[ih] Network Control Program vs Network Control Protocol

[John Day]

Thanks for confirming that.

To your other point, the standing ‘half-joke’ around our place was, how do you interface to an IMP?  Make it look like a tape drive!  ;-)

Yea, by the 2nd generation the confusion between NCP (Program and Protocol) was in full swing. Somehow HHP just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. ;-)

You should write it up.

Take care,
John

> On Apr 30, 2024, at 15:23, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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.
> 
>