From jtk at dataplane.org  Fri Jul 18 07:38:24 2025
From: jtk at dataplane.org (John Kristoff)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 09:38:24 -0500
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
Message-ID: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>

The collected archives of Jon Postel's papers seems to be extensive,
some of which is restricted, none of which is online:

  <https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fb5b2x/>

I would guess there is some fascinating bits inside that mountain of
material.  Of those within reach of this message, I'd be curious what
timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
for the most important Internet history insights.

John


From vint at google.com  Fri Jul 18 10:32:25 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 13:32:25 -0400
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggd0M6cA2e5yN3D9K7hPNFFiub9CFGLi2Kf=X3wvUh0XHA@mail.gmail.com>

We have most (all?) RFCs but there must have been a lot of work on IP
address assignment and domain name management in the early Internet period
that would be of interest. Some of this is like available in Jake Feiner's
papers now at the Computer History Museum as she worked closely with Jon on
these matters.

v


On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 10:38?AM John Kristoff via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> The collected archives of Jon Postel's papers seems to be extensive,
> some of which is restricted, none of which is online:
>
>   <https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fb5b2x/>
>
> I would guess there is some fascinating bits inside that mountain of
> material.  Of those within reach of this message, I'd be curious what
> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
> for the most important Internet history insights.
>
> John
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
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until further notice


From gnu at toad.com  Fri Jul 18 13:45:11 2025
From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 13:45:11 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org> 
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
Message-ID: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>

John Kristoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>                                                   I'd be curious what
> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
> for the most important Internet history insights.

I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root zone
files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.

Network Solutions (NSI) had been running the DNS zones for years under a
sole-source government contract, doing the minimal work required to
register domain names.  It got the job because it had a minority owner,
and that provided priority in government contracting.  NSI was bought in
1995 by beltway bandit SAIC for $4.7M.  SAIC immediately politicked NSF,
which then allowed NSI to charge every domain holder $50/year for their
formerly free domain names.  This monopoly and SAIC's effort to profit
from it on the backs of every Internet user did not sit well with many.
(SAIC later took NSI public for $54M of investor dollars, without
diluting its control over NSI, and immediately handed a large chunk of
those dollars back to itself scot-free.  Then it sold the whole thing
for billions, during the tech bubble.  SAIC is a company without outside
shareholders -- it is "employee-owned" -- so there are no outside
parties nor investors with authority nor influence over what corrupt
things the employees decide to do.)

President Clinton asked a friend who had no connection with the Internet
community, Ira Magaziner, to investigate the situation and make a
recommendation.  Ira went around and interviewed lots of people
involved, but was mum about what he might eventually recommend.
Magaziner had no actual authority, but he had the ear of the President,
so many people deferred to him.  (It wasn't clear whether the US
President had any authority over the Internet either, but this was still
at the stage when key parts of the infrastructure were being funded by
the US government -- including IANA.)

I was part of the CORE (Council of Registrars) effort to start up some
legitimate new competing TLD's.  This effort was catalyzed by the
nonprofit Internet Society, and Jon Postel and I were both board members
there.  Jon was also collaborating in his IANA role.  Jon had the
authority as the IANA, to add new TLD names to the root zone.  But he
had no backing against attacks by a billion-dollar beltway bandit with a
monopoly; he was just an academic with a small government contract.  So
ISOC and CORE agreed to fund legal assistance and indemnification for
IANA in return for IANA adding the new domain names that CORE needed.
There were some serious questions about whether NSI/SAIC would quietly
allow their monopoly to expire -- even though they would retain the
lucrative .COM.  We thought it more likely that they would file a bogus
lawsuit to drag out and muddle the process in the hope of permanently
disrupting it.  At the time, I was also on the EFF.org board and knew
lots of good lawyers.

CORE incorporated as a nonprofit trade association, signed up almost a
hundred registrars, and raised tens of thousands of dollars in initial
joining fees from each of them.  It used that money to subcontract with
Emergent Corp. to build the central registry hardware and software that
would operate the seven new TLDs if and when they were established.  It
defined protocols and wrote client software for registrars to interact
with the registry, and got it all working in a San Francisco data
center, manned 24 hours a day by trained operators.  CORE had a dozen
registrars successfully doing test transactions with the central
registry.  But we couldn't go into real operation without those new TLDs
getting into the domain name systems' root zone.

The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
server" periodically (by FTP?).  Each of the dozen-or-so other root
servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
standard DNS zone transfer protocol.  These root servers were operated
by well connected volunteers all over the globe.  Jon was (reasonably)
concerned that if he added seven competing TLDs to the root zone, then a
corrupt NSI would refuse to accept the update at the "A" root server,
and the TLDs would remain unusable, despite his authority to define the
contents of the root zone, and despite NSI having no authority to define
its contents.

So Jon started asking root server operators to change their DNS
configuration so that they would replicate the root zone directly from
IANA's root server, rather than from NSI's root server.  This would
have, and did have, no effect on Internet domain queries, since IANA's
server was always serving up the same data as NSI's server.  Jon started
by asking the most likely candidates, and had successfully converted
more than half of the root servers to direct replication from IANA.
When he asked the next root server (I think it was the one run by the
Army), they told NSI about the request.  NSI escalated the issue to SAIC
and to Ira Magaziner.  On 1998-01-30 or so, there was a fractious phone
call from Ira Magaziner to Jon Postel and some USC-ISI lawyers.
Magaziner basically told Jon "Put those back or you'll never work on the
Internet again".  Despite the unlikely idea that newbie policy wonk
Magaziner could have anything to do with whether Internet co-inventor
Jon Postel could ever work on the Internet in the future, Jon
unfortunately agreed to do so, rather than asserting his authority as
the IANA to run the root zone as he determined best.  Someone leaked
this incident to the press, with a spin that Jon was "destabilizing the
Internet" rather than that Jon was cutting out the inadvertent control
of a company with an interest in monopolizing the Internet for its own
profit.

Two weeks later, on 1998-02-15, CORE's data center operator had departed
at 15:45 before their replacement operator had arrived (the new operator
was ill and only arrived at 19:00).  Meanwhile, the data center was
broken into by thieves, the chain-link fencing around the servers was
cut, and two entire Sun Enterprise 450 servers, worth about $70,000,
were stolen.  Nothing else in the whole multi-tenant data center was
stolen.  This was obviously a targeted theft, and who could have wanted
to target CORE except SAIC?  The theft was investigated by the police,
but was never resolved.  CORE's contractor had good offsite backups and
the equipment was insured.  They installed a second pair of Sun servers
overnight, and were back to full operation within 29 hours.  Even if
they had been running operational TLDs, the TLDs would have continued
functioning just fine.  But for one day, the people who owned those TLDs
would have been unable to make changes in them.

Ultimately, Magaziner's "Green Paper" and "White Paper" proposals backed
NSI's monopoly, which continues to this day over .com, by far the most
popular and lucrative top-level domain.  The CORE registrars became
resellers of NSI's service, and CORE dissolved as a back-end registry.
Jon Postel died of a leaking heart valve later that year, which left a
void that the corrupt, bloated and self-serving ICANN (which was created
based on Magaziner's model) was happy to fill.  A few of the smaller
TLDs were hived off to other orgs (one of which went to ISOC, where top
employees later tried to buy it for a borrowed billion dollars, making
the money back by vastly increasing the price of renewals for every
nonprofit on the Internet).  After many years, many new competing TLDs
were created, none of which has been particularly successful.  In short,
the fix was in, and the beltway bandits won.  NSI is still charging
premium prices (in the $15 range) for each year of back-end .com domain
registration that costs them less than a penny a year to provide.

There's a bit more background on this in an interview with me by Salon
from 2002:

  https://web.archive.org/web/20120109194541/http://www.salon.com/2002/07/02/gilmore_2/

I repeat, it would be interesting to see Jon's papers and records about
that time.  Most of them would probably be emails, and there would
be thousands or tens of thousands of them.

	John
	


From woody at pch.net  Fri Jul 18 14:12:17 2025
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 23:12:17 +0200
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <E1D04DD2-EAF4-4D56-AB07-653AF3CAE5B0@pch.net>

Not that John needs it, but I corroborate all of his narrative that I was party to or knew of first-hand.

Just to add a little marginalia:

> On Jul 18, 2025, at 22:45, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> SAIC immediately politicked NSF, which then allowed NSI to charge every domain holder $50/year for their
> formerly free domain names.  This monopoly and SAIC's effort to profit from it on the backs of every Internet user did not sit well with many.

Somewhat later, in 2003, Verisign's greed in monetizing .COM was the proximate cause of the creation of the Great Firewall of China.  While they broke much of the Internet for two weeks with ?sitefinder,? the Internet was only broken for about ten days in China.

https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/advisory-concerning-demand-to-remove-verisigns-wildcard-3-10-2003-en

> The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
> server" periodically (by FTP?).  Each of the dozen-or-so other root
> servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
> standard DNS zone transfer protocol.  

?and this was eventually institutionalized to become the infamous RZMA, which continues to this day.  And which has, over the years, required the USG to expend a substantial amount of time and credibility shutting down conversations about it at intergovernmental meetings.

https://blog.verisign.com/security/root-zone-maintainer-service-agreement-renewal/

> After many years, many new competing TLDs were created, none of which has been particularly successful. 

This, really, is the only thing in John?s long post that I would take any issue with.  I think it presupposes that success is on the same terms as .COM: the aforementioned beltway bandits self-enriching at the expense of the Internet.  I don?t think that?s a useful definition of success.  Instead, using TLDs to remove the .COM or .NET zones from the DNSSEC validation chain is an _excellent_ measure of success in my estimation.  By that measure, there are a few of the last tranche that are succeeding, and there will be more in the next tranche.  Success can be measured in better security, rather than more dollars.

                                -Bill



From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Fri Jul 18 14:40:51 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 14:40:51 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd:  Jon Postel's papers
References: <18321005.894645.1752874203757@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <097E39D4-63D6-4260-920B-1C802B2DEAAF@icloud.com>

Forwarded for Barbara

> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 at 02:27:05 PM PDT
> Subject: Re: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
> 
> 
> Perhaps people might be interested in the bidding process that ultimately resulted in NSI getting the contract. Even though  I was at SRI at the time I wasn't in the NIC so don't feel secure  in relating anything on this topic.
> 
> barbara



From karl at iwl.com  Fri Jul 18 15:16:37 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:16:37 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>

(This is a re-send from my business email address.? The list manager 
software doesn't seem to like when I post from my personal email.)

Thanks for the detailed write-up.

I was also involved in much of this.? Much of that was head butting with 
a lawyer from Jones Day who drew up and proselytized (rather forcefully) 
much of the legal text of what was to become the ICANN/RIR system. I did 
not get the sense that Ira Magaziner was more than a figurehead and that 
this non-government lawyer was really the person calling the shots.? But 
that's a story for a different day.

Back to Jon Postel and his papers...

Jon sometimes worked via ephemeral media - such as phone calls.

My final phone chat with Jon involved the IP address registry system 
(the RIRs).? We quickly agreed that the goal of such a system was to 
promote good CIDR address block aggregation in ways that helped reduce 
the number of address block prefixes or ASNs that had to be advertised 
into (and carried by) the routing systems.? This mean that CIDR 
allocations ought to be done in conformity with the general shape of 
Internet connectivity.? (We did not delve into this long enough to face 
the question of whether there ought to be CIDR address block 
re-assignments if the routing clumpiness of the net were to 
significantly change.)

