[ih] Fuzzballs

[Jack Haverty]

Where was that dry cleaner when we needed it...!?

For those who might not know....

Fuzzballs were routers in the early-1980s Internet.   They were the 
creation of Dave Mills and his crew, and were instrumental in the spread 
of the Internet into NSF projects.   They were also the nemesis of the 
"core gateways" we were tasked to keep operational at BBN, as a reliable 
24x7 communications service.  Dave's fuzzballs were a vehicle for 
research into new algorithms, techniques, and mechanisms that might 
solve one or more of the outstanding issues at the time.  But his 
experiments could, and did, sometimes bring down the "core" service.  
That was the prime motivation for our creation of Autonomous Systems and 
the EGP protocol, purely as a temporary mechanism to "firewall" the core 
from the effects of Dave's "Fuzzies", while still maintaining 
interoperability across the entire Internet.   We needed to do both 
Internet research and reliable service, and ASes were a way to do it.

Later, as the Internet spread into corporate IT environments, I recall 
asking some of the IT managers in such places if they were considering 
just using Dave's Fuzzballs, which had a good reputation.   The answer 
was usually something like "I want to keep my job.  If I go to the 
executive committee and propose that we base our future IT on something 
called a 'Fuzzball', I will be unemployed the next day."

Yes, Marketing matters...
Jack Haverty

On 4/27/24 14:46, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> duh, trying again
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w3aO4cZgecloEl5tgecTdTdHiqOHdyie/view?usp=sharing
>
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 5:21 PM vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> sign found in my dry cleaning service
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> v
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 3:34 PM
>> Subject: Fuzzballs
>> To: Vint Cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>

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