From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Thu Nov 9 18:13:55 2023 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 15:13:55 +1300 Subject: [ih] A 40th anniversary Message-ID: This year is the 40th anniversary of the CERN Communications Systems Group, which I headed from 1985 to 1996. The group is alive and well and looking forward to the next new thing. There was a retrospective event last week, and some of the talks might be of interest here. Agenda/presentations/videos are at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1331906/timetable/#20231101 (click on the little paperclips). For Internet history snippets, probably the most interesting items are the talks by Ben Segal, Francois Fluckiger, Olivier Martin and Denise Heagerty. For what CERN and LHC networking looks like today, see the second of Edoardo Martelli's talks. Regards Brian Carpenter From dave.taht at gmail.com Thu Nov 9 18:42:00 2023 From: dave.taht at gmail.com (Dave Taht) Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2023 21:42:00 -0500 Subject: [ih] 25th anniversary of the arlan wireless howto Message-ID: 25 years ago today I sat on the roof of my house, in the rain, after re-aligning my pre-wifi-wireless router's antenna, which after 7 months of effort we had finally got running for a week solid... and wondered where wifi and wireless technologies might go. I gave myself a cold a few days before... by sitting up there, in the rain, for so long, marvelling into the fog my signal disappeared into... This was pre-blog, pre archive.org, pre-google: "11/5/98 - We're up continuously now for nearly a week. Greg sends out email gloating that the the wireless stuff was more reliable than the ADSL line was... 11/6/98 - The antenna gets knocked askew by pouring rain and winds. This happens, of course, at about 4 AM, midway through my download of redhat 5.2. I crawl up on the roof at dawn in my bathrobe and realalign the antenna by eye... it works again!! - and god himself is spitting down on the house, I can barely see the trees at the end of our lot. I start writing up this report in the hope that it would be useful to others. It absolutely pouring rain, and my ping times to the valley occilate between 12 and 17 ms. Greg said he knew when he sent that mail out about our great wireless uptime something bad would happen. I said: 'don't do that, then'. 11/10/98 - I stay home from work (sick) and take a stab at finishing this report. Of course it's pouring rain and the antenna gets knocked around so back up on the roof I go. While on the roof, I have a revelation - despite all the hassles and expense, the ups and the downs, this project has been FUN, and I wouldn't have missed mucking around with all this technology for the world. This system costs only a little more a month than hybrid cable, offers full bidirectional near-T1 bandwidth, has lower latency than anything, and ultimately will cost much less per month than the major alternatives (ISDN, 56K, T1) in our location." Did not have a grammar check then! https://the-edge.blogspot.com/2010/10/who-invented-embedded-linux-based.html -- Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html Dave T?ht CSO, LibreQos From gbuday.irtf at gmail.com Fri Nov 10 01:16:02 2023 From: gbuday.irtf at gmail.com (Gergely Buday) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 10:16:02 +0100 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs Message-ID: Hi there, is there a written history of Internet protocol bugs? Somebody suggested to find the obsolete RFCs and figure out why they went obsolete. Other than that, what would you recommend to figure out this history? - Gergely From craig at tereschau.net Fri Nov 10 04:50:46 2023 From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 05:50:46 -0700 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Fun question and it also raises the question of "what's a bug?" So, for instance, here are 3 TCP "bugs" -- which of these are the kinds of bugs you're interested in? 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson was using an early TCP to connect to a printer and his host kept crashing and he discovered printer outputs that combined data from multiple TCP connections because every TCP connection was starting with sequence number 0 when the host rebooted. He realized that TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old segments from being confused with new segments. 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was too small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the sequence space. All three could be described as bugs: #1 - failure to implement spec, #2 - failure to recognize a potential failure point, and #3 - failure to anticipate evolution. Or you could say just #1 was a bug and #2 and #3 were learning experiences. Or you could label #3 as simply a growth issue that was deferred by the original designers..... Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? Craig On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 2:16?AM Gergely Buday via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > Hi there, > > is there a written history of Internet protocol bugs? > > Somebody suggested to find the obsolete RFCs and figure out why they went > obsolete. > > Other than that, what would you recommend to figure out this history? > > - Gergely > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > -- ***** Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and mailing lists. From dhc at dcrocker.net Fri Nov 10 06:04:35 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 06:04:35 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: > Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what was intended by the authors. This draws a distinction from things that might be called 'enhancements'.? A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended.? An enhancement is a change in intention. So... > 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong > checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. bug > 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson ... > He realized that > TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old > segments from being confused with new segments. bug. > 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was too > small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the > sequence space. enhancement. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Nov 10 09:56:51 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:56:51 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <19248db1-16ca-429e-a5c8-b6f0e4164355@3kitty.org> For protocol bugs, rather than coding errors or technology evolution, I can vaguely remember one such incident.? During the process of defining and testing TCP4, there was a state diagram in the protocol definition that had to be changed.?? The original state diagram didn't properly handle all possible sequences of events involving lost, delayed, duplicated, or reordered datagrams.? So several additional states had to be added to the state diagram. This fixed a true "protocol bug" of the TCP state machine. This was circa 1977-1978.? I think the problem occurred in the "opening" and/or "closing" handshakes.? It surfaced as we were implementing and trying out the first TCP4 implementations.?? At the time, we were frequently rebooting or restarting various pieces of equipment including routers ("gateways" at that point) and host computers.?? Many such devices didn't always restart "cold", but might have buffers still holding datagrams from previous testing. So it was common for a TCP to send or receive a datagram from a previous test run -- i.e., a datagram "delayed in the Internet" for possibly minutes or even hours.?? There was even one case where a computer (PDP-10 IIRC) had a hardware problem and was down for several days, but transmitted the datagrams from its output queue several days later.?? Magnetic core memory didn't lose its contents over power cycles so the machine just continued after the hardware was fixed. Those long-delayed datagrams surfaced the issue with the state diagram.? The "Initial Sequence Number" (ISN) issue also still existed and was addressed by requiring the ISN to be assigned by a random number generator.? That was a problem for many computers at the time, which had no way in the hardware to generate a random number.?? I can't remember what I did on the PDP-11.....but I still have a listing of the 1970s code. I recall Jon Postel drawing the TCP state diagram on a whiteboard and adding the several new states that we decided were needed to make the protocol able to withstand "long delay" datagrams.? All us implementers changed our code to add the new states and the problems (those ones at least) were solved.? Somewhat later Jon documented the protocol in the RFCs which were required to make TCP a "DoD Standard". I'm not sure if any of this ever got written up, but it may have been in one of Jon's notes on the Internet meetings. Jack Haverty (implemented TCP for Unix on PDP-11/40) On 11/10/23 06:04, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote: > On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: >> Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? > > RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from > what was intended by the authors. > > This draws a distinction from things that might be called > 'enhancements'.? A bug is a behavior that was not originally > intended.? An enhancement is a change in intention. > > So... > >> 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong >> checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. > bug > > >> 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson > ... >> ?? He realized that >> TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old >> segments from being confused with new segments. > bug. > > >> 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space >> was too >> small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the >> sequence space. > enhancement. > > > d/ > From steve at shinkuro.com Fri Nov 10 10:43:48 2023 From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 08:43:48 -1000 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 was a specification bug. #3 is a "bug" of a different order. Craig says it's a growth issue. Dave says it's an enhancement. It's clear the sequence space was too small to support the kinds of delays that would be encountered in interplanetary communication. Thus, it would be fair to say this wasn't a bug, but simply a limitation on the environments in which TCP would work. Essentially all tools have limitations on how they're used. That said, I've always thought it was a weakness in the specification and documentation of protocols that the quantitative aspects are usually not addressed. The tuning of timeouts, limitations on capacity, etc. are usually left to the implementers and operators to figure out later. Thus, if there's a bug in #3, I'd say it was in not making the limitations explicit in the design and documentation. Thus it was not a bug that the TCP sequence space didn't support interplanetary communication. If there was a bug, it was, at worst, merely that anyone had in mind to use it for that purpose. Steve On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:05?AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: > > Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? > > RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what > was intended by the authors. > > This draws a distinction from things that might be called > 'enhancements'. A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended. > An enhancement is a change in intention. > > So... > > > 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong > > checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. > bug > > > > 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson > ... > > He realized that > > TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old > > segments from being confused with new segments. > bug. > > > > 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was > too > > small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the > > sequence space. > enhancement. > > > d/ > > -- > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Nov 10 13:16:41 2023 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 16:16:41 -0500 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8E34D8D1-25A5-4B02-861B-1B9C7AF8D60B@comcast.net> I agree with you. The same Sequence Number can?t be assigned unless the last use has been Acked. But to do that, the implementation would have also had to have been ignoring the Credit and not to send beyond the Right Window Edge. The implementation wasn?t obeying the protocol. The fact that the sequence number space rolled over too soon and the sender couldn?t keep the pipe full was not a bug in the protocol. That it was not what was desired was a different problem. That led to an ?enhancement.? Of course a problem that easily predictable. (It didn?t need interplanetary communication to run into the problem. I remember doing this calculation for a satellite connection early on (last half of 70s) and realizing that it would be a problem with byte sequencing.) Take care, John > On Nov 10, 2023, at 13:43, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote: > > I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 was a > specification bug. > > #3 is a "bug" of a different order. Craig says it's a growth issue. Dave > says it's an enhancement. It's clear the sequence space was too small to > support the kinds of delays that would be encountered in interplanetary > communication. Thus, it would be fair to say this wasn't a bug, but simply > a limitation on the environments in which TCP would work. > > Essentially all tools have limitations on how they're used. That said, > I've always thought it was a weakness in the specification and > documentation of protocols that the quantitative aspects are usually not > addressed. The tuning of timeouts, limitations on capacity, etc. are > usually left to the implementers and operators to figure out later. > > Thus, if there's a bug in #3, I'd say it was in not making the limitations > explicit in the design and documentation. Thus it was not a bug that the > TCP sequence space didn't support interplanetary communication. If there > was a bug, it was, at worst, merely that anyone had in mind to use it for > that purpose. > > Steve > > On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:05?AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history < > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > >> On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: >>> Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? >> >> RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what >> was intended by the authors. >> >> This draws a distinction from things that might be called >> 'enhancements'. A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended. >> An enhancement is a change in intention. >> >> So... >> >>> 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong >>> checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. >> bug >> >> >>> 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson >> ... >>> He realized that >>> TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old >>> segments from being confused with new segments. >> bug. >> >> >>> 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was >> too >>> small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the >>> sequence space. >> enhancement. >> >> >> d/ >> >> -- >> Dave Crocker >> Brandenburg InternetWorking >> bbiw.net >> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social >> -- >> Internet-history mailing list >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history >> > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From dhc at dcrocker.net Fri Nov 10 14:01:24 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 14:01:24 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <877a1105-2b7a-4052-a260-c02c2bf616bb@dcrocker.net> On 11/10/2023 10:43 AM, Steve Crocker wrote: > I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 > was a specification bug. Distinguishing between a specification-writing bug -- I'll call that misguided intent -- versus implementation bug, is fundamental. Some years ago, there was a workshop at Stanford put on by a couple of CS professors, about 'problems with TCP/IP'.? Attendees included Larry Roberts and Barry Leiner, among others.? As usual, I was by far the most junior. As presentations progressed it turned out that the problems these professors were concerned about were all implementation errors. And apparently they thought the problem was with the specifications... d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From jack at 3kitty.org Fri Nov 10 15:18:49 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 15:18:49 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: <8E34D8D1-25A5-4B02-861B-1B9C7AF8D60B@comcast.net> References: <8E34D8D1-25A5-4B02-861B-1B9C7AF8D60B@comcast.net> Message-ID: <711d8a05-ef72-485d-909e-e2d9ac369eaa@3kitty.org> Part of the requirements spec of the protocol was that it be able to handle whatever the network did to datagrams in transit.? That included delaying packets.?? A functioning TCP connection might receive an old datagram, with address and sequence number that happened to be valid for the current connection, but with quite different data.?? You can never be absolutely sure that "the last use has been Acked." That could occur when a datagram from an "old" connection was still bouncing around somewhere in the 'net and finally came to its destination.? In the early days, when TCP implementations tended to start all connections with ISN == 0, it was pretty common to receive "old" datagrams that caused errors in the output. IIRC, we struggled with how to best handle such possibilities.?? One approach was simply to assume that there was a maximum latency of the Internet, and require TCP implementations to simply sleep on startup until any old datagrams were assumed to be gone.?? One value that passed the consensus test was 3 seconds, so TCP implementations at that point would just wait a while when first started.?? We weren't thinking about an interplanetary Internet at the time, but we did have satellite networks (SATNET, MATNET, WBNET) with associated delays. The 3-second delay didn't solve the computer-crashed-and-restarted case, so the protocol was changed again to require a random ISN.? Of course that isn't perfect either, since there's still some chance that a new connection will ovrlap with an old one.?? But we decided that such an event would be probabilistically small.? Besides, the Internet was an Experiment, and a better mechanism could be put in the next version of TCP.?? Similarly, the checksumming algorithm was purposely selected to be friendly to the overworked computers running TCPs, rather than to be robust as an error handling scheme, and a better algorithm could be introduced later. There were also a lot of distinctions between Required and Recommended parts of the protocol.? Very few things were Required. That allowed for a lot of experimentation with retransmission algorithms, packetization approaches, et al.? IIRC, the "window" was defined to be advisory - so it wasn't a protocol violation to send data "outside the window".? The receiver might just discard it, but perhaps by the time the datagram arrived the window would have moved and the datagram accepted.?? That was an experimental technique to perhaps achieve improved throughput. All of the above happened over a very short period of time - somewhere between a weekend and a few months.? So if it was captured anywhere in print, it would have been in emails or meeting notes, not likely in RFCs or IENs. Jack Haverty On 11/10/23 13:16, John Day via Internet-history wrote: > I agree with you. The same Sequence Number can?t be assigned unless the last use has been Acked. > > But to do that, the implementation would have also had to have been ignoring the Credit and not to send beyond the Right Window Edge. The implementation wasn?t obeying the protocol. > > The fact that the sequence number space rolled over too soon and the sender couldn?t keep the pipe full was not a bug in the protocol. That it was not what was desired was a different problem. That led to an ?enhancement.? Of course a problem that easily predictable. > > (It didn?t need interplanetary communication to run into the problem. I remember doing this calculation for a satellite connection early on (last half of 70s) and realizing that it would be a problem with byte sequencing.) > > Take care, > John > >> On Nov 10, 2023, at 13:43, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote: >> >> I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 was a >> specification bug. >> >> #3 is a "bug" of a different order. Craig says it's a growth issue. Dave >> says it's an enhancement. It's clear the sequence space was too small to >> support the kinds of delays that would be encountered in interplanetary >> communication. Thus, it would be fair to say this wasn't a bug, but simply >> a limitation on the environments in which TCP would work. >> >> Essentially all tools have limitations on how they're used. That said, >> I've always thought it was a weakness in the specification and >> documentation of protocols that the quantitative aspects are usually not >> addressed. The tuning of timeouts, limitations on capacity, etc. are >> usually left to the implementers and operators to figure out later. >> >> Thus, if there's a bug in #3, I'd say it was in not making the limitations >> explicit in the design and documentation. Thus it was not a bug that the >> TCP sequence space didn't support interplanetary communication. If there >> was a bug, it was, at worst, merely that anyone had in mind to use it for >> that purpose. >> >> Steve >> >> On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:05?AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history < >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: >> >>> On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: >>>> Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? >>> RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what >>> was intended by the authors. >>> >>> This draws a distinction from things that might be called >>> 'enhancements'. A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended. >>> An enhancement is a change in intention. >>> >>> So... >>> >>>> 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong >>>> checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. >>> bug >>> >>> >>>> 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson >>> ... >>>> He realized that >>>> TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old >>>> segments from being confused with new segments. >>> bug. >>> >>> >>>> 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was >>> too >>>> small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the >>>> sequence space. >>> enhancement. >>> >>> >>> d/ >>> >>> -- >>> Dave Crocker >>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>> bbiw.net >>> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social >>> -- >>> Internet-history mailing list >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history >>> >> -- >> Internet-history mailing list >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From jeanjour at comcast.net Fri Nov 10 18:44:07 2023 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 21:44:07 -0500 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: <711d8a05-ef72-485d-909e-e2d9ac369eaa@3kitty.org> References: <8E34D8D1-25A5-4B02-861B-1B9C7AF8D60B@comcast.net> <711d8a05-ef72-485d-909e-e2d9ac369eaa@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <8D97B48C-9076-4B40-8976-F02745D1A84B@comcast.net> Yes, correct. Looking for something that works. The spec ended up with 2 seconds, which may not be enough but one can use different port-ids to get around it and leave used port-ids fallow even longer. Part of the Lsolution was TTL in IP to ensure that the packets were no longer in the network. The ultimate solution came in 1978 when Richard Watson proved that the necessary and sufficient condition for synchronization for reliable data transfer was to impose an upper bound on 3 times: Maximum Packet Lifetime, MPL; Maximum Time to Wait before sending an Ack, A; Maximum Time to Exhaust Retries, R. Watson calls the quantity: MPL+A+R, delta-t. After no traffic for 2 or 3 delta-t, there are no packets in the network relating to the state. Any initial sequence number can be used. A bit, called the Data Run Flag, is set in the header of the protocol to indicate this is a new state regime. TCP/IP imposes the first, but the other two are implicit in the assumptions about performance. Waiting 2 seconds to re-use the port-ids after a connection has closed seems to be sufficient to avoid problems, and probably these days is much more than enough. (From what I hear, some implementations are running through the port-id space in less than 2 seconds and nothing bad has been reported, or at least I haven?t heard of it.) I haven?t looked closely enough at the TCP Timestamp Option (how sequence number rollover is protected) to see if it obeys this. It probably does for normal operation. The only one I would be concerned about is Selective Ack. I do know that simulations showed that a protocol that implemented Watson?s bounds was found to be more robust under bad conditions than TCP. Take care, John > On Nov 10, 2023, at 18:18, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > > Part of the requirements spec of the protocol was that it be able to handle whatever the network did to datagrams in transit. That included delaying packets. A functioning TCP connection might receive an old datagram, with address and sequence number that happened to be valid for the current connection, but with quite different data. You can never be absolutely sure that "the last use has been Acked." > > That could occur when a datagram from an "old" connection was still bouncing around somewhere in the 'net and finally came to its destination. In the early days, when TCP implementations tended to start all connections with ISN == 0, it was pretty common to receive "old" datagrams that caused errors in the output. > > IIRC, we struggled with how to best handle such possibilities. One approach was simply to assume that there was a maximum latency of the Internet, and require TCP implementations to simply sleep on startup until any old datagrams were assumed to be gone. One value that passed the consensus test was 3 seconds, so TCP implementations at that point would just wait a while when first started. We weren't thinking about an interplanetary Internet at the time, but we did have satellite networks (SATNET, MATNET, WBNET) with associated delays. > > The 3-second delay didn't solve the computer-crashed-and-restarted case, so the protocol was changed again to require a random ISN. Of course that isn't perfect either, since there's still some chance that a new connection will ovrlap with an old one. But we decided that such an event would be probabilistically small. Besides, the Internet was an Experiment, and a better mechanism could be put in the next version of TCP. Similarly, the checksumming algorithm was purposely selected to be friendly to the overworked computers running TCPs, rather than to be robust as an error handling scheme, and a better algorithm could be introduced later. > > There were also a lot of distinctions between Required and Recommended parts of the protocol. Very few things were Required. That allowed for a lot of experimentation with retransmission algorithms, packetization approaches, et al. IIRC, the "window" was defined to be advisory - so it wasn't a protocol violation to send data "outside the window". The receiver might just discard it, but perhaps by the time the datagram arrived the window would have moved and the datagram accepted. That was an experimental technique to perhaps achieve improved throughput. > > All of the above happened over a very short period of time - somewhere between a weekend and a few months. So if it was captured anywhere in print, it would have been in emails or meeting notes, not likely in RFCs or IENs. > > Jack Haverty > > > On 11/10/23 13:16, John Day via Internet-history wrote: >> I agree with you. The same Sequence Number can?t be assigned unless the last use has been Acked. >> >> But to do that, the implementation would have also had to have been ignoring the Credit and not to send beyond the Right Window Edge. The implementation wasn?t obeying the protocol. >> >> The fact that the sequence number space rolled over too soon and the sender couldn?t keep the pipe full was not a bug in the protocol. That it was not what was desired was a different problem. That led to an ?enhancement.? Of course a problem that easily predictable. >> >> (It didn?t need interplanetary communication to run into the problem. I remember doing this calculation for a satellite connection early on (last half of 70s) and realizing that it would be a problem with byte sequencing.) >> >> Take care, >> John >> >>> On Nov 10, 2023, at 13:43, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote: >>> >>> I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 was a >>> specification bug. >>> >>> #3 is a "bug" of a different order. Craig says it's a growth issue. Dave >>> says it's an enhancement. It's clear the sequence space was too small to >>> support the kinds of delays that would be encountered in interplanetary >>> communication. Thus, it would be fair to say this wasn't a bug, but simply >>> a limitation on the environments in which TCP would work. >>> >>> Essentially all tools have limitations on how they're used. That said, >>> I've always thought it was a weakness in the specification and >>> documentation of protocols that the quantitative aspects are usually not >>> addressed. The tuning of timeouts, limitations on capacity, etc. are >>> usually left to the implementers and operators to figure out later. >>> >>> Thus, if there's a bug in #3, I'd say it was in not making the limitations >>> explicit in the design and documentation. Thus it was not a bug that the >>> TCP sequence space didn't support interplanetary communication. If there >>> was a bug, it was, at worst, merely that anyone had in mind to use it for >>> that purpose. >>> >>> Steve >>> >>> On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:05?AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history < >>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: >>> >>>> On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: >>>>> Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? >>>> RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what >>>> was intended by the authors. >>>> >>>> This draws a distinction from things that might be called >>>> 'enhancements'. A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended. >>>> An enhancement is a change in intention. >>>> >>>> So... >>>> >>>>> 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong >>>>> checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. >>>> bug >>>> >>>> >>>>> 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson >>>> ... >>>>> He realized that >>>>> TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old >>>>> segments from being confused with new segments. >>>> bug. >>>> >>>> >>>>> 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was >>>> too >>>>> small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the >>>>> sequence space. >>>> enhancement. >>>> >>>> >>>> d/ >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Dave Crocker >>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking >>>> bbiw.net >>>> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social >>>> -- >>>> Internet-history mailing list >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history >>>> >>> -- >>> Internet-history mailing list >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From gbuday.irtf at gmail.com Sat Nov 11 02:03:23 2023 From: gbuday.irtf at gmail.com (Gergely Buday) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:03:23 +0100 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 10 Nov 2023 at 13:50, Craig Partridge wrote: > > Fun question and it also raises the question of "what's a bug?" So, for instance, here are 3 TCP "bugs" -- which of these are the kinds of bugs you're interested in? > > 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted. >From a user's perspective, this is definitely a bug, but not in the protocol, but in the implementation. Would any stakeholder: the IESG, vendors, RFC authors be interested in formally verified reference implementations of protocols? Some said that the IETF is not interested. > 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson was using an early TCP to connect to a printer and his host kept crashing and he discovered printer outputs that combined data from multiple TCP connections because every TCP connection was starting with sequence number 0 when the host rebooted. He realized that TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old segments from being confused with new segments. This I call a bug in the protocol. > 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was too small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the sequence space. As someone suggested, this is an enhancement to a new environment, where large amounts of data in one connection should be possible. > All three could be described as bugs: #1 - failure to implement spec, #2 - failure to recognize a potential failure point, and #3 - failure to anticipate evolution. Or you could say just #1 was a bug and #2 and #3 were learning experiences. Or you could label #3 as simply a growth issue that was deferred by the original designers..... > > Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track? I joined the Usable Formal Methods Research Group of the IRTF to tackle protocol bugs during the design of the protocol with formal methods. Formal methods are just tools, what matters is what properties I want to check with them. And here learning history is essential. - Gergely From vint at google.com Sat Nov 11 06:24:03 2023 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 06:24:03 -0800 Subject: [ih] visual internet routing Message-ID: https://www.sidn.nl/en/news-and-blogs/packet-run-is-an-interactive-marble-run-that-shows-people-how-the-internet-works v -- Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: Vint Cerf Google, LLC 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor Reston, VA 20190 +1 (571) 213 1346 until further notice From dave.taht at gmail.com Sat Nov 11 06:33:45 2023 From: dave.taht at gmail.com (Dave Taht) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 09:33:45 -0500 Subject: [ih] visual internet routing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Vint Cerf via Internet-history Date: Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 9:24?AM Subject: [ih] visual internet routing To: Warren Kumari , Steven G. Huter , Internet-history , Christophe Diot https://www.sidn.nl/en/news-and-blogs/packet-run-is-an-interactive-marble-run-that-shows-people-how-the-internet-works This is a wonderful concept, thanks!!!!! ages ago we tried to get funding for an animation or build a rube goldberg machine. for how network queues work, getting so far as writing a script for it and soliciting bids: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TeMbxDQA81P-Fu47rWcztwcqrh1So4qt77B_Tt_fxsU/edit?usp=sharing Instead we wave hands, and use chocolate fountains, or bottles of water... or MIT's juggling club - I have been losing my marbles (sic) lately at how few people understand what a packet is! -- Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: Vint Cerf Google, LLC 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor Reston, VA 20190 +1 (571) 213 1346 until further notice -- Internet-history mailing list Internet-history at elists.isoc.org https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history -- Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html Dave T?ht CSO, LibreQos From lk at cs.ucla.edu Sat Nov 11 09:52:22 2023 From: lk at cs.ucla.edu (Leonard Kleinrock) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 09:52:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs Message-ID: <1817525327.6094445.1699725142060.JavaMail.zimbra@mail.cs.ucla.edu> ?Hi, In my 1976 Wiley Interscience book, Queueing Systems, Volume 2: Computer Applications, I described in detail a number deadlocks, degradations and lockups in the early Arpanet. Len Kleinrock Sent from my iPhone > On Nov 10, 2023, at 1:16?AM, Gergely Buday via Internet-history wrote: > ?Hi there, > > is there a written history of Internet protocol bugs? > > Somebody suggested to find the obsolete RFCs and figure out why they went > obsolete. > > Other than that, what would you recommend to figure out this history? > > - Gergely > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From jack at 3kitty.org Sat Nov 11 11:10:35 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:10:35 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: There's quite a lot of discussion about protocol issues reported in the Technical Reports about the Arpanet project over the 1980s. Early versions of some algorithms and protocols were found to be inadequate when the technology was actually used in real-world conditions.?? Changes were proposed, documented, and tested as the Arpanet grew and evolved over the years. Much of the contemporary documentation is archived in DTIC, and can be found by searching for "Arpanet" on the DTIC site - e.g., https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/tr/ADA121350?? There are many other such reports.?? Searching for the "contract number" is also productive - it was MDA903-78-C-0129 for the Arpanet main contract.?? The phrase "Quarterly Technical Report" is another good search term to retrieve the history of the operation and evolution of the network, describing many of the "bugs" encountered and fixed. One incident I recall happened sometime in the 1980s, as the Arpanet was becoming the DDN (Defense Data Network) to serve as the worldwide communications infrastructure for the US Defense Department.?? Sorry I can't remember the references, but someone at a university had published a paper which mathematically proved that the Arpanet (and hence the DDN) would "lock up" and all communications would cease.?? That understandably disturbed the government sponsors of the DDN, who immediately tasked BBN to find the problem and fix it.?? Yesterday! The math gurus at BBN analyzed the report and concluded (IIRC) that the analysis was correct -- the DDN would in fact lock up and all communications would fail.?? However, they also discovered that the academic analysis had made certain assumptions, which greatly simplified their analysis.?? In particular, the paper assumed that all the switches (computers called IMPs) in the network ran at exactly the same speed and were started at exactly the same time. So IF all the computers comprising the network executed instructions in perfect synchronization, eventually the entire system would crash.? Big IF... At BBN, we advised the government that although such an incident was mathematically possible, we didn't have any idea how to actually make multiple computers scattered around the world start at exactly the same time and run instruction-by-instruction in lockstep.? In theory, such an incident could happen; in practice it was unlikely to ever happen for thousands or even millions of years. Marauding backhoes were by far a bigger threat to network operation.?? But the Arpanet protocols and algorithms mitigated that threat pretty well. As the Arpanet transmuted into the Internet, such mathematical analyses became much more challenging.?? Networks interconnected by gateways were much more complex in behavior than the circuits interconnecting switches in the Arpanet.? I don't recall seeing many formal mathematical analyses of Internet protocols and algorithms, at least in the early years when I was involved.? We were aware of the issues in networks, largely from experience with the Arpanet, but often didn't have practical solutions.? But there were lots of Ideas in the Internet research group, and The Internet was the Experiment to see which Ideas worked in actual practice.?? Ideas couldn't be analyzed, but they could be implemented, deployed, and tested in real-world use. Some of the Ideas of TCP4 were actually "placeholders" for the real mechanisms to be developed later and tested in subsequent live operation of the Internet Experiment.? One might view them as "bugs" but they were intentionally put into the design.? One example I recall is "Source Quench", which is a congestion control mechanism that I at least never thought was viable.? Another was the checksum algorithm which was poor at handling typical communication errors but didn't require a lot of scarce computing power in the switches and host computers of the era.?? TTL (Time-To-Live) was considered important for the algorithms, especially routing and handling of time-sensitive data flows such as interactive speech.? But, as implemented, it had nothing to do with time, but rather was defined as a "hop count", since the computers of the era didn't have the ability to measure time (until Dave Mills and crew created NTP). Hope this helps, Jack Haverty On 11/10/23 01:16, Gergely Buday via Internet-history wrote: > Hi there, > > is there a written history of Internet protocol bugs? > > Somebody suggested to find the obsolete RFCs and figure out why they went > obsolete. > > Other than that, what would you recommend to figure out this history? > > - Gergely From agmalis at gmail.com Sat Nov 11 12:38:06 2023 From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 15:38:06 -0500 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Jack, > Marauding backhoes were by far a bigger threat to network operation. Actually, back then microwave fade was a much more common issue than backhoes. Cheers, Andy From jack at 3kitty.org Sat Nov 11 15:32:04 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2023 15:32:04 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In January 1983, the Internet had been operating as a "24x7 service" for a year or so.? Vint Cerf was leaving ARPA and Barry Leiner was taking over the ARPA Internet projects.?? Barry arranged a "Network Management Workshop" in January 1983 to bring together a group of people who had been working on Internet projects to discuss how to manage the beast we had built and gotten some experience in operating and using. The "Proceedings" of that workshop were unusual - we were asked, after the workshop had ended, to each write up short notes on what we thought about the state of the Internet and its future.? Much of what we thought was wrong - projecting that the Internet might eventually grow to contain the unbelievable configuration of 1000 networks for example.? But those writeups might provide insight into what we were all thinking at the time about the technology inside the Internet. I haven't been able to find those Proceedings anywhere online. ? But I did find my paper copy in a box in the basement, along with a photograph of the group.? It's now been scanned. ? Rather than inflict it on this mailing list, I've put it online for whoever wants to retrieve it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cK8Lc22vidgnCxHhyT1qcHmhS82d7xzO/view?usp=sharing I'm sure there are lots of other historical artifacts, many probably only captured in boxes in someone's basement. ? The early days of networking were, IMHO, quite unusual. ? Much of the interaction, discussion, and debate that might formerly have been captured in journals and learned publications was instead carried out using our new-fangled network. ? There was no web or massive cloud warehouses yet.? So much of that history was only captured in email or other ephemeral files accessible through FTP from somewhere else on the net.? All gone now, except for boxes in basements. Hope this helps some historians... Jack Haverty From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Sun Nov 12 19:22:10 2023 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 03:22:10 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1280556510.2770562.1699845730379@mail.yahoo.com> Thanks Jack!? ?I am wondering what happened to Jil.? She isn't in the photograph.? It would have been nice to have the only woman attendee in the picture. barbara On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 03:32:23 PM PST, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: In January 1983, the Internet had been operating as a "24x7 service" for a year or so.? Vint Cerf was leaving ARPA and Barry Leiner was taking over the ARPA Internet projects.?? Barry arranged a "Network Management Workshop" in January 1983 to bring together a group of people who had been working on Internet projects to discuss how to manage the beast we had built and gotten some experience in operating and using. The "Proceedings" of that workshop were unusual - we were asked, after the workshop had ended, to each write up short notes on what we thought about the state of the Internet and its future.? Much of what we thought was wrong - projecting that the Internet might eventually grow to contain the unbelievable configuration of 1000 networks for example.? But those writeups might provide insight into what we were all thinking at the time about the technology inside the Internet. I haven't been able to find those Proceedings anywhere online. ? But I did find my paper copy in a box in the basement, along with a photograph