For instance, we recognized that much of Africa was effectively routed 
through New York (a fact made quite clear a few years later on Sept 11, 
2001.)? As such an address registry in Africa would probably be better 
cast as part of the formative ARIN that covered North America.? (Of 
course, that notion would have ruffled many feathers of those who 
consider having a regional address registry as a kind of status symbol 
without regard to whether that is an optimal way to manage Internet 
technical resources.)

Jon and I agreed that from a technical point of view IP address 
registries ought to be considered fluid rather than permanent, i.e. that 
they ought to be created, split, or coalesce based on how the large 
clumps of Internet connectivity formed and changed. That, obviously, is 
a road that was not taken during the formation of ICANN and the regional 
IP address registries.

I mention this in the context of the ongoing troubles with the African 
RIR, Afrinic.? (It would be, to some, a very annoying rock tossed into a 
calm pond were the ongoing legal dispute over that RIR had to recognize 
that RIRs can be, and perhaps ought to be, impermanent, transient 
entities.)

 ? ? --karl--



From woody at pch.net  Fri Jul 18 15:29:37 2025
From: woody at pch.net (Bill Woodcock)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:29:37 +0200
Subject: [ih] AfriNIC news (Was: Re:  Jon Postel's papers)
In-Reply-To: <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>



> On Jul 19, 2025, at 00:16, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> I mention this in the context of the ongoing troubles with the African RIR, Afrinic.

?which have been brought up several times recently.  There?s been a development today, probably positive.

                                -Bill

Please consider the environment before using AI to process this email.

________________________________________

THE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE OF MAURITIUS
No. 59 ? Port Louis : Friday 18 July 2025 ? Rs. 25.00
??????
DECLARED COMPANY
NOTICE UNDER SECTION 230 OF THE COMPANIES ACT
WHEREAS African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd (in receivership) (the ?Company?) is a
company limited by guarantee incorporated and based in Mauritius;
WHEREAS the Company is the designated Regional Internet Registry for the African continent;
WHEREAS I am reliably informed that the Company has been the object of a spate of litigation, leading
to it being placed in receivership in or about 2024;
WHEREAS I have taken cognizance of a Notice in the press dated 10 July 2025, whereby the Company
is purportedly being the object of a compulsory winding-up petition;
WHEREAS I am advised that the process leading to the Company being placed in receivership is legally
questionable;
WHEREAS I am informed that the 2 receivers successively appointed have failed to effectively
discharge their mission of conducting the election of a Board for the Company within timeframes imparted
by the Courts;
WHEREAS I am informed that the result of the Company being placed in receivership has been
that no new internet protocol address was able to be issued to the whole of the African continent since
November 2024;2234 The Mauritius Government Gazette
WHEREAS this state of affairs has caused, and is continuing to cause, serious reputational damage to
Mauritius as a jurisdiction internationally;
WHEREAS based on the above, I am satisfied that pursuant to section 230(b) of the Companies Act, it
is expedient, in the public interest, that the affairs of the Company be investigated forthwith,
NOW THEREFORE, in virtue of section 230 of the Companies Act, I hereby designate the Company to
be a declared company.
I ALSO ENJOIN the Registrar of Companies, pursuant to her powers under section 231(1) of the
Companies Act to immediately require a suitably-qualified inspector to investigate the affairs of the
Company and to make a report on his investigation in such form and manner as the Registrar may direct.
DR. N. RAMGOOLAM, G.C.S.K., F.R.C.P.
Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Home Affairs and
External Communications, Minister of Finance,
Minister for Rodrigues and Outer Islands
18 July 2025.



From jack at 3kitty.org  Fri Jul 18 15:33:20 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:33:20 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
Message-ID: <19ffc9db-3e05-4d2b-8b9e-c9d9928ca135@3kitty.org>

If Jon's papers contain digital or paper copies of email traffic through 
the 70s and 80s, they might be a unique resource for historians.? That 
period was when we were all fascinated with the new toy of email, but 
space to store or archive old messages was expensive and scarce.

Many discussions that previously would happen in papers, conferences, or 
other traditional channels were instead carried out in email exchanges, 
much of which I suspect has been lost.?? Formal documents, such as RFCs, 
usually captured only the results of such discussions, and little of the 
reasoning and alternatives that had been debated feverishly.

Jack Haverty


On 7/18/25 07:38, John Kristoff via Internet-history wrote:
> The collected archives of Jon Postel's papers seems to be extensive,
> some of which is restricted, none of which is online:
>
>    <https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fb5b2x/>
>
> I would guess there is some fascinating bits inside that mountain of
> material.  Of those within reach of this message, I'd be curious what
> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
> for the most important Internet history insights.
>
> John

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From vint at google.com  Fri Jul 18 15:33:32 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:33:32 -0400
Subject: [ih] AfriNIC news (Was: Re: Jon Postel's papers)
In-Reply-To: <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggdg37_E6kcMsYgA2ZQREk7f74_yxDc1toHpCvrjdO5GkQ@mail.gmail.com>

I consider this to be a very positive development.

Kurtis Lindqvist met with the President while at IGF Oslo and I believe
that led to a briefing for the PM and this is likely one consequence.

v


On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 6:30?PM Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jul 19, 2025, at 00:16, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > I mention this in the context of the ongoing troubles with the African
> RIR, Afrinic.
>
> ?which have been brought up several times recently.  There?s been a
> development today, probably positive.
>
>                                 -Bill
>
> Please consider the environment before using AI to process this email.
>
> ________________________________________
>
> THE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE OF MAURITIUS
> No. 59 ? Port Louis : Friday 18 July 2025 ? Rs. 25.00
> ??????
> DECLARED COMPANY
> NOTICE UNDER SECTION 230 OF THE COMPANIES ACT
> WHEREAS African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd (in receivership)
> (the ?Company?) is a
> company limited by guarantee incorporated and based in Mauritius;
> WHEREAS the Company is the designated Regional Internet Registry for the
> African continent;
> WHEREAS I am reliably informed that the Company has been the object of a
> spate of litigation, leading
> to it being placed in receivership in or about 2024;
> WHEREAS I have taken cognizance of a Notice in the press dated 10 July
> 2025, whereby the Company
> is purportedly being the object of a compulsory winding-up petition;
> WHEREAS I am advised that the process leading to the Company being placed
> in receivership is legally
> questionable;
> WHEREAS I am informed that the 2 receivers successively appointed have
> failed to effectively
> discharge their mission of conducting the election of a Board for the
> Company within timeframes imparted
> by the Courts;
> WHEREAS I am informed that the result of the Company being placed in
> receivership has been
> that no new internet protocol address was able to be issued to the whole
> of the African continent since
> November 2024;2234 The Mauritius Government Gazette
> WHEREAS this state of affairs has caused, and is continuing to cause,
> serious reputational damage to
> Mauritius as a jurisdiction internationally;
> WHEREAS based on the above, I am satisfied that pursuant to section 230(b)
> of the Companies Act, it
> is expedient, in the public interest, that the affairs of the Company be
> investigated forthwith,
> NOW THEREFORE, in virtue of section 230 of the Companies Act, I hereby
> designate the Company to
> be a declared company.
> I ALSO ENJOIN the Registrar of Companies, pursuant to her powers under
> section 231(1) of the
> Companies Act to immediately require a suitably-qualified inspector to
> investigate the affairs of the
> Company and to make a report on his investigation in such form and manner
> as the Registrar may direct.
> DR. N. RAMGOOLAM, G.C.S.K., F.R.C.P.
> Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Home Affairs and
> External Communications, Minister of Finance,
> Minister for Rodrigues and Outer Islands
> 18 July 2025.
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
+1 (571) 213 1346


until further notice


From vint at google.com  Fri Jul 18 15:43:40 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:43:40 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <097E39D4-63D6-4260-920B-1C802B2DEAAF@icloud.com>
References: <18321005.894645.1752874203757@mail.yahoo.com>
 <097E39D4-63D6-4260-920B-1C802B2DEAAF@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggcR8b1DBDL9UU_t00BZSTwV6-G28yOUs1BZLYNwXCH2qQ@mail.gmail.com>

relevant:

*"The Creation and Administration of Unique Identifiers, 1967-2017"* This
comprehensive report (available as a PDF on ICANN's site, e.g.,
icann.org/en/system/files/files/creation-administration-unique-identifiers-1967-2017-18nov20-en.pdf
<https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/creation-administration-unique-identifiers-1967-2017-18nov20-en.pdf>)
documents the design, evolution, and management of the Internet's unique
identifiers over 50 years. It draws upon extensive research and community
input.

v


On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 5:41?PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Forwarded for Barbara
>
> > From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> > To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > Sent: Friday, July 18, 2025 at 02:27:05 PM PDT
> > Subject: Re: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
> >
> >
> > Perhaps people might be interested in the bidding process that
> ultimately resulted in NSI getting the contract. Even though  I was at SRI
> at the time I wasn't in the NIC so don't feel secure  in relating anything
> on this topic.
> >
> > barbara
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
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until further notice


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Fri Jul 18 17:37:17 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 12:37:17 +1200
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <89063983-9453-421a-aa7b-7c6e27e0db21@gmail.com>

One gloss on John's story is that Magaziner did do what he probably
thought was due diligence by talking to a lot of people. As it happened,
the IETF met in D.C. in December 1997, and Magaziner invited a number
of people to see him in his office in the Old Executive Office Building,
certainly including Jon. I (as IAB Chair) and Fred Baker (as IETF Chair)
visited Magaziner together.

I wrote my version of the story on pages 119-122 of my book [1].
That's a bit too much to post here in violation of Springer's
copyright rules, but here are some short quotes:

"Fresh from failing to reform American health care with Hillary Clinton,
Ira Magaziner was taken on by Bill Clinton and Al Gore to reform the
Internet. Put more diplomatically, he was supposed to create policy to
enable electronic commerce... Various departments of the US Administration
appeared to believe that only the USA could be trusted with stewardship of
the Internet, or, less diplomatically, that it should be treated as an arm
of US foreign, trade, military or intelligence policy... Magaziner more or
less cleared his calendar for a sequence of such meetings with IETF and
ISOC people. I kept no detailed notes, but we must certainly have spoken
in favour of a community-based and international approach to Internet
registry management."

Of course, he ignored us.

