[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

Sun Aug 24 14:48:30 PDT 2025

I heard that one - the voice said "Hey, Martha, it's that nut with the
whistle again!!"

v

On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 5:45 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I also heard a similar story while I was at BBN, probably from someone
> in the ARPANET group.  But it occurred after IMPs had been installed and
> were reporting to the NOC.  I'm not sure how the NOC could have put
> something out at the West Coast sites to remotely monitor lines.   IMPs
> did provide that function, but what other equipment could have been
> installed "before BBN had an IMP on the Net"?
>
> A similar story circulated about SATNET, where the Intelsat IV operators
> (in DC IIRC) refused to believe that some company in Boston could
> predict an outage involving the satellite channel between the earth
> stations in West Virginia and England.  Until it happened again.  Most
> of the satellite usage at the time was to carry television feeds, which
> could tolerate some signal degradation.  The SIMPs used a satellite
> channel to create SATNET, and watched the behavior of the data flow
> continuously.  Incipient problems were reported back to the NOC at BBN,
> who had learned to spot the early signs of failures and called the
> Intelsat NOC to report them.   Intelsat quickly learned that those
> people up in Boston should be listened to.
>
> My favorite ARPANET story concerned the TIP dialup lines, which were all
> over the country.  It went something like this:
>
> Some computer in the NOC had the job of testing those lines.  It
> accomplished that by simply dialing out to each phone number, to see if
> it answered and the TIP was available.  With a lot of lines, it might
> take day(s) to get through the entire list.  Any non-responsive line was
> tagged for the next field-service visit to the site involved.
>
> There was some line that had been tagged as "out of service", and Field
> Service had been unable to find anything wrong after several visits.  So
> someone in the NOC figured out when that line would be tested, and
> patched in to the phone line to listen.  The phone rang, and was picked
> up.  A woman's voice said "Hello?".  The modem screeched at her.   The
> woman said "Oh no, not you again!".
>
> Somehow the phone number in the master list had been corrupted. The NOC
> had apparently been making annoying calls to someone (IIRC, in the US
> Midwest), probably for months.
>
> My own similar personal experience with Operations was while I had a
> student job in the late 60s, writing some kind of analysis program for
> an MIT Metallurgy course.  I was using CTSS (the campus timesharing
> service at MIT in the late 60s).  When I tried to run my program CTSS
> crashed.  After it crashed a second time, I called the CTSS operator to
> report what I had done.  He was skeptical of course that a mere mortal
> user could crash CTSS.  I told him I'd try again as soon as CTSS was
> revived.  CTSS came up.  I ran my program.  CTSS crashed.    My phone
> rang.  It was the operator, who immediately said "Don't run that program
> again!".
>
> I can't confirm the truth of the ARPANET and SATNET stories, but I
> remember my day spent crashing CTSS.   Operators can learn to listen to
> Users.   It just takes a bit to earn their trust and confirm your
> competence.
>
> Jack
>
>
> On 8/24/25 13:20, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> > I think Bob Kahn might have been the origin of that story.
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 2:34 PM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >> 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 <(415)%20550-9433>
> >>> Cell:   +1 415-370-4628 <(415)%20370-4628>
> >>> Docomo: +81 90 3337-9311 <+81%2090-3337-9311>
> >>> Norway: +47 98 00 26 30 <+47%2098%2000%2026%2030>
> >>> Web: protocoljournal.org
> >>> E-mail:olejacobsen at me.com
> >>> E-mail:ole at protocoljournal.org
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
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