of the group.? It's now been scanned. ? Rather than inflict it on this mailing list, I've put it online for whoever wants to retrieve it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cK8Lc22vidgnCxHhyT1qcHmhS82d7xzO/view?usp=sharing I'm sure there are lots of other historical artifacts, many probably only captured in boxes in someone's basement. ? The early days of networking were, IMHO, quite unusual. ? Much of the interaction, discussion, and debate that might formerly have been captured in journals and learned publications was instead carried out using our new-fangled network. ? There was no web or massive cloud warehouses yet.? So much of that history was only captured in email or other ephemeral files accessible through FTP from somewhere else on the net.? All gone now, except for boxes in basements. Hope this helps some historians... Jack Haverty -- Internet-history mailing list Internet-history at elists.isoc.org https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From gbuday.irtf at gmail.com Mon Nov 13 06:12:03 2023 From: gbuday.irtf at gmail.com (Gergely Buday) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 14:12:03 +0000 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: <1817525327.6094445.1699725142060.JavaMail.zimbra@mail.cs.ucla.edu> References: <1817525327.6094445.1699725142060.JavaMail.zimbra@mail.cs.ucla.edu> Message-ID: Thanks. Do you refer to chapter 6? - Gergely On Sat, 11 Nov 2023 at 17:52, Leonard Kleinrock wrote: > > ?Hi, > In my 1976 Wiley Interscience book, Queueing Systems, Volume 2: Computer Applications, I described in detail a number deadlocks, degradations and lockups in the early Arpanet. > Len Kleinrock > Sent from my iPhone > > On Nov 10, 2023, at 1:16?AM, Gergely Buday via Internet-history wrote: > > ?Hi there, > > is there a written history of Internet protocol bugs? > > Somebody suggested to find the obsolete RFCs and figure out why they went > obsolete. > > Other than that, what would you recommend to figure out this history? > > - Gergely > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From b_a_denny at yahoo.com Mon Nov 13 09:34:13 2023 From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:34:13 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: <1280556510.2770562.1699845730379@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1280556510.2770562.1699845730379@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <243305690.3029796.1699896853196@mail.yahoo.com> I was skimming through this a little more this morning and noticed that Dave Clark was listed for a presentation. However, he is not in the attendee list, he didn't provide his thoughts, and he is not in the photo that I see.? I am wondering if he didn't make it at the last minute or whether he might have called in.? I don't remember what phone capabilities existed at that time (perhaps a speaker phone?).? I am pretty sure he was at MIT then but there were no other MIT people listed as attendees so I doubt someone else did the presentation for him.?? BTW, I am not sure Keith Klemba is in the photo either.? barbara On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 07:22:45 PM PST, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote: Thanks Jack!? ?I am wondering what happened to Jil.? She isn't in the photograph.? It would have been nice to have the only woman attendee in the picture. barbara ? ? On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 03:32:23 PM PST, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:? In January 1983, the Internet had been operating as a "24x7 service" for a year or so.? Vint Cerf was leaving ARPA and Barry Leiner was taking over the ARPA Internet projects.?? Barry arranged a "Network Management Workshop" in January 1983 to bring together a group of people who had been working on Internet projects to discuss how to manage the beast we had built and gotten some experience in operating and using. The "Proceedings" of that workshop were unusual - we were asked, after the workshop had ended, to each write up short notes on what we thought about the state of the Internet and its future.? Much of what we thought was wrong - projecting that the Internet might eventually grow to contain the unbelievable configuration of 1000 networks for example.? But those writeups might provide insight into what we were all thinking at the time about the technology inside the Internet. I haven't been able to find those Proceedings anywhere online. ? But I did find my paper copy in a box in the basement, along with a photograph of the group.? It's now been scanned. ? Rather than inflict it on this mailing list, I've put it online for whoever wants to retrieve it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cK8Lc22vidgnCxHhyT1qcHmhS82d7xzO/view?usp=sharing I'm sure there are lots of other historical artifacts, many probably only captured in boxes in someone's basement. ? The early days of networking were, IMHO, quite unusual. ? Much of the interaction, discussion, and debate that might formerly have been captured in journals and learned publications was instead carried out using our new-fangled network. ? There was no web or massive cloud warehouses yet.? So much of that history was only captured in email or other ephemeral files accessible through FTP from somewhere else on the net.? All gone now, except for boxes in basements. Hope this helps some historians... Jack Haverty -- Internet-history mailing list Internet-history at elists.isoc.org https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history ? -- Internet-history mailing list Internet-history at elists.isoc.org https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From jack at 3kitty.org Mon Nov 13 10:15:19 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 10:15:19 -0800 Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs In-Reply-To: <243305690.3029796.1699896853196@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1280556510.2770562.1699845730379@mail.yahoo.com> <243305690.3029796.1699896853196@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <55603b50-094b-4e9b-b9e4-198bb471a182@3kitty.org> Dave Clark was there.? I'm pretty sure Keith Klemba was not.? Here's my recollection of the people in that photo: L->R Dale McNeill (BBN - in charge of SATNET & MATNET operations) Jim Forgie (MIT Lincoln Labs) Jim Herman (BBN - in charge of Arpanet operations) Barry Leiner (DARPA) Gil Falk (BBN - satellite nets) Cliff Weinstein ?not sure? (MIT Lincoln Labs) Jon Postel (everyone knows Jon...) Steve Kent (BBN - security guru) Dave Clark (MIT - ICCB "Internet Architect") Dave Mills (Linkabit, Comsat, UDel, ...?) Jack Haverty (BBN, in charge of "sponsored research") (kneeling) I remember the face, but not the name... There were a few others, not around when the picture happened.? It wasn't a large event, probably just an invited list from Barry Leiner at ARPA.? I recall that a few attendees (e.g., Jil Westcott) arrived late by plane, having been at some other meeting.?? I hadn't realized Catalina even had an airport.?? We used "alternate routing" to get there. Most of us journeyed from LA to Catalina by the ferry service, through the dense fog bank that was common over the Pacific in California in the winter.?? I recall my surprise as I was staring into the gray and suddenly the dock in Catalina appeared - not more than a few hundred feet away!? Radar avoided disaster. The venue on Catalina, at least at the time, was the old Wrigley mansion on top of the hill above the harbor.? See https://localwiki.org/catalina-island/The_Wrigley_Mansion_of_Catalina_Island It was the owners' "summer cottage", and our Workshop was held in the living room.? Not much in the way of "conference" paraphernalia but there was probably a phone somewhere.? I was sitting at a little "tea table" by a window, being distracted by the view and uneasy looking at the long drop below.? My perch was in a kind of parapet hanging out over the cliff.?? I was from the East Coast at the time and had heard about those earthquakes in California! Unfortunately the "Proceedings" that ARPA printed didn't include the presentations.?? IIRC some of us used viewgraphs (low-tech precursor to Powerpoint) and others were just talks or whiteboard-ware so much of the content was probably lost.?? The "recollections" in the Proceedings had a deadline so the publication only contains what the attendees sent in by the cutoff date. Jack Haverty On 11/13/23 09:34, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote: > I was skimming through this a little more this morning and noticed that Dave Clark was listed for a presentation. However, he is not in the attendee list, he didn't provide his thoughts, and he is not in the photo that I see.? I am wondering if he didn't make it at the last minute or whether he might have called in.? I don't remember what phone capabilities existed at that time (perhaps a speaker phone?).? I am pretty sure he was at MIT then but there were no other MIT people listed as attendees so I doubt someone else did the presentation for him. > BTW, I am not sure Keith Klemba is in the photo either. > barbara > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 07:22:45 PM PST, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote: > > Thanks Jack!? ?I am wondering what happened to Jil.? She isn't in the photograph.? It would have been nice to have the only woman attendee in the picture. > barbara > ? ? On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 03:32:23 PM PST, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > > In January 1983, the Internet had been operating as a "24x7 service" for > a year or so.? Vint Cerf was leaving ARPA and Barry Leiner was taking > over the ARPA Internet projects.?? Barry arranged a "Network Management > Workshop" in January 1983 to bring together a group of people who had > been working on Internet projects to discuss how to manage the beast we > had built and gotten some experience in operating and using. > > The "Proceedings" of that workshop were unusual - we were asked, after > the workshop had ended, to each write up short notes on what we thought > about the state of the Internet and its future.? Much of what we thought > was wrong - projecting that the Internet might eventually grow to > contain the unbelievable configuration of 1000 networks for example. > But those writeups might provide insight into what we were all thinking > at the time about the technology inside the Internet. > > I haven't been able to find those Proceedings anywhere online. ? But I > did find my paper copy in a box in the basement, along with a photograph > of the group.? It's now been scanned. ? Rather than inflict it on this > mailing list, I've put it online for whoever wants to retrieve it: > > https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cK8Lc22vidgnCxHhyT1qcHmhS82d7xzO/view?usp=sharing > > I'm sure there are lots of other historical artifacts, many probably > only captured in boxes in someone's basement. ? The early days of > networking were, IMHO, quite unusual. ? Much of the interaction, > discussion, and debate that might formerly have been captured in > journals and learned publications was instead carried out using our > new-fangled network. ? There was no web or massive cloud warehouses > yet.? So much of that history was only captured in email or other > ephemeral files accessible through FTP from somewhere else on the net. > All gone now, except for boxes in basements. > > Hope this helps some historians... > > Jack Haverty > > From gregskinner0 at icloud.com Mon Nov 13 12:39:46 2023 From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 12:39:46 -0800 Subject: [ih] Fwd: history of protocol bugs References: <961788828.3050374.1699901031397@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7DF7C90F-6A2F-4E43-9F37-8C194E60EE8B@icloud.com> Forwarded for Barbara, who?s having trouble with the list. > ----- Forwarded Message --- > From: Barbara Denny > To: Internet-history > Sent: Monday, November 13, 2023 at 10:40:44 AM PST > Subject: [ih] history of protocol bugs > > Apologize if the content is a repeat. I have trouble with the mailing list sometimes. > > John Jubin is kneeling. > > I was wondering if that was Dave Clark in the photo but he wasn't listed as attending. > > I forgot Mount Ada is the hill on Catalina. It is a nice ferry ride. I wasn't sure if someone, like Jil, provided sailing services. Lots of sailors back then Thanks for mentioning Catalina. > > barbara > > > > > > From ralph.koning at sidn.nl Wed Nov 15 09:32:50 2023 From: ralph.koning at sidn.nl (Ralph Koning) Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2023 18:32:50 +0100 Subject: [ih] visual internet routing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for noticing and sharing our work! If you encounter a 404 when visiting the link you can try this alternative link: https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/packet-run-is-an-interactive-marble-run-that-shows-people-how-internet-works Yesterday, we also published a video of packet run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIs0sh4iYU Ralph -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 665 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From vgcerf at gmail.com Wed Nov 22 09:52:38 2023 From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:52:38 -0500 Subject: [ih] internet artifacts Message-ID: https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ v From alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com Wed Nov 22 10:14:49 2023 From: alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com (Alejandro Acosta) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 14:14:49 -0400 Subject: [ih] internet artifacts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5b5e3511-8da2-88f1-90ce-b59138a4ce6b@gmail.com> Wow, super nice On 22/11/23 1:52 PM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: > https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ > > v From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Nov 22 11:00:04 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 11:00:04 -0800 Subject: [ih] internet artifacts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8d683765-88d2-4f63-a939-935243f6f115@3kitty.org> Very interesting, thanks!??? Two things I noticed: 1/ There is a picture of the Arpanet, but no classic "Internet" diagrams at all.? Their definition of "Internet Artifacts" seems to include experiences such as Compuserve, Usenet, etc. 2/ More generally, the museum perspective seems to be from the end-users' experiences, curating all of the things they have encountered over the years in the online world. ? That seems in sharp contrast to the "techie" perspective (such as this list) , which focusses on protocols, algorithms,? and mechanisms based on IP datagrams.?? IMHO, techies (us, IETF, ISOC, etc) view "The Internet" as a computer communications infrastructure which has a growing horde of "apps" that someone else has built on top.?? In contrast, the masses of end-users view "The Internet" as that same collection of apps that they can use to do whatever they do, and the underlying communications mechanism is irrelevant to them. You know you're old when you see something you used to use now displayed in a museum.? It's even worse when you see something you built in that museum.... Jack Haverty On 11/22/23 09:52, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: > https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ > > v From paf at paftech.se Wed Nov 22 14:13:21 2023 From: paf at paftech.se (=?utf-8?b?UGF0cmlrIEbDpGx0c3Ryw7Zt?=) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 23:13:21 +0100 Subject: [ih] internet artifacts In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 22 Nov 2023, at 18:52, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: > https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ Where is Archie and Gopher!?! ;-) Well done! We must and should be better on saving our stories and stuff. We all die. Many of our friends have passed away and can no longer tell their stories. We should work hard(er) on just recording, writing down and saving stuff. As soon as it is saved in some way or another, someone else can restore the bits to some artefact that maybe someone in the future will be interested in. Patrik -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 256 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From stewart at serissa.com Wed Nov 22 17:28:39 2023 From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart) Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 20:28:39 -0500 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 9 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0EA962FA-C069-4097-96AF-81E62F73A243@serissa.com> > > Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:52:38 -0500 > From: vinton cerf > Subject: [ih] internet artifacts > > https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/ > > v > I find myself somewhat bemused to realize I know nine members of the cited band Severe Tire Damage?. -Larry From touch at strayalpha.com Thu Nov 23 11:58:00 2023 From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joe Touch) Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2023 19:58:00 +0000 Subject: [ih] Polarized world threatens open internet: ICANN (AFP) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This post is off topic for this list. News posts and politics discussions should be taken elsewhere. Joe (list admin) > On Nov 22, 2023, at 2:36?AM, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history wrote: > > ?After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the nonprofit > ICANN -- responsible for its technical infrastructure -- is warning that > increasingly polarized geopolitics could start cracking the foundations of > the online world. From jack at 3kitty.org Mon Nov 27 22:47:11 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 22:47:11 -0800 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 Message-ID: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed.?? If you get a chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. Jack Haverty From jericho at attrition.org Mon Nov 27 23:14:53 2023 From: jericho at attrition.org (Jared E. Richo) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:14:53 -0700 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. .b [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch > Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, with > lots of its advantages and foibles revealed.?? If you get a chance to se > it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet History, and > commentary on the real Internet of today. > > https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ > > The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. > > Jack Haverty From karl at cavebear.com Tue Nov 28 00:18:40 2023 From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:18:40 -0800 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the electric telegraph.? (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying to nail Jello to a ceiling.) The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an electronic store-and-forward packet switching system.? That is if one equates telegrams with packets.? The store-and-forward part came from the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the telegram to the destination.? And whether said in jest as a pun or being serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and analog.? (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established by the telegraph system.) ??? --karl-- On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: > > The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the > foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ > 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. > > So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw > wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to > another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? > > It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary > (?) ?timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, > corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. > > .b > > [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to > where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and > his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up > that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen > give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs > "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it > hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially > via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this > day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. > > On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > >> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch >> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, >> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed.?? If you get a >> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet >> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. >> >> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ >> >> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. >> >> Jack Haverty From vint at google.com Tue Nov 28 02:31:00 2023 From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 05:31:00 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Karl, I think you have a reasonable point regarding store/forward and telegraph. The early days of telegraphy involved headset, handset, pencil and paper. Teletypes used paper tape and the messages were punched onto tape, fed into a teletype and fed down the line. The operators would tear off the tape, hang it on a peg waiting to be forwarded to the next telegraph station. This was called 'torn tape" and literally was store (on the peg) and forward (feed to next teletype connect by dedicated circuit to the next hop). AUTODIN was a 1960s store and forward messaging system that emulated this but all electronically. v On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:18?AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the > start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the > electric telegraph. (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying > to nail Jello to a ceiling.) > > The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an > electronic store-and-forward packet switching system. That is if one > equates telegrams with packets. The store-and-forward part came from > the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate > outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the > telegram to the destination. And whether said in jest as a pun or being > serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph > network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. > > I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a > progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and > analog. (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on > imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even > major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established > by the telegraph system.) > > --karl-- > > > On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: > > > > The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the > > foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ > > 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. > > > > So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw > > wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to > > another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? > > > > It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary > > (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, > > corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. > > > > .b > > > > [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to > > where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and > > his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up > > that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen > > give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs > > "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it > > hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially > > via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this > > day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. > > > > On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > > > >> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch > >> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, > >> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a > >> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet > >> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. > >> > >> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ > >> > >> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. > >> > >> Jack Haverty > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > -- Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: Vint Cerf Google, LLC 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor Reston, VA 20190 +1 (571) 213 1346 until further notice From leo at vegoda.org Tue Nov 28 04:42:24 2023 From: leo at vegoda.org (Leo Vegoda) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 13:42:24 +0100 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Hi, Wouldn't something like that have been done for the Chappe brothers' French optical telegraph? The alternative would presumably be for the operator to remember both the protocol codes and the message and then repeat it correctly. That's a lot to ask, I expect. Kind regards, Leo On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 at 11:31, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote: > > Karl, > I think you have a reasonable point regarding store/forward and telegraph. > The early days of telegraphy involved headset, handset, pencil and paper. > Teletypes used paper tape and the messages were punched onto tape, fed into > a teletype and fed down the line. The operators would tear off the tape, > hang it on a peg waiting to be forwarded to the next telegraph station. > This was called 'torn tape" and literally was store (on the peg) and > forward (feed to next teletype connect by dedicated circuit to the next > hop). AUTODIN was a 1960s store and forward messaging system that emulated > this but all electronically. > > v > > > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:18?AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history < > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > > > In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the > > start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the > > electric telegraph. (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying > > to nail Jello to a ceiling.) > > > > The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an > > electronic store-and-forward packet switching system. That is if one > > equates telegrams with packets. The store-and-forward part came from > > the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate > > outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the > > telegram to the destination. And whether said in jest as a pun or being > > serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph > > network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. > > > > I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a > > progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and > > analog. (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on > > imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even > > major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established > > by the telegraph system.) > > > > --karl-- > > > > > > On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: > > > > > > The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the > > > foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ > > > 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. > > > > > > So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw > > > wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to > > > another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? > > > > > > It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary > > > (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, > > > corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. > > > > > > .b > > > > > > [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to > > > where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and > > > his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up > > > that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen > > > give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs > > > "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it > > > hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially > > > via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this > > > day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. > > > > > > On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > > > > > >> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch > > >> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, > > >> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a > > >> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet > > >> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. > > >> > > >> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ > > >> > > >> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. > > >> > > >> Jack Haverty > > -- > > Internet-history mailing list > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > > > > > -- > Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: > Vint Cerf > Google, LLC > 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > +1 (571) 213 1346 > > > until further notice > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From jeanjour at comcast.net Tue Nov 28 05:12:12 2023 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 08:12:12 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: In the late 19thC at least in Europe, telegraph was visual, not auditory. (Yea, I was surprised too.) The reason I know is a very good book I highly recommend: Basil Mahon, The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside. Heaviside had scarlet fever as a child and was badly hard of hearing. But because telegraph was visual, he became a telegraph operator for one of the first undersea cable companies from the UK to Norway. Later becoming chief operator, worked