>>> That was indeed the key to worldwide success, far beyond its necessity
>>> for "national security" reasons. Even today, the Internet seems
>>> remarkably hard to switch off, even in totalitarian states.
>>>
>>> I think it is in the documentation. Paul Baran wrote it down explicitly,
>>> way before ARPANET was conceived.
>>>
>>> [BARAN, P. 1964. On Distributed Communication Networks, IEEE Trans. on
>>> Communications Systems, CS-12:1-9]
>>>
>>>       Brian
>>
>> .
>>




From ned+internet-history at mrochek.com  Mon Jul 19 17:49:18 2021
From: ned+internet-history at mrochek.com (ned+internet-history at mrochek.com)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:49:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] A paper {dkim-fail}
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:28:45 -0700"
 <87f5feee-a92f-7672-91ba-f6b4d893c93c@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_USRRG2LU5AXbQe6bac6jkb0PbWttkkrArvzMmFO6cVnQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <87f5feee-a92f-7672-91ba-f6b4d893c93c@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <01S1LGA5VIRE0085YQ@mauve.mrochek.com>

Life has even earlier claims, I think. There are any number of labeling and
routing mechanisms in cellular metabolism. An especially topical example is the
so-called "S glycoprotein signal peptide", which is used in the BioNTech/Pfizer
Covid-19 Vaccine to route the manufactured modified spike protein to the
endoplasmic reticulum so it can exit the cell and interact with the immune
system. (It's also used by the virus itself to route manufactured viral
particles to that location.)

It seems there multiple ways to code this particular directive. The one used in
the vaccine maximizes the number of Cs and Gs, likely because it is know that
more Cs and Gs the more efficient the conversion.

More at:

  https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/

And if you want the full story (at least the parts we understand), I recommend
Michal and Schomburg's Biochemical Pathways, which has to be seen to be
believed.

				Ned

> Ahah!?? So the Ancient Greeks invented Packet Switching, complete with
> headers, but called their packets "scrolls"!

> Errr, hmmm, maybe it was actually the Egyptians, or Assyrians, or ...???
> And the Greeks simply gave the headers a new name.

> /Jack

> On 7/19/21 4:34 PM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> > not so much ancient politics - just that you needed a header (protokollon)
> > on a scroll to know what was in it just like you needed headers on packets
> > to know where they were to go, etc. And both diplomatic and medical
> > protocols were all about the agreements on behaviors, formats for
> > interaction, etc.
> >
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:28 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 7/18/21 5:17 PM, Darius Kazemi via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> >>> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic
> >> protocol!
> >>
> >> It may be older than that.   I recall at one of the early Internet
> >> meetings, circa 1978, Vint explained to all of us that the "Protocol" in
> >> TCP was descended from the ancient Greek "protokolon", which was the
> >> name of the short section of writing at the beginning of a scroll of
> >> papyrus, containing an explanation of what was in the rest of the scroll
> >> and how it was intended to be used.   So you could find what you wanted
> >> without unrolling the whole scroll.
> >>
> >> So a "protokolon" was essentially a set of rules and information that
> >> allowed someone to use the contents of a papyrus scroll.   Kind of like
> >> how a protocol tells us how to use the bits that follow. The word is
> >> still in some use today - I've seen "protokolon" used in descriptions of
> >> ancient papyrus unearthed by archaeologists that I've stumbled across.
> >> But I don't know if it had anything to do with ancient politics.
> >>
> >> /Jack
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Internet-history mailing list
> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>


> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



From paf at frobbit.se  Tue Jul 20 00:27:54 2021
From: paf at frobbit.se (Patrik =?utf-8?b?RsOkbHRzdHLDtm0=?=)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 09:27:54 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <259f5d36-3d2b-6cc4-474e-714f3938e294@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABf5zvJrEiD7VERzfpb3VwpKyGOD4Q0RZZjDBg=voWEgPyMBNQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <259f5d36-3d2b-6cc4-474e-714f3938e294@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <60184546-3510-489D-9FB9-51EF9E87D0C7@frobbit.se>

[I included a slide that was too large for the list, now with links]

On 19 Jul 2021, at 23:13, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:

> That resulted in Eric and I inventing "Autonomous Systems" and EGP.

Wonderful story Jack! Thanks!

My first international talk was fall of 1990 when I was invited by Cisco to Networkers Europe to talk about how we in SUNET/NorduNET started to use AS:es and EGP.

I have scanned all slides on the network setup and you can find the single slide which has the overall architecture on here:

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Q04xXeLb00ehXLaugOTo9Sj6ePCZ8gV/view?usp=sharing>

And the full slide deck here:

<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-RvXOh85Z0RAOLq8gsJGtle2DoJs0dgD/view?usp=sharing>

Once again, thanks Jack!

   Patrik
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 256 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210720/0854107c/attachment.asc>

From bortzmeyer at nic.fr  Tue Jul 20 02:34:47 2021
From: bortzmeyer at nic.fr (Stephane Bortzmeyer)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:34:47 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>
References: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>
Message-ID: <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org>

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 01:10:44AM -0400,
 John R. Levine via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote 
 a message of 36 lines which said:

> It might be interesting to ask Paul Mockapetris if he considered
> other topologies (he does answer his mail)

I discussed several times the history of the DNS with Paul Mockapetris
(for instance in the context of qname minimization) and, when asked
about the rationale for a design choice, he often replies honestly
"I'm not sure" or "I don't remember". Which seems to indicate that
there was not a systematic and documented effort at the origin of the
DNS to explore in detail all the possible alternatives.

This is not a criticism: his goal was not to do a survey of name
resolution systems, but to produce something which worked (which he
did). When designing a new system, there is a fine line to draw
between "studying so many variants you never have time to actually
create something" and "jumping on the first idea without considering
the other possibilities". IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented
yet :-)



From vint at google.com  Tue Jul 20 02:42:43 2021
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 05:42:43 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <60184546-3510-489D-9FB9-51EF9E87D0C7@frobbit.se>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CABf5zvJrEiD7VERzfpb3VwpKyGOD4Q0RZZjDBg=voWEgPyMBNQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <259f5d36-3d2b-6cc4-474e-714f3938e294@3kitty.org>
 <60184546-3510-489D-9FB9-51EF9E87D0C7@frobbit.se>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggcLkOJM2mUnUrDFGCMeiAC+S_u1X2zOLKO60Rk9WmSUrw@mail.gmail.com>

thanks Jack and Patrik - great to have these details.
v


On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 3:28 AM Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> [I included a slide that was too large for the list, now with links]
>
> On 19 Jul 2021, at 23:13, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
> > That resulted in Eric and I inventing "Autonomous Systems" and EGP.
>
> Wonderful story Jack! Thanks!
>
> My first international talk was fall of 1990 when I was invited by Cisco
> to Networkers Europe to talk about how we in SUNET/NorduNET started to use
> AS:es and EGP.
>
> I have scanned all slides on the network setup and you can find the single
> slide which has the overall architecture on here:
>
> <
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Q04xXeLb00ehXLaugOTo9Sj6ePCZ8gV/view?usp=sharing
> >
>
> And the full slide deck here:
>
> <
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-RvXOh85Z0RAOLq8gsJGtle2DoJs0dgD/view?usp=sharing
> >
>
> Once again, thanks Jack!
>
>    Patrik
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
1435 Woodhurst Blvd
McLean, VA 22102
703-448-0965

until further notice


From bortzmeyer at nic.fr  Tue Jul 20 02:52:38 2021
From: bortzmeyer at nic.fr (Stephane Bortzmeyer)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 11:52:38 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <9d27afaf-8521-176b-d9d9-ab16fbeae4ec@gih.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <e33db451-c700-3c5e-4423-297cb92fe7fc@gmail.com>
 <9d27afaf-8521-176b-d9d9-ab16fbeae4ec@gih.com>
Message-ID: <20210720095238.GD28296@sources.org>

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 06:42:56PM +0300,
 Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote 
 a message of 43 lines which said:

> There were two points of view in the early 90s. On the one hand,
> technical, the people actually using the computing resources had a
> choice between the ITU protocols on big mainframes that were
> cumbersome to use (try X.400 email addressing) and that necessitated
> hacks like Kermit to get files transferred across to their PCs. On
> the other, a multiplication of free software like KA9Q & other
> pc-based software allowed for a TCP-IP stack on a PC.

There were more than two points of view. There was also the UUCP
people (who merged with the TCP/IP people but only after) and the
Fidonet crowd, which was both anti-OSI (their focus was on small local
machines) and anti-TCPIP (because it was "the US Army").



From dave at taht.net  Tue Jul 20 02:57:06 2021
From: dave at taht.net (Dave =?iso-8859-1?Q?T=E4ht?=)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 09:57:06 +0000
Subject: [ih] The "right to repair" and spacex starlink
Message-ID: <20210720095706.GA1007@mail.taht.net>

I've been dinging spacex's starlink effort and
(especially) the right to repair this week. The key, short
segment is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9gLo6Xrwgw

(they are using an ancient linux kernel on their router
 and dishy with no bufferbloat mitigations in then)

The whole show is here, where I leverage among
other crazy things, a "vogon cluebat":

https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/638?autostart=false

please reshare and enjoy!

So far I have got a few folk with extensive packet expertise to
join the "starlink" mailing list to offer them some
sage advice about how to go about building a better
LEO network, and I'd love it if more from here joined.

subscribe at:

https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

-- 
My email server only sends and accepts starttls encrypted mail in transit.
One benefit - it stops all spams thus far, cold. If you are not encrypting
 by default you are not going to get my mail or I, yours.


From steffen at sdaoden.eu  Tue Jul 20 06:52:33 2021
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:52:33 +0200
Subject: [ih] A paper {dkim-fail}
In-Reply-To: <01S1LGA5VIRE0085YQ@mauve.mrochek.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <CAAFtm_UiHGtjctzG7A4AOQ-dnSiGz_gGXat6qK0KM+P34cL6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CADHc3QFyPUNDrRmbtxNnM-qDDQix0fPK40c4R5aGBh8GHAw6kQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <fadb8c4c-daf0-1c2b-a33c-9e8dd19c14cb@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_USRRG2LU5AXbQe6bac6jkb0PbWttkkrArvzMmFO6cVnQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <87f5feee-a92f-7672-91ba-f6b4d893c93c@3kitty.org>
 <01S1LGA5VIRE0085YQ@mauve.mrochek.com>
Message-ID: <20210720135233.cuN94%steffen@sdaoden.eu>

ned+internet-history at mrochek.com wrote in
 <01S1LGA5VIRE0085YQ at mauve.mrochek.com>:
 |Life has even earlier claims, I think. There are any number of labeling and

It took a billion vivisected animals to find that out.  Just
sayin'

 |routing mechanisms in cellular metabolism. An especially topical example \
 |is the
 |so-called "S glycoprotein signal peptide", which is used in the BioNTech\
 |/Pfizer
 |Covid-19 Vaccine to route the manufactured modified spike protein to the
 |endoplasmic reticulum so it can exit the cell and interact with the immune
 |system. (It's also used by the virus itself to route manufactured viral
 |particles to that location.)

