[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

Sun Aug 24 16:07:16 PDT 2025

That is how I heard it.

> On Aug 24, 2025, at 17:48, Vint Cerf via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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