[ih] A paper

[Steve Crocker]

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
> >
> >
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