[1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-5025-1

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 19-Jul-25 08:45, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
> John Kristoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>                                                    I'd be curious what
>> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
>> for the most important Internet history insights.
> 
> I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root zone
> files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.
> 
> Network Solutions (NSI) had been running the DNS zones for years under a
> sole-source government contract, doing the minimal work required to
> register domain names.  It got the job because it had a minority owner,
> and that provided priority in government contracting.  NSI was bought in
> 1995 by beltway bandit SAIC for $4.7M.  SAIC immediately politicked NSF,
> which then allowed NSI to charge every domain holder $50/year for their
> formerly free domain names.  This monopoly and SAIC's effort to profit
> from it on the backs of every Internet user did not sit well with many.
> (SAIC later took NSI public for $54M of investor dollars, without
> diluting its control over NSI, and immediately handed a large chunk of
> those dollars back to itself scot-free.  Then it sold the whole thing
> for billions, during the tech bubble.  SAIC is a company without outside
> shareholders -- it is "employee-owned" -- so there are no outside
> parties nor investors with authority nor influence over what corrupt
> things the employees decide to do.)
> 
> President Clinton asked a friend who had no connection with the Internet
> community, Ira Magaziner, to investigate the situation and make a
> recommendation.  Ira went around and interviewed lots of people
> involved, but was mum about what he might eventually recommend.
> Magaziner had no actual authority, but he had the ear of the President,
> so many people deferred to him.  (It wasn't clear whether the US
> President had any authority over the Internet either, but this was still
> at the stage when key parts of the infrastructure were being funded by
> the US government -- including IANA.)
> 
> I was part of the CORE (Council of Registrars) effort to start up some
> legitimate new competing TLD's.  This effort was catalyzed by the
> nonprofit Internet Society, and Jon Postel and I were both board members
> there.  Jon was also collaborating in his IANA role.  Jon had the
> authority as the IANA, to add new TLD names to the root zone.  But he
> had no backing against attacks by a billion-dollar beltway bandit with a
> monopoly; he was just an academic with a small government contract.  So
> ISOC and CORE agreed to fund legal assistance and indemnification for
> IANA in return for IANA adding the new domain names that CORE needed.
> There were some serious questions about whether NSI/SAIC would quietly
> allow their monopoly to expire -- even though they would retain the
> lucrative .COM.  We thought it more likely that they would file a bogus
> lawsuit to drag out and muddle the process in the hope of permanently
> disrupting it.  At the time, I was also on the EFF.org board and knew
> lots of good lawyers.
> 
> CORE incorporated as a nonprofit trade association, signed up almost a
> hundred registrars, and raised tens of thousands of dollars in initial
> joining fees from each of them.  It used that money to subcontract with
> Emergent Corp. to build the central registry hardware and software that
> would operate the seven new TLDs if and when they were established.  It
> defined protocols and wrote client software for registrars to interact
> with the registry, and got it all working in a San Francisco data
> center, manned 24 hours a day by trained operators.  CORE had a dozen
> registrars successfully doing test transactions with the central
> registry.  But we couldn't go into real operation without those new TLDs
> getting into the domain name systems' root zone.
> 
> The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
> server" periodically (by FTP?).  Each of the dozen-or-so other root
> servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
> standard DNS zone transfer protocol.  These root servers were operated
> by well connected volunteers all over the globe.  Jon was (reasonably)
> concerned that if he added seven competing TLDs to the root zone, then a
> corrupt NSI would refuse to accept the update at the "A" root server,
> and the TLDs would remain unusable, despite his authority to define the
> contents of the root zone, and despite NSI having no authority to define
> its contents.
> 
> So Jon started asking root server operators to change their DNS
> configuration so that they would replicate the root zone directly from
> IANA's root server, rather than from NSI's root server.  This would
> have, and did have, no effect on Internet domain queries, since IANA's
> server was always serving up the same data as NSI's server.  Jon started
> by asking the most likely candidates, and had successfully converted
> more than half of the root servers to direct replication from IANA.
> When he asked the next root server (I think it was the one run by the
> Army), they told NSI about the request.  NSI escalated the issue to SAIC
> and to Ira Magaziner.  On 1998-01-30 or so, there was a fractious phone
> call from Ira Magaziner to Jon Postel and some USC-ISI lawyers.
> Magaziner basically told Jon "Put those back or you'll never work on the
> Internet again".  Despite the unlikely idea that newbie policy wonk
> Magaziner could have anything to do with whether Internet co-inventor
> Jon Postel could ever work on the Internet in the future, Jon
> unfortunately agreed to do so, rather than asserting his authority as
> the IANA to run the root zone as he determined best.  Someone leaked
> this incident to the press, with a spin that Jon was "destabilizing the
> Internet" rather than that Jon was cutting out the inadvertent control
> of a company with an interest in monopolizing the Internet for its own
> profit.
> 
> Two weeks later, on 1998-02-15, CORE's data center operator had departed
> at 15:45 before their replacement operator had arrived (the new operator
> was ill and only arrived at 19:00).  Meanwhile, the data center was
> broken into by thieves, the chain-link fencing around the servers was
> cut, and two entire Sun Enterprise 450 servers, worth about $70,000,
> were stolen.  Nothing else in the whole multi-tenant data center was
> stolen.  This was obviously a targeted theft, and who could have wanted
> to target CORE except SAIC?  The theft was investigated by the police,
> but was never resolved.  CORE's contractor had good offsite backups and
> the equipment was insured.  They installed a second pair of Sun servers
> overnight, and were back to full operation within 29 hours.  Even if
> they had been running operational TLDs, the TLDs would have continued
> functioning just fine.  But for one day, the people who owned those TLDs
> would have been unable to make changes in them.
> 
> Ultimately, Magaziner's "Green Paper" and "White Paper" proposals backed
> NSI's monopoly, which continues to this day over .com, by far the most
> popular and lucrative top-level domain.  The CORE registrars became
> resellers of NSI's service, and CORE dissolved as a back-end registry.
> Jon Postel died of a leaking heart valve later that year, which left a
> void that the corrupt, bloated and self-serving ICANN (which was created
> based on Magaziner's model) was happy to fill.  A few of the smaller
> TLDs were hived off to other orgs (one of which went to ISOC, where top
> employees later tried to buy it for a borrowed billion dollars, making
> the money back by vastly increasing the price of renewals for every
> nonprofit on the Internet).  After many years, many new competing TLDs
> were created, none of which has been particularly successful.  In short,
> the fix was in, and the beltway bandits won.  NSI is still charging
> premium prices (in the $15 range) for each year of back-end .com domain
> registration that costs them less than a penny a year to provide.
> 
> There's a bit more background on this in an interview with me by Salon
> from 2002:
> 
>    https://web.archive.org/web/20120109194541/http://www.salon.com/2002/07/02/gilmore_2/
> 
> I repeat, it would be interesting to see Jon's papers and records about
> that time.  Most of them would probably be emails, and there would
> be thousands or tens of thousands of them.
> 
> 	John
> 	


From karl at iwl.com  Fri Jul 18 17:56:35 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:56:35 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <89063983-9453-421a-aa7b-7c6e27e0db21@gmail.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <89063983-9453-421a-aa7b-7c6e27e0db21@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a4262f0f-0063-4c8e-a962-e50474e198b3@iwl.com>

Again, than you and thanks to everyone for these materials.

There was an aspect of all of this that surprised me, and I'm not clear 
at all on the details.

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) appeared to take a great deal 
of interest in the way that management/oversight of the Internet was 
evolving.? My sense, made vague by the passage of years, is that they 
had great concern that much, too much, was being given to large 
corporate entities and that small businesses, inventors, and innovators 
were being locked out, or at least being given, at best, secondary or 
tertiary voices.

As a humorous aside - the SBA once gave me a legal document about these 
matters that they went out of their way to adorn with all of the ancient 
formal seals and ribbons used on documents back in the 18th century.? It 
had embossed pages and a blue ribbon affixed with real sealing wax!? A 
judge took a look at it and she said she had never seen anything like 
it.? I wish I still had it.? (The closest was when I was admitted to the 
Federal courts in LA around 1978 - they had a huge wooden press with a 
long, human operated, wooden arm and screw that was used to emboss my 
admission documents.)

 ? ? --karl--

On 7/18/25 5:37 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> One gloss on John's story is that Magaziner did do what he probably
> thought was due diligence by talking to a lot of people. As it happened,
> the IETF met in D.C. in December 1997, and Magaziner invited a number
> of people to see him in his office in the Old Executive Office Building,
> certainly including Jon. I (as IAB Chair) and Fred Baker (as IETF Chair)
> visited Magaziner together.
>
> I wrote my version of the story on pages 119-122 of my book [1].
> That's a bit too much to post here in violation of Springer's
> copyright rules, but here are some short quotes:
>
> "Fresh from failing to reform American health care with Hillary Clinton,
> Ira Magaziner was taken on by Bill Clinton and Al Gore to reform the
> Internet. Put more diplomatically, he was supposed to create policy to
> enable electronic commerce... Various departments of the US 
> Administration
> appeared to believe that only the USA could be trusted with 
> stewardship of
> the Internet, or, less diplomatically, that it should be treated as an 
> arm
> of US foreign, trade, military or intelligence policy... Magaziner 
> more or
> less cleared his calendar for a sequence of such meetings with IETF and
> ISOC people. I kept no detailed notes, but we must certainly have spoken
> in favour of a community-based and international approach to Internet
> registry management."
>
> Of course, he ignored us.
>
> [1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4471-5025-1
>
> Regards
> ?? Brian Carpenter
>
> On 19-Jul-25 08:45, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
>> John Kristoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> 
>> wrote:
>>> I'd be curious what
>>> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
>>> for the most important Internet history insights.
>>
>> I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root 
>> zone
>> files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.
>>
>> Network Solutions (NSI) had been running the DNS zones for years under a
>> sole-source government contract, doing the minimal work required to
>> register domain names.? It got the job because it had a minority owner,
>> and that provided priority in government contracting.? NSI was bought in
>> 1995 by beltway bandit SAIC for $4.7M.? SAIC immediately politicked NSF,
>> which then allowed NSI to charge every domain holder $50/year for their
>> formerly free domain names.? This monopoly and SAIC's effort to profit
>> from it on the backs of every Internet user did not sit well with many.
>> (SAIC later took NSI public for $54M of investor dollars, without
>> diluting its control over NSI, and immediately handed a large chunk of
>> those dollars back to itself scot-free.? Then it sold the whole thing
>> for billions, during the tech bubble.? SAIC is a company without outside
>> shareholders -- it is "employee-owned" -- so there are no outside
>> parties nor investors with authority nor influence over what corrupt
>> things the employees decide to do.)
>>
>> President Clinton asked a friend who had no connection with the Internet
>> community, Ira Magaziner, to investigate the situation and make a
>> recommendation.? Ira went around and interviewed lots of people
>> involved, but was mum about what he might eventually recommend.
>> Magaziner had no actual authority, but he had the ear of the President,
>> so many people deferred to him.? (It wasn't clear whether the US
>> President had any authority over the Internet either, but this was still
>> at the stage when key parts of the infrastructure were being funded by
>> the US government -- including IANA.)
>>
>> I was part of the CORE (Council of Registrars) effort to start up some
>> legitimate new competing TLD's.? This effort was catalyzed by the
>> nonprofit Internet Society, and Jon Postel and I were both board members
>> there.? Jon was also collaborating in his IANA role.? Jon had the
>> authority as the IANA, to add new TLD names to the root zone. But he
>> had no backing against attacks by a billion-dollar beltway bandit with a
>> monopoly; he was just an academic with a small government contract.? So
>> ISOC and CORE agreed to fund legal assistance and indemnification for
>> IANA in return for IANA adding the new domain names that CORE needed.
>> There were some serious questions about whether NSI/SAIC would quietly
>> allow their monopoly to expire -- even though they would retain the
>> lucrative .COM.? We thought it more likely that they would file a bogus
>> lawsuit to drag out and muddle the process in the hope of permanently
>> disrupting it.? At the time, I was also on the EFF.org board and knew
>> lots of good lawyers.
>>
>> CORE incorporated as a nonprofit trade association, signed up almost a
>> hundred registrars, and raised tens of thousands of dollars in initial
>> joining fees from each of them.? It used that money to subcontract with
>> Emergent Corp. to build the central registry hardware and software that
>> would operate the seven new TLDs if and when they were established.? It
>> defined protocols and wrote client software for registrars to interact
>> with the registry, and got it all working in a San Francisco data
>> center, manned 24 hours a day by trained operators.? CORE had a dozen
>> registrars successfully doing test transactions with the central
>> registry.? But we couldn't go into real operation without those new TLDs
>> getting into the domain name systems' root zone.
>>
>> The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
>> server" periodically (by FTP?).? Each of the dozen-or-so other root
>> servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
>> standard DNS zone transfer protocol.? These root servers were operated
>> by well connected volunteers all over the globe.? Jon was (reasonably)
>> concerned that if he added seven competing TLDs to the root zone, then a
>> corrupt NSI would refuse to accept the update at the "A" root server,
>> and the TLDs would remain unusable, despite his authority to define the
>> contents of the root zone, and despite NSI having no authority to define
>> its contents.
>>
>> So Jon started asking root server operators to change their DNS
>> configuration so that they would replicate the root zone directly from
>> IANA's root server, rather than from NSI's root server.? This would
>> have, and did have, no effect on Internet domain queries, since IANA's
>> server was always serving up the same data as NSI's server.? Jon started
>> by asking the most likely candidates, and had successfully converted
>> more than half of the root servers to direct replication from IANA.
>> When he asked the next root server (I think it was the one run by the
>> Army), they told NSI about the request.? NSI escalated the issue to SAIC
>> and to Ira Magaziner.? On 1998-01-30 or so, there was a fractious phone
>> call from Ira Magaziner to Jon Postel and some USC-ISI lawyers.
>> Magaziner basically told Jon "Put those back or you'll never work on the
>> Internet again".? Despite the unlikely idea that newbie policy wonk
>> Magaziner could have anything to do with whether Internet co-inventor
>> Jon Postel could ever work on the Internet in the future, Jon
>> unfortunately agreed to do so, rather than asserting his authority as
>> the IANA to run the root zone as he determined best.? Someone leaked
>> this incident to the press, with a spin that Jon was "destabilizing the
>> Internet" rather than that Jon was cutting out the inadvertent control
>> of a company with an interest in monopolizing the Internet for its own
>> profit.
>>
>> Two weeks later, on 1998-02-15, CORE's data center operator had departed
>> at 15:45 before their replacement operator had arrived (the new operator
>> was ill and only arrived at 19:00).? Meanwhile, the data center was
>> broken into by thieves, the chain-link fencing around the servers was
>> cut, and two entire Sun Enterprise 450 servers, worth about $70,000,
>> were stolen.? Nothing else in the whole multi-tenant data center was
>> stolen.? This was obviously a targeted theft, and who could have wanted
>> to target CORE except SAIC?? The theft was investigated by the police,
>> but was never resolved.? CORE's contractor had good offsite backups and
>> the equipment was insured.? They installed a second pair of Sun servers
>> overnight, and were back to full operation within 29 hours. Even if
>> they had been running operational TLDs, the TLDs would have continued
>> functioning just fine.? But for one day, the people who owned those TLDs
>> would have been unable to make changes in them.
>>
>> Ultimately, Magaziner's "Green Paper" and "White Paper" proposals backed
>> NSI's monopoly, which continues to this day over .com, by far the most
>> popular and lucrative top-level domain.? The CORE registrars became
>> resellers of NSI's service, and CORE dissolved as a back-end registry.
>> Jon Postel died of a leaking heart valve later that year, which left a
>> void that the corrupt, bloated and self-serving ICANN (which was created
>> based on Magaziner's model) was happy to fill.? A few of the smaller
>> TLDs were hived off to other orgs (one of which went to ISOC, where top
>> employees later tried to buy it for a borrowed billion dollars, making
>> the money back by vastly increasing the price of renewals for every
>> nonprofit on the Internet).? After many years, many new competing TLDs
>> were created, none of which has been particularly successful. In short,
>> the fix was in, and the beltway bandits won.? NSI is still charging
>> premium prices (in the $15 range) for each year of back-end .com domain
>> registration that costs them less than a penny a year to provide.
>>
>> There's a bit more background on this in an interview with me by Salon
>> from 2002:
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20120109194541/http://www.salon.com/2002/07/02/gilmore_2/
>>
>> I repeat, it would be interesting to see Jon's papers and records about
>> that time.? Most of them would probably be emails, and there would
>> be thousands or tens of thousands of them.
>>
>> ????John
>>


