[ih] pretty good video on internet history

[vinton cerf]

considering that web runs via https which runs over tcp/ip or quic/udp,
one notion of "internet" is the transport system for carrying application
layer services. Another is that it's all internet. These interpretations
get conflated in our discussions.

v




On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 2:20 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Just looked at the video - yes, it's pretty good.   A few observations
> though...
>
> - Through the 70s, I worked with or for JCR Licklider.  I never heard
> anyone call him "JCR Lick".  To VIP visitors at the MIT lab, he was
> "Professor Licklider".  To everyone who knew him, he was just "Lick".
> Maybe it was different elsewhere, but never "JCR Lick", at least at MIT
>
> - My general impression is that the video is a reasonably accurate
> account of what happened, or at least some parts of that history. But
> it's not very good at explaining "How" the Internet happened, or why
> TCP/IP became the basis for today's Internet after a historic battle of
> technologies and organizations.  E.g., it mentions OSI when discussing
> the Web, but neglects to mention any of the other networking
> developments going on through the 80s - SNA, DecNet, Appletalk, Netware,
> Vines, X.25/X.75 "internets", and especially XNS, which IMHO was closest
> in vision to the TCP/IP world.  I expected the "How" of today's Internet
> to include an explanation of what caused all of those other
> actitivities, including OSI, to just disappear almost overnight, leaving
> TCP/IP as the only survivor. The video mentions that OSI "never
> happened" at CERN, but the same is true of the military environment
> where it all started - the US military networks were also supposed to
> migrate to OSI, and in fact the various networks (ARPANET, MILNET, ...)
> replaced the "1822" interface with standard X.25, as a first step on the
> migration to OSI.  That was the Plan.  But, like at CERN, that migration
> also never happened -- Why not...?
>
> - There's just a slight reference to the military origins of the
> Internet, and no explanation of what those early Internet projects were
> trying to accomplish -- i.e., what was the Internet trying to do 40-50
> years ago?  E.g., the Packet Radio technology, demos, and deployments
> aren't mentioned at all.  SATNET was mentioned, but the video ignored
> the context of its history and plans, such as the deployment to the Navy
> on an aircraft carrier.  IMHO, the Internet technology was driven by
> military command-and-control scenarios, and was purposely made "open"
> for others to use if they chose to do so. The Internet technology was,
> again IMHO, just adopted by the academic and then commercial world
> because it was the only one that they could actually use for what they
> wanted to do, and the needs of the non-military world were close enough
> to those of the military that TCP/IP fit nicely.
>
> - After years of indoctrination by Lick I was thoroughly converted to
> his view of the "Galactic Network", in which computers and
> communications synergized to help humans do whatever humans do.  His
> "Galactic Network" vision is very close to what I see today as I type,
> looking at the screen in front of me, which I think of as "The
> Internet".  So I disagree with the statement in the video that the Web
> is not a fundamental part of the Internet, but rather lives "on top of"
> the Internet.  Packet voice was another important type of network
> traffic in the 80s, not mentioned at all in the video. Using Web
> technology for conveying images, and Internet voice technology for
> conversations, a military operation in the 80s could be envisioned, and
> today's use of teleconferencing, telemedicine, and such could adopt the
> same technology for everything people do today.  But the video
> categorizes technologies such as the Web, or Zoom, Skype, et al, as not
> being components of "The Internet" any more.   They are now "apps" that
> exist "on top of" the Internet. How did that happen...?
>
> Jack Haverty
> MIT (1966-1977), BBN (1977-1990)
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>