[ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

Barbara Denny b_a_denny at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 3 19:57:58 PDT 2022 

 Unfortunately I feel I can't relate a story regarding Cisco's  routing software. I think it is okay to say its lineage is probably different than what you think.
>From what I remember, Sandy Lerner played a significant part in getting the company off the ground.  
barbara

    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 06:13:54 PM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Geoff,
  This is very interesting.
  For those sufficiently interested in the details of how Cisco's early 
hardware and software relate to Stanford (and SUN Microsystems) IP, the 
email thread referred to below tell (at least the Stanford side of) the 
story in some detail.

  Earlier today, I'd expressed some confusion about how (a) Tom 
Rindfleisch had mentioned Cisco licensing Stanford IP in 1986 and (b) 
Stanford considering litigation against Cisco in spring 1987.
  The Reader's Digest version includes that (a) there were numerous 
things that Cisco should have licensed from Stanford and getting the 
correct licenses in place was a process that ran for about 12 months 
from spring 1986 to spring 1987, while (b) a number of Cisco's actions 
that transcended licensing issues continued to irritate (mild version) 
Stanford.
  And, while the information from <saildart.org> is very valuable 
historically, it does tell (only) one side of the story.

  Without taking a stance on where credit/blame should fall, I will 
make one simple observation: at least in hindsight, what was being 
fought over was not what I expected.  Most of it was about detailed work 
on printed circuit boards that were modern but not with any big claim to 
being patent-able or otherwise huge in import.  What I'd expected was 
that the routing software was the big deal and, viewed decades later, I 
think that Stanford Univ Network software as a basis for the very early 
Cisco gateways was the big deal.  All the haggling over circuit boards 
strikes me (again from decades of hindsight) as Bosack trying to pay as 
little as possible to get the Cisco gateway/router business "off the 
ground".
  Bosack deserves credit for understanding how big a business the 
router business would soon be and the urgency to get it going.  The sad 
thing is the graceless way he grabbed Stanford IP to get it going 
cheaper and faster.  This apart from legal issues which I will avoid 
judging (at least since the <saildart.org> archives vividly paint one 
side of the story).

  From an Internet History point of view, understanding how this came 
about is of legitimate interest, again apart from forming a judgment 
about who was legally correct.
  And, to be clear, Cisco was not the first: Proteon over in New 
England was designing / building / shipping routers in parallel.