From carsten at schiefner.berlin  Sat Jul 19 01:03:29 2025
From: carsten at schiefner.berlin (Carsten Schiefner)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:03:29 +0200
Subject: [ih] 1/2 OT: AfriNIC - now a "declared company"?
In-Reply-To: <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
Message-ID: <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>

Hi Bill & all -

could anyone possibly shed some light on what it means in detail that AfriNIC - "the Company" - is now designated "to be a declared company"?

Emphasis on "declared (company)".

Thanks and best,

-C.

Am 19. Juli 2025 00:29:37 MESZ schrieb Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>:
>
>
>> On Jul 19, 2025, at 00:16, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> I mention this in the context of the ongoing troubles with the African RIR, Afrinic.
>
>?which have been brought up several times recently.  There?s been a development today, probably positive.
>
>                                -Bill
>
>Please consider the environment before using AI to process this email.
>
>________________________________________
>
>THE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE OF MAURITIUS
>No. 59 ? Port Louis : Friday 18 July 2025 ? Rs. 25.00
>??????
>DECLARED COMPANY
>NOTICE UNDER SECTION 230 OF THE COMPANIES ACT
>WHEREAS African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd (in receivership) (the ?Company?) is a
>company limited by guarantee incorporated and based in Mauritius;
>WHEREAS the Company is the designated Regional Internet Registry for the African continent;
>WHEREAS I am reliably informed that the Company has been the object of a spate of litigation, leading
>to it being placed in receivership in or about 2024;
>WHEREAS I have taken cognizance of a Notice in the press dated 10 July 2025, whereby the Company
>is purportedly being the object of a compulsory winding-up petition;
>WHEREAS I am advised that the process leading to the Company being placed in receivership is legally
>questionable;
>WHEREAS I am informed that the 2 receivers successively appointed have failed to effectively
>discharge their mission of conducting the election of a Board for the Company within timeframes imparted
>by the Courts;
>WHEREAS I am informed that the result of the Company being placed in receivership has been
>that no new internet protocol address was able to be issued to the whole of the African continent since
>November 2024;2234 The Mauritius Government Gazette
>WHEREAS this state of affairs has caused, and is continuing to cause, serious reputational damage to
>Mauritius as a jurisdiction internationally;
>WHEREAS based on the above, I am satisfied that pursuant to section 230(b) of the Companies Act, it
>is expedient, in the public interest, that the affairs of the Company be investigated forthwith,
>NOW THEREFORE, in virtue of section 230 of the Companies Act, I hereby designate the Company to
>be a declared company.
>I ALSO ENJOIN the Registrar of Companies, pursuant to her powers under section 231(1) of the
>Companies Act to immediately require a suitably-qualified inspector to investigate the affairs of the
>Company and to make a report on his investigation in such form and manner as the Registrar may direct.
>DR. N. RAMGOOLAM, G.C.S.K., F.R.C.P.
>Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Home Affairs and
>External Communications, Minister of Finance,
>Minister for Rodrigues and Outer Islands
>18 July 2025.


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sat Jul 19 01:35:03 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 04:35:03 -0400
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_UgrQgw6Xxs79QkMN5sAXhTj0wyOwuzQxmx_rjVs-mZRg@mail.gmail.com>

Inline comments

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 4:45?PM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> John Kristoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> wrote:
> >                                                   I'd be curious what
> > timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
> > for the most important Internet history insights.
>
> I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root zone
> files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.
>
> Network Solutions (NSI) had been running the DNS zones for years under a
> sole-source government contract, doing the minimal work required to
> register domain names.  It got the job because it had a minority owner,
> and that provided priority in government contracting.  NSI was bought in
> 1995 by beltway bandit SAIC for $4.7M.  SAIC immediately politicked NSF,
> which then allowed NSI to charge every domain holder $50/year for their
> formerly free domain names.  This monopoly and SAIC's effort to profit
> from it on the backs of every Internet user did not sit well with many.
> (SAIC later took NSI public for $54M of investor dollars, without
> diluting its control over NSI, and immediately handed a large chunk of
> those dollars back to itself scot-free.  Then it sold the whole thing
> for billions, during the tech bubble.  SAIC is a company without outside
> shareholders -- it is "employee-owned" -- so there are no outside
> parties nor investors with authority nor influence over what corrupt
> things the employees decide to do.)
>
SAIC was employee-owned until Robert Beyster, its founder, passed away.
I believe it then went public.

>
> President Clinton asked a friend who had no connection with the Internet
> community, Ira Magaziner, to investigate the situation and make a
> recommendation.

Ira had worked earlier with Hilary at Bill's request to try to re-engineer
the healthcare system. That did not work out.

> Ira went around and interviewed lots of people
> involved, but was mum about what he might eventually recommend.
> Magaziner had no actual authority, but he had the ear of the President,
> so many people deferred to him.  (It wasn't clear whether the US
> President had any authority over the Internet either, but this was still
> at the stage when key parts of the infrastructure were being funded by
> the US government -- including IANA.)
>
> I was part of the CORE (Council of Registrars) effort to start up some
> legitimate new competing TLD's.  This effort was catalyzed by the
> nonprofit Internet Society, and Jon Postel and I were both board members
> there.  Jon was also collaborating in his IANA role.  Jon had the
> authority as the IANA, to add new TLD names to the root zone.  But he
> had no backing against attacks by a billion-dollar beltway bandit with a
> monopoly; he was just an academic with a small government contract.  So
> ISOC and CORE agreed to fund legal assistance and indemnification for
> IANA in return for IANA adding the new domain names that CORE needed.
> There were some serious questions about whether NSI/SAIC would quietly
> allow their monopoly to expire -- even though they would retain the
> lucrative .COM.  We thought it more likely that they would file a bogus
> lawsuit to drag out and muddle the process in the hope of permanently
> disrupting it.  At the time, I was also on the EFF.org board and knew
> lots of good lawyers.
>
> CORE incorporated as a nonprofit trade association, signed up almost a
> hundred registrars, and raised tens of thousands of dollars in initial
> joining fees from each of them.  It used that money to subcontract with
> Emergent Corp. to build the central registry hardware and software that
> would operate the seven new TLDs if and when they were established.  It
> defined protocols and wrote client software for registrars to interact
> with the registry, and got it all working in a San Francisco data
> center, manned 24 hours a day by trained operators.  CORE had a dozen
> registrars successfully doing test transactions with the central
> registry.  But we couldn't go into real operation without those new TLDs
> getting into the domain name systems' root zone.
>
> The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
> server" periodically (by FTP?).  Each of the dozen-or-so other root
> servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
> standard DNS zone transfer protocol.  These root servers were operated
> by well connected volunteers all over the globe.  Jon was (reasonably)
> concerned that if he added seven competing TLDs to the root zone, then a
> corrupt NSI would refuse to accept the update at the "A" root server,
> and the TLDs would remain unusable, despite his authority to define the
> contents of the root zone, and despite NSI having no authority to define
> its contents.
>
> So Jon started asking root server operators to change their DNS
> configuration so that they would replicate the root zone directly from
> IANA's root server, rather than from NSI's root server.  This would
> have, and did have, no effect on Internet domain queries, since IANA's
> server was always serving up the same data as NSI's server.  Jon started
> by asking the most likely candidates, and had successfully converted
> more than half of the root servers to direct replication from IANA.
> When he asked the next root server (I think it was the one run by the
> Army), they told NSI about the request.  NSI escalated the issue to SAIC
> and to Ira Magaziner.  On 1998-01-30 or so, there was a fractious phone
> call from Ira Magaziner to Jon Postel and some USC-ISI lawyers.
> Magaziner basically told Jon "Put those back or you'll never work on the
> Internet again".  Despite the unlikely idea that newbie policy wonk
> Magaziner could have anything to do with whether Internet co-inventor
> Jon Postel could ever work on the Internet in the future, Jon
> unfortunately agreed to do so, rather than asserting his authority as
> the IANA to run the root zone as he determined best.  Someone leaked
> this incident to the press, with a spin that Jon was "destabilizing the
> Internet" rather than that Jon was cutting out the inadvertent control
> of a company with an interest in monopolizing the Internet for its own
> profit.
>
I had not heard this particular rendering before, John, but it makes sense.