out the theory of transmission lines (I learned why I had a semester course for my undergrad EE), and translated Maxwell into vector calculus and much else. Heaviside was entirely self-taught. A pretty amazing guy. (I am guessing that the telegraph scorched marks or holes on a paper tape and that punched paper tape came later, but maybe not.) What Karl is describing is really message switching. Packet switching broke up the messages and allowed interleaving different pieces of messages, so that short messages didn?t have to wait behind long ones. (Still delayed, but shorter completion time. Think OS scheduling.) While Baran?s interest in inventing packet switching was survivability and the military applications, Davies wasn?t doing work for the UK military and resiliency was distinctly secondary. His interest was greater efficient use of the lines. Think of it as messages switching was FCFS batch processing, while packet switching was multiprocigramming. So virtual circuit is multiprogramming with contiguous allocation, and datagrams were a tool for the next step. The big surprise was that at the time, nothing else was needed, except congestion control, which Davies recognized in his 1966 paper, as did CYCLADES when they adopted it in 1972 and funded Waterloo to work on it. That?s the short version. BTW, before you read the Heaviside book. Read, Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field on how they figured out E&M. The establishment kept trying to make it Newtonian and it wasn?t of course. It took 3 outsiders to figure it out. It is a fascinating story and sets the stage for Heaviside. Take care, John > On Nov 28, 2023, at 05:31, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote: > > Karl, > I think you have a reasonable point regarding store/forward and telegraph. > The early days of telegraphy involved headset, handset, pencil and paper. > Teletypes used paper tape and the messages were punched onto tape, fed into > a teletype and fed down the line. The operators would tear off the tape, > hang it on a peg waiting to be forwarded to the next telegraph station. > This was called 'torn tape" and literally was store (on the peg) and > forward (feed to next teletype connect by dedicated circuit to the next > hop). AUTODIN was a 1960s store and forward messaging system that emulated > this but all electronically. > > v > > > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:18?AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history < > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > >> In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the >> start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the >> electric telegraph. (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying >> to nail Jello to a ceiling.) >> >> The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an >> electronic store-and-forward packet switching system. That is if one >> equates telegrams with packets. The store-and-forward part came from >> the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate >> outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the >> telegram to the destination. And whether said in jest as a pun or being >> serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph >> network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. >> >> I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a >> progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and >> analog. (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on >> imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even >> major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established >> by the telegraph system.) >> >> --karl-- >> >> >> On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: >>> >>> The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the >>> foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ >>> 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. >>> >>> So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw >>> wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to >>> another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? >>> >>> It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary >>> (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, >>> corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. >>> >>> .b >>> >>> [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to >>> where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and >>> his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up >>> that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen >>> give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs >>> "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it >>> hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially >>> via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this >>> day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. >>> >>> On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: >>> >>>> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch >>>> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, >>>> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a >>>> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet >>>> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. >>>> >>>> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ >>>> >>>> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. >>>> >>>> Jack Haverty >> -- >> Internet-history mailing list >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history >> > > > -- > Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: > Vint Cerf > Google, LLC > 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor > Reston, VA 20190 > +1 (571) 213 1346 > > > until further notice > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From vgcerf at gmail.com Tue Nov 28 06:14:30 2023 From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:14:30 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock market information faster than other means, to their advantage? v On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 8:12?AM John Day via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > In the late 19thC at least in Europe, telegraph was visual, not auditory. > (Yea, I was surprised too.) The reason I know is a very good book I highly > recommend: > Basil Mahon, The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside. > Heaviside had scarlet fever as a child and was badly hard of hearing. But > because telegraph was visual, he became a telegraph operator for one of the > first undersea cable companies from the UK to Norway. Later becoming chief > operator, worked out the theory of transmission lines (I learned why I had > a semester course for my undergrad EE), and translated Maxwell into vector > calculus and much else. Heaviside was entirely self-taught. A pretty > amazing guy. (I am guessing that the telegraph scorched marks or holes on > a paper tape and that punched paper tape came later, but maybe not.) > > What Karl is describing is really message switching. Packet switching > broke up the messages and allowed interleaving different pieces of > messages, so that short messages didn?t have to wait behind long ones. > (Still delayed, but shorter completion time. Think OS scheduling.) > > While Baran?s interest in inventing packet switching was survivability and > the military applications, Davies wasn?t doing work for the UK military and > resiliency was distinctly secondary. His interest was greater efficient use > of the lines. Think of it as messages switching was FCFS batch processing, > while packet switching was multiprocigramming. So virtual circuit is > multiprogramming with contiguous allocation, and datagrams were a tool for > the next step. The big surprise was that at the time, nothing else was > needed, except congestion control, which Davies recognized in his 1966 > paper, as did CYCLADES when they adopted it in 1972 and funded Waterloo to > work on it. > > That?s the short version. > > BTW, before you read the Heaviside book. > Read, Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the > Electromagnetic Field on how they figured out E&M. The establishment kept > trying to make it Newtonian and it wasn?t of course. It took 3 outsiders to > figure it out. It is a fascinating story and sets the stage for Heaviside. > > Take care, > John > > > On Nov 28, 2023, at 05:31, Vint Cerf via Internet-history < > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > > > > Karl, > > I think you have a reasonable point regarding store/forward and > telegraph. > > The early days of telegraphy involved headset, handset, pencil and paper. > > Teletypes used paper tape and the messages were punched onto tape, fed > into > > a teletype and fed down the line. The operators would tear off the tape, > > hang it on a peg waiting to be forwarded to the next telegraph station. > > This was called 'torn tape" and literally was store (on the peg) and > > forward (feed to next teletype connect by dedicated circuit to the next > > hop). AUTODIN was a 1960s store and forward messaging system that > emulated > > this but all electronically. > > > > v > > > > > > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:18?AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history < > > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > > > >> In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the > >> start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the > >> electric telegraph. (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying > >> to nail Jello to a ceiling.) > >> > >> The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an > >> electronic store-and-forward packet switching system. That is if one > >> equates telegrams with packets. The store-and-forward part came from > >> the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate > >> outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the > >> telegram to the destination. And whether said in jest as a pun or being > >> serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph > >> network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. > >> > >> I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a > >> progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and > >> analog. (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on > >> imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even > >> major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established > >> by the telegraph system.) > >> > >> --karl-- > >> > >> > >> On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: > >>> > >>> The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the > >>> foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ > >>> 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. > >>> > >>> So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw > >>> wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to > >>> another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? > >>> > >>> It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary > >>> (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, > >>> corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. > >>> > >>> .b > >>> > >>> [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to > >>> where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and > >>> his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up > >>> that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen > >>> give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs > >>> "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it > >>> hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially > >>> via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this > >>> day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. > >>> > >>> On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > >>> > >>>> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch > >>>> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, > >>>> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a > >>>> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet > >>>> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. > >>>> > >>>> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ > >>>> > >>>> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. > >>>> > >>>> Jack Haverty > >> -- > >> Internet-history mailing list > >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > >> > > > > > > -- > > Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: > > Vint Cerf > > Google, LLC > > 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor > > Reston, VA 20190 > > +1 (571) 213 1346 > > > > > > until further notice > > -- > > Internet-history mailing list > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > From jhlowry at mac.com Tue Nov 28 06:21:45 2023 From: jhlowry at mac.com (John Lowry) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:21:45 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <3A3AD961-27AC-4E9D-997E-67A40D785093@mac.com> It seems possible that semaphore signals to/from ships at sea with the relevant authorities ashore might qualify. Also, it seems like a lot of this is not packet transfer but message transfer. Since the actual originator and recipients were unlikely to be technologically capable, this seems like MTA traffic, much like we have to day. > On Nov 28, 2023, at 07:42, Leo Vegoda via Internet-history wrote: > > Hi, > > Wouldn't something like that have been done for the Chappe brothers' > French optical telegraph? The alternative would presumably be for the > operator to remember both the protocol codes and the message and then > repeat it correctly. That's a lot to ask, I expect. > > Kind regards, > > Leo > > On Tue, 28 Nov 2023 at 11:31, Vint Cerf via Internet-history > wrote: >> >> Karl, >> I think you have a reasonable point regarding store/forward and telegraph. >> The early days of telegraphy involved headset, handset, pencil and paper. >> Teletypes used paper tape and the messages were punched onto tape, fed into >> a teletype and fed down the line. The operators would tear off the tape, >> hang it on a peg waiting to be forwarded to the next telegraph station. >> This was called 'torn tape" and literally was store (on the peg) and >> forward (feed to next teletype connect by dedicated circuit to the next >> hop). AUTODIN was a 1960s store and forward messaging system that emulated >> this but all electronically. >> >> v >> >> >> On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 3:18?AM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history < >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: >> >>> In a couple of pieces that I've written/recorded I tried to nail the >>> start of the net sometime in the 1830s with the invention of the >>> electric telegraph. (But, truly it is an exercise as fruitful as trying >>> to nail Jello to a ceiling.) >>> >>> The reason that I picked that was that the electric telegraph was an >>> electronic store-and-forward packet switching system. That is if one >>> equates telegrams with packets. The store-and-forward part came from >>> the manual writing-down and then transmitting on the appropriate >>> outgoing link at relay locations along the path from the source of the >>> telegram to the destination. And whether