[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 50, Issue 6 (Xerox Alto TCP and the ICCB)

[Greg Skinner]

On Jan 24, 2024, at 12:57 PM, Larry Masinter <LMM at acm.org> wrote:
> 
>>> When Xerox gave Alto/Ethernet/Dover/PUP systems to a number of
>>> universities (Stanford, MIT, CMU, CalTech, Rochester), I think it included
>>> Nova-based PUP "gateways"
>> 
>> Umm, no. I cannot speak with certainty about what Stanford and CMU got, but I
>> can say with great certainty that all that MIT got was several UNIBUS
>> Experimental Ethernet cards:
>> 
>> https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIBUS_Experimental_Ethernet_interface
>> 
>> I believe, from scraps I heard about what happened at Stanford and CMU, that
>> it was the same there.
> 
> The attached text describes the first year of the Xerox University Grant,
> or at least what was offered.
> 
> -- 
> https://LarryMasinter.net  https://interlisp.org
> <ug.txt>

While poking around the saildart.org <http://saildart.org/> site, I found a debate between Mark Crispin (MRC) and John Seamons regarding Altos, PUP, and a few other things (including a criticism by MRC that IP addresses allowed only eight bits of network at that time). [1]

For what it's worth, here is the Cringely article about “Ships in the Night” multiprotocol routers and more mention of Altos and PUP at a meeting at Xerox PARC in October 1979. [2] [3]

—gregbo

[1] https://www.saildart.org/ETHER.MSG%5B1,LES%5D1
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20071011154314/https://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1998/pulpit_19981210_000593.html
[3] https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien126.txt