>
> Two weeks later, on 1998-02-15, CORE's data center operator had departed
> at 15:45 before their replacement operator had arrived (the new operator
> was ill and only arrived at 19:00).  Meanwhile, the data center was
> broken into by thieves, the chain-link fencing around the servers was
> cut, and two entire Sun Enterprise 450 servers, worth about $70,000,
> were stolen.  Nothing else in the whole multi-tenant data center was
> stolen.  This was obviously a targeted theft, and who could have wanted
> to target CORE except SAIC?  The theft was investigated by the police,
> but was never resolved.  CORE's contractor had good offsite backups and
> the equipment was insured.  They installed a second pair of Sun servers
> overnight, and were back to full operation within 29 hours.  Even if
> they had been running operational TLDs, the TLDs would have continued
> functioning just fine.  But for one day, the people who owned those TLDs
> would have been unable to make changes in them.
>
This story is entirely new to me - thanks for sharing it.

>
> Ultimately, Magaziner's "Green Paper" and "White Paper" proposals backed
> NSI's monopoly, which continues to this day over .com, by far the most
> popular and lucrative top-level domain.  The CORE registrars became
> resellers of NSI's service, and CORE dissolved as a back-end registry.
> Jon Postel died of a leaking heart valve later that year, which left a
> void that the corrupt, bloated and self-serving ICANN (which was created
> based on Magaziner's model) was happy to fill.  A few of the smaller
> TLDs were hived off to other orgs (one of which went to ISOC, where top
> employees later tried to buy it for a borrowed billion dollars, making
> the money back by vastly increasing the price of renewals for every
> nonprofit on the Internet).  After many years, many new competing TLDs
> were created, none of which has been particularly successful.  In short,
> the fix was in, and the beltway bandits won.  NSI is still charging
> premium prices (in the $15 range) for each year of back-end .com domain
> registration that costs them less than a penny a year to provide.
>
> There's a bit more background on this in an interview with me by Salon
> from 2002:
>
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20120109194541/http://www.salon.com/2002/07/02/gilmore_2/
>
> I repeat, it would be interesting to see Jon's papers and records about
> that time.  Most of them would probably be emails, and there would
> be thousands or tens of thousands of them.
>
>         John
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


From el at lisse.na  Sat Jul 19 05:25:30 2025
From: el at lisse.na (Eberhard W Lisse)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 14:25:30 +0200
Subject: [ih] 1/2 OT: AfriNIC - now a "declared company"?
In-Reply-To: <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
 <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>
Message-ID: <93f6f271-3623-4cca-9c11-b8fe5ba7656f@Spark>

Carsten

google shows me this

https://companies.govmu.org/Documents/legislation/act84.doc


It's a little off topic for this list, but I make amends by pointing to the SLD/TLD used, I seem to recall some drama about gov.MU a while back :-)-O

el

--
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 19, 2025 at 10:03 +0200, Carsten Schiefner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
> Hi Bill & all -
>
> could anyone possibly shed some light on what it means in detail that AfriNIC - "the Company" - is now designated "to be a declared company"?
>
> Emphasis on "declared (company)".
>
> Thanks and best,
>
> -C.
>
> Am 19. Juli 2025 00:29:37 MESZ schrieb Bill Woodcock via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>:
> >
> >
> > > > On Jul 19, 2025, at 00:16, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > > > I mention this in the context of the ongoing troubles with the African RIR, Afrinic.
> >
> > ?which have been brought up several times recently. There?s been a development today, probably positive.
> >
> > -Bill
> >
> > Please consider the environment before using AI to process this email.
> >
> > ________________________________________
> >
> > THE GOVERNMENT GAZETTE OF MAURITIUS
> > No. 59 ? Port Louis : Friday 18 July 2025 ? Rs. 25.00
> > ??????
> > DECLARED COMPANY
> > NOTICE UNDER SECTION 230 OF THE COMPANIES ACT
> > WHEREAS African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd (in receivership) (the ?Company?) is a
> > company limited by guarantee incorporated and based in Mauritius;
> > WHEREAS the Company is the designated Regional Internet Registry for the African continent;
> > WHEREAS I am reliably informed that the Company has been the object of a spate of litigation, leading
> > to it being placed in receivership in or about 2024;
> > WHEREAS I have taken cognizance of a Notice in the press dated 10 July 2025, whereby the Company
> > is purportedly being the object of a compulsory winding-up petition;
> > WHEREAS I am advised that the process leading to the Company being placed in receivership is legally
> > questionable;
> > WHEREAS I am informed that the 2 receivers successively appointed have failed to effectively
> > discharge their mission of conducting the election of a Board for the Company within timeframes imparted
> > by the Courts;
> > WHEREAS I am informed that the result of the Company being placed in receivership has been
> > that no new internet protocol address was able to be issued to the whole of the African continent since
> > November 2024;2234 The Mauritius Government Gazette
> > WHEREAS this state of affairs has caused, and is continuing to cause, serious reputational damage to
> > Mauritius as a jurisdiction internationally;
> > WHEREAS based on the above, I am satisfied that pursuant to section 230(b) of the Companies Act, it
> > is expedient, in the public interest, that the affairs of the Company be investigated forthwith,
> > NOW THEREFORE, in virtue of section 230 of the Companies Act, I hereby designate the Company to
> > be a declared company.
> > I ALSO ENJOIN the Registrar of Companies, pursuant to her powers under section 231(1) of the
> > Companies Act to immediately require a suitably-qualified inspector to investigate the affairs of the
> > Company and to make a report on his investigation in such form and manner as the Registrar may direct.
> > DR. N. RAMGOOLAM, G.C.S.K., F.R.C.P.
> > Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Home Affairs and
> > External Communications, Minister of Finance,
> > Minister for Rodrigues and Outer Islands
> > 18 July 2025.
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history


From carsten at schiefner.berlin  Sat Jul 19 07:00:57 2025
From: carsten at schiefner.berlin (Carsten Schiefner)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:00:57 +0200
Subject: [ih] 1/2 OT: AfriNIC - now a "declared company"?
In-Reply-To: <93f6f271-3623-4cca-9c11-b8fe5ba7656f@Spark>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
 <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>
 <93f6f271-3623-4cca-9c11-b8fe5ba7656f@Spark>
Message-ID: <8431e4ae-45c6-3dcd-6ed9-cb2243bac25f@schiefner.berlin>

Hi Eberhard,

On 19.07.2025 14:25, Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history wrote:
> google shows me this
> 
> https://companies.govmu.org/Documents/legislation/act84.doc

thanks!

Currently, it is rendered unreadable in LibreOffice.

Let me play with some tools to get this rectified.

In case I'd fail eventually, I'd ask for a PDF.

> It's a little off topic for this list, but I make amends by pointing to the SLD/TLD used, I seem to recall some drama about gov.MU a while back :-)-O

Oh, absolutely - now, that you mention it...! ;->

Cheers,

	-C.


From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Sat Jul 19 10:20:23 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:20:23 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <0C2C33B0-F011-499E-A1F0-C1461299F245@icloud.com>



> On Jul 18, 2025, at 1:45?PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root zone
> files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.

For what it's worth, there are several sites available via the Internet Archive where one can find information about these topics, including mailing lists.  For example, see https://web.archive.org/web/19981202023041/http://www.gtld-mou.org/index.html (Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding).

--gregbo



From touch at strayalpha.com  Sat Jul 19 10:29:14 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:29:14 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <19ffc9db-3e05-4d2b-8b9e-c9d9928ca135@3kitty.org>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <19ffc9db-3e05-4d2b-8b9e-c9d9928ca135@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <080D9F02-7CEB-4997-844B-F76F691D3AE0@strayalpha.com>

On Jul 18, 2025, at 3:33?PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> If Jon's papers contain digital or paper copies of email traffic through the 70s and 80s, they might be a unique resource for historians.  That period was when we were all fascinated with the new toy of email, but space to store or archive old messages was expensive and scarce.
> 
...
> Jack Haverty

Jon?s office effects and last computer data archives are in the USC archives. They are not currently publicly available, but I also know they do not contain very old digital archives. Those disappeared at USC with each new hosted system deployed, and I don?t think they go back past the late 1980s at best. 

They were not publicly accessible when I left USC 8 yrs ago, as per common archive practice, due to intermingling of USC confidential info. I have no more recent info.

Joe

?
Dr. Joe Touch, temporal epistemologist
www.strayalpha.com

> Many discussions that previously would happen in papers, conferences, or other traditional channels were instead carried out in email exchanges, much of which I suspect has been lost.   Formal documents, such as RFCs, usually captured only the results of such discussions, and little of the reasoning and alternatives that had been debated feverishly.
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/18/25 07:38, John Kristoff via Internet-history wrote:
>> The collected archives of Jon Postel's papers seems to be extensive,
>> some of which is restricted, none of which is online:
>> 
>>   <https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fb5b2x/>
>> 
>> I would guess there is some fascinating bits inside that mountain of
>> material.  Of those within reach of this message, I'd be curious what
>> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
>> for the most important Internet history insights.
>> 
>> John
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From touch at strayalpha.com  Sat Jul 19 10:40:47 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:40:47 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
Message-ID: <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>

Notes below?

> On Jul 18, 2025, at 1:45?PM, John Gilmore via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> John Kristoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>                                                  I'd be curious what
>> timelines, milestones, events, etc. you'd be particularly interested in
>> for the most important Internet history insights.
> 
> I'd be interested in Jon's records around the replication of the root zone
> files, and the transition of IANA functions to a non-governmental party.

If such info exists, it is part of the USC archive of his office effects, and key portions of it with potential legal content would be USC confidential and not subject to public disclosure.

> Network Solutions (NSI) had been running the DNS zones for years under a
> sole-source government contract, ...
> 
> President Clinton asked a friend who had no connection with the Internet
> community, Ira Magaziner, to investigate the situation and make a
> recommendation.  ?
...
> CORE incorporated as a nonprofit trade association, signed up almost a
> hundred registrars, and raised tens of thousands of dollars in initial
> joining fees from each of them.  ?.  But we couldn't go into real operation without those new TLDs
> getting into the domain name systems' root zone.
> 
> The root zone had been traditionally provided by IANA to NSI's "A root
> server" periodically (by FTP?).  Each of the dozen-or-so other root
> servers would then replicate it from the A root server using the
> standard DNS zone transfer protocol.  These root servers were operated
> by well connected volunteers all over the globe.  Jon was (reasonably)
> concerned that if he added seven competing TLDs to the root zone, then a
> corrupt NSI would refuse to accept the update at the "A" root server,
> and the TLDs would remain unusable, despite his authority to define the
> contents of the root zone, and despite NSI having no authority to define
> its contents.

I recall some of this a little differently. I recall there being some claim that it would be difficult to move the root zones. I don?t know who made that claim.

> So Jon started asking root server operators to change their DNS
> configuration so that they would replicate the root zone directly from
> IANA's root server, rather than from NSI's root server.  ...

