[ih] A paper

[Brian E Carpenter]

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
> 
> 
> .
>