[ih] Some random thoughts about ICCC 72

[Leonard Kleinrock]


Alex got the story correct and added some great color to its description. Well done Alex.
I remember the turtle disaster since we practiced the UCLA demonstration the night before and saw our great experiment of moving moving files back-and-forth across the country to deliver a printed output to Jon Postel sitting at a terminal there in the basement, but instead, as Alex described, the output went to turtle and turtle  jumped around the room with the output - hilarious!. We fixed it in time for a proper and successful demo the next morning. 
Interestingly, not only did the public walk away, convinced that packet switching was a viable technology, but also the many ARPA contractors and PI‘s were themselves convinced of its viability and usefulness, which was not the case before ICCC 72. 
All the best,
Len
Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 25, 2025, at 11:16 AM, Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> As I recall, Bob Kahn was in charge of the ARPAnet demo. As I recall, Al
> Vezza was Bob's assistant.
> 
> ARPA had BBN send a TIP to the hotel. AT&T donated (I believe) a 50kbps
> circuit from some other nearby Washington site, including the loan of two
> Bell 303 50kbps modems.
> 
> I believe ARPA paid for the lease of the ballroom, but it may have been
> donated by the ICCC management.
> 
> Bob and Al arranged for the loan of a raised floor and about 60
> character-at-a-time terminals, including one or two Imlacs, a line printer,
> Model 33 TTY's, and glass TTYs. Some contractor (MIT, BBN, .. ?) brought a
> Logo turtle. Most of these terminals had never before been connected to a
> TIP and there were exciting times getting them all working properly. Most
> of the work was done by engineers and grad students being supported by ARPA
> contracts who were sent by their managers to support the demo.
> 
> IMPs/TIPs expected to be connected to the rest of the net by two or more
> circuits. They were quick to declare a circuit "down" so traffic would be
> routed through an alternate path, rather than queuing for a flaky circuit.
> In view of the fact that the demo TIP was connected by only a single
> circuit, we patched the demo TIP and the IMP it was connected to to be a
> lot slower to declare the line down, in hopes that a flaky line would get
> at least some traffic to and from the demo. This turned out to be a
> disaster - when the line got flaky, congestion quickly spread through the
> entire ARPAnet and the demos stopped working anyway. After a little
> experience we removed the patches.
> 
> Bob and AL had arranged to have a film made that would explain the ARPAnet
> and why ARPA had built it - the title included the phrase "Heralds of
> Resource Sharing." For some reason the film wasn't finished in time, so
> Bob and Al put together a slide show (one full slide carousel) that ran
> continuously in a corridor outside the ballroom.
> 
> At one point, the Logo turtle appeared to have gone crazy. It turned out
> someone had switched TIP port assignments so the line printer output was
> going to the turtle, and turtle commands were going to the line printer.
> 
> I believe most conference attendees arrived thinking packet switching was a
> foolish departure from standard communication concepts, and thanks to the
> demo went home believing that packet switching was a viable technology. In
> this sense the domo was a success.
> 
> A few months before the demo, many (most?) of the ARPAnet host sites were
> not able to make use of the ARPAnet to provide access to other hosts or to
> support remote users. Pressure on every site by Larry Roberts to
> participate in the demo got almost every site up to speed, and the ARPAnet
> began to be used much more. In this sense, too, the demo was a success.
> 
> Cheers,
> Alex
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