[ih] early networking

Sun Apr 14 17:43:05 PDT 2024

If you have watched the show "Murdoch Mysteries" set 100+ years ago in 
Toronto, episodes sometimes illustrate how telegraphy worked.  I don't 
know how historically accurate the show is, but sometimes a telegram 
would be couriered, on a bicycle or horse, from one telegraphy office to 
another, run by a competitor, if that was necessary to get the message 
through.

FWIW, back in the days when TCP4 was congealing, we actually talked 
about such historical methods, hoping to learn from experience and maybe 
avoid mistakes made in past "internet" mechanisms.

IMHO, "internetting", "packet switching" and other contemporary terms 
reflect concepts and mechanisms that have literally been in use for 
millenia.  Humans have been moving "stuff" from place to place since we 
were all hunter-gatherers.

We have used many different types of "networks".    In Greco-Roman 
times, there was an extensive transportation network using ships in the 
Mediterranean.   Rome also built an extensive network of roads, some of 
which survive today.   Their goal was apparently to achieve low-latency 
(for the time) throughout the Empire, and good roads were their 
solution.  Within Roman cities, slaves provided local delivery, carrying 
goods (or even people) into Roman villas

When a ship reached a port, its cargo was offloaded and transferred to 
carts and wagons suitable for traversing the roads.  At its final 
destination, the cargo would be further distributed across several 
networks, and some of a cargo of wine might end up in the goblet of a 
patrician Citizen.

They didn't use the term "internet", or "gateway", or "router", or 
"LAN", but their mechanisms performed similar functions.

They even had "packets" ... for example, amphora were big jugs that 
could carry wine, water, olive oil, or even grain.  Many amphora could 
be carried in a single ship, avoiding the need to have special ships for 
each type of cargo.   Amphora were of a size that could be readily 
transferred to another transport network, e.g., to carts used on the 
road system.   In other words, there was a "MTU" for "packets" crossing 
the Roman Internet.

Some transportation needs were met by a form of "circuit switching".  
E.g., aqueducts carried water for long distances, but it wasn't possible 
to mix cargos in an aqueduct.   It was dedicated to a particular 
commodity.   But even aqueducts could be "gatewayed" to another network, 
e.g,. by using amphora for part of the journey.

It's always seemed to me that there are some basic, and ancient, 
principles and concepts in use for millenia to move "stuff". Whenever 
some new technology is created, a frenzy often occurs to create the 
particular new mechanisms to implement those ancient concepts in the new 
environment.  For example, as railroads appeared, techniques were 
invented to integrate them into the older systems.   In the 19th 
century, mechanisms such as "team tracks" gatewayed the rail network to 
the roads.  Today, "containerized shipping" uses similar "packets" to 
move cargo across rail, ship, road, and even air networks.

So, for telegraphy, radio, and today's Internet, the new technology was 
electronics, and new mechanisms are still being developed to create the 
same millenias-old concepts.  Bits are just another form of "stuff" to 
be moved.  Today, bits are even being moved by trucks - e.g., Amazon's 
use of trucks full of storage devices to move huge piles of data to its 
cloud using the road network.

Our networks today seem to increasingly use computers and Artificial 
Intelligence to keep the cargo moving.  Curiously, even the Romans 
automated their Internet.   They used an advanced implementation of 
Intelligence to keep things running smoothly.  Of course they didn't 
have computers or AI, but they did have slaves - lots of them. Slaves 
could keep the systems all running and the cargo moving. Even the 
"email" sent by military and business users throughout the Internet.   
Slaves made excellent couriers.  So even "SneakerNet" is an ancient concept.

Instead of moving physical cargo, our electronic networks are limited - 
they can only move bits.

Until someone figures out how to implement the Transporters of the 
sci-fi world.

Beam me up Scotty,
Jack Haverty

On 4/14/24 13:07, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> I am surprised that there was not a lively discussion of this.  It is an honest question. It is unclear to me what precisely the solution to internetworking was?  I don’t want to suggest anything and affect the answer, but I guess I could.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
>> On Apr 9, 2024, at 06:24, John Day via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>
>> sorry forgot to hit reply-all
>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>> From: John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [ih] early networking
>>> Date: April 9, 2024 at 06:22:45 EDT
>>> To: Sivasubramanian M<6.internet at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Nor was there about virtual circuits and X.25, but it was packet switching.
>>>
>>> We have known this was totally different for 50+ years.  That isn’t the question. There are probably lots of ways to solve this problem. What was the solution adopted?
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>>> On Apr 9, 2024, at 00:06, Sivasubramanian M<6.internet at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> John,
>>>>
>>>> There was hardly anything redudant, 'multi-path', decentralised, end-to-end free, open about telegrams.  OUR "InterNetWorks"  is something totally and fundamentally different from THEIR telephones and telegrams, hence it is unwise to allow THEM to trace the history of Internetworking to the telegram switches bought by the Army, Navy and Airforce !
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 9 Apr, 2024, 09:19 John Day, <jeanjour at comcast.net  <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>> I guess this begs the question, what was the solution to internetworking?
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Apr 8, 2024, at 23:33, Sivasubramanian M via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org  <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This history video narrated by an AI-like voice traces the history of the
>>>>>> Internet to telegraph switching and makes a passing suggestion that US
>>>>>> Army, Navy and Airforce instituted automated telegraph switching euipment
>>>>>> ... this was perhaps the first Internetwork. Clever argument.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, 9 Apr, 2024, 03:35 Vint Cerf via Internet-history, <
>>>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org  <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> interesting pre-Arpanet/Internet history
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkwWZ6ujy0
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> 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  <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org  <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> -- 
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>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
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