  All for now.
      -- Guy


On 11/3/22 2:35 PM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via 
Internet-history wrote:
> vis-a-vis "The director of the AI Lab, Lester Ernest, mostly was concerned
> that Len had been collecting his Stanford salary and using the facilities
> he supposedly managed to design the Cisco variant. Les has published a bit
> out this informally, including an email thread from the time."
> 
> the complete email thread from the time can be seen by going to
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.saildart.org/*5B1,LES*5D/__;JSU!!KwNVnqRv!HSdKGlpgiEyELxfCJMsw3qM7bEuYecJZB4MeVDzWxcUqjmPyqAnlxV0XYQWDqVoJP6rdTj1BjR-NWCAlntZTMP2dTU_I6w$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.saildart.org/*5B1,LES*5D/__;JSU!!KwNVnqRv!HSdKGlpgiEyELxfCJMsw3qM7bEuYecJZB4MeVDzWxcUqjmPyqAnlxV0XYQWDqVoJP6rdTj1BjR-NWCAlntZTMP2dTU_I6w$>
> then be paging down thru the list of files on the
> left hand side of your screen until you start seeing a
> series of "CISCO.MSG" files... beginning with
> 1986-05-27 15:32  CISCO .MSG [  1,LES]  1    23040
> ***BUT/HOWEVER, keep on paging down the
> list of CISCO.MSG files until you get to the
> final "CISCO.MSG" file at
> 1988-07-21 14:44  CISCO .MSG [  1,LES] 20  311040
> then if you click on this "CISCO.MSG" you'll then see
> everything regarding this "history" from the beginning.
> 
> geoff
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 11:14 AM Bill Nowicki via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>> Yes, the details might not have been public at the time, since it might
>> have looked bad. What I meant was that about once a year the claim by Cisco
>> marketing that they "invented" the multi-protocol router comes up. Usually,
>> Noel Chiappa points out that MIT had one earlier (Stanford even had at
>> least two of those, based on the PDP-11 and MIT-written software) before
>> then. I see such a discussion on this list in 2017 for example.  And yes,
>> most of the early 1980 efforts used concepts from the Xerox PARC PUP
>> architecture. PARC was on Stanford land, a short bike ride up the hill. I
>> was a summer intern at Xerox, and bunches of us went up to the "dealer"
>> seminars.  There were various meetings with people from MIT, CMU, ISI and
>> other DARPA contractors, where ideas were freely interchanged.
>> Cisco's first product, by the way, was an Ethernet adapter for the Massbus
>> on a DecSystem-20, but re-using the router hardware and software gave them
>> a head start on the router business. By late 1986 it became a three-way
>> discussion between Sun, Cisco and Stanford office of technology licensing
>> (OTL). It was complicated by the fact that Andy had tried to license the
>> original Stanford design (funded by NSF and DARPA), but OTL said patents
>> would be hard since it was a modular design with standard parts! There was
>> at least one patent on the graphics board, but Cisco did not use the
>> graphics board. Andy Bechtolscheim had been at the Sun Microsystems company
>> for a while (I was too by then). His hardware design had diverged from Len
>> Bosack's, and Cisco ended up totally rewriting their software without any
>> Bill Yeager code.
>> The director of the AI Lab, Lester Ernest, mostly was concerned that Len
>> had been collecting his Stanford salary and using the facilities he
>> supposedly managed to design the Cisco variant. Les has published a bit out
>> this informally, including an email thread from the time. Most of the bad
>> feelings went under the bridge due to the large discount that Cisco and Sun
>> gave to Stanford, making the university a flagship beta customer. Cisco was
>> trying to position themselves as the "high end" with high list prices and
>> discounts negotiated to each customer so they each thought they were
>> getting a great deal.
>> If nothing else, there were follow-on "gifts" (which could be tax
>> deductible!) including endowing a professorship. I did find these:
>> Cisco endows professorship in information technology
>>
>>
>> |
>> |
>> |  |
>> Cisco endows professorship in information technology
>>
>>
>>  |
>>
>>  |
>>
>>  |
>>
>>
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.quora.com/Did-Cisco-actually-invent-the-modern-router-Or-did-they-just-perfected-it__;!!KwNVnqRv!HSdKGlpgiEyELxfCJMsw3qM7bEuYecJZB4MeVDzWxcUqjmPyqAnlxV0XYQWDqVoJP6rdTj1BjR-NWCAlntZTMP1tS1kYjw$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.quora.com/Did-Cisco-actually-invent-the-modern-router-Or-did-they-just-perfected-it__;!!KwNVnqRv!HSdKGlpgiEyELxfCJMsw3qM7bEuYecJZB4MeVDzWxcUqjmPyqAnlxV0XYQWDqVoJP6rdTj1BjR-NWCAlntZTMP1tS1kYjw$>
>>
>>
>> Bill
>>    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 09:53:39 AM PDT, Barbara Denny via
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>  At least one of those people worked at SRI before moving to Stanford and
>> then Cisco.  There were other sources of early technology transfer.
>> Later on I was also asked by the military to try to get early commercial
>> router vendors to support one protocol they were interested in.
>> barbara
>>    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 08:54:55 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>  Perhaps helpful with the archaeology.
>>
>> Several of the single digit employees at Cisco were former Stanford IT
>> folks who had worked on the routers.  And the routers were actively used
>> for research -- people were periodically making enhancements based on new
>> research and then getting them deployed in the Stanford routers.
>>
>> I remember one person who leveraged the routers for research despairing as
>> all the folks who had supported his research were now at Cisco.
>>
>> So, and purely speculating, there may have been concerns about a continuing
>> transfer of knowledge/ideas post any initial license as Stanford employees
>> who were engaged in improving the Stanford devices then went to Cisco, with
>> improvements in their heads.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 9:07 AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Dave,
>> >    The word I heard went into some detail on the discounts, but I recall
>> > wondering why no mention was made of equity.  I hope your memory is
>> > correct and that Stanford did get some equity.
>> >    So, in itself, the "Stanford thought about suing them but didn't"
>> > story is not very interesting.
>> >    The more interesting thing would be why they were upset at cisco.
>> > Particularly given Tom's account stating that cisco had received a
>> > license during 1986.
>> >
>> >    By the way, I still recall my initial visit to cisco in March 1987.
>> > At the time, all of cisco was in a suite of offices and lab space on the
>> > second floor of a nondescript building in Menlo Park.  Len Bosack met me
>> > and stressed (a) the advanced nature of their routers vis a vis the
>> > competition and (b) his ambition for cisco.  Even though the office
>> > suite was loosely furnished, his Board Room included a map of the world.
>> >
>> >    We ended up placing a huge (seven routers) order with cisco and I
>> > never regretted it.  It was neat being able to call cisco to report a
>> > bug, getting a sngle-digit-employee-number person to answer the call and
>> > have a new version of the software without the bug by close of business
>> > that day.  Needless to say, that didn't last for more than a year or so.
>> >
>> >    But I also recall friends at Stanford being very critical of the
>> > cisco-Stanford relationship during this period, so it's definitely
>> > Internet history of interest.
>> >
>> >        -- Guy
>> >
>> > On 11/3/22 9:05 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>> > > On 11/3/2022 5:52 AM, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>> > >>  During spring 1987, however, when I was shopping for routers for an
>> > >> NSFnet regional network, I was made aware of quite a bit of
>> > >> uncertainty about whether Stanford was going to sue cisco over some
>> > >> Intellectual Property issues.  Evidently there was a settlement that
>> > >> gave Stanford a discount on buying cisco routers.
>> > >
>> > > Adding to the rumors...
>> > >
>> > > At the time, I heard all of the above, with the closure being that the
>> > > settlement was Stanford's getting some cisco shares.
>> > >
>> > > d/
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Dave Crocker
>> > > Brandenburg InternetWorking
>> > > bbiw.net
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Internet-history mailing list
>> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > >
>> >
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!BhF0ReQHMaqoADPF_U5qv64gz2QkgRzsfjNXf3lxD3_pDoZEM9E7yGatUubyNFwDqrjZ0I84Z04rdpTZI1b9NHMpyQw-1A$ >  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!BhF0ReQHMaqoADPF_U5qv64gz2QkgRzsfjNXf3lxD3_pDoZEM9E7yGatUubyNFwDqrjZ0I84Z04rdpTZI1b9NHMpyQw-1A$
>>>> <
>> >
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!BhF0ReQHMaqoADPF_U5qv64gz2QkgRzsfjNXf3lxD3_pDoZEM9E7yGatUubyNFwDqrjZ0I84Z04rdpTZI1b9NHMpyQw-1A$ >  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!BhF0ReQHMaqoADPF_U5qv64gz2QkgRzsfjNXf3lxD3_pDoZEM9E7yGatUubyNFwDqrjZ0I84Z04rdpTZI1b9NHMpyQw-1A$
>>>> >
>> > >
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>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> *****
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>>
>>
> 
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> living as The Truth is True
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