[ih] A paper

[Jack Haverty]

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
>>
>> .
>>