[ih] NBS seminar on TCP/IP (was TCP RTT Estimator)

[Karl Auerbach]

On 4/25/25 3:17 PM, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:

> So far, based on what I’ve read, I don’t see any evidence that the concerns of the military, or users of lossy networks, were given insufficient consideration.

For a while (circa 1972/73), while at SDC, I worked on projects for the 
US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We were working on packet switched networking issues, mostly for 
tactical communications.  And we were highly concerned with lossy 
networks - not only in terms of packet loss (or corruption) but also 
with the loss of physical assets, such as routers/gateways disappearing 
(usually accompanied by a loud "boom" from conventional explosives or 
intense X-rays from a nuclear blast - the "cold war" was running rather 
hot at the time.)

(We were also concerned with the physical capture of operating packet 
switching devices or the links between them.  I remember one project 
where we were concerned about loss of devices due to them being dropped 
into the mud by tired Marines slogging across a battlefield.)

This was well before the advent of TCP but the idea of highly dynamic 
routing of store-and-forward packets was well accepted as the right road 
forward.

Much of what I saw during those years was hidden behind cone-of-silence 
upon cone-of-silence - Our world was "we don't talk about it" or 
"everything is classified".  (I even got dinged for publishing a piece 
based only on open source/unclassified materials.)

So it would not be surprising that the academic and tech communities 
that were not inside our security walls did not hear us loudly 
expressing our concerns.

	--karl--