I liked that AAAAAAAAAAA at the end.  (The more we program there,
the more we get, no?)

 |It seems there multiple ways to code this particular directive. The \
 |one used in
 |the vaccine maximizes the number of Cs and Gs, likely because it is \
 |know that
 |more Cs and Gs the more efficient the conversion.
 |
 |More at:
 |
 |  https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the\
 |  -biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
 |
 |And if you want the full story (at least the parts we understand), \
 |I recommend
 |Michal and Schomburg's Biochemical Pathways, which has to be seen to be
 |believed.

I have not read that.  All i hope is that they do not start to
program in Rust, as i prefer personalized garbage collection!

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)


From steffen at sdaoden.eu  Tue Jul 20 07:15:44 2021
From: steffen at sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 16:15:44 +0200
Subject: [ih] The "right to repair" and spacex starlink
In-Reply-To: <20210720095706.GA1007@mail.taht.net>
References: <20210720095706.GA1007@mail.taht.net>
Message-ID: <20210720141544.iiL9Y%steffen@sdaoden.eu>

Dave T?ht wrote in
 <20210720095706.GA1007 at mail.taht.net>:
 |I've been dinging spacex's starlink effort and
 |(especially) the right to repair this week. The key, short
 |segment is here:
 |
 |https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9gLo6Xrwgw
 |
 |(they are using an ancient linux kernel on their router
 | and dishy with no bufferbloat mitigations in then)
 |
 |The whole show is here, where I leverage among
 |other crazy things, a "vogon cluebat":
 |
 |https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/638?autostart=false
 |
 |please reshare and enjoy!

To be very honest, i cannot enjoy anything surrounding these
efforts.  I hate the so-called "Starlink trains" on the sky above
us; i have seen other constellations which would seem preferrable,
if anything at all, but likely none of those, as commercial
satellites are something i totally refuse.  Whereas that is my
personal fun, the pollution is not.
I think that one big penis must have landed again in the meantime,
i think the date was carefully chosen.  The Guardian yesterday had
a small notice on the air pollution caused by "a rocket start"
alone, let alone resource digging, construction, transport, and
the private learjet flight to the launch pad.  Sorry, no.
You know, Velvet Underground had a perfect day ~50 years ago, and
it was a bit cheaper for everyone else.

 |So far I have got a few folk with extensive packet expertise to
 |join the "starlink" mailing list to offer them some
 |sage advice about how to go about building a better
 |LEO network, and I'd love it if more from here joined.
 |
 |subscribe at:
 |
 |https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

But luckily Hubble could be fixed again, i have read.  Granted,
i hate most of what Musk does.  I just do not get it.  Just today
i have read they destroyed a crypto mining farm with a bulldozer,
was it in Indonesia?  As a german i concur flamethrowers are no
fun, a fire-eater, maybe.  Yeah and electric cars, poor sausage on
that cross, really, the sheer pollution that will happen because
of all the infrastructural changes which are needed to go
electrical cars, instead of waiting five more years (or spending
massive worldwide development interest) and just upgrading the
existing petrol stations with hydrogen.  650 and more kilogram of
batteries in those electrical SUVs, no no.  These alone are almost
as heavy as the Lotus frame and body they used first.
I personally give as much fecal matter as you desire for these
good business models.

Granted, that they are.  The question is, how come that all this
is possible, who give billions and billions of credit for way over
a decade, so that the best engineers and designers etc. can be
bought, and paid for such a long time, and lots of expensive
development can occur.  Seems i am just to stupid to know the
right people who put trust and money.  Anyhow.

Spoiler off.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Jul 20 11:43:18 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 20 Jul 2021 14:43:18 -0400
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org>
Message-ID: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>

It appears that Stephane Bortzmeyer via Internet-history <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> said:
>This is not a criticism: his goal was not to do a survey of name
>resolution systems, but to produce something which worked (which he
>did). When designing a new system, there is a fine line to draw
>between "studying so many variants you never have time to actually
>create something" and "jumping on the first idea without considering
>the other possibilities". IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
>ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented yet :-)

If you look at the design criteria for the DNS, good read-only performance via replication, highly
scalable, distributed management, there weren't a lot of plausible design options and there still aren't.

In fairness, when people were designing the DNS in the early 1980s I doubt it occurred to anyone
that less than 20 years later, DNS names would have become collectable and tradable fashion accessories.

R's,
John


From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 12:41:01 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 12:41:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
References: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>

While I'm thinking of it, there's another part of Internet History and 
DNS...

IIRC, DNS appeared as a replacement for the files of "hostnames" that 
the NIC maintained but which had become unwieldy as the network grew.?? 
I don't recall the details, but it always seemed to me that the "Mail 
Records" aspect of DNS was sort of glued on to DNS as a convenient way 
to add another kind of data to the network service.??? So DNS didn't 
just tell you what address to use to connect to a host, but also 
specified where to send its mail.

Then in the early 1990s, I was working at Oracle, and we had a similar 
need.?? Database users (basically the hordes of people in corporations 
with some kind of terminal in front of them) wanted to connect to 
databases, by name.?? E.g., some might connect to "Accounting", others 
to "Inventory", others to "Sales", "Personnel", "Physical Plant" etc.

At the time that struck me as a problem simlar to the DNS' Mail 
functionality.? One design choice could have been to add another record 
type or two to DNS, or perhaps even generalize DNS to include "Service" 
records, permitting numerous different services to then be referenced by 
name as Mail was.?? Want to know where to send mail -- get the MX 
record.?? Want to use Accounting -- get the SVC record.

That would certainly have been possible, but we didn't pursue it. It 
wasn't reasonable to rely on an Internet-specific mechanism because, at 
that point in time, essentially all corporations were using something 
other than TCP.? Although they usually had TCP somewhere in the 
organization (brought in by those radical new college grads no doubt!), 
most core functions of the company still ran on something else - SNA, 
DECNet, Netware, even Appletalk (seemed to be popular in Marketing).

We needed Naming that would work anywhere, even if there was no 
IP-capable network.? So we created some software called Oracle Names, 
which did pretty much the same things as DNS but would do it in any 
flavor of network and even across different networks by means of an 
"Interchange" (which was analogous to an IP gateway in the cloud 
diagrams I drew to explain it).

It turned out that was amazingly easy to do.?? Once I was indoctrinated 
into the world of databases, by the immersion osmosis method of being 
surrounded by people who all lived and breathed databases, it was easy 
to see DNS, and naming mechanisms in general, as a fairly simple and 
straightforward database? program, built on top of the distributed, 
replicated, database technology that we could assume was going to be 
present in our customers' networks.

Timing seems to be an important factor in the History of the Internet.?? 
Databases (relational) weren't really prominent, especially in the 
academic and research communities I experienced, in the early 80s, and 
SQL, i.e., the protocol which makes databases easy to use, hadn't yet 
fully congealed as a standard.?? I had heard of databases, but knew 
little about them before joining Oracle.

I wonder how the Internet mechanisms would have evolved if the timing 
had been a bit different, and the people who built the early network 
mechanisms had been able to consider using database technology or 
techniques when designing? mechanisms such as DNS.

/Jack Haverty



On 7/20/21 11:43 AM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It appears that Stephane Bortzmeyer via Internet-history <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> said:
>> This is not a criticism: his goal was not to do a survey of name
>> resolution systems, but to produce something which worked (which he
>> did). When designing a new system, there is a fine line to draw
>> between "studying so many variants you never have time to actually
>> create something" and "jumping on the first idea without considering
>> the other possibilities". IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
>> ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented yet :-)
> If you look at the design criteria for the DNS, good read-only performance via replication, highly
> scalable, distributed management, there weren't a lot of plausible design options and there still aren't.
>
> In fairness, when people were designing the DNS in the early 1980s I doubt it occurred to anyone
> that less than 20 years later, DNS names would have become collectable and tradable fashion accessories.
>
> R's,
> John




From woody at pch.net  Tue Jul 20 14:30:24 2021
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 14:30:24 -0700
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
References: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
 <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>



> On Jul 20, 2021, at 12:41 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> ...in the early 1990s, I was working at Oracle, and we had a similar need.   Database users (basically the hordes of people in corporations with some kind of terminal in front of them) wanted to connect to databases, by name. So we created some software called Oracle Names, which did pretty much the same things as DNS but would do it in any flavor of network and even across different networks by means of an IP gateway.

Oracle was (perhaps unknowingly) paying for a significant amount of interesting Internet development in that era.  In 1994-1995 I built an anycast distribution infrastructure for Oracle, with FTP server clusters at two IXPs on the east coast, and two IXPs on the west coast, to distribute Oracle?s documentation and training materials, which were otherwise too slow and costly to download from any single point.  To the best of my knowledge, that was the first national-scale production anycast CDN.  I?d done smaller ones within California starting in 1989.

                                -Bill

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210720/44463baa/attachment.asc>

From bpurvy at gmail.com  Tue Jul 20 14:59:58 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 14:59:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>
References: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
 <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
 <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVEK7AzruDLt1Gh3PvCbKZa3+2xac2hjSrGWDz7PJWwxsg@mail.gmail.com>

It wasn't unknowing. I worked with Jack, and went to several IETFs on
Oracle's dime, and led a WG.

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 2:30 PM Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jul 20, 2021, at 12:41 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > ...in the early 1990s, I was working at Oracle, and we had a similar
> need.   Database users (basically the hordes of people in corporations with
> some kind of terminal in front of them) wanted to connect to databases, by
> name. So we created some software called Oracle Names, which did pretty
> much the same things as DNS but would do it in any flavor of network and
> even across different networks by means of an IP gateway.
>
> Oracle was (perhaps unknowingly) paying for a significant amount of
> interesting Internet development in that era.  In 1994-1995 I built an
> anycast distribution infrastructure for Oracle, with FTP server clusters at
> two IXPs on the east coast, and two IXPs on the west coast, to distribute
> Oracle?s documentation and training materials, which were otherwise too
> slow and costly to download from any single point.  To the best of my
> knowledge, that was the first national-scale production anycast CDN.  I?d
> done smaller ones within California starting in 1989.
>
>                                 -Bill
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 15:07:58 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:07:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>
References: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
 <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
 <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>
Message-ID: <4ce7bf0d-869d-8c4d-883d-d2c3f10f8e83@3kitty.org>

Very cool, thanks.? I was at Oracle and involved with operating the 
corporate intranet in the 90s.?? We always wondered exactly what all the 
traffic was doing!

In terms of Internet History, one observation I offer is that, as users 
invaded the Internet, they started to build things themselves.?? It was 
(and is) easy to do so given the "platform" provided by TCP and IP.?? It 
seems that such development continues even today, evidenced by popular 
applications and their underlying technology (CDNs et al) which are 
prominent with netizens such as Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, et al.

IMHO, there's been a steady but unrelenting shift of technology 
development away from the traditional research/engineering machinery and 
into the users' (including corporations) realms.?? I guess that's why I 
keep wondering how much of the IETF's technology captured in RFCs is 
actually what is being used in the operating Internet.

