[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[Guy Almes]

Alex,
   It is true that the CIX episode marked a trend in this direction, but 
there are two reasons why your specific suggestion is not right.

   First, by 1987, when both the ARPAnet and the proto-NSFnet backbone 
were both operational, networks that connected to both had to decide 
which to use, and that led to interesting routing decisions.  Problems 
encountered then led, for example, to creation of BGP.
   Similarly, again during the 1980s, a network might also connect to 
the NASA Science Internet and, again, have to make interesting routing 
choices.

   Second, recall that the initial CIX "exchange" was a single router 
with a T1 circuit from each of PSInet, Alternet, and CERFnet.  I don't 
know exactly how that router was configured, but note that it was that 
CIX router that had to make many of the interesting routing decisions.

   Also, I think that the term 'router' as a Level-3 gateway was in 
heavy use prior to 1991.
	-- Guy

On 11/24/21 10:29 AM, Alex McKenzie via Internet-history wrote:
> I've stayed out of the discussion but listened with interest.  In fact, I have no clear recollection of when the terminology switched.  But I suspect it happened around the time the first CIX (Commercial Internet Exchange) agreement was reached.  Before that there was a "backbone" network (first ARPAnet and then NSFnet).  Packets went from your network to the backbone, across the backbone, and then to the destination network.  But after the CIX agreement there became a meaningful choice of routes, and the gateways had to start figuring out what the set of available routes was and choose one.  I understand this is an oversimplification of the internet structure, but I think it is a meaningful one.
> Cheers,Alex
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