[ih] Overlay networks

[Karl Auerbach]

Thinking of overlay networks...

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s there were a bunch of small 
companies who played and partied (and I mean *seriously* played and 
partied) together.  These included FTP Software, TGV, Intercon, 
Internode, Beame & Whitside, Epilogue Technology, Empirical Tools and 
Toys.  (Epilogue and Empirical were companies I founded.  I learned 
later that I had been an indirect cause of the formation of FTP 
Software.)  From this group came the core of the shownet team that 
designed and deployed the Interop show networks - we got really good at 
deploying convention-center + city-spanning multi-protocol networks of 
thousands of nodes within a span of a few hours (as short as eight hours.)

So it fit right in when Stuart Vance (TGV) and Simon Hacket (Internode) 
wanted to play a kind of network Jinga.

So they created an overlay network - link between TGV (Santa Cruz, 
California) and Internode (Adelaide, Australia.)

This wasn't just any link.  It was a stack of various protocol families 
including IPv4, IPX/Netware, and Decnet.  I can't remember whether IP, 
Netware, or Decnet was the bottomost at any given moment.  And sometimes 
there were multiple instances, like IP over Decnet over Netware over 
Decnet over IP.

Surprisingly, connections at the topmost layer could be created and 
sustained, although the round trip time was rather long.

As I said, we like to play.  We did the first Internet toasters, two 
distinct implementations.  (We licensed the Berkeley Designs image of 
flying, winged toasters for the celebratory T-shirt.)  We did 
"Etherphones", essentially an early VoIP (the T-shirt for that is a 
classic, based on the Sistine Chapel, with God handing a phone to 
Adam.)  We also had a stereo system, with a 100 slot CD-player/library 
located in Santa Cruz that Simon could feed and control from Adelaide.  
There was also the Internet toaster-loading Lego robot, a talking bear, 
and a weather station.  We also had contact with The Little Garden 
network (I remember being at the lunch where everyone met Little Garden 
restaurant in Palo Alto to get things going.)

And if I remember correctly, we served as forwarding/delivery-dialing 
nodes on Marshall Rose/Carl Malamud's Internet based overlay faxing 
network, TPC.INT - RFC 1528 - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc1528/

         --karl--