Something for historians to ponder....

/Jack

On 7/20/21 2:30 PM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>
>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 12:41 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> ...in the early 1990s, I was working at Oracle, and we had a similar need.   Database users (basically the hordes of people in corporations with some kind of terminal in front of them) wanted to connect to databases, by name. So we created some software called Oracle Names, which did pretty much the same things as DNS but would do it in any flavor of network and even across different networks by means of an IP gateway.
> Oracle was (perhaps unknowingly) paying for a significant amount of interesting Internet development in that era.  In 1994-1995 I built an anycast distribution infrastructure for Oracle, with FTP server clusters at two IXPs on the east coast, and two IXPs on the west coast, to distribute Oracle?s documentation and training materials, which were otherwise too slow and costly to download from any single point.  To the best of my knowledge, that was the first national-scale production anycast CDN.  I?d done smaller ones within California starting in 1989.
>
>                                  -Bill
>




From gnu at toad.com  Tue Jul 20 15:08:48 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:08:48 -0700
Subject: [ih] DNS history and design
In-Reply-To: <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org> 
References: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>
 <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org>
Message-ID: <18768.1626818928@hop.toad.com>

Stephane Bortzmeyer via Internet-history wrote re the Domain Name System:
>                           IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
> ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented
> yet :-)

Distributed databases weren't invented yet either!  At the time,
there were only a handful of one-of-a-kind networks to distribute
one on!  If I was designing the DNS today, I'd probably use an
underlying technology more like that.

The DNS that Paul Mockapetris designed has scaled and lasted incredibly
well, given how early in networking history it was built.  It is one of
the few Internet protocols that uses binary packet layouts rather than
parsing text, which made it harder to debug and evolve the protocol.
And many things about the DNS were not really understood until decades
later, like how an "rrset", a collection of all the Resource Records
that have the same domain name and the same RRtype, needs to be handled
together rather than as separable records.

But the fundamental design still survives: "zones" of resource records,
each zone and record with a hierarchical global name, replicated N times
on different servers, with version numbering and automated updating
among the servers, and a "Time to Live" on each record to avoid data
going stale.  Requests and responses via UDP with a possible TCP
fallback.  Solid cacheing designed in for high performance, replication
for high reliability.

It's likely that a DNS requester that hasn't changed since 1985 could
plug in and work fine 36 years later, on the Internet of today.

Amazing!

	John
	


From woody at pch.net  Tue Jul 20 15:21:34 2021
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:21:34 -0700
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVEK7AzruDLt1Gh3PvCbKZa3+2xac2hjSrGWDz7PJWwxsg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20210720184320.4E2F224C442F@ary.qy>
 <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
 <EC25657F-A437-4ADF-A818-157AE9034838@pch.net>
 <CAFq6nVEK7AzruDLt1Gh3PvCbKZa3+2xac2hjSrGWDz7PJWwxsg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C6B9ED36-B647-46D0-9417-55015112330D@pch.net>

>> On Tue, Jul 20, 2021, 2:30 PM Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> Oracle was (perhaps unknowingly) paying for a significant amount of interesting Internet development in that era.
> 
> On Jul 20, 2021, at 2:59 PM, Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
> It wasn't unknowing. I worked with Jack, and went to several IETFs on Oracle's dime, and led a WG.

Sorry, I certainly didn?t mean to imply that it wasn?t purposeful?  Obviously Oracle was doing all kinds of interesting things intentionally and knowingly; I just meant that I think, in retrospect, that they may have been doing more than they knew.

                                -Bill

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20210720/42ff9875/attachment.asc>

From gnu at toad.com  Tue Jul 20 15:32:05 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:32:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>

Jack Haverty wrote:
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> the day, were under a single organization's control.   The Internet
> tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
> principle.

The Internet Archive is facing the same dichotomy today.

It would be better if there were multiple replicated copies, owned and
filled and operated by different organizations in different parts of the
world.  If those orgs could cooperate to exchange updates, even more
better!

At the moment, there are several replicated copies of the IA corpus,
automatically updated, but they are all under the control of a single
organization, which can suffer any of the maladies of organizations.  If
that org totters or fails at some point before the data is replicated
outside its own control, then a large fraction of the history of our
culture will be at serious risk of loss.

It took a genius to create it.  It won't take a genius to distribute it.
Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
inside a single point of failure.

	John


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Tue Jul 20 15:41:54 2021
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:41:54 -0700
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <11142cf0-ced7-2922-b4b1-888ecd84c7aa@dcrocker.net>

On 7/20/2021 3:32 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
> inside a single point of failure.

People keep using the future tense (or tone) for something that is 
already well and truly true.

Loss of that archive would already be spectacularly damaging.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


From gnu at toad.com  Tue Jul 20 15:45:12 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 15:45:12 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control:  Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com> 
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>

Jack Haverty wrote:
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> the day, were under a single organization's control.
	
The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
(alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).

Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
years ago.

	John
	


From crossd at gmail.com  Tue Jul 20 15:57:06 2021
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:57:06 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W6MC7mf5CJruaPQoKC0zMW1eXiL+kh_uv7wjdparhb3tw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 6:45 PM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Jack Haverty wrote:
> > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> > "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> > the day, were under a single organization's control.
>
> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
>
> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> years ago.
>

It's still there, still works, and perhaps amazingly, still has some
traffic.

The spammers have not entirely vacated the place, but have been greatly
attenuated; one suspects largely because it's no longer as tempting a
target as when it was in its prime.

There is occasionally interesting and relevant content, but there are also
annoyances. Those that are left tend to be those that never left, with all
that entails (both good and bad) and some are more extreme than others;
there's a lot of fighting as people have forgotten the age old 'net lesson
of, "don't feed the troll." In contrast to more recent offerings, the
trolls make their presence particularly known, and often one misses the
tools for moderation available elsewhere.

        - Dan C.


From tte at cs.fau.de  Tue Jul 20 16:02:48 2021
From: tte at cs.fau.de (Toerless Eckert)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 01:02:48 +0200
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
References: <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <20210720230248.GM57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Reminds me of some financial network that had two pretty
independent physical network infrastructures for resilience. But only one
management plane / operator entity that could roll out changes across both
networks. Guess what happened so that this "single administrative" approach
was changed. But hey, that was just some billion of money trading network
where you loose millions $$ per unit of time when it does not work, but you 
don't loose something irreproducable.

Are current Internet archive mirrors at least versioning, deduplicating archives
that never throw away old versions ? That would a least protect against loss through
origin mistakes.

There are the IMHO really evil proof of capacity cryptocurrencies that will
cause disk space to be more and more abused. I wonder if it would be possible
to design a cryptocurrency such that the space wasn't wasted but was
some, at least privately reversible mirror of an actual useful data set,
such as (parts of) the Internet archive. Ideally with an incentive to cache
data that the least number of other participants have cached he same data -
which could/should create incentive for even amoun of caching across a
large dataset...

Pretty sure this will not work. Otherwise there wold be something useful
coming out of cryptocurrencies..

Cheers
    Toerless

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 03:32:05PM -0700, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> Jack Haverty wrote:
> > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> > "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> > the day, were under a single organization's control.   The Internet
> > tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
> > principle.
> 
> The Internet Archive is facing the same dichotomy today.
> 
> It would be better if there were multiple replicated copies, owned and
> filled and operated by different organizations in different parts of the
> world.  If those orgs could cooperate to exchange updates, even more
> better!
> 
> At the moment, there are several replicated copies of the IA corpus,
> automatically updated, but they are all under the control of a single
> organization, which can suffer any of the maladies of organizations.  If
> that org totters or fails at some point before the data is replicated
> outside its own control, then a large fraction of the history of our
> culture will be at serious risk of loss.
> 
> It took a genius to create it.  It won't take a genius to distribute it.
> Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
> inside a single point of failure.
> 
> 	John
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

-- 
---
tte at cs.fau.de


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Tue Jul 20 16:03:40 2021
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:03:40 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>


> Jack Haverty wrote:
>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
>> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>
> 	


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown



From tte at cs.fau.de  Tue Jul 20 16:11:24 2021
From: tte at cs.fau.de (Toerless Eckert)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 01:11:24 +0200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control:  Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
References: <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <20210720231124.GN57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Alas, i also stopped using public usenet  groups almost 2 decades ago
(after operating it myself for almost 2 decades).

At the office, we still used email list mirrors into private usenet groups just
to be able to use the usenet tooling (NNTP and newsreader) instead of
tenths or hundreds of users subscribing to the very same mailing lists,
but ultimately,  with the trend from unix CLI to Windows/Mac/Browser
user-interfaces, that tooling benefits pretty much vanished.

AFAIK, for the last > 10 years, public usenet is primarily for distribution
of likely often legally questionable large, segmented binary content.
AFAIK, relatively few specialized ISPs are still offering usenet as
a chargeable service for access to this content.

Cheers
    Toerless

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 03:45:12PM -0700, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> Jack Haverty wrote:
> > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> > "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> > the day, were under a single organization's control.
> 	
> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> 
> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> years ago.
> 
> 	John
> 	
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

-- 
---
tte at cs.fau.de


From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 16:39:06 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 16:39:06 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>

Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, in 
the early 80s before EGP?

I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET (Dick 
Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly dominated 
by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was experimenting 
with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a primary motivator 
for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to connect and do their 
thing without impacting the core.?? BBN had some managerial role in 
NSFNET too IIRC.

After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
Internetworking changed.

/Jack


On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 
>>> notion
>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>
>>
>
>




From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 16:57:07 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 16:57:07 -0700
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <11142cf0-ced7-2922-b4b1-888ecd84c7aa@dcrocker.net>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
 <11142cf0-ced7-2922-b4b1-888ecd84c7aa@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <c43fb02b-0299-831a-a8ba-ee78969a5b87@3kitty.org>

With all of the corporations now doing "cloud computing", wouldn't such 
a replication be a small blip in their operation that wouldn't even be 
noticed by a Netflix or Youtube or AWS or the like.?? A corporate 
donation of storage space to preserve the history of the net might even 
provide a message for Marketing to use.??? Perhaps a logo proudly 
displaying membership in the Museum of the Internet? After 30 years, my 
Oracle contacts have long gone on to other things but some one or more 
of the Big Tech crowd might be worth asking. Or maybe they've been asked 
and said no.?? If so, shame on them.

/Jack

On 7/20/21 3:41 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 7/20/2021 3:32 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
>> Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
>> inside a single point of failure.
>
> People keep using the future tense (or tone) for something that is 
> already well and truly true.
>
> Loss of that archive would already be spectacularly damaging.
>
> d/
>




From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Tue Jul 20 16:57:55 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 11:57:55 +1200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <ff00a75e-f343-bead-3194-a98b6e0b6b1a@gmail.com>

On 21-Jul-21 11:39, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, in 
> the early 80s before EGP?

