[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

[John Day]

I heard a story, which I think is true (someone can correct me if not) that in the very early days before BBN had an IMP on the Net, BBN could monitor the lines of the ARPANET between UCLA, UCSB, SRI, and Utah. They noticed a certain behavior on the line between UCSB (it might have been UCLA) and SRI that always led to the line going down.  So one day, they saw the behavior and called PacBell to tell them that this specific line between USCB and SRI was about to go down. The conversation supposedly went like this:
PacBell: You are at UCSB?
BBN: No.
PacBell: Then you are at SRI.
BBN: No
PacBell: Then where are you!?
BBN; Cambridge, Massachusetts.
PacBell: Yea, right. (click)
A few minutes later the line went down.  ;-)

There was another phone call and this time the guy listened.

John

> On Aug 24, 2025, at 13:57, Ole Jacobsen via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> "A History of The ARPANET: The First Decade"
> 
> Dated 1 April, 1981.
> 
> Page 17:
> 
> "DECCO was able to handle all the contractual details with the
> common carriers for circuit leases. Most of the required 50 kilobit
> circuits used in the ARPANET were leased through DECCO from AT&T,
> but a small number of circuits were leased from other carriers such
> as General Telephone. In addition, DARPA arranged for a special
> point of contact in AT&T (long lines), which greatly facilitated the
> interactions between the network system contractor, DARPA, and AT&T.
> The selection of network node locations and the internode
> connections (and, therefore, the location of circuit terminations)
> was a specialized topology problem and represented a difficult
> theoretical problem in its own right. To help solve this particular
> problem, DARPA contracted with the Network Analysis Corporation
> (NAC)."
> 
> You can get the full report here:
> 
> https://ipj.dreamhosters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/A-History-of-the-ARPANet.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> Ole J. Jacobsen
> Editor and Publisher
> The Internet Protocol Journal
> Office: +1 415-550-9433
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> E-mail: ole at protocoljournal.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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