[ih] Network Control Program vs Network Control Protocol

[Steve Crocker]

John,

You're absolutely correct.  In fact, it was I who coined the term Network
Control Program (NCP) and used it in our early RFCs and published papers.

I wanted to emphasize that in addition to a hardware interface, one also
needed software incisions into the operating system.  Moreover, the IMP
wasn't similar enough to existing peripherals -- tape, disk, terminals,
printer, etc. -- to be dealt with as just a minor variation of one of those.

At the same time, I chose the very bland name "Host-Host protocol" for the
protocol.  Over time, people started to refer to the protocol as the
Network Control Protocol, and "NCP" became repurposed.

I've had in mind to write this up in Wikipedia, but I haven't gotten around
to it.  In my response to Detlef, I had the sense that "NCP" as the name of
the protocol was more likely to be familiar.

Steve

On Tue, Apr 30, 2024 at 1:46 PM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> Steve, At the time, I thought NCP was the name of the implementation of
> the Host-Host Protocol, Network Control *Program*. Although, you seldom
> ever heard the Host-Host Protocol mentioned and the distinction was often
> blurred. More recently, I have seen it referred to as you do.
>
> There was an early report by Jon Postel called A Survey of ARPANET NCPs,
> where it was definitely Program. (I remember because while Jon didn’t call
> it out, it was clear reading the report that there were two categories of
> NCPs: big ones and little ones. ;-) Big ones were OSs with little or no IPC
> and small ones were OSs with good IPC.  ;-) An important lesson there.
>
>
sender