[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

Wed Nov 24 13:02:06 PST 2021

IMHO, it's usually not possible to agree on the meaning of network 
terminology, or readily reconstruct the history of its changes. There is 
no universal "standards body" dictating what terms mean. Terms mean what 
people think they mean, at the time, and they don't typically agree.  I 
learned in high school debating that the first step in a debate is to 
"define your terms" so that the ensuing debate can at least have 
everyone, in that debate, talking about the same things, at least for 
the next hour or so.

Today, there is no universal agreement on networking terms -- even 
including words such as "Internet".   It's not a new situation. Back in 
the early 70s, the ARPANET IMPs sent and received "messages" to and from 
host computers, and split them up into "packets" for transmission 
between IMPs.  But as host people, we thought we were sending "packets" 
to the IMP, especially after "message" got to mean mail objects to many 
people.  When TCP appeared, so did datagrams - but IIRC even that term 
was already is use somewhere else.

So, my anecdote about changing from "gateway" to "router" at BBN in the 
early 80s was when I redefined my personal terminology (and the BBN 
sales people adopted the new term eagerly so as not to lose customers' 
interest).  It's quite possible I heard the term "router" earlier in the 
context of PARC's work (but I declined to call packets "pups", another 
term that has died out).  One of the Internet meetings in the early 80s 
was held at PARC and I'm sure we got a presentation on how Xerox was 
building their own Internet. What did they call it other than XNS?  Was 
it "the Xerox internet"? How about "internets" built using Netware, OSI, 
LU6.2, DECNET, Appletalk, etc.?  What terms did they use?  I can't recall.

Even email arguably also involved routing, and used terms such as 
"gateway".   It even had its own interconnection of networks, more 
extensive even than "the Internet", and used a form of Source Routing to 
allow senders to specify how a message should be routed (remember ! % 
and such in mail addresses?).  AFAIK mail servers were never called 
routers -- but that's part of what they did and still do.   You can see 
this in the collection of fields in headers.

Terms change over time as people make decisions.  I think these are 
often "marketing" decisions, even when made by techies.  If you choose 
to present your idea as "New!  Improved!", you call it the same as 
something older, and explain why yours is better.   TCP/IP V4 is of 
course better than V2, and V6 is even better.  If you choose to present 
your idea as "New! Finally Solves Your Problems!", you give it a new 
name and explain why that old stuff is plainly wrong and should be 
discarded immediately.   TCP/IP is of course better than X.25/X.75.

When I was talking with a lawyer once during a patent battle, he 
observed that most of a court's work involves arguing about the meaning 
of words, which can change significantly over the years.

/Jack

On 11/24/21 11:36 AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Sorry folks. That should have been USAREUR.  I have trouble keeping up with auto correction on my phone.
> Happy Thanksgiving!
> barbara
>      On Wednesday, November 24, 2021, 11:32:41 AM PST, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   
> The Cisco AGS was released in May 1986 according to Wikipedia. I installed them in Germany for USAEUR probably in September of that year as best as I can recall.  I think the deployment first included IMPs but I think subsequently SRI removed the IMPs that were between the Cisco boxes (though I think IMPs we're called PSNs by this point in time. BBN certainly can chime in here).  I don't know about  SRI people using Cisco's AGS boxes for something like the bay area regional network.
> barbara
>
>      On Wednesday, November 24, 2021, 09:56:48 AM PST, Greg Skinner <gregskinner0 at icloud.com> wrote:
>   
>   Hi Barbara,
>
> I remember those cisco AGS boxes appeared at SRI sometime around the summer of 1986.  Some of the SRI staff who maintained them called them ‘routers’.  As time went on, that name stuck.  They may have provided access to BARRnet, the SF bay area NSFnet regional network.
>
> —gregbo
>
>> On Nov 23, 2021, at 9:19 PM, Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think the change from router to gateway in the networking community was suggested somewhere in the 1983-1986 timeframe .? I am using the final report for the Reconstitution Protocol project? to jog my memory.? ?I remember Jim Mathis telling me about this change in terminology because there was at least one other device, called a gateway, that provided a translation like functionality and people didn't want to create more confusion.? I also don't think we would have used the word gateway during the RP project if router was the accepted term when we started. I am pretty sure we also were using the AGS Cisco boxes? in? the fall of 1986 for a different SRI project so I think the change in naming was?underway by then. I don't remember feeling any surprise at Cisco's use of the word router to describe their product.
>> It is interesting to remember that BGP as an experimental RFC wasn't released until 1989 so we still had the term gateway hanging around for quite a while afterwards.? I don't mean to ignore IGRP and EIGRP either. Then there is also Lixia Zhang's? paper on "How to Build a Gateway" dated April 1987.
>> barbara
>>      On Tuesday, November 23, 2021, 10:39:31 AM PST, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> 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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>>>
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>    