[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[Jack Haverty]

Sorry, I wasn't clear -- the incident I recalled about the sales people 
and "gateway" versus "router" was probably a few years later - early 
80s.  We always called them "gateways" until then.  Jack

On 11/22/21 1:34 PM, vinton cerf wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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
>     <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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