My perception from Europe in the second half of the 80s was that they
were all very much independent managerially. And even with one agency
(DOE) there was a lot of rivalry between ESNET and the HEPNET people.
The HEPNET people talked more to the SPAN people that to ESNET.
Dennis Jennings would be the person to ask about early NSFnet.

   Brian

> 
> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET (Dick 
> Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly dominated 
> by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was experimenting 
> with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a primary motivator 
> for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to connect and do their 
> thing without impacting the core.?? BBN had some managerial role in 
> NSFNET too IIRC.
> 
> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
> Internetworking changed.
> 
> /Jack
> 
> 
> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 
>>>> notion
>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
> 
> 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 17:02:09 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 17:02:09 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>

It's the time frame.?? My comment was about the period before EGP was 
created in 1982.?? The IETF didn't exist yet.?? I don't remember which 
if any of those networks existed before 1982.?? But if they did, I think 
they had a single manager.

/Jack


On 7/20/21 4:45 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> No, all of the regionals and other networks were various independent organizations. There was no centralization, just the chaos of trying to keep things working through the informal network of operator?s personal connections. For this, the IETF and NANOG were indispensable.
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, in the early 80s before EGP?
>>
>> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET (Dick Edmiston).   NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.  Our experiences when Dave was experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to connect and do their thing without impacting the core.   BBN had some managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>>
>> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of Internetworking changed.
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
>> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
>>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
>>>>> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>>> Really?  NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history




From vgcerf at gmail.com  Tue Jul 20 18:49:22 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 21:49:22 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>

The fuzzball net arrived about 1986 at 50Kb/s - congested quickly and the
IBM/MCI/MERIT version of NSFNET launched in 1988 at 1.5 Mb/s

I am not aware of any involvement of BBN in either the fuzzball network or
the subsequent NSFNET except that presumably Mills implemented EGP. BGP
doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov Rekhter of IBM and Keith
Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it.

v


On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 8:02 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> It's the time frame.   My comment was about the period before EGP was
> created in 1982.   The IETF didn't exist yet.   I don't remember which
> if any of those networks existed before 1982.   But if they did, I think
> they had a single manager.
>
> /Jack
>
>
> On 7/20/21 4:45 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> > No, all of the regionals and other networks were various independent
> organizations. There was no centralization, just the chaos of trying to
> keep things working through the informal network of operator?s personal
> connections. For this, the IETF and NANOG were indispensable.
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Jul 20, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor,
> in the early 80s before EGP?
> >>
> >> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET
> (Dick Edmiston).   NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly
> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.  Our experiences when Dave was
> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a
> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to connect
> and do their thing without impacting the core.   BBN had some managerial
> role in NSFNET too IIRC.
> >>
> >> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
> Internetworking changed.
> >>
> >> /Jack
> >>
> >>
> >> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
> >>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the
> notion
> >>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
> organization
> >>>>> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> >>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
> >>> Really?  NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer
> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Internet-history mailing list
> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Tue Jul 20 18:52:05 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 21:52:05 -0400
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <c43fb02b-0299-831a-a8ba-ee78969a5b87@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
 <11142cf0-ced7-2922-b4b1-888ecd84c7aa@dcrocker.net>
 <c43fb02b-0299-831a-a8ba-ee78969a5b87@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_VkK=yP0t5pLci7F9QEXftGrF+6W4BZZwbD_MZcG_cULQ@mail.gmail.com>

we're talking petaflops - not inconsequential even for Google.
v


On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 7:57 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> With all of the corporations now doing "cloud computing", wouldn't such
> a replication be a small blip in their operation that wouldn't even be
> noticed by a Netflix or Youtube or AWS or the like.   A corporate
> donation of storage space to preserve the history of the net might even
> provide a message for Marketing to use.    Perhaps a logo proudly
> displaying membership in the Museum of the Internet? After 30 years, my
> Oracle contacts have long gone on to other things but some one or more
> of the Big Tech crowd might be worth asking. Or maybe they've been asked
> and said no.   If so, shame on them.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 7/20/21 3:41 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> > On 7/20/2021 3:32 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> >> Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
> >> inside a single point of failure.
> >
> > People keep using the future tense (or tone) for something that is
> > already well and truly true.
> >
> > Loss of that archive would already be spectacularly damaging.
> >
> > d/
> >
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Jul 20 18:55:27 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 20 Jul 2021 21:55:27 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W6MC7mf5CJruaPQoKC0zMW1eXiL+kh_uv7wjdparhb3tw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210721015528.4BF1124CA244@ary.qy>

It appears that Dan Cross via Internet-history <crossd at gmail.com> said:
>It's still there, still works, and perhaps amazingly, still has some
>traffic.

Yup.  If you post something to comp.compilers, I'm still the moderator.  There's
a fair number of groups with interesting traffic like comp.arch (computer architecture)
and uk.railway (train spotter anoraks.)


>The spammers have not entirely vacated the place, but have been greatly
>attenuated; one suspects largely because it's no longer as tempting a
>target as when it was in its prime.

The structure of usenet has changed a lot.  Now there is a handful of extremely
large usenet nodes like Giganews that carry everything, and a lot of small nodes
like mine that only carry the newsgroups of interest to the users at the site.
The vast majority of traffic at the large nodes is in alt.binaries.* which is
what you'd expect it to be.

R's,
John


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Jul 20 19:09:48 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 20 Jul 2021 22:09:48 -0400
Subject: [ih] early DNS,
 A paper that has something to to with the Internet
In-Reply-To: <be71e563-afe7-6422-9dc5-d3fcbbb6c6ac@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <20210721020949.4589824CA41A@ary.qy>

It appears that Jack Haverty via Internet-history <jack at 3kitty.org> said:
>I wonder how the Internet mechanisms would have evolved if the timing 
>had been a bit different, and the people who built the early network 
>mechanisms had been able to consider using database technology or 
>techniques when designing? mechanisms such as DNS.

I can imagine some minor differences like a data dictionary to make it
less painful to add new record types, but I doubt the overall structure
would be very different.  There is a lot of super cool stuff you can do
with databases but it is also super slow.

We already had key-value databases which is what the DNS is.



From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 20 19:23:20 2021
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:23:20 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9574fa0c-0619-2d74-65db-826ee50ea06e@3kitty.org>

Thanks Vint.? Dates have always been hard (for me at least) to keep sorted.

Per the authoritative voice of Wikipedia - "Support for NSFNET end-users 
was provided by the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), located at BBN 
Technologies <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBN_Technologies>". But I 
can't say I remember anything about that at all.

Also I agree we didn't get involved with the Fuzzball network as it got 
rolled out to NSF et al.? However, I remember clearly various "events" 
that occurred several years earlier while Dave was developing his 
Fuzzball code and a few Fuzzies were part of the fledgling Internet.?? 
At some of the meetings, we would jokingly rib each other.?? Dave would 
report on something his Fuzzies tried to do; I would report on the 
ensuing disruptions in the Internet we were trying to make reliable.?? I 
joked that Dave's tendency was to poke at the Internet in some new way 
and say "Hey, look, it turned pink, let's see what else we can do."?? I 
would respond with something like "Please don't do that."?? Dave was the 
scientist, exploring the unknown.? I was the engineer, trying to get the 
beast to keep running.

That was all before 1982 and was a strong motivation for creating the 
notion of ASes and EGP.?? EGP allowed us both to be happy and keep 
scientific experimentation and operational engineering from doing battle 
inside the Internet.

/Jack

On 7/20/21 6:49 PM, vinton cerf wrote:
> The fuzzball net arrived about 1986 at 50Kb/s - congested quickly and 
> the IBM/MCI/MERIT version of NSFNET launched in 1988 at 1.5 Mb/s
>
> I am not aware of any involvement of BBN in either the fuzzball 
> network or the subsequent NSFNET except that presumably Mills 
> implemented EGP. BGP doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov 
> Rekhter of IBM and Keith Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it.
>
> v
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 8:02 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>
>     It's the time frame.?? My comment was about the period before EGP was
>     created in 1982.?? The IETF didn't exist yet.?? I don't remember
>     which
>     if any of those networks existed before 1982.?? But if they did, I
>     think
>     they had a single manager.
>
>     /Jack
>
>
>     On 7/20/21 4:45 PM, Tony Li wrote:
>     > No, all of the regionals and other networks were various
>     independent organizations. There was no centralization, just the
>     chaos of trying to keep things working through the informal
>     network of operator?s personal connections. For this, the IETF and
>     NANOG were indispensable.
>     >
>     > Tony
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >> On Jul 20, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history
>     <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>     >>
>     >> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its
>     contractor, in the early 80s before EGP?
>     >>
>     >> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing
>     CSNET (Dick Edmiston).? ?NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was
>     thoroughly dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs. Our experiences
>     when Dave was experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the
>     core Internet was a primary motivator for EGP, which made it
>     possible for Fuzzies to connect and do their thing without
>     impacting the core.? ?BBN had some managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>     >>
>     >> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
>     Internetworking changed.
>     >>
>     >> /Jack
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>     >>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>     >>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision
>     -- the notion
>     >>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
>     organization
>     >>>>> "managing the network".? ?The ARPANET, and IIRC all other
>     networks of
>     >>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>     >>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the
>     Supercomputer Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>     >>>>
>     >>>
>     >>
>     >> --
>     >> 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
>     <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
>     <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
>



From gnu at toad.com  Tue Jul 20 20:13:26 2021
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 20:13:26 -0700
Subject: [ih] a single organization "managing the network"
In-Reply-To: <c43fb02b-0299-831a-a8ba-ee78969a5b87@3kitty.org> 
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <19896.1626820325@hop.toad.com>
 <11142cf0-ced7-2922-b4b1-888ecd84c7aa@dcrocker.net>
 <c43fb02b-0299-831a-a8ba-ee78969a5b87@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <1921.1626837206@hop.toad.com>

Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> With all of the corporations now doing "cloud computing", wouldn't
> such a replication be a small blip in their operation that wouldn't
> even be noticed by a Netflix or Youtube or AWS or the like?

Running more servers and spinning drives would be easy for a cloud
vendor to clone.  Keeping up with gigabits/sec of updates: from the big
web crawls and the myriad little ones; and the realtime continuous
digitizing of 50 channels of television; and the scanning in of
thousands of books and magazines daily; and all the public uploads:
would take some good synchronization software, but it's "just engineering".

Providing public access to the collection would be a significant
software undertaking.  If you have the corpus on ten thousand
18-terabyte drives, updated til yesterday, but nobody can access it,
have you really replicated it usefully?

The hard part is building a team of people who manage it all and keep it
running and keep evolving it, as the web and the Internet and the
culture evolve.  And who keep raising the funding, year after year.  And
who do it all independently of the IA, otherwise IA is still a single
point of failure.

	John
	


From tony.li at tony.li  Tue Jul 20 22:54:07 2021
From: tony.li at tony.li (Tony Li)
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 22:54:07 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <D0979BAB-BF3E-4B29-A3CB-18AFD5F89414@tony.li>



> On Jul 20, 2021, at 6:49 PM, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> BGP doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov Rekhter of IBM and Keith Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it. 

