[ih] Interprocess Communication

[Steve Crocker]

Work on the Arpanet host level protocols started with a meeting in August
1968.  Representatives from the first four sites came to a meeting at
UCSB.  Elmer Shapiro from SRI chaired the meeting.  Jeff Rulifson came from
SRI.  Vint and I came from UCLA.  There are notes with the names of the
others.

A series of meetings spaced roughly six weeks apart followed.  I was
immediately focused on how to create a general architecture.  Interprocess
communication came quickly to mind, and I tried to check the literature.
Multics was the most visible and most ambitious operating system at the
time.  If I recall correctly, the only thing I could find regarding
interprocess communication involved using a bit in shared memory for
coordination.  The memory had to support an uninterruptible test and set"
instruction.  I remember thinking we didn't have any shared memory across
the Arpanet, so there wasn't a template I could adapt.

Steve


On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 2:46 PM Alex McKenzie via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> In August 1970, Dave Walden issued RFC #62, describing a system for
> interprocess communication that did not include the concept of
> "connections" or "circuits".  (I believe it was also published in the
> Communications of the ACM.) It was a generalization of interprocess
> communication within a single computer.  I believe that at the time his
> proposal was too radical for the ARPAnet Network Working Group to consider
> seriously, and so far as I know it has never been implemented.  That is my
> question: has that concept, or something close, been implemented in the
> Internet or elsewhere?
> Thanks,Alex McKenzie
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