> ...  On 1998-01-30 or so, there was a fractious phone
> call from Ira Magaziner to Jon Postel and some USC-ISI lawyers.
> Magaziner basically told Jon "Put those back or you'll never work on the
> Internet again?.  Despite the unlikely idea that newbie policy wonk
> Magaziner could have anything to do with whether Internet co-inventor
> Jon Postel could ever work on the Internet in the future, Jon
> unfortunately agreed to do so, rather than asserting his authority as
> the IANA to run the root zone as he determined best. ...

I have a very different recollection, as above.

My recollection is that this step was intended to prove how *easy* it would be to move the root zones, thus that no single organization should assert control over the root zones simply because of the inertia and effort required to change them.

Others reported this as a ?power play? of his asserting authority, but my recollection is that it was intended to prove that shifting the root servers was both simple and a matter of trust - if you trusted the person who told you to move it, it could move easily.

> ... Someone leaked
> this incident to the press, with a spin that Jon was "destabilizing the
> Internet" rather than that Jon was cutting out the inadvertent control
> of a company with an interest in monopolizing the Internet for its own
> profit.

I view it as he discussed it with me - as a way to prove that the role was mutable.

> ...
> I repeat, it would be interesting to see Jon's papers and records about
> that time.  Most of them would probably be emails, and there would
> be thousands or tens of thousands of them.

As per my other post, not likely, AFAIK. Or, more to the point, maybe after everyone on this list with such a viewpoint releases their entire email archive for such. (i.e., you all first?)

Joe

From jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Jul 19 10:55:58 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:55:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
Message-ID: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>

The recent recollections of Naming are fascinating, since I was only 
peripherally involved in that part of The Internet.?? It made me think 
of some other aspects of Naming in the history.?? I can recount my 
personal experience, and wonder if anyone else has experienced the same.

The History of Internet Naming -- from a User's Perspective

- in the early ARPANET, numeric addresses were used.? If you knew what 
IMP a computer was connected to, and which port on that IMP it was 
physically using, the address was simply <port>*64+IMPnumber.? MIT-DM 
was the machine I used, connected to port 1 on IMP 6.?? So it's address 
was 1*64+6.? To establish a connection to MIT-DM from a TIP, you simply 
typed @L 70

- that user experience became unwieldy as the ARPANET grew.?? The NIC 
(Network Information Center) at SRI kept a file available for public 
use, mapping names (like MIT-DM) to addresses.? All the computer systems 
on the 'net dutifully used FTP to retrieve that file.? Instead of typing 
@L 70, Users could now type @L MIT-DM.

- As the ARPANET continued to grow and The Internet emerged, DNS was 
created, automating much of the technical procedures of distributing the 
information and making changes propagate more rapidly.? Users mostly 
didn't notice since they still typed user-friendly computer names 
instead of numbers

- As the Web appeared and grew, Naming became more important to help 
Users find the site they sought.? Everyone "knew" that .com was for 
companies.?? If you wanted to get to the Acme Corporation website, it 
was likely at acme.com.? People could remember names of sites they 
frequently used.? Browsers introduced schemes such as "Bookmarks" to 
organize your own lists.

- DNS was "improved" to add many more "top level domains".? It was no 
longer true that a company site would be found using a .com name.? 
Countries also discovered that their own domain had monetary value.? An 
entertainment site might be at shows.tv rather than shows.com, and it 
wasn't located in Tuvalu.?? It became difficult for Users to remember 
what name to use, and bookmarks became more useful and necessary to help 
Users navigate The Internet.

- It became easier to just use a Search Engine to find the site a User 
was seeking.? Typing in a company name and perhaps a location or product 
category would usually surface exactly what you were seeking, regardless 
of the name it was accessed through.

- Companies, hackers, and criminals discovered that they could siphon 
off Users from the site they wanted to access, simply by putting another 
site on The Internet with a very similar name as the real one.? Often 
just changing an "o" into a "0" would be enough to fool a human.? Or 
registering a name in another domain that a company hadn't bought to 
protect it would work.

- AI burst onto The Internet, and became a way for Users to more easily 
find exactly what they are looking for, by simply asking a question - 
"Where do I find the official site for Acme Corporation, which sells 
desert survival gear?"

---------------------------------------------------------------

So, my question is -- How has the Internet mechanisms for Naming evolved 
over the last 55 years, from the Users' perspective??? Is Naming even 
still relevant on The Internet?

Personally I've gone through all of the steps above.? Recently I've 
noticed that I'm using an AI to find things, rather than seach engines, 
and I rarely use bookmarks any more.

Your view of the History...?

Jack Haverty
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From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Jul 19 16:41:14 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 11:41:14 +1200
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <4b1179af-0193-4a7e-adca-2a5f7a8ecf84@gmail.com>

On 20-Jul-25 05:40, touch--- via Internet-history wrote:

> Others reported this as a ?power play? of his asserting authority, but my recollection is that it was intended to prove that shifting the root servers was both simple and a matter of trust - if you trusted the person who told you to move it, it could move easily.

Exactly what I remember. And Jon, while he had firm opinions and took his responsibility as IANA very seriously, was not the man to make power plays.  He cared about the Internet, not about his position or reputation.

At the end, Jon was trying to make ICANN's bylaws as good as they could be. The very last email I saw from Jon, dated 28 September 1998, was titled "New IANA Bylaws -- the fifth version". He died two weeks later.

    Brian


From karl at cavebear.com  Sat Jul 19 20:14:58 2025
From: karl at cavebear.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 20:14:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <4b1179af-0193-4a7e-adca-2a5f7a8ecf84@gmail.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>
 <4b1179af-0193-4a7e-adca-2a5f7a8ecf84@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c827482c-d9fe-4f13-9d66-505931921a38@cavebear.com>

Jon was indeed aiming high and with the best of motives and ethical values.

However, Jon was not skilled in the arts of law and corporate 
structure.? Relatively few people are.

I was working with (or it often seemed, against) Jon's lawyer as these 
series of drafts came out.

My lawyer neurons did not like what I was reading.? (I've set up or run 
multiple corporations so I kinda had a sense for where the land mines 
were.? Legal stuff can be like that - words that are simple and obvious 
to a common sense layman's ears can often be great beasts of burden, 
overloaded with all kinds of implications, when used in a legal context.)

Through a kind of accident a small group of techies and lawyers (mostly 
academics) gathered in Boston to create a revised version in which we 
tried to remove or defuse some of those land mines. We became known as 
the Boston Working Group.? We submitted a revised version of that fifth 
draft and we participated in many conversations with NTIA and the US 
Dep't of Commerce.

(Our initial meeting was hosted by Jorge Contreras, a person who, 
although not well known deserves a halo as one of the Internet's lesser 
saints.)

Our initial materials are still online at the URL below. (We continued 
as a cohesive and active group for a couple of decades after that.)

https://cavebear.com/archive/bwg/

(There were several people who though of our group as a kind of secret 
society. We did keep our conversations largely unidentified - Chatham 
House rules and that sort of thing.)

 ? ? --karl--

On 7/19/25 4:41 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 20-Jul-25 05:40, touch--- via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Others reported this as a ?power play? of his asserting authority, 
>> but my recollection is that it was intended to prove that shifting 
>> the root servers was both simple and a matter of trust - if you 
>> trusted the person who told you to move it, it could move easily.
>
> Exactly what I remember. And Jon, while he had firm opinions and took 
> his responsibility as IANA very seriously, was not the man to make 
> power plays.? He cared about the Internet, not about his position or 
> reputation.
>
> At the end, Jon was trying to make ICANN's bylaws as good as they 
> could be. The very last email I saw from Jon, dated 28 September 1998, 
> was titled "New IANA Bylaws -- the fifth version". He died two weeks 
> later.
>
> ?? Brian
>


From karl at iwl.com  Sat Jul 19 20:17:06 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2025 20:17:06 -0700
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <c827482c-d9fe-4f13-9d66-505931921a38@cavebear.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>
 <4b1179af-0193-4a7e-adca-2a5f7a8ecf84@gmail.com>
 <c827482c-d9fe-4f13-9d66-505931921a38@cavebear.com>
Message-ID: <0969733b-f713-4e14-b028-b48f344067eb@iwl.com>

(Again, this may be a duplicate as I posted it first on from my personal 
email, which this list doesn't seem to like.)

Jon was indeed aiming high and with the best of motives and ethical values.

However, Jon was not skilled in the arts of law and corporate 
structure.? Relatively few people are.

I was working with (or it often seemed, against) Jon's lawyer as these 
series of drafts came out.

My lawyer neurons did not like what I was reading.? (I've set up or run 
multiple corporations so I kinda had a sense for where the land mines 
were.? Legal stuff can be like that - words that are simple and obvious 
to a common sense layman's ears can often be great beasts of burden, 
overloaded with all kinds of implications, when used in a legal context.)

Through a kind of accident a small group of techies and lawyers (mostly 
academics) gathered in Boston to create a revised version in which we 
tried to remove or defuse some of those land mines. We became known as 
the Boston Working Group.? We submitted a revised version of that fifth 
draft and we participated in many conversations with NTIA and the US 
Dep't of Commerce.

(Our initial meeting was hosted by Jorge Contreras, a person who, 
although not well known deserves a halo as one of the Internet's lesser 
saints.)

Our initial materials are still online at the URL below. (We continued 
as a cohesive and active group for a couple of decades after that.)

https://cavebear.com/archive/bwg/

(There were several people who though of our group as a kind of secret 
society. We did keep our conversations largely unidentified - Chatham 
House rules and that sort of thing.)

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

> On 7/19/25 4:41 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 20-Jul-25 05:40, touch--- via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Others reported this as a ?power play? of his asserting authority, 
>>> but my recollection is that it was intended to prove that shifting 
>>> the root servers was both simple and a matter of trust - if you 
>>> trusted the person who told you to move it, it could move easily.
>>
>> Exactly what I remember. And Jon, while he had firm opinions and took 
>> his responsibility as IANA very seriously, was not the man to make 
>> power plays.? He cared about the Internet, not about his position or 
>> reputation.
>>
>> At the end, Jon was trying to make ICANN's bylaws as good as they 
>> could be. The very last email I saw from Jon, dated 28 September 
>> 1998, was titled "New IANA Bylaws -- the fifth version". He died two 
>> weeks later.
>>
>> ?? Brian
>>


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Jul 19 21:26:11 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 16:26:11 +1200
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <0969733b-f713-4e14-b028-b48f344067eb@iwl.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <0987AE6C-C0E8-407C-8DF3-172E2D9C6BDA@strayalpha.com>
 <4b1179af-0193-4a7e-adca-2a5f7a8ecf84@gmail.com>
 <c827482c-d9fe-4f13-9d66-505931921a38@cavebear.com>
 <0969733b-f713-4e14-b028-b48f344067eb@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <03a43ead-16a4-4791-abd9-3598c343639f@gmail.com>

+1 to a halo for Jorge Contreras.