                                                                            

That's Kirk Lougheed.

BGP doesn?t really get deployed until 1992 when EGP is imploding and we?re desperate for something else. A small band of enterprising geeks deploy BGP without due process and when it?s found to work, we flip over to it.

Tony



From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 00:05:47 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian Carpenter)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 19:05:47 +1200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <D0979BAB-BF3E-4B29-A3CB-18AFD5F89414@tony.li>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
 <D0979BAB-BF3E-4B29-A3CB-18AFD5F89414@tony.li>
Message-ID: <CANMZLAberoCcxCm=fR_2hDV+e4FYL+mXCee6BtSmTaPdpijrWA@mail.gmail.com>

iirc you did the same thing again to get BGP4 into service two years later.
Thank you, by the way.

Regards,
    Brian Carpenter
    (via tiny screen & keyboard)

On Wed, 21 Jul 2021, 17:54 Tony Li via Internet-history, <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jul 20, 2021, at 6:49 PM, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > BGP doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov Rekhter of IBM and
> Keith Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it.
>
>
>
> That's Kirk Lougheed.
>
> BGP doesn?t really get deployed until 1992 when EGP is imploding and we?re
> desperate for something else. A small band of enterprising geeks deploy BGP
> without due process and when it?s found to work, we flip over to it.
>
> Tony
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 00:31:46 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:31:46 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <9574fa0c-0619-2d74-65db-826ee50ea06e@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
 <9574fa0c-0619-2d74-65db-826ee50ea06e@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_VDNzZbdcVGaVNrcUFJEoOFroeMB8UAeD4DOWdUxD3Vjw@mail.gmail.com>

wow, I missed the NNSC entirely - but in 1992 I was busy with starting
ISOC...

v


On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 10:23 PM Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> Thanks Vint.  Dates have always been hard (for me at least) to keep sorted.
>
> Per the authoritative voice of Wikipedia - "Support for NSFNET end-users
> was provided by the NSF Network Service Center (NNSC), located at BBN
> Technologies <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBN_Technologies>".   But I
> can't say I remember anything about that at all.
>
> Also I agree we didn't get involved with the Fuzzball network as it got
> rolled out to NSF et al.  However, I remember clearly various "events" that
> occurred several years earlier while Dave was developing his Fuzzball code
> and a few Fuzzies were part of the fledgling Internet.   At some of the
> meetings, we would jokingly rib each other.   Dave would report on
> something his Fuzzies tried to do; I would report on the ensuing
> disruptions in the Internet we were trying to make reliable.   I joked that
> Dave's tendency was to poke at the Internet in some new way and say "Hey,
> look, it turned pink, let's see what else we can do."   I would respond
> with something like "Please don't do that."   Dave was the scientist,
> exploring the unknown.  I was the engineer, trying to get the beast to keep
> running.
>
> That was all before 1982 and was a strong motivation for creating the
> notion of ASes and EGP.   EGP allowed us both to be happy and keep
> scientific experimentation and operational engineering from doing battle
> inside the Internet.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 7/20/21 6:49 PM, vinton cerf wrote:
>
> The fuzzball net arrived about 1986 at 50Kb/s - congested quickly and the
> IBM/MCI/MERIT version of NSFNET launched in 1988 at 1.5 Mb/s
>
> I am not aware of any involvement of BBN in either the fuzzball network or
> the subsequent NSFNET except that presumably Mills implemented EGP. BGP
> doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov Rekhter of IBM and Keith
> Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it.
>
> v
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 8:02 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> It's the time frame.   My comment was about the period before EGP was
>> created in 1982.   The IETF didn't exist yet.   I don't remember which
>> if any of those networks existed before 1982.   But if they did, I think
>> they had a single manager.
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
>> On 7/20/21 4:45 PM, Tony Li wrote:
>> > No, all of the regionals and other networks were various independent
>> organizations. There was no centralization, just the chaos of trying to
>> keep things working through the informal network of operator?s personal
>> connections. For this, the IETF and NANOG were indispensable.
>> >
>> > Tony
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Jul 20, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor,
>> in the early 80s before EGP?
>> >>
>> >> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET
>> (Dick Edmiston).   NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly
>> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.  Our experiences when Dave was
>> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a
>> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to connect
>> and do their thing without impacting the core.   BBN had some managerial
>> role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>> >>
>> >> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
>> Internetworking changed.
>> >>
>> >> /Jack
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>> >>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>> >>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the
>> notion
>> >>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
>> organization
>> >>>>> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks
>> of
>> >>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>> >>> Really?  NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer
>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>> >>>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Internet-history mailing list
>> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>>
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>
>


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 00:32:19 2021
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 03:32:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <D0979BAB-BF3E-4B29-A3CB-18AFD5F89414@tony.li>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
 <D0979BAB-BF3E-4B29-A3CB-18AFD5F89414@tony.li>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_UNWA=C2vcj06jWCK+hc1xFfoRR9EG+HLEaQEPSfosHGg@mail.gmail.com>

yes, Kirk - thanks for that correction, Tony.



On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 1:54 AM Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li> wrote:

>
>
> On Jul 20, 2021, at 6:49 PM, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BGP doesn't arrive until 1989 and as I recall, Yakov Rekhter of IBM and
> Keith Loughead at Cisco wrote RFC 1105 describing it.
>
>
>
>
> That's Kirk Lougheed.
>
> BGP doesn?t really get deployed until 1992 when EGP is imploding and we?re
> desperate for something else. A small band of enterprising geeks deploy BGP
> without due process and when it?s found to work, we flip over to it.
>
> Tony
>
>


From joly at punkcast.com  Wed Jul 21 02:14:34 2021
From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 05:14:34 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of RPKI - Geoff Huston
Message-ID: <CAM9VJk16MCAv8d_u88wrXw0yT8_U++ofOEWRdcAPFJC-Egjz_w@mail.gmail.com>

As an introduction to RPKI Week <https://isoc.live/14313/> last week, a
pre-recorded video was played of Geoff Huston giving a potted history.

We had to trim it to fit the timeslot, but the original untrimmed version
is archived at
https://archive.org/download/rpkiweek/History_of_RPKI_with_Geoff_Huston_UNTRIMMED.mp4

-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Wed Jul 21 08:50:35 2021
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 11:50:35 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>

Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind 
of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.

Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and 
the European nets?? Or did those come later?

Miles


Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, 
> in the early 80s before EGP?
>
> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET 
> (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly 
> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was 
> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a 
> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to 
> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN had some 
> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>
> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
> Internetworking changed.
>
> /Jack
>
>
> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 
>>>> notion
>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or 
>>>> organization
>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown



From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 13:57:20 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 08:57:20 +1200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>

On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind 
> of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.
> 
> Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and 

> the European nets?? Or did those come later?

SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP 
scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:

1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice 
Hall, 1992.

2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on OSI.)

3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html. 
(Highly recommended!)

4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013, Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)

   Brian

> 
> Miles
> 
> 
> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, 
>> in the early 80s before EGP?
>>
>> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET 
>> (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly 
>> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was 
>> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a 
>> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to 
>> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN 
had some 
>> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>>
>> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
>> Internetworking changed.
>>
>> /Jack
>>
>>
>> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 
>>>>> notion
>>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or 
>>>>> organization
>>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other 
networks of
>>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
>>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
> 
> 



From bpurvy at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 14:11:52 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 14:11:52 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
 <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVGu55PtE4WQ2zzsb-N3yKpmVX-sey0T05h71nQ9p8NccQ@mail.gmail.com>

OK, I've been resisting promoting my book(s), so apologies but here goes:

Inventing the Future
<https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Future-Albert-Cory/dp/1736298615/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0>
(on
the Xerox Star) takes a much different approach than the history books: I
wrote it as historical *fiction* (the characters are fictional, but the
events are all real). I've finished the first draft of the sequel, which
goes through most of the 80s and the growth of Ethernet and the Internet.

So some of what you've all been talking about will appear in Book II, but
definitely not *all* of it. No one was present for all of it. I wasn't.
I've had some help from Dave Crocker and Bob Metcalfe already and I hope
some of the rest of you will help out, too.

Why historical fiction? To get into what it felt like, not just what
happened. To try and recapture what it was like to be part of it and not
know how it was going to turn out. Because I can't write dialog and
meetings with real people -- no one remembers what they said or did back
then, and if they did they might not all agree, or give permission. Fiction
is just a different animal. My touchstone is the *Master and Commander* series
of books by Patrick O'Brian.


On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 1:57 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> > Well... yes.  I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind
> > of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US
> Government.
> >
> > Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and
>
> > the European nets?  Or did those come later?
>
> SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and
> migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP
> scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a
> treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:
>
> 1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice
> Hall, 1992.
>
> 2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and
> Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled
> book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on
> OSI.)
>
> 3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga
> of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence
> on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at
> http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html.
> (Highly recommended!)
>
> 4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013,
> Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not
> so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)
>
>    Brian
>
> >
> > Miles
> >
> >
> > Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor,
> >> in the early 80s before EGP?
> >>
> >> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET
> >> (Dick Edmiston).   NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly
> >> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.  Our experiences when Dave was
> >> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a
> >> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to
> >> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.   BBN
> had some
> >> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
> >>
> >> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
> >> Internetworking changed.
> >>
> >> /Jack
> >>
> >>
> >> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
> >>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the
> >>>>> notion
> >>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
> >>>>> organization
> >>>>> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other
> networks of
> >>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
> >>> Really?  NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer
> >>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From tte at cs.fau.de  Wed Jul 21 15:43:52 2021
From: tte at cs.fau.de (Toerless Eckert)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 00:43:52 +0200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
References: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
 <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Brian

Does this fit into the list ?
Its the only one i came across in Germany back then and found it pretty good:

The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, John Quarterman, 1989, Digital Press

Comparing the titles and only knowin the matrix, i think your reading list is
going more into in specific areas, whereas the Matrix might be a more beginners overview.

Cheers
    Toerless

On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 08:57:20AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> > Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind 
> > of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.
> > 
> > Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and 
> 
> > the European nets?? Or did those come later?
> 
> SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP 
> scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:
> 
> 1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice 
> Hall, 1992.
> 
> 2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on OSI.)
> 
> 3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html. 
> (Highly recommended!)
> 
> 4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013, Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)
> 
>    Brian
> 
> > 
> > Miles
> > 
> > 
> > Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, 
> >> in the early 80s before EGP?
> >>
> >> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET 
> >> (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly 
> >> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was 
> >> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a 
> >> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to 
> >> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN 
> had some 
> >> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
> >>
> >> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
> >> Internetworking changed.
> >>
> >> /Jack
> >>
> >>
> >> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
> >>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 
> >>>>> notion
> >>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or 
> >>>>> organization
> >>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other 
> networks of
> >>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
> >>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
> >>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

-- 
---
tte at cs.fau.de


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Jul 21 16:01:26 2021
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:01:26 +1200
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
 <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
 <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <bf61299b-aef3-eeb6-7ea8-4bf941f1a7fb@gmail.com>

That's a good book but a bit early to have covered how the Internet became truly international. John ran "The Matrix" newsletter for years and that had lots of facts and numbers. I don't know if its archive is on line.

