[ih] Design choices in SMTP

[John Day]

Wasn’t it called NETRJS and was defined in RFC 189?  Which had Braden’s name on it.

John

> On Feb 9, 2023, at 14:22, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> NETRJE didn’t get a lot of use because the systems that could support a Server FTP didn’t need the NETRJE. (Can someone correct me about that?)
>> 
>> What did get a lot of use of was CCNRJE written by Bob Braden for the UCLA CCN 360/91.
> 
> 
> I used the RJE program, available at ISI, to submit jobs to the UCLA CCN 360/91.  But I would have sworn the author was someone other than Braden.
> 
> 
> The nature of the use was not as straightforward as Steve's example.
> 
> My job was user support and documentation at the UCLA Arpanet project.  A year or two before getting hired, I'd become a fan of the NLS system at SRI, even including the text-only interface. (Prior to dropping out and getting hired for this job, I wrote a text formatter, with inline commands, that emulated the hierarchical text model in NLS.  I developed and ran it at my place of work which was the other 360/91 on campus, the NIH-funded Health Sciences Computing.  There were only 18 of those machines built. This was also my only major foray into using PL/1.)
> 
> Anyhow, I taught the department secretaries -- remember when that was what they were called? -- to use the remote system.  After editing, we needed to be able to print documents.  The one's they'd been editing and the ones from the NIC, of course.
> 
> So I had them FTP the document down to ISI and run the RJE program to send the document to the high-speed, upper and lower case printer at CCN.  The fastest U/L printer we had in the department was 120 cps, so this was /much/ better.
> 
> This also wound up generating a serious bit of learning about computer science and statistics. (Before and after dropping out, I studied Psychology and had taken 1 really basic stats course and no CS courses.)
> 
> The secretaries quickly got facile with the process, but they started complaining that the sequence would often fail.  I turned to my office mate, Jon Postel, and asked whether he had any suggestions. He had me explain the total sequence being used and asked how often things were failing and what the symptoms were.
> 
> I noted that there were widely different systems, but that the overall failure rate seemed to be about 50%,
> 
> He  asked how reliable our department Sigma 7 was, I suggested a good, but not outstanding number and he agreed.  Then he asked about the net itself, and we agreed it was highly reliable, maybe 90%. Then SRI, which wasn't great, and ISI, which had gotten quite good, then CCN, which was not great.
> 
> Cumulative probably came out almost exactly at 50%
> 
> I later hear that the failure to perform a similar, aggregate failure rate exercise was the reason the Russians beat us to space...
> 
> d/
> 
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social
> 
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