[ih] Where are we preserving these early documents? Re: early networking: "the solution"

[Jack Haverty]

That document I put on Google Drive came out of a box in my basement, 
where it has been for about 45 years now.  I have no idea why I kept 
that particular folder for so long.   I guess it seemed important.  Or 
maybe it just got stuck in the file cabinet.

AFAIK, the 1979 event was the first "Bakeoff" to test interoperability 
across multiple Arpa projects.  Prior to that, TCP implementations had 
been able to interact, as needed for specific projects.  E.g., the 
Packet Radio project involved several different computers interacting 
with TCP.  My own implementation (PDP-11/40 running Unix V6) was part of 
a Network Security research project, and had successfully interacted 
with Jim Mathis' TCP running on LSI-11s.  Since Jim's code was what I 
started with to create the Unix TCP, it wasn't very surprising that they 
could talk to each other.

At the time, TCP itself was in a state of continuous flux. Everyone's 
probably heard of TCP2 and TCP/IP4.  But at the time we were dealing 
with "specifications" such as "TCP+epsilon" and "TCP+epsilon+2" and 
briefly even "TCP 3".   That 1979 Bakeoff was an attempt to get a mix of 
Arpa projects "on the same page" with their protocol implementations.   
TCP was changing rapidly as experiences and new ideas flowed across the 
'net.

I suspect most of the details of that evolution have been lost since it 
was only captured in email exchanges among the implementers, using 
ascii-art illustrations of header formats.   Jon suffered as the 
"scribe" for Arpa, capturing snapshots in occasional IENs and RFCs.   
RFC 1025 is a good example (thanks Greg!).  There was far more 
discussion, argument, and debate carried out in 1980+-10 using our new 
electronic toy of the 'net.

I think that period of history, roughly between the advent of email on 
the Arpanet (early 1970s?) and the advent of the Web (early 1990s?), was 
an inflection point in history.  In prior eras, discussions were 
captured in traditional forms such as journals and conference 
proceedings.  As the Web proliferated, and sites such as archve.org 
appeared, there was a new mechanism for capturing and publishing.

In between there were few ways to preserve those email discussions.   
The NIC at SRI, and the Datacomputer at CCA provided rudimentary new 
ways to store content for posterity.  The Datacomputer had the ability 
to store a massive entire Terabit of stuff people considered important 
to save.  Surely that was enough memory for everyone on the 'net....   
But those machines are long gone, and I haven't found any place today 
preserving whatever was on them back then.

To answer Dan's question -- there are lots of such stories, many of 
which I've related on this list.  I've been hoping others would chime in 
with their own stories.   I try to only relate what I remember, but 
there was lots of the history that I wasn't part of.

The Internet is far more complex, and its history more intricate, than I 
think even today's technology of websites, forums, email, and such can 
handle.   IMHO, the Web was the "next killer app" that we all spent 
years seeking after the Arpanet triggered the creation of NVTs (Network 
Virtual Terminals), Telnet, FTP, and Email.  The Web changed the world, 
but it's now 30 years old.   What's next...?

Personally, I've been playing with "Mind Maps", and recently stumbled 
onto Obsidian.  I'm collecting my stories into an Obsidian "vault", 
which seems like it might provide a way to organize what is a very 
complicated history.  But of course my vault will only capture what I 
remember and experienced.

But such a "vault" is just a bunch of files.  Perhaps someone will 
figure out a way to embed such vaults into the Internet, and for people 
to connect their vaults together as an archival quality repository.

Somewhere out there is a hacker who might read this email, say "Yes, we 
can do that" and start writing code.

Perhaps some AI is already working on it.

Jack Haverty


On 4/22/24 08:55, Greg Skinner wrote:
> On Apr 22, 2024, at 3:59 AM, Dan York via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>> In the midst of these truly fascinating discussions (which were mostly before my time as I was a CompSci university student in the late 1980s), this one line in Jack’s great recollection gave me pause:
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2024, at 6:14 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>
>> My most memorable recollection of that weekend was late on Sunday. Jon had set up the Bakeoff with a "scoring scheme" which gave each participant a number of points for passing each test.   His score rules are here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NNc9tJTEQsVq-knCCWLeJ3zVrL2Xd25g/view?usp=sharing
>>
>> Is this document preserved somewhere else beyond someone’s Google Drive?   (If not, where is a good place for it?)
> There is a bakeoff procedure described in RFC1025, but the point values are different. It references several IENs that report on the bakeoffs that took place earlier.

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