Regards
   Brian

On 22-Jul-21 10:43, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> Brian
> 
> Does this fit into the list ?
> Its the only one i came across in Germany back then and found it pretty 
good:
> 
> The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, John Quarterman, 1989, Digital Press
> 
> Comparing the titles and only knowin the matrix, i think your reading list is
> going more into in specific areas, whereas the Matrix might be a more beginners overview.
> 
> Cheers
>     Toerless
> 
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 08:57:20AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind 
>>> of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.
>>>
>>> Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and 
>>
>>> the European nets?? Or did those come later?
>>
>> SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP 
>> scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:
>>
>> 1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice 
>> Hall, 1992.
>>
>> 2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on OSI.)
>>
>> 3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html. 
>> (Highly recommended!)
>>
>> 4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013, Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)
>>
>>    Brian
>>
>>>
>>> Miles
>>>
>>>
>>> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor, 
>>>> in the early 80s before EGP?
>>>>
>>>> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET 
>>>> (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly 
>>>> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was 
>>>> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a 

>>>> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to 
>>>> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN 
>> had some 
>>>> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>>>>
>>>> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of 
>>>> Internetworking changed.
>>>>
>>>> /Jack
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the 

>>>>>>> notion
>>>>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or 
>>>>>>> organization
>>>>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other 
>> networks of
>>>>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>>>>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer 
>>>>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> 



From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Thu Jul 22 08:37:00 2021
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:37:00 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
References: <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
 <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
 <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <165177dc-ab3e-a4af-eef0-02743bd25bac@meetinghouse.net>

Toerless Eckert wrote:
> Brian
>
> Does this fit into the list ?
> Its the only one i came across in Germany back then and found it pretty good:
>
> The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, John Quarterman, 1989, Digital Press
>
An excellent map of the early networks.? If you hadn't mentioned it, I 
was about to.

Miles



> Comparing the titles and only knowin the matrix, i think your reading list is
> going more into in specific areas, whereas the Matrix might be a more beginners overview.
>
> Cheers
>      Toerless
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 08:57:20AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind
>>> of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.
>>>
>>> Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and
>>> the European nets?? Or did those come later?
>> SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP
>> scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:
>>
>> 1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice
>> Hall, 1992.
>>
>> 2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on OSI.)
>>
>> 3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html.
>> (Highly recommended!)
>>
>> 4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013, Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)
>>
>>     Brian
>>
>>> Miles
>>>
>>>
>>> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor,
>>>> in the early 80s before EGP?
>>>>
>>>> I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET
>>>> (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly
>>>> dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was
>>>> experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a
>>>> primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to
>>>> connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN
>> had some
>>>> managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
>>>>
>>>> After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
>>>> Internetworking changed.
>>>>
>>>> /Jack
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>> Jack Haverty wrote:
>>>>>>> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the
>>>>>>> notion
>>>>>>> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
>>>>>>> organization
>>>>>>> "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other
>> networks of
>>>>>>> the day, were under a single organization's control.
>>>>> Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer
>>>>> Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown



From internet-history at gtaylor.tnetconsulting.net  Thu Jul 22 10:31:40 2021
From: internet-history at gtaylor.tnetconsulting.net (Grant Taylor)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:31:40 -0600
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <a8138b7f-7d0f-ba4c-dd16-d5c4bdb4fab0@spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net>

On 7/20/21 4:45 PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?

Usenet is still very much a thing.  There are a small number of big 
operators that play with binaries.  And there are more than a handful of 
small operators that avoid binaries.

I run two servers that fall into the latter category.  My text only 
servers see 40-80 MB of text traffic a day.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die


From mark at good-stuff.co.uk  Thu Jul 22 11:10:18 2021
From: mark at good-stuff.co.uk (Mark Goodge)
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2021 19:10:18 +0100
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20210721015528.4BF1124CA244@ary.qy>
References: <20210721015528.4BF1124CA244@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <15929f90-1f76-566c-c9ac-171787e872e5@good-stuff.co.uk>



On 21/07/2021 02:55, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It appears that Dan Cross via Internet-history <crossd at gmail.com> said:
>> It's still there, still works, and perhaps amazingly, still has some
>> traffic.
> 
> Yup.  If you post something to comp.compilers, I'm still the moderator.  There's
> a fair number of groups with interesting traffic like comp.arch (computer architecture)
> and uk.railway (train spotter anoraks.)

Oi! :-)

A lot of groups do seem to have fallen below the critical mass necessary 
to keep them going, but there are, as you say, still several that are 
popular. Moderation seems to have been the salvation of many; it keeps 
the spammers out and maintains the signal to noise ratio at a level 
which makes the group readable.

Mark


From reed at reedmedia.net  Sat Jul 24 07:50:42 2021
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 09:50:42 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [ih] DNS history and design
In-Reply-To: <18768.1626818928@hop.toad.com>
References: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>
 <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org> <18768.1626818928@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.22.394.2107240931470.1879@t1.m.reedmedia.net>

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:

> It's likely that a DNS requester that hasn't changed since 1985 could
> plug in and work fine 36 years later, on the Internet of today.

Coincidently, started experimenting with (almost) this a few days 
earlier running 4.3BSD-Reno BIND named 4.8.3 (June 1990) as a caching 
resolver and authoritative service in today's Internet.

It mostly works.

https://dnsinstitute.com/research/2021/ancient-1990-bind-4.8.3.html

Here are two examples of incompatibilities from late 1980s and today:

Using it highlights one standard problem with modern implementations 
that wrongly send EDNS OPT pseudo-records responses back even when 
were never requested.

Also recent implementations are often configured to not respond with 
Additional Section glue and the old named 4.8.3 gives up with SERVFAIL 
at a few levels of recursion, even while its outstanding queries are 
still in progress to find nameserver addresses (and the old named will 
soon answer correctly for same queries).


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sat Jul 24 08:23:16 2021
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 11:23:16 -0400
Subject: [ih] DNS history and design
In-Reply-To: <18768.1626818928@hop.toad.com>
References: <e217a474-8c21-39e2-508-de58b8402efb@iecc.com>
 <20210720093447.GB28296@sources.org> <18768.1626818928@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <E03EF9E3-1D3A-471A-B491-5F7242F584E9@comcast.net>

That is interesting. We were doing research on the properties of distributed databases in 1975-6 and I believe built one, but I would have to go back try to dig up the data on it.

Take care,
John

> On Jul 20, 2021, at 18:08, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Stephane Bortzmeyer via Internet-history wrote re the Domain Name System:
>>                          IMHO, the choices were basically the correct
>> ones, giving the techniques of the time (blockchain was not invented
>> yet :-)
> 
> Distributed databases weren't invented yet either!  At the time,
> there were only a handful of one-of-a-kind networks to distribute
> one on!  If I was designing the DNS today, I'd probably use an
> underlying technology more like that.
> 
> The DNS that Paul Mockapetris designed has scaled and lasted incredibly
> well, given how early in networking history it was built.  It is one of
> the few Internet protocols that uses binary packet layouts rather than
> parsing text, which made it harder to debug and evolve the protocol.
> And many things about the DNS were not really understood until decades
> later, like how an "rrset", a collection of all the Resource Records
> that have the same domain name and the same RRtype, needs to be handled
> together rather than as separable records.
> 
> But the fundamental design still survives: "zones" of resource records,
> each zone and record with a hierarchical global name, replicated N times
> on different servers, with version numbering and automated updating
> among the servers, and a "Time to Live" on each record to avoid data
> going stale.  Requests and responses via UDP with a possible TCP
> fallback.  Solid cacheing designed in for high performance, replication
> for high reliability.
> 
> It's likely that a DNS requester that hasn't changed since 1985 could
> plug in and work fine 36 years later, on the Internet of today.
> 
> Amazing!
> 
> 	John
> 	
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Sun Jul 25 14:08:18 2021
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 14:08:18 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control:  Usenet
In-Reply-To: <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>


On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> 
> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> years ago.

BTW, it?s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/>.  Some newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.

?gregbo




From bpurvy at gmail.com  Sun Jul 25 14:16:22 2021
From: bpurvy at gmail.com (Bob Purvy)
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2021 14:16:22 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <CAFq6nVFNtXkd9bX-S86f9iZ+hkkNad6uKBVxQ2pUOX-eCL9awA@mail.gmail.com>

When I first joined Packeteer in 1998, Usenet accounted for an overwhelming
percentage of the Internet traffic.

On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 2:08 PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> > The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> > the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> > times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> > NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> > agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> > (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> > wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> >
> > Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> > years ago.
>
> BTW, it?s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/>.  Some
> newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.
>
> ?gregbo
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From wfms at wfms.org  Mon Jul 26 04:03:28 2021
From: wfms at wfms.org (wfms at wfms.org)
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 11:03:28 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] distributed network control:  Usenet
In-Reply-To: <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <9fa8ddb-cb26-a024-c8d6-f9aaadc4fdab@wfms.org>

On Sun, 25 Jul 2021, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:

> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
>> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
>> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
>> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
>> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
>> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
>> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
>> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
>>
>> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
>> years ago.
>
> BTW, it?s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/>.  Some newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.

Indeed, the older archives were donated to Dejanews between a number of 
folks, before Google acquired them.

INN is still being actively developed and seeing use at some USENET sites.

wfms

From craig at tereschau.net  Mon Jul 26 05:34:21 2021
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 06:34:21 -0600
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_VDNzZbdcVGaVNrcUFJEoOFroeMB8UAeD4DOWdUxD3Vjw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <C93DABDC-3AE8-4F43-9268-D0D4385E4CE8@gmail.com>
 <2f540d61-4e0c-2e6d-8bbe-6dfa2dddf129@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_UtJM8ittVr9CxMmPhBPTFPcRnfMv8u-+S3cxWtu5ceng@mail.gmail.com>
 <9574fa0c-0619-2d74-65db-826ee50ea06e@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VDNzZbdcVGaVNrcUFJEoOFroeMB8UAeD4DOWdUxD3Vjw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CcatTPwDrq0PWFWs2c4oAmQ+qeJ2jbTf1M_kqx74+UMdw@mail.gmail.com>

The NNSC was intended to serve as something like the DDN NIC.  User
information at a central point.

We did a bunch of educational seminars (taught folks joining NSFNET what
the DNS was, how to configure their servers, etc.).  We published a
newsletter, etc.

The NNSC had only one technical staff member -- me, half-time.  And I did
no operational work.  However, NSF did ask me to look at issues in network
management, which led to HEMS, which strongly influenced SGMP/SNMP.