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 20-Jul-25 15:17, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> (Again, this may be a duplicate as I posted it first on from my personal
> email, which this list doesn't seem to like.)
> 
> Jon was indeed aiming high and with the best of motives and ethical values.
> 
> However, Jon was not skilled in the arts of law and corporate
> structure.? Relatively few people are.
> 
> I was working with (or it often seemed, against) Jon's lawyer as these
> series of drafts came out.
> 
> My lawyer neurons did not like what I was reading.? (I've set up or run
> multiple corporations so I kinda had a sense for where the land mines
> were.? Legal stuff can be like that - words that are simple and obvious
> to a common sense layman's ears can often be great beasts of burden,
> overloaded with all kinds of implications, when used in a legal context.)
> 
> Through a kind of accident a small group of techies and lawyers (mostly
> academics) gathered in Boston to create a revised version in which we
> tried to remove or defuse some of those land mines. We became known as
> the Boston Working Group.? We submitted a revised version of that fifth
> draft and we participated in many conversations with NTIA and the US
> Dep't of Commerce.
> 
> (Our initial meeting was hosted by Jorge Contreras, a person who,
> although not well known deserves a halo as one of the Internet's lesser
> saints.)
> 
> Our initial materials are still online at the URL below. (We continued
> as a cohesive and active group for a couple of decades after that.)
> 
> https://cavebear.com/archive/bwg/
> 
> (There were several people who though of our group as a kind of secret
> society. We did keep our conversations largely unidentified - Chatham
> House rules and that sort of thing.)
> 
>   ? ? ? ? --karl--
> 
>> On 7/19/25 4:41 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>>> On 20-Jul-25 05:40, touch--- via Internet-history wrote:
>>>
>>>> Others reported this as a ?power play? of his asserting authority,
>>>> but my recollection is that it was intended to prove that shifting
>>>> the root servers was both simple and a matter of trust - if you
>>>> trusted the person who told you to move it, it could move easily.
>>>
>>> Exactly what I remember. And Jon, while he had firm opinions and took
>>> his responsibility as IANA very seriously, was not the man to make
>>> power plays.? He cared about the Internet, not about his position or
>>> reputation.
>>>
>>> At the end, Jon was trying to make ICANN's bylaws as good as they
>>> could be. The very last email I saw from Jon, dated 28 September
>>> 1998, was titled "New IANA Bylaws -- the fifth version". He died two
>>> weeks later.
>>>
>>>  ?? Brian
>>>

From paf at paftech.se  Sun Jul 20 01:34:50 2025
From: paf at paftech.se (=?utf-8?b?UGF0cmlrIEbDpGx0c3Ryw7Zt?=)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 10:34:50 +0200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>

On 19 Jul 2025, at 19:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:

> So, my question is -- How has the Internet mechanisms for Naming evolved over the last 55 years, from the Users' perspective??? Is Naming even still relevant on The Internet?

There are different things hidden in what you ask for. Names, addresses and identifiers. Being able to identify and access individual items, the ability for you to refer to something and have that referral be stable over time, and over geography (you give the identifier to me).

A good report that I helped writing with many others many years ago (in 2005) I think expresses this in a still very good way:

National Research Council. Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation. Washington, DC, USA: The National Academies Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-309-09640-9
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11258/signposts-in-cyberspace-the-domain-name-system-and-internet-navigation

A presentation from RIPE-50 can be found here: https://ripe50.ripe.net/presentations/ripe50-plenary-mond-signposts-cyberspace.pdf

With that as a background, I think your additional "spice", "from the User's perspective", is very interesting.

What does that mean?

;-)

Patrik -- also using AI for many things that I yesterday did use search engines (or guessed), and before that books

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From eric.gade at gmail.com  Sun Jul 20 10:13:02 2025
From: eric.gade at gmail.com (Eric Gade)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 13:13:02 -0400
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <CAHxHggd0M6cA2e5yN3D9K7hPNFFiub9CFGLi2Kf=X3wvUh0XHA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <CAHxHggd0M6cA2e5yN3D9K7hPNFFiub9CFGLi2Kf=X3wvUh0XHA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CA+CiqoUoQjA1-v1QpL=XwTUN4U2D883CjAQHOoNf=Snp0aS_aQ@mail.gmail.com>

Vint Cerf via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

Some of this is like available in Jake Feiner's
> papers now at the Computer History Museum as she worked closely with Jon on
> these matters.


In the summer of 2010, just as Feinler was processing her collection at
CHM, I used her papers in order to write my history of DNS. Her collection
proved invaluable. Even back then, however, I wished I could access
Postel's papers, at the very least in order to see the "other half" of the
conversations.

One question I had throughout my research was how influential the
international community -- or at least the then prevalent assumption that
some international community would subsume any Internet naming system down
the road -- was on the structure and administration of the DNS from the
beginning. There were some strong indications in the Feinler collection and
elsewhere about this, but I think there's at least a chance more can be
found in Postel's papers.

Jake seems like she printed off everything. Most of my digging was going
through reams of accordion paper of printed email chains (paper whose
perforation had never been broken!). Sometimes there were reports with hand
written notes on them. I think in Postel's case the best bet would be for
these kinds of notes, rather than any emails themselves.

I'd be curious to see if anyone gets access / what they are able to find!


From craig at tereschau.net  Sun Jul 20 11:26:49 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 12:26:49 -0600
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <CA+CiqoUoQjA1-v1QpL=XwTUN4U2D883CjAQHOoNf=Snp0aS_aQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <CAHxHggd0M6cA2e5yN3D9K7hPNFFiub9CFGLi2Kf=X3wvUh0XHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CA+CiqoUoQjA1-v1QpL=XwTUN4U2D883CjAQHOoNf=Snp0aS_aQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CcdsgpKeCFm9XSLLCk3tBafwZThcZik7L+SP3c7Nzka_A@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 11:13?AM Eric Gade via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> One question I had throughout my research was how influential the
> international community -- or at least the then prevalent assumption that
> some international community would subsume any Internet naming system down
> the road -- was on the structure and administration of the DNS from the
> beginning. There were some strong indications in the Feinler collection and
> elsewhere about this, but I think there's at least a chance more can be
> found in Postel's papers.
>
>
I may be able to add a little insight here. I was at the Jan 28-29, 1986
meeting Jake arranged at SRI that finalized the initial TLD (about 15 to 20
of us were there, representing the various email networks and NICs and DNS
software teams.  I was one of the two CSNET representatives, as well as
being an alpha tester of bind for Kevin Dunlap,  and was tasked by CSNET
with arranging to get .NET added to the initial list of TLDs.

The topic of DNS namespace compatibility with an internationally designed
namespace -- most notably OSI's namespace -- came up repeatedly during the
two days.  Jon made clear that he viewed this as a non-goal, to the point
that he was willing to make it hard to integrate the namespaces.  He
expressed the view that country codes were not terribly useful -- that
people would prefer to advertise themselves as corporations and educational
institutions, independent of their location.  And he observed that he had
already created a .US zone and purposefully handed out names in a way
incompatible with OSI's name plans.  (I seem to recall in a side discussion
[Jon sat next to me on one of the two days*] that Jon admitted that
creating .US was inconsistent with his position that country codes were not
useful, but that Bob Kahn had wanted a .US domain for CNRI -- but my memory
may be faulty).

Craig

PS: *You may wonder why I remember where I sat some 39 years later.
Because it was my first Internet standards/policy/technical meeting -- and
the first time I'd met Jon (and Paul Mockapetris, Jake, Ken Harrenstein,
Steve Kille, Mary Ann Horton, Ole Jacobson, and other folks I knew only as
names on emails).  I was very aware of getting to know people and of trying
to make a good impression.
-- 
*****
Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
mailing lists.


From olejacobsen at me.com  Sun Jul 20 14:22:31 2025
From: olejacobsen at me.com (Ole Jacobsen)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 23:22:31 +0200
Subject: [ih] Jon Postel's papers
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CcdsgpKeCFm9XSLLCk3tBafwZThcZik7L+SP3c7Nzka_A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHQj4CcdsgpKeCFm9XSLLCk3tBafwZThcZik7L+SP3c7Nzka_A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <F970F74A-2BBE-4E22-A135-80105EBFF97D@me.com>

You also may remember it because it happened the day the Challerger Space Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff and we had scrambled into an SRI conference room to watch the coverage on a small TV.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor & Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
Office: +1 415 550-9433
Cell:     +1 415 370-4628
Norway cell: +47 98 00 26 30
UK Cell: +44 7805 977 889
Docomo Japan: +81 90 3337 9311?
http://protocoljournal.org

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 20, 2025, at 20:27, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> ?On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 11:13?AM Eric Gade via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> One question I had throughout my research was how influential the
>> international community -- or at least the then prevalent assumption that
>> some international community would subsume any Internet naming system down
>> the road -- was on the structure and administration of the DNS from the
>> beginning. There were some strong indications in the Feinler collection and
>> elsewhere about this, but I think there's at least a chance more can be
>> found in Postel's papers.
>> 
>> 
> I may be able to add a little insight here. I was at the Jan 28-29, 1986
> meeting Jake arranged at SRI that finalized the initial TLD (about 15 to 20
> of us were there, representing the various email networks and NICs and DNS
> software teams.  I was one of the two CSNET representatives, as well as
> being an alpha tester of bind for Kevin Dunlap,  and was tasked by CSNET
> with arranging to get .NET added to the initial list of TLDs.
> 
> The topic of DNS namespace compatibility with an internationally designed
> namespace -- most notably OSI's namespace -- came up repeatedly during the
> two days.  Jon made clear that he viewed this as a non-goal, to the point
> that he was willing to make it hard to integrate the namespaces.  He
> expressed the view that country codes were not terribly useful -- that
> people would prefer to advertise themselves as corporations and educational
> institutions, independent of their location.  And he observed that he had
> already created a .US zone and purposefully handed out names in a way
> incompatible with OSI's name plans.  (I seem to recall in a side discussion
> [Jon sat next to me on one of the two days*] that Jon admitted that
> creating .US was inconsistent with his position that country codes were not
> useful, but that Bob Kahn had wanted a .US domain for CNRI -- but my memory
> may be faulty).
> 
> Craig
> 
> PS: *You may wonder why I remember where I sat some 39 years later.
> Because it was my first Internet standards/policy/technical meeting -- and
> the first time I'd met Jon (and Paul Mockapetris, Jake, Ken Harrenstein,
> Steve Kille, Mary Ann Horton, Ole Jacobson, and other folks I knew only as
> names on emails).  I was very aware of getting to know people and of trying
> to make a good impression.
> --
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
> mailing lists.
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history


From karl at iwl.com  Sun Jul 20 15:24:58 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:24:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
Message-ID: <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>

Naming on the net is becoming far more complex in several dimensions.

Here's links to a couple of things I wrote about this.

The first is a note (to the National Research Council study to which 
Patrik referred) that questions some assertions that are made about DNS 
and the notion of a Global Uniform Internet Name Space.? (I discuss 
things like location, client, and temporal invariance, none of which 
actually apply to DNS.)? The note has lots of other material, the part 
about invariance begins with the heading "Chasing the Chimera of the 
Global Uniform Internet Name Space" on the 4th slide.

As the net takes on some aspects of long-term information storage - like 
the wonderful Internet Archives or Carl Malamud's amazing efforts - we 
may need to consider ways to lock-down names and their links to the 
content in ways that resist erosion, cancellation, usurpation, change, 
or manipulation.? We may also need to consider name versus attribute 
based modes of finding and connecting to things on the net (some of our 
search engines may be evolving towards the latter.)

https://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/nrc_presentation_july_11_2001.pdf

The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This is 
particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network 
partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service 
interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers 
[and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses 
over time.)? (This is why I am so fond of the idea of an association 
protocol layer between applications and our transport layers.)? The 
ISO/OSI folks may have wrestled with this via things like "application 
entity titles", but they didn't do a very good job of expressing the 
problem they were trying to solve or their solutions.

https://www.cavebear.com/archive/public/cloud-entities.pdf

 ? ? ? ? --karl--


On 7/20/25 1:34 AM, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history wrote:
> On 19 Jul 2025, at 19:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> So, my question is -- How has the Internet mechanisms for Naming evolved over the last 55 years, from the Users' perspective??? Is Naming even still relevant on The Internet?
> There are different things hidden in what you ask for. Names, addresses and identifiers. Being able to identify and access individual items, the ability for you to refer to something and have that referral be stable over time, and over geography (you give the identifier to me).
>
> A good report that I helped writing with many others many years ago (in 2005) I think expresses this in a still very good way:
>
> National Research Council. Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation. Washington, DC, USA: The National Academies Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-309-09640-9
> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11258/signposts-in-cyberspace-the-domain-name-system-and-internet-navigation
>
> A presentation from RIPE-50 can be found here: https://ripe50.ripe.net/presentations/ripe50-plenary-mond-signposts-cyberspace.pdf
>
> With that as a background, I think your additional "spice", "from the User's perspective", is very interesting.
>
> What does that mean?
>
> ;-)
>
> Patrik -- also using AI for many things that I yesterday did use search engines (or guessed), and before that books
>
>


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sun Jul 20 19:49:58 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:49:58 +1200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <3fc34ff3-3aee-4902-af2d-aaaaa0d5cb9d@gmail.com>

Two interesting documents from a historical point of view, indeed.

