[ih] Internet sounds

[Paul Ruizendaal]

According to wikipedia, the ‘IMPs’ of Pouzin's CYCLADES network - called CIGALEs - had a speaker attached; according to Wikipedia:

"The name CIGALE (French pronunciation: ​[siɡal]) – French for cicada – originates from the fact that the developers installed a speaker at each computer, so that "it went 'chirp chirp chirp' like cicadas" when a packet passed a computer.”

I've always wondered what that sounded like, but I would not expect any recordings or recreations to exist.


> On 29 Apr 2022, at 21:00, internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org wrote:
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>   1. Re: Internet sounds (Stephen Casner)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 23:12:50 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Stephen Casner <casner at acm.org>
> To: Toerless Eckert <tte at cs.fau.de>
> Cc: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>,
> 	internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] Internet sounds
> Message-ID:
> 	<alpine.OSX.2.23.453.2204282221370.15693 at auge.attlocal.net>
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> 
> On Thu, 28 Apr 2022, Toerless Eckert via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 11:34:13AM +1200, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> For me, the first "sound" that I would definitively associate with
>>>> the Internet specifically is Carl Malamud's _Internet Talk Radio_
>>>> program from 1993.
>>> 
>>> "On June 24, 1993, the band Severe Tire Damage was the first to
>>> perform live on the Mbone."
>>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone#History)
>>> 
>>> But there was audio and video using early versions of VIC/VAT before
>>> 1993. I was in a transatlantic teleconf at UCL in 1991, and I seem to
>>> remember remote audio in the very early days of RIPE (1989?).
>> 
>> Same here. Alas i do not remember the exact dates, but the first sound
>> "across" the Internet for me was most likely VIC/VAT conferences too.
>> MICE project @UCL for example was quite active.  I think to remember
>> that the "places all over the world" channel also had audio
>> and of course my later boss was at NASA posting NASA TV to the MBone.
>> think We also quickly "commercialized" the MBone ourselves to replace
>> actual monthly business travel in our region (bavaria).
> 
> If we want to take packet audio transmissions as examples of Internet
> sounds, then the earliest dates would depend upon one's definition of
> "Internet".  The initial packet voice experiments over ARPANET started
> in 1974.  That audio in CVSD and LPC encoding suffered from various
> artifacts.  The 1978 ISI movie spearheaded by Danny Cohen and titled
> Digital Voice Conferencing includes a soundtrack in the LPC encoding.
> 
> During the June 1982 program review meeting at Lincoln Lab there were
> several demos including a four-party conference with participants on
> the Packet Radio Net, the Wideband Net and LEXNET at Lincoln.  I don't
> remember if any of that was recorded, but Cliff Weinstein might.
> 
> Later in the 1980s packet video was added and the implementation of
> video conferencing over the Wideband Net stabilized to the point that
> unrelated groups used it for distributed meetings.  But by then the
> sound was not unique to Internet.
> 
> The first IETF audiocast was from San Diego in March 1992.  This was a
> precursor to the MBone with an ad-hoc set of IP multicast tunnels
> connected to the DARTnet as the core network.  vat and NEVOT were in
> use.  Some of that might have been recorded, but it was 64kbps mu-law
> audio, same as long-distance telephony, so again the sound was not
> unique to the Internet.
> 
> Some initial slow-frame-rate video was included for the next IETF in
> Cambridge, MA in July 1992.  The name "MBone" was coined at the end of
> that meeting when we set a goal to keep the ad-hoc multicast tunnels
> operational between meetings and to improve their organization.  Over
> the next couple of years the nv program was the first MBone video tool
> to be used widely, then later VIC.
> 
>                                                        -- Steve
> 
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