Craig


From tte at cs.fau.de  Mon Jul 26 10:19:59 2021
From: tte at cs.fau.de (Toerless Eckert)
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 19:19:59 +0200
Subject: [ih] Historical documents/books online ? (was: Re: distributed
 network control: Usenet)
In-Reply-To: <165177dc-ab3e-a4af-eef0-02743bd25bac@meetinghouse.net>
References: <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <e3e6523f-a4a1-0e13-bd5a-88248fa6affb@meetinghouse.net>
 <0445c81e-5a1e-b2bb-e1ad-afb633b59b71@3kitty.org>
 <44832c75-e524-b3a4-9f30-816207125bf2@meetinghouse.net>
 <4f6bde70-2ff1-3fce-03b1-bc09a3681adb@gmail.com>
 <20210721224352.GU57276@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
 <165177dc-ab3e-a4af-eef0-02743bd25bac@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <20210726171959.GG15189@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Btw: is there any organized efforts to help make historically relevant
work available ? For example such books as "The Matrix" and others
mention here ?

I talked to someone whose book is still in print at Springer, and he already
made the upfront deal to forego royalties, and in return Springer granted the
right for him to put up the PDF for free on the Internet. He also said
that  once a book goes out of print, Authors typically do get permission
from their publishers to make such online version freely available.

Given how many of the historical books of interest in the contex of this
list have authors who are still around do something like emailing
to their publisher and getting a BDF version together, it would be
great if there was a site summarzing such guidance and providing
useful pointers, such as sites where such old book PDF could be
posted (e.g.: i wouldn't know if arxiv would be appropriate for example),
because obviously you wouldn't want books on some non-long-lived
web page like an authors personal one...

I fear that special interests books are much more easy vanishing han
being preserved if this doesn't get organized...

Cheers
    Toerless

On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 11:37:00AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Toerless Eckert wrote:
> > Brian
> > 
> > Does this fit into the list ?
> > Its the only one i came across in Germany back then and found it pretty good:
> > 
> > The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide, John Quarterman, 1989, Digital Press
> > 
> An excellent map of the early networks.? If you hadn't mentioned it, I was
> about to.
> 
> Miles
> 
> 
> 
> > Comparing the titles and only knowin the matrix, i think your reading list is
> > going more into in specific areas, whereas the Matrix might be a more beginners overview.
> > 
> > Cheers
> >      Toerless
> > 
> > On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 08:57:20AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> > > On 22-Jul-21 03:50, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> > > > Well... yes.? I wasn't quite sure if you were alluding to BBN - I kind
> > > > of thought you might have been referring to either DoD or the US Government.
> > > > 
> > > > Still - what about the various component networks - like NASA SPAN, and
> > > > the European nets?? Or did those come later?
> > > SPAN, and the US version of HEPNET, were DECnet based (Phase IV, and migrating to Phase V == DECnet/CLNP as time went on). The European TCP/IP
> > > scene was pretty fragmented, that's why Carl Malamud's book is such a treasure, but there are at least four references, starting with Carl:
> > > 
> > > 1. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, Carl Malamud, Prentice
> > > Hall, 1992.
> > > 
> > > 2. A History of International Research Networking, Howard Davies and Beatrice Bressan (editors), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (A somewhat mistitled book, since it describes only the European scene, with much emphasis on OSI.)
> > > 
> > > 3. The ?hidden? history of European Research Networking, or ?The sad saga of the obscurantism of some European networking leaders and their influence on European Research Networks?, Olivier H. Martin, 2012, available at http://www.ictconsulting.ch/papers.html.
> > > (Highly recommended!)
> > > 
> > > 4. Network Geeks ? How They Built the Internet, Brian E. Carpenter, 2013, Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4471-5024-4. (Badly titled by the publisher and not so highly recommended, but Chapters 7 & 8 are relevant.)
> > > 
> > >     Brian
> > > 
> > > > Miles
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > > > > Weren't those all managed by the same organization or its contractor,
> > > > > in the early 80s before EGP?
> > > > > 
> > > > > I remember that at one point BBN was the contractor managing CSNET
> > > > > (Dick Edmiston).?? NSFNET started in mid-80s and IIRC was thoroughly
> > > > > dominated by Dave Mills' Fuzzballs.? Our experiences when Dave was
> > > > > experimenting with connecting his Fuzzies to the core Internet was a
> > > > > primary motivator for EGP, which made it possible for Fuzzies to
> > > > > connect and do their thing without impacting the core.?? BBN
> > > had some
> > > > > managerial role in NSFNET too IIRC.
> > > > > 
> > > > > After EGP, and probably more importantly BGP, the world of
> > > > > Internetworking changed.
> > > > > 
> > > > > /Jack
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > On 7/20/21 4:03 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
> > > > > > > Jack Haverty wrote:
> > > > > > > > What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the
> > > > > > > > notion
> > > > > > > > that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or
> > > > > > > > organization
> > > > > > > > "managing the network".?? The ARPANET, and IIRC all other
> > > networks of
> > > > > > > > the day, were under a single organization's control.
> > > > > > Really?? NASA SPAN, DOEnet, then CSnet, and then the Supercomputer
> > > > > > Center Networks, and the NSFnet regionals & Backbone?
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Internet-history mailing list
> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> 
> 
> -- 
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
> 
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
> 

-- 
---
tte at cs.fau.de


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Jul 27 14:08:29 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 27 Jul 2021 17:08:29 -0400
Subject: [ih] Historical documents/books online ? (was: Re: distributed
 network control: Usenet)
In-Reply-To: <20210726171959.GG15189@faui48e.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Message-ID: <20210727210830.11D9F2537066@ary.qy>

It appears that Toerless Eckert via Internet-history <tte at cs.fau.de> said:
>Btw: is there any organized efforts to help make historically relevant
>work available ? For example such books as "The Matrix" and others
>mention here ?
>
>I talked to someone whose book is still in print at Springer, and he already
>made the upfront deal to forego royalties, and in return Springer granted the
>right for him to put up the PDF for free on the Internet. He also said
>that  once a book goes out of print, Authors typically do get permission
>from their publishers to make such online version freely available. ...

It's more complicated than that.  Most publishing contracts have a clause that
says that author can get the rights back on request when the book is out of print.
Once the author has the rights, he or she can do anything with the rights they want,
including giving it away.

I did it for one of my books, mostly to see if it was actually
possible. In these days of print on demand, "out of print" has become
meaningless, and publishers routinely keep books in print forever, so
unless your agent is sharp enough to change that to a minimum number
of sales per year you're out of luck. ("Of course it's in print, if
you don't believe me, order a copy.") Even if you can establish that
the book is out of print, getting the publisher to do the assignment
takes forever since it is literally at the absolute bottom of their
list of things to do.

US copyright law has a quirk called termination. In most cases, 30 to
35 years after a book was published an author can send a termination
notice to the publisher, and get the rights back five years later,
without needing the publisher to cooperate. 30 years ago was 1991 and
there are certainly books from that era worth releasing.

R's,
John



From sauer at technologists.com  Tue Jul 27 14:28:38 2021
From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer)
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2021 16:28:38 -0500
Subject: [ih] Historical documents/books online ? (was: Re: distributed
 network control: Usenet)
In-Reply-To: <20210727210830.11D9F2537066@ary.qy>
References: <20210727210830.11D9F2537066@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <480265e2-c42d-88a1-5347-c89bada60398@technologists.com>

On 7/27/2021 4:08 PM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> It appears that Toerless Eckert via Internet-history <tte at cs.fau.de> said:
>> Btw: is there any organized efforts to help make historically relevant
>> work available ? For example such books as "The Matrix" and others
>> mention here ?
>>
>> I talked to someone whose book is still in print at Springer, and he already
>> made the upfront deal to forego royalties, and in return Springer granted the
>> right for him to put up the PDF for free on the Internet. He also said
>> that  once a book goes out of print, Authors typically do get permission
>>from their publishers to make such online version freely available. ...
> 
> It's more complicated than that.  Most publishing contracts have a clause that
> says that author can get the rights back on request when the book is out of print.
> Once the author has the rights, he or she can do anything with the rights they want,
> including giving it away.
> 
> I did it for one of my books, mostly to see if it was actually
> possible. In these days of print on demand, "out of print" has become
> meaningless, and publishers routinely keep books in print forever, so
> unless your agent is sharp enough to change that to a minimum number
> of sales per year you're out of luck. ("Of course it's in print, if
> you don't believe me, order a copy.") Even if you can establish that
> the book is out of print, getting the publisher to do the assignment
> takes forever since it is literally at the absolute bottom of their
> list of things to do.

I've gotten rights back for four out of print books without difficulty 
or unreasonable delay:
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/02/14/mainstream-videoconferencing-available-again/
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/computer-systems-performance-modeling/
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/remembering-resq/

Charlie

> US copyright law has a quirk called termination. In most cases, 30 to
> 35 years after a book was published an author can send a termination
> notice to the publisher, and get the rights back five years later,
> without needing the publisher to cooperate. 30 years ago was 1991 and
> there are certainly books from that era worth releasing.
> 
> R's,
> John
> 

-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer at technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/Skype/Twitter: CharlesHSauer


From johnl at iecc.com  Tue Jul 27 18:02:52 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 27 Jul 2021 21:02:52 -0400
Subject: [ih] Historical documents/books online ? (was: Re: distributed
 network control: Usenet)
In-Reply-To: <480265e2-c42d-88a1-5347-c89bada60398@technologists.com>
Message-ID: <20210728010253.152892539673@ary.qy>

It appears that Charles H Sauer via Internet-history <sauer at technologists.com> said:
>> you don't believe me, order a copy.") Even if you can establish that
>> the book is out of print, getting the publisher to do the assignment
>> takes forever since it is literally at the absolute bottom of their
>> list of things to do.
>
>I've gotten rights back for four out of print books without difficulty 
>or unreasonable delay:
>https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2008/02/14/mainstream-videoconferencing-available-again/
>https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/computer-systems-performance-modeling/
>https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2020/08/25/remembering-resq/

It really depends on the publisher.  The one book I got back was easy because the
publisher knew me and liked me.  Other places, I wouldn't count on it.

They'll do it eventually, for some version of eventually.

R's,
John


From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 29 07:16:06 2021
From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 14:16:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>

Farzaneh,
Thank you for sharing the paper you and Andy have written with those of us on the Internet History list.? I have now had an opportunity to read the paper and I like it.? I suspect some of my colleagues on this list do not read enough of the papers written by recent historians to understand how badly your perspective is needed.? I think you and Andy have gotten the basic facts correct, although some of the discussions of Autonomous Systems, EGP, and BGP on this list in response to your post provide additional useful background.
Best wishes,Alex McKenzie


On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>
> Here is the link to the paper:
>
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>
> <
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> >
>
>
> Farzaneh

  

From agmalis at gmail.com  Thu Jul 29 07:46:36 2021
From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 10:46:36 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAA=duU2ms7NaVYAF3ZHmByh6DYMw86RqQSgQW1LMXHdNkLwuVQ@mail.gmail.com>

Alex,

Just to set the record straight, the paper's authors are Farzaneh Badiei
and Bradley Fidler.