said in jest as a pun or being >>> serious it is the case that the signalling on the early telegraph >>> network was quite "digital", being driven by finger -digit - action. >>> >>> I tend to not give much credit to the voice telephone system as a >>> progenitor of the net as it was largely end-to-end circuit switched and >>> analog. (At a later stage I think that the telephone systems' work on >>> imposing modulated signals onto various media was a significant, even >>> major, contribution, but a contribution to a design already established >>> by the telegraph system.) >>> >>> --karl-- >>> >>> >>> On 11/27/23 11:14 PM, Jared E. Richo via Internet-history wrote: >>>> >>>> The Marconi Wireless Telegraph, invented circa 1902/1903 [1], set the >>>> foundation for a LOT of modern technology. It's where I begin in my ~ >>>> 120 years of Vulnerability History talk. >>>> >>>> So in this example, just under 20 years later, but before we saw >>>> wireless used for transferring encrypted/encoded comms, which led to >>>> another 'fun' chapter in that history (WW2)? >>>> >>>> It tracks =) Hard to say if they did any research, but the arbitrary >>>> (?) timeline is believable, especially if there were no wars, >>>> corporate espionage, or whatever else looming at the time. >>>> >>>> .b >>>> >>>> [1] While that date is more arguably established, the relevance to >>>> where I begin my talk is a tad more murky. The demo from Marconi and >>>> his assistants happened at a given time, yes! But the six+ lead-up >>>> that led to that event happened before the public articles I have seen >>>> give any attribution to. So I am speaking at "technology inception" vs >>>> "technology demonstration" vs "technology hacked" vs "omg why was it >>>> hacked on the day it was 'unveiled'?!". It's a bit nuanced, especially >>>> via the lens of modern vulnerability disclosure timelines. To this >>>> day, it is perhaps the most valuable use-case for why it matters. >>>> >>>> On 11/27/2023 11:47 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: >>>> >>>>> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch >>>>> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, >>>>> with lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a >>>>> chance to se it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet >>>>> History, and commentary on the real Internet of today. >>>>> >>>>> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ >>>>> >>>>> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. >>>>> >>>>> Jack Haverty >>> -- >>> Internet-history mailing list >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history >>> >> >> >> -- >> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to: >> Vint Cerf >> Google, LLC >> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor >> Reston, VA 20190 >> +1 (571) 213 1346 >> >> >> until further notice >> -- >> Internet-history mailing list >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From vgcerf at gmail.com Tue Nov 28 06:24:36 2023 From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:24:36 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: yes; one bit message: HELP! On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 9:23?AM Dave Crocker wrote: > On 11/28/2023 6:14 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: > > Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock > > market information faster than other means, to their advantage? > > As soon as that sort of tech comes into the mix, didn't the Greeks and > Romans use a bonfire and/or flag system for relayed signaling over > distances? > > d/ > > -- > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social > > From jaap at NLnetLabs.nl Tue Nov 28 06:28:16 2023 From: jaap at NLnetLabs.nl (Jaap Akkerhuis) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:28:16 +0100 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <202311281428.3ASESGs2025787@bela.nlnetlabs.nl> vinton cerf via Internet-history writes: > Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock market > information faster than other means, to their advantage? As a kid I was fascinated by the whole idea of Optical telegraph. The Optical telegrph has a long history, see also https://www.academia.edu/19258586/The_First_Data_Networks or the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph. jaap From dhc at dcrocker.net Tue Nov 28 06:29:48 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 06:29:48 -0800 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: On 11/28/2023 6:24 AM, vinton cerf wrote: > yes; one bit message: HELP! apparently just a slight... bit... more elaborate. www.bbc.co.uk BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: Discovering Roman Technology <#> 'What did the Romans ever do for us?' Adam Hart-Davis rises to the challenge. ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/tech_01.shtml www.romanobritain.org Romans in Britain - Military Signalling <#> The Roman Army had developed some pretty advanced signalling systems for it's time and on this web page you can learn about it. ? https://www.romanobritain.org/8-military/mil_signalling_systems.php -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From dhc at dcrocker.net Tue Nov 28 06:23:50 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 06:23:50 -0800 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: On 11/28/2023 6:14 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: > Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock > market information faster than other means, to their advantage? As soon as that sort of tech comes into the mix, didn't the Greeks and Romans use a bonfire and/or flag system for relayed signaling over distances? d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From wayne at playaholic.com Tue Nov 28 07:52:14 2023 From: wayne at playaholic.com (Wayne Hathaway) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 10:52:14 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <1701186734.8ixpqyp7hcgccc8o@hostingemail.digitalspace.net> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned a fun book called "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage. wayne On Mon, 27 Nov 2023 22:47:11 -0800, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: >> Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch >> Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, with >> lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a chance to se >> it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet History, and >> commentary on the real Internet of today. >> >> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ >> >> The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. >> >> Jack Haverty >> -- >> Internet-history mailing list >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From odlyzko at umn.edu Tue Nov 28 08:05:08 2023 From: odlyzko at umn.edu (odlyzko at umn.edu) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 10:05:08 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Just a few historical comments, which I will build on a response to a question that was posed by Vint Cerf: > Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock market > information faster than other means, to their advantage? That seems unlikely. But they did have one of the best and most extensive private courier businesses, which did give them a competitive advantage, and this system did use a variety of technologies, including pigeons. The widespread story that the first really rich and powerful Rothschild, Nathan Mayer, made his first fortune from early news of the results of the Battle of Waterloo has been pretty convincingly debunked. But it is conceivable he may have been involved in setting up the first effective pigeon service across the English Channel in the mid-1830s. Pigeons had been used for centuries for communication, but only over land or short stretches of water. It was only in the mid-1830s that a successful system was set up to relay stock market info between Paris and London using pigeons. It only functioned a few months in the year, when the weather was good, and there is no record of who was behind it. The Rothschilds would have been logical candidates to get involved. (BTW, this cross-Channel pigeon system was widely resented, and there were calls for hunters to station themselves on likely routes and shoot down the pigeons. I had a project to try to figure out the date this method became effective by studying the degree to which prices in Paris and London were correlated, but the volunteer undergraduate research assistant who was working on it did not get very far before graduating. I may try to resuscitate that in the future.) Long-range optical telegraph systems were only built by governments, with the most extensive and long-lasting one by the Chappe brothers in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. A great history of that is in the Holzmann and Pehrson book, "The Early History of Data Networks." Short range systems were quite common, though, with cities or port authorities using them to signal the arrival of ships. (Telegraph Hill in San Francisco is named after one such.) And crude optical signaling goes back thousands of years, with central Greece being informed of the fall of Troy through a series of fire signals. All this material is amusing and informative, but it is rather far afield from the history of packet networks. Messages in those system were not broken up in packets that were then mixed with those of other messages, ... Andrew From craig at tereschau.net Tue Nov 28 08:10:01 2023 From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:10:01 -0700 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 9:05?AM Andrew Odlyzko via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > > All this material is amusing and informative, but it > is rather far afield from the history of packet networks. > Messages in those system were not broken up in packets > that were then mixed with those of other messages, ... > > > Agreed, though not far from cyber security. Pehrson and Holtzmann were down the hall from me at SICS when they started writing their book (Holtzmann on a sabbatical, like me). And one detail we uncovered was that the French telegraph system played a critical role in the plot of the Count of Monte Cristo, in which the count arranges for a message to be altered or inserted (I don't recall which) in transit, which causes the Baron Danglars, a banker, to panic. Classic man-in-the-middle attack :-) Craig -- ***** Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and mailing lists. From j at shoch.com Tue Nov 28 08:26:02 2023 From: j at shoch.com (John Shoch) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 08:26:02 -0800 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm no expert, but.....: --Early telegraphy (wired, pre-Marconi) often had operators writing down messages as they came in, and re-keying them on to the next station. --This has often been cited in the evolution of digital communications. --Many years ago Lewis Branscomb (then Chief Scientist at IBM) started a talk with a description of the first telegraph line built across Australia, from Adelaide in the South to Darwin in the North (where messages could be re-sent on an underseas cable to Java, and then on to Europe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Overland_Telegraph_Line --There were, I think, 11 "stations" built across the route -- with operators to receive and re-transmit messages. --Branscomb cited a book about one station built in the outback at Alice Springs -- "Alice on the Line"; initially set ca. 1900; I tracked down a copy and read it. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/alice-on-the-line-doris-blackwell/1026425911 https://openlibrary.org/works/OL26452045W/Alice_on_the_line?edition=key%3A/books/OL8647342M --The book has great stories about the hardships in getting to and running a telegraph relay station in the desert. [Sadly, the book is also a disturbing reflection of social and racial aspects of this very different time and place......] --I also have a set of Boy Scout semaphore flags, which I have used in talks on digital communication. --Messages can be forwarded along a string of people. --It has a 2-of-8 encoding, allowing 28 regular symbols (plus two sort-of-out-of-band pause and error signals). --With the 28 regular symbols, it provides a good lesson on the difference between bit-rate and baud [yes, the purists will remind us that "baud rate" is redundant, or a first derivative.....] John Shoch From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Nov 28 09:34:48 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:34:48 -0800 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <11f2c53e-7ccd-421e-b8b6-b6ab0f957a6b@3kitty.org> In high school I had a teacher who was enamored of Roman history. So I learned a bit about how Roman society worked, and in particular wartime behavior.? The Romans (and many others of the age) had extensive communications networks, using runners, ships, birds, fires, and anything else handy to send information over long distances.?? Their networks had a serious problem with latency - days or weeks in transit being a common problem. One of the wartime techniques addressed the risk of the enemy spies ("intelligence agencies") intercepting messages, e.g., between generals in Africa and the government in Rome.??? The sender would create a message on a scroll.?? The communications wetware (slaves) would then rip the scroll into pieces so that none of the pieces contained enough information to be useful to an enemy.?? The pieces would then be sent separately, even by different means available, to the destination.?? Some might go by ships, some by runners, on different routes.? At the destination, the pieces would be gathered together and the original scroll reconstructed.?? Multiple copies of scrolls could be sent if the routes were especially dangerous. That sure sounds like "packet switching" to me...although the terminology was created as computers arrived, the concepts were used in ancient time. I recall Vint explaining, at some early Internet meeting, that the word "protocol" is derived from the Greek "protokolon", which was the section at the beginning of a scroll that described exactly what the scroll contained and other relevant "metadata".?? Today we call them "headers". All of this history was in my head, and probably many others, as we built the Arpanet, Internet, et al.?? But I suspect the basic ideas were around even before the Greco-Roman age. Jack Haverty PS - that TV show I referenced was interesting because it goes well beyond the basic ideas of digital communications, and explores how humans reacted to it with "social media" and such.?? It's here -- https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hgmp8?? In the end, the inventor concludes it was all a bad idea..... From odlyzko at umn.edu Tue Nov 28 10:08:49 2023 From: odlyzko at umn.edu (odlyzko at umn.edu) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:08:49 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes, indeed. One minor point that might be worth recalling: The word "telegraph" was coined by Claude Chappe, as was the word "semaphore." Andrew On Tue, 28 Nov 2023, Bill Ricker wrote: > > > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 11:10?AM Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote: > On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 9:05?AM Andrew Odlyzko via Internet-history < > > ?And one detail we uncovered was that > the French telegraph system played a critical role in the plot of the Count > of Monte Cristo, in which the count arranges for a message to be altered or > inserted (I don't recall which) in transit, which causes the Baron > Danglars, a banker, to panic.? Classic man-in-the-middle attack :-) > > > Art imitates life. The Chappe/Napoleonic optical-telegraphe/Semaphore national network had the first (wireless) case > of wire-fraud, despite the network supposedly being government use only. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph#Prevalence > > (Note that it is this optical telegraph that the wine label Vieux? T?l?graphe Ch?teauneuf du Pape commemorates. > Alas the label has only an icon caricature of the old tower as ruined.) > image.png > > Historically, the English hilltop bonfire network was much earlier, but it had a bandwidth of 1 bit per night -- > Invasion or not? > > Chappe's was a major step forward in bandwidth vs either bonfires or person-sized semaphore flags (greater size = > greater distance per relay when read by telescope instead of hand-held binoculars ). > > -- > Bill Ricker > bill.n1vux at gmail.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux? > > From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Tue Nov 28 11:36:19 2023 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:36:19 +1300 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <7fd98a4c-22be-eeb3-526e-724b1cf08a90@gmail.com> I suspect that native American smoke signals, and Swiss alpenhorn signalling and yodelling, would count. When the Spanish Armada invaded Britain in 1588, the warning was sent to London and around the country by a series of hill-top beacon fires. That's a torn-tape system even if it only conveys one bit, and the idea goes back at least to the Peloponnesian War and to the Han dynasty in China. Lots more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon. Regards Brian Carpenter On 29-Nov-23 03:23, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote: > On 11/28/2023 6:14 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: >> Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock >> market information faster than other means, to their advantage? > > As soon as that sort of tech comes into the mix, didn't the Greeks and > Romans use a bonfire and/or flag system for relayed signaling over > distances? > > d/ > From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Tue Nov 28 12:36:04 2023 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian Carpenter) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 09:36:04 +1300 Subject: [ih] Australian Overland Telegraph Line In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: There's another great book about the Australian line, written by a descendant of the original Alice after whom Alice Springs was named: The Singing Line (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3392468-the-singing-line). Sadly my copy seems to have gone walkabout. Brian On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 5:26?AM John Shoch via Internet-history wrote: > > I'm no expert, but.....: > --Early telegraphy (wired, pre-Marconi) often had operators writing down > messages as they came in, and re-keying them on to the next station. > --This has often been cited in the evolution of digital communications. > --Many years ago Lewis Branscomb (then Chief Scientist at IBM) started a > talk with a description of the first telegraph line built across Australia, > from Adelaide in the South to Darwin in the North (where messages could be > re-sent on an underseas cable to Java, and then on to Europe) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Overland_Telegraph_Line > --There were, I think, 11 "stations" built across the route -- with > operators to receive and re-transmit messages. > --Branscomb cited a book about one station built in the outback at Alice > Springs -- "Alice on the Line"; initially set ca. 1900; I tracked down a > copy and read it. > https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/alice-on-the-line-doris-blackwell/1026425911 > https://openlibrary.org/works/OL26452045W/Alice_on_the_line?edition=key%3A/books/OL8647342M > --The book has great stories about the hardships in getting to and running > a telegraph relay station in the desert. [Sadly, the book is also a > disturbing reflection of social and racial aspects of this very different > time and place......] > > --I also have a set of Boy Scout semaphore flags, which I have used in > talks on digital communication. > --Messages can be forwarded along a string of people. > --It has a 2-of-8 encoding, allowing 28 regular symbols (plus two > sort-of-out-of-band pause and error signals). > --With the 28 regular symbols, it provides a good lesson on the difference > between bit-rate and baud [yes, the purists will remind us that "baud rate" > is redundant, or a first derivative.....] > > John Shoch > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From dhc at dcrocker.net Tue Nov 28 13:06:06 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 13:06:06 -0800 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: <11f2c53e-7ccd-421e-b8b6-b6ab0f957a6b@3kitty.org> References: <11f2c53e-7ccd-421e-b8b6-b6ab0f957a6b@3kitty.org> Message-ID: On 11/28/2023 9:34 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > All of this history was in my head, and probably many others, as we > built the Arpanet, Internet, et al.?? But I suspect the basic ideas > were around even before the Greco-Roman age. For any interesting technology, it is probably useful for a timeline to distinguish basic concept from forms of implementation.? (One can, of course, at other aspects of distinction.) For this thread, distinguishing the concept of packet switching from the service implementation might note manual (smoke, semaphore etc.) vs. electric transmission (telegraph, computer), clear vs. coded/encrypted, and routing that is manual? vs. automated. I think tht covers the range of mechanisms that have been discussed in this thread. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From ycor at iit.demokritos.gr Tue Nov 28 13:19:25 2023 From: ycor at iit.demokritos.gr (Yannis Korovesis) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 23:19:25 +0200 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: a tower system in Ancient Greece https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phryctoria Yannis ????? ??? BlueMail ??? Android ? ???? 28 ??? 2023, 16:23 ,??? ??? 16:23 ,Dave Crocker via Internet-history ??????: >On 11/28/2023 6:14 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote: >> Didn't the Rothschild's set up a semaphore system to relay stock >> market information faster than other means, to their advantage? > >As soon as that sort of tech comes into the mix, didn't the Greeks and >Romans use a bonfire and/or flag system for relayed signaling over >distances? > >d/ > >-- >Dave Crocker >Brandenburg InternetWorking >bbiw.net >mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social > >-- >Internet-history mailing list >Internet-history at elists.isoc.org >https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history From gaylord at dirtcheapemail.com Tue Nov 28 13:44:18 2023 From: gaylord at dirtcheapemail.com (Clark Gaylord) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 16:44:18 -0500 Subject: [ih] Invention of The Internet - circa 1920 In-Reply-To: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> References: <7e3a2031-0790-4cdd-835a-e60b85332a92@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet makes an interesting read in this context, wrt telegraphy as an "Internet" technology, and especially gets into some of the social elements of telegraph operators, which are quite reminiscent (preminiscent?) of this community https://amzn.to/3uCFk9m Clark On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 01:47 Jack Haverty via Internet-history < internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote: > Yes, it's fiction, but I just saw an interesting episode of Murdoch > Mysteries, in which the Internet is invented, over a century ago, with > lots of its advantages and foibles revealed. If you get a chance to se > it, it's an interesting alternative view of Internet History, and > commentary on the real Internet of today. > > https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18602066/ > > The Inventor, in the TV show, also wears a 3-piece suit. > > Jack Haverty > -- > Internet-history mailing list > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history > From jack at 3kitty.org Tue Nov 28 14:20:09 2023 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:20:09 -0800 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: <11f2c53e-7ccd-421e-b8b6-b6ab0f957a6b@3kitty.org> Message-ID: Agreed.?? I've often wondered what the ratio is between "inventions" which introduced new concepts and those which just applied old concepts using a new technology. Another interesting comparison over a timeline would be the economics aspects of communications.? Every mechanism I know about over history has had some incremental "cost" to the sender of data. It cost you something to communicate.? Telegrams cost money to send.? Scrolls consumed the time of your ships and couriers, and your slaves to do the copying, instead of tending the herds and crops. Until the Internet... where I can send as much data as I want, at no additional cost to me.?? Or as many emails as I like, with no difference in my communications bill.? Maybe we missed an important part of the concept? Jack Haverty On 11/28/23 13:06, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 11/28/2023 9:34 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: >> All of this history was in my head, and probably many others, as we >> built the Arpanet, Internet, et al.?? But I suspect the basic ideas >> were around even before the Greco-Roman age. > > > For any interesting technology, it is probably useful for a timeline > to distinguish basic concept from forms of implementation.? (One can, > of course, at other aspects of distinction.) > > For this thread, distinguishing the concept of packet switching from > the service implementation might note manual (smoke, semaphore etc.) > vs. electric transmission (telegraph, computer), clear vs. > coded/encrypted, and routing that is manual? vs. automated. > > I think tht covers the range of mechanisms that have been discussed in > this thread. > > d/ > From dhc at dcrocker.net Tue Nov 28 14:30:37 2023 From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:30:37 -0800 Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 48, Issue 13 In-Reply-To: References: <11f2c53e-7ccd-421e-b8b6-b6ab0f957a6b@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <3a95c91b-1c62-48d0-bfc3-3302046a0140@dcrocker.net> On 11/28/2023 2:20 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote: > Agreed. I've often wondered what the ratio is between "inventions" > which introduced new concepts and those which just applied old > concepts using a new technology. I'll take exception to the 'just'.? Sometimes the use of a new tech warrants the 'just'.? Others are hugely innovative. Also, I now realize I earlier left off a distinction I usually promote, between creation of component technology and integration of components into a new service.? Anonymous FTP was operationally the start of the distributed web, albeit with impressively bad UX design.? And the WWW is claimed to have created no component functionality (or, I've heard, maybe only one), but as systems design innovation, it got a wonderful balance between functionality and usability.? There should be no 'just' about such achievements. (I'm harping on the just not as a criticism of your use, but of that use being quite common.) > Another interesting comparison over a timeline would be the economics > aspects of communications.? Every mechanism I know about over history > has had some incremental "cost" to the sender of data. It cost you > something to communicate.? Telegrams cost money to send.? Scrolls > consumed the time of your ships and couriers, and your slaves to do > the copying, instead of tending the herds and crops. As I recall, when I was growing up, local phone calls in US urban environs carried no incremental charge. > Until the Internet... where I can send as much data as I want, at no > additional cost to me.?? Or as many emails as I like, with no > difference in my communications bill.? Maybe we missed an important > part of the concept? Scale and scope of the all-you-can-eat benefit certainly was/is unique. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social From touch at strayalpha.com Wed Nov 29 13:49:25 2023 From: touch at strayalpha.com (Joe Touch) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 21:49:25 +0000 Subject: [ih] Reminder about the size of list posts Message-ID: <15D64A7B-78D9-498E-B4A2-643DD59CC147@strayalpha.com> Hi all, As a reminder, this list is for discussions of Internet history. Post sizes are limited; the list is not itself a large data repository. Any large items should be posted elsewhere and a link provided in email to this list. Joe (list admin) From karl at cavebear.com Thu Nov 30 14:55:38 2023 From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 14:55:38 -0800 Subject: [ih] ULANA Message-ID: <8043d749-f396-46c7-8aac-af8916150fe8@cavebear.com> The ULANA project was a project by the US Air Force in the mid 1980s in which they went against the pressure for ISO/OSI and wanted something that they could actually buy and actually worked.? It was a big acquisition for those days, about $1billiion. I worked with the TRW team to come up with a proposal (we won, but it was protested by AT&T and the whole project went down the drain.) The idea was for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) TCP based products with demonstrated interoperability. At that time there were a lot of nascent companies - Cisco was in a garage, there were small companies such as FTP Software (spin-off of the Romkey/Bridgham PC/IP project at MIT), Intercon, Beame & Whitside, WRQ, Phil Karn's KA9Q, TGV, my company Epilogue Technology, etc.? There was also Romkey's Packet Driver design (I wrote the first actual implementation) that Russ Nelson picked up on to create a packet driver for nearly every kind of Ethernet card for PCs. The ULANA project put a lot of energy into these companies and helped create a world of reasonably interoperable TCP/IP based products that could run on commodity hardware for reasonable prices. But ULANA is rarely mentioned even though it is, in my opinion, an extremely important driver of the expansion and evolution of the net. (ULANA also pushed the Netbios notions of sharing - which is how I got attached to what ultimately became RFCs 1001 and 1002.) I also find it interesting in that those of us who were involved in ULANA also tended to become busy with the Interop show net as began to grow and evolve around 1987 (under a different name), 1988, and later. ??? ??? --karl--