[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[vinton cerf]

your memory and mine are coincident - i had the impression that "router"
came from Cisco Systems but that had to be after 1984. If you introduced
the term "router" in 1977 that would certainly be early. I stuck with
"gateways" for quite a while after the 1977 three network demonstration.

v


On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 3:50 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Watching Jeopardy from November 17, 2021, I was surprised to see a
> "clue" which was a picture of Len Kleinrock standing in front of the
> ARPANET IMP which has been preserved at UCLA.  It was a clue under the
> category "It's a New Machine".
>
> The host read the clue:
>
> "In 1969, Leonard Kleinrock and his team sent the first message over the
> Internet with the first THIS, which now connects devices like modems."
>
> None of the contestants knew the answer, although one guessed
> "backbone", which isn't a bad guess.  So the guest revealed the answer:
>
> "You're looking at the first router."
>
> My immediate reaction was "No, you're not!    That's an IMP."
>
> See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmv1WKMGcDw starting at about 1:29
>
> That's not quite like I remember it.  Ginny Strazisar built the first
> switching device for the Internet to connect the ARPANET to the Packet
> Radio net, circa 1977.  To me that was the genesis of the "Internet" -
> INTERconnecting of NETworks of a variety of types, using TCP/IP to glue
> it all together.   But millions of people just learned otherwise.
>
> A historical tidbit -- Back in 1977 Ginny's system was called a
> "gateway", but later was renamed a "router".   It's possible that I did
> the renaming.  At BBN we were selling lots of packet switches, and
> sometimes customers asked for ideas on how to use their LANs in the
> network.  Our sales people would tell them about the research
> activities, and the role of gateways, TCP/IP , and the Internet. But in
> many customers' minds that term "gateway"  immediately set off alarm
> bells, because they had prior bad experience with "gateways" in their
> IBM networks, and didn't want anything to do with more "gateways".   So
> I suggested calling them "routers" instead of "gateways", and suddenly
> the marketplace became much more willing to listen.
>
> Enjoy,
> Jack Haverty
>
>
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