Cheers,
Andy


On Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 10:16 AM Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Farzaneh,
> Thank you for sharing the paper you and Andy have written with those of us
> on the Internet History list.  I have now had an opportunity to read the
> paper and I like it.  I suspect some of my colleagues on this list do not
> read enough of the papers written by recent historians to understand how
> badly your perspective is needed.  I think you and Andy have gotten the
> basic facts correct, although some of the discussions of Autonomous
> Systems, EGP, and BGP on this list in response to your post provide
> additional useful background.
> Best wishes,Alex McKenzie
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
> > human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> > greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this
> list
> > and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
> >
> > Here is the link to the paper:
> >
> >
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> >
> > <
> >
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> > >
> >
> >
> > Farzaneh
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 29 07:50:04 2021
From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 14:50:04 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <CAA=duU2ms7NaVYAF3ZHmByh6DYMw86RqQSgQW1LMXHdNkLwuVQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
 <CAA=duU2ms7NaVYAF3ZHmByh6DYMw86RqQSgQW1LMXHdNkLwuVQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <616666664.1142218.1627570204658@mail.yahoo.com>

 Thanks for the correction!? My apologies.? I was thinking "Brad" but typed "Andy" [Russell].
I should do a better job proofreading my own typing!
Alex

    On Thursday, July 29, 2021, 10:46:54 AM EDT, Andrew G. Malis <agmalis at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Alex,
Just to set the record straight, the paper's authors are?Farzaneh Badiei and?Bradley Fidler.
Cheers,Andy

On Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 10:16 AM Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

Farzaneh,
Thank you for sharing the paper you and Andy have written with those of us on the Internet History list.? I have now had an opportunity to read the paper and I like it.? I suspect some of my colleagues on this list do not read enough of the papers written by recent historians to understand how badly your perspective is needed.? I think you and Andy have gotten the basic facts correct, although some of the discussions of Autonomous Systems, EGP, and BGP on this list in response to your post provide additional useful background.
Best wishes,Alex McKenzie


On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:16 AM farzaneh badii via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>
> Here is the link to the paper:
>
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>
> <
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
> >
>
>
> Farzaneh


-- 
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history

  

From tony.li at tony.li  Thu Jul 29 08:50:11 2021
From: tony.li at tony.li (Tony Li)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 08:50:11 -0700
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <88D04563-3116-49DC-B742-80EEF59A94AB@tony.li>

>> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
>> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
>> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>> 
>> Here is the link to the paper:
>> 
>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>> 
>> <
>> https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior%3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c#metadata_info_tab_contents
>>> 



Hi,

Thank you for your paper.  In it, you write:

"Ultimately, the intentions behind the design decisions, behind the design, and behind the impact of EGP and BGP are opaque.?

I think that there is definitely more that can be said.  It?s very clear that it was the intention of DARPA to get out of the business of funding and
running an operational network. Yet the architecture prior to EGP and BGP made that impossible. Technologically, it was also a clear
necessity to allow and control the interaction of multiple networks. It?s pretty clear that these dual motivations drove the original EGP design.
It?s equally clear that the technological design decisions of EGP (pure distance vector, fragmenting IP packets, lack of loop protection) 
made it impossible to scale. These issues drove the necessity for BGP.  

You also write:

"Cisco, a company formed due to the opportunities created by EGP and which employed one of the original BGP authors, 
portrayed EGP as a technical problem in interconnection efficiency.? 

It?s a little known fact that Cisco was not originally founded to build routers. The first intent was to build Ethernet hardware for DEC-10s and -20s.
It?s true that quickly morphed into ?gateway? development because after connecting a system to an Ethernet, it wasn?t going to be able to get 
past its local network. 

The issues with EGP, as described above, were not mere marketing bluster. They were fundamental limitations that made the network
unmanageable.  Network operators (at the time, NSFnet regionals) had to manually maintain lists of networks that were attached to other
autonomous systems and filter out EGP advertisements at each boundary as a means of loop prevention. This teetered on the brink of 
utter chaos for far too long.

Tony





From galmes at tamu.edu  Thu Jul 29 09:15:07 2021
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 12:15:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] A paper
In-Reply-To: <88D04563-3116-49DC-B742-80EEF59A94AB@tony.li>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <2048855630.1113583.1627568166097@mail.yahoo.com>
 <88D04563-3116-49DC-B742-80EEF59A94AB@tony.li>
Message-ID: <07da9fd8-eca2-81f6-e1b9-4d0c66f2f3fe@tamu.edu>

Tony,
   Exactly.
   As a specific example, at one point in early 1988, I literally went 
through all the network numbers we at Sesquinet (one of the 
NSFnet-related regional networks) were receiving from the ARPAnet and 
the Fuzzball-based 56kb/s NSFnet and figuring out, in case both 
announced a given network number, which to prefer.
   During that era, given the limited number of such network numbers 
that were 'live', this was manageable.  Given the rapid growth of the 
Internet, during those days especially from the NSFnet world, this 
quickly became an exercise I could not repeat.
   BGP was desperately needed.
	-- Guy

On 7/29/21 11:50 AM, Tony Li via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Filder and I have published a paper recently about Internet protocols and
>>> human rights but had a historical look at WHOIS, BGP/EGP and DNS. We
>>> greatly enjoyed the informative conversation about BGP and EGP on this list
>>> and helped us a lot with providing a more complete background.
>>>
>>> Here is the link to the paper:
>>>
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior*3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c*metadata_info_tab_contents__;JSM!!KwNVnqRv!RdESdLqAAUlJdkIAgUaq8Tx4_pWFwleE88O5HrR-EHejiAenZz3kt4GF8g1q5Q$
>>>
>>> <
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.11.2021.0376?refreqid=excelsior*3A5f6e0042f4bc042a36aa87e2a4d0107c*metadata_info_tab_contents__;JSM!!KwNVnqRv!RdESdLqAAUlJdkIAgUaq8Tx4_pWFwleE88O5HrR-EHejiAenZz3kt4GF8g1q5Q$
>>>>
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for your paper.  In it, you write:
> 
> "Ultimately, the intentions behind the design decisions, behind the design, and behind the impact of EGP and BGP are opaque.?
> 
> I think that there is definitely more that can be said.  It?s very clear that it was the intention of DARPA to get out of the business of funding and
> running an operational network. Yet the architecture prior to EGP and BGP made that impossible. Technologically, it was also a clear
> necessity to allow and control the interaction of multiple networks. It?s pretty clear that these dual motivations drove the original EGP design.
> It?s equally clear that the technological design decisions of EGP (pure distance vector, fragmenting IP packets, lack of loop protection)
> made it impossible to scale. These issues drove the necessity for BGP.
> 
> You also write:
> 
> "Cisco, a company formed due to the opportunities created by EGP and which employed one of the original BGP authors,
> portrayed EGP as a technical problem in interconnection efficiency.?
> 
> It?s a little known fact that Cisco was not originally founded to build routers. The first intent was to build Ethernet hardware for DEC-10s and -20s.
> It?s true that quickly morphed into ?gateway? development because after connecting a system to an Ethernet, it wasn?t going to be able to get
> past its local network.
> 
> The issues with EGP, as described above, were not mere marketing bluster. They were fundamental limitations that made the network
> unmanageable.  Network operators (at the time, NSFnet regionals) had to manually maintain lists of networks that were attached to other
> autonomous systems and filter out EGP advertisements at each boundary as a means of loop prevention. This teetered on the brink of
> utter chaos for far too long.
> 
> Tony
> 
> 
> 


From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Sat Jul 31 20:16:33 2021
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2021 20:16:33 -0700
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <CAFq6nVFNtXkd9bX-S86f9iZ+hkkNad6uKBVxQ2pUOX-eCL9awA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAN1qJvDVuyH3+y8gySA9aLeL8dzgSwM4Q9RA3qW2g55yTe+pjg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVHUgWwiceEAT8khbFBi0CZpnhHOPKYDATVVSjo1-qVWaQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAN1qJvCNvUc7jQKVNEsqot2PNHNDDtQ247vVN+m-t-Sri2r+5A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVEWN_UTHxCnyivHZeUuaVb4xrehCLgSPD+_gWGrvcA_ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <14A2BD9D-BD65-45E4-B9D1-F04283A8DB83@frobbit.se>
 <CAA=duU1KXQgmptGgHveH3jFADrDzEoFE+n-P5B-rK_h+0auQOg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAAFtm_X1fwwgumpKL+e4mWiYyHgsY6gpMh098-Q=VdCTabQM0A@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFq6nVFuM_dUY5YgBF4Dwe8_BZLvuNwZCULnwtSNPq5=uMm7Qg@mail.gmail.com>
 <20210718212352.jjne6xuno3obv4gj@crankycanuck.ca>
 <72671e9d-7e0c-901a-8bbb-ac14cf4c48c3@3kitty.org>
 <532bf391-22ed-aa16-f5ba-eca88f538d88@gmail.com>
 <2126f6c1-7e4d-6684-a05b-3d3eebde6149@3kitty.org>
 <CAAFtm_VSM=eBVsBW1XtkFfSd5Vzc=eazLwqz4sqj87vdw0Mb=Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <20582.1626821112@hop.toad.com>
 <BFEB3E67-F376-4DE5-9470-E989899DA94F@icloud.com>
 <CAFq6nVFNtXkd9bX-S86f9iZ+hkkNad6uKBVxQ2pUOX-eCL9awA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9300C505-1673-4A61-9504-0EE997E50DC8@icloud.com>

I?m surprised, given how popular the web had become by then.  How was this determined?

> On Jul 25, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> When I first joined Packeteer in 1998, Usenet accounted for an overwhelming percentage of the Internet traffic.
> 
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 2:08 PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com <mailto:gnu at toad.com>> wrote:
> > The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
> > the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
> > times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
> > NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
> > agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
> > (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
> > wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
> > 
> > Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
> > years ago.
> 
> BTW, it?s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/ <https://groups.google.com/>>.  Some newsgroups go back to the early 1980s.
> 
> ?gregbo
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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 <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>



From johnl at iecc.com  Sat Jul 31 21:15:36 2021
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 1 Aug 2021 00:15:36 -0400
Subject: [ih] distributed network control: Usenet
In-Reply-To: <9300C505-1673-4A61-9504-0EE997E50DC8@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <20210801041536.64745256C917@ary.qy>

It appears that Greg Skinner via Internet-history <gregskinner0 at icloud.com> said:
>I?m surprised, given how popular the web had become by then.  How was this determined?

I'm not sure I believe it, but the amount of traffix in alt.binaries.whatever was and is very large.
There's a lot of encoded video.

>> On Jul 25, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> When I first joined Packeteer in 1998, Usenet accounted for an overwhelming percentage of the Internet traffic.
>> 
>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 2:08 PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
><mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com <mailto:gnu at toad.com>> wrote:
>> > The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
>> > the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
>> > times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
>> > NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
>> > agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
>> > (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
>> > wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
>> > 
>> > Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
>> > years ago.
>> 
>> BTW, it?s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/ <https://groups.google.com/>>.  Some newsgroups go back
>to the early 1980s.
>> 
>> ?gregbo
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> 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 <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
>
>-- 
>Internet-history mailing list
>Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history