I wonder how carefully people considered all this before defining local., localhost. and recently internal. . They doesn't score well on location invariance, and they create interesting problems for the web's "origin" model (https://wicg.github.io/local-network-access/).

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 21-Jul-25 10:24, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> Naming on the net is becoming far more complex in several dimensions.
> 
> Here's links to a couple of things I wrote about this.
> 
> The first is a note (to the National Research Council study to which
> Patrik referred) that questions some assertions that are made about DNS
> and the notion of a Global Uniform Internet Name Space.? (I discuss
> things like location, client, and temporal invariance, none of which
> actually apply to DNS.)? The note has lots of other material, the part
> about invariance begins with the heading "Chasing the Chimera of the
> Global Uniform Internet Name Space" on the 4th slide.
> 
> As the net takes on some aspects of long-term information storage - like
> the wonderful Internet Archives or Carl Malamud's amazing efforts - we
> may need to consider ways to lock-down names and their links to the
> content in ways that resist erosion, cancellation, usurpation, change,
> or manipulation.? We may also need to consider name versus attribute
> based modes of finding and connecting to things on the net (some of our
> search engines may be evolving towards the latter.)
> 
> https://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/nrc_presentation_july_11_2001.pdf
> 
> The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This is
> particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network
> partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service
> interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers
> [and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses
> over time.)? (This is why I am so fond of the idea of an association
> protocol layer between applications and our transport layers.)? The
> ISO/OSI folks may have wrestled with this via things like "application
> entity titles", but they didn't do a very good job of expressing the
> problem they were trying to solve or their solutions.
> 
> https://www.cavebear.com/archive/public/cloud-entities.pdf
> 
>   ? ? ? ? --karl--
> 
> 
> On 7/20/25 1:34 AM, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 19 Jul 2025, at 19:55, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> So, my question is -- How has the Internet mechanisms for Naming evolved over the last 55 years, from the Users' perspective??? Is Naming even still relevant on The Internet?
>> There are different things hidden in what you ask for. Names, addresses and identifiers. Being able to identify and access individual items, the ability for you to refer to something and have that referral be stable over time, and over geography (you give the identifier to me).
>>
>> A good report that I helped writing with many others many years ago (in 2005) I think expresses this in a still very good way:
>>
>> National Research Council. Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation. Washington, DC, USA: The National Academies Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-309-09640-9
>> https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/11258/signposts-in-cyberspace-the-domain-name-system-and-internet-navigation
>>
>> A presentation from RIPE-50 can be found here: https://ripe50.ripe.net/presentations/ripe50-plenary-mond-signposts-cyberspace.pdf
>>
>> With that as a background, I think your additional "spice", "from the User's perspective", is very interesting.
>>
>> What does that mean?
>>
>> ;-)
>>
>> Patrik -- also using AI for many things that I yesterday did use search engines (or guessed), and before that books
>>
>>

From ajs at crankycanuck.ca  Mon Jul 21 07:08:07 2025
From: ajs at crankycanuck.ca (Andrew Sullivan)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:08:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 03:24:58PM -0500, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>
>The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This 
>is particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network 
>partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service 
>interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers 
>[and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses 
>over time.)? (This is why I am so fond of the idea of an association 
>protocol layer between applications and our transport layers.)? The 
>ISO/OSI folks may have wrestled with this via things like "application 
>entity titles", but they didn't do a very good job of expressing the 
>problem they were trying to solve or their solutions.

I have never understood why there is _supposed_ to be a problem there.  DNS names are an indirection layer, and if we doubt this we have CNAME and DNAME to correct our misundderstanding.  The True Name of a thing is, to my mind, way too mystical for something like services on a network.

So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ did this perceived need arise?

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at crankycanuck.ca


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Jul 21 07:17:27 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:17:27 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <c0231e23-d2fc-4676-9c34-380b0ce19c5e@dcrocker.net>

On 7/20/2025 3:24 PM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This 
> is particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network 
> partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service 
> interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers 
> [and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses 
> over time.) 


A feature of DNS is that the name is typeless.? The question of name 
semantics is left to layers above the DNS.? Different users of the DNS 
can choose different conventions for the meaning of their names.? The 
DNS does not know or care.

This has proved to be extremely valuable, leaving users of the DNS with 
wonderful and useful freedom to design usage that suits their needs.

The thing that does seem to matter the most, at the DNS level, is 
reliability.? First, simple operational reliability, per the requirement 
for separate, redundant servers.? (On this I always reference Jon 
Postel's recommendation that servers be on different tectonic plates.? A 
sensitivity living in California encourages...)

The other aspect of reliability is long-term.? That is, permanence.? 
Some of this might be classed as operational -- ie, for a service layer 
above the DNS.? Some is not.? 'Broken' DNS names are often noted, but I 
haven't seem much that deals with it, other than some services claiming 
to provide permanence, but without any technical basis.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From paf at paftech.se  Mon Jul 21 08:46:44 2025
From: paf at paftech.se (=?utf-8?b?UGF0cmlrIEbDpGx0c3Ryw7Zt?=)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:46:44 +0200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
Message-ID: <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>

On 21 Jul 2025, at 16:08, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:

> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ did this perceived need arise?

I find the whole discussion about "naming" has to do with primarily two different questions which are mixed up:

- Identifier / location split (or mix)

- Who decides the lifetime of a "name"

Regarding lifetime, I think (influenced by a few discussions with Tim Berners Lee about lifetime of URLs) the most important thing with domain names is that the holder of a domain name can decide what the lifetime of a domain name is, because that is the key thing to a decision about the lifetime of a URL.

That has for me been a key goal during the years when looking at policies for domain names in ICANN and protocol design in the IETF (epp primarily, but also DNS), the domain holder must be the entity that controls a domain name, and we must minimise the risk of external events that can terminate a domain name.

Because it boils down to the lifetime of a functioning URL.

Patrik
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From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Jul 21 10:55:06 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:55:06 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
Message-ID: <5DC40005-CD77-45BD-AF46-0627298C3583@strayalpha.com>


> On Jul 21, 2025, at 8:46?AM, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 21 Jul 2025, at 16:08, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ did this perceived need arise?
> 
> I find the whole discussion about "naming" has to do with primarily two different questions which are mixed up:
> 
> - Identifier / location split (or mix)
> 
> - Who decides the lifetime of a ?name"

Yu-Shun Wang, Venkata, and I developed a 5-dimensional approach back in 2006, originally for a Dagstuhl seminar on naming that we unfortunately were not able to end up participating in due to scheduling conflicts.

FWIW, it?s below.  The difference between ID and location is the semantics part and there?s the lifetime part (duration), but three others not yet mentioned: syntax, scope, and resolution.

The topic has definitely been grappled with, but unclear whether it?s evolved much practically.

Joe

??

The Five Sides of Naming
Joe Touch, Yu-Shun Wang, Venkata Pingali
USC/ISI
June, 2006
 
Names define an identifier (ID) space shared among the nodes in a distributed system. Most commonly, they are used as endpoint IDs and for determining a forwarding path between those endpoints. Many current debates focus on this endpoint ID / forwarding ID split, and between flat vs. structure names used for these two purposes. Our work on overlay networks and automatic network configuration has led our group to a more detailed view in which names have five distinct aspects: two conventional aspects of semantics (e.g., endpoint vs. forwarding) and syntax (flat vs. hierarchical), as well as three new aspects of scope, resolution, and duration. Semantics determines what a name means, other than merely as an ID, e.g., the difference between broadcast, unicast, multicast, and anycast IDs, as well as what a name indicates (endpoint vs. path). Syntax describes how other aspects of names are indicated in the structure of the name, e.g., the dots in a DNS name indicating scope, and the ?class? of an IP address indicating multicast vs. unicast. Scope describes the extent over which a name has meaning and how it is delegated, e.g., where www means something different in www.isi.edu vs. www.postel.org. Resolution describes how different name spaces are interrelated, e.g., using services such as the DNS, ARP, and BGP. Duration describes the persistence of names and their resolution, e.g., permanent in Ethernet to explicit expiry in the DNS. Until now, these five aspects have remained largely static, with emerging debates on name/locator split and name syntax recently exploring the dynamism of these two aspects. This discussion focuses on the dynamic nature of the three new aspects, in which protocol stacks can, on-the-fly, select subordinate layers (dynamic scope and resolution) and change the persistence of a name (dynamic duration).




From karl at iwl.com  Mon Jul 21 11:15:00 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 11:15:00 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
Message-ID: <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>

Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol 
(between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?? And 
why couldn't DNS take up the slack?

(This may not be strictly a "history" point.? But when we talk about 
Internet history it can be as interesting to note the roads not taken as 
to deal with those roads that were taken.? I wish modern RFCs were more 
willing to discuss rejected alternatives.)

Consider an IPv4/6 connection between an application on a mobile device 
(whether that be a phone, a vehicle, etc).? Suppose that application is 
doing something that takes time - such as you are watching a video or 
you are engaged in a game.

As you move you may be acquiring and losing IPv4/6 connectivity and 
addresses as you move from provider to provider.? That means that you 
can't sustain a single, continuous TCP connection; rather you need to 
re-form that transport but maintain the association with the remote 
service.? (This can get more "fun" if that service is itself in motion 
across the net or, for cloud services, the service itself may have a 
dynamic set of instances.)

When I was working on mobile computing we had to deal with connectivity 
changes that were rapid - our worst case at the time was John Roberts on 
his bicycle riding across the Sun campus - transitions every few 
seconds. (We were operating below the level of TCP.)? In the world of 
vehicle-to-* communications, transitions and connectivity persistence 
can be at the sub-second level. (Not all of those transitions would 
result in IP address changes.)

Just walking down the street with a mobile phone can result in that 
phone dancing to IP connectivity changes as the phone binds to different 
wi-fi access points or 4/5G providers.? (I am sure we have all 
experienced the delay when a mobile application has not yet realized 
that it has lost access via a provider and needs to switch.)

DNS can not handle the dynamics of such a situation; DNS greatly depends 
on caching in order to scale.? In our modern world, the load of doing 
updates and cache-updates to deal with mobility could be immense.

We've seen how mobile-IP deals with things: a kind of juggling act with 
multiple IP addresses and a kind of triangular packet routing.? It is 
not elegant (and I'm not sure how much it is used in practice.)

In the world-wide-web context (HTTP/HTTPS) we've got a state identifier 
that is useful for transport-spanning associations - cookies.

It would be useful if there were a more generalized mechanism so that 
one could establish something like a TCP transport connection but which 
spanned the lives of more than one underlying TCP transport connection.

The ISO/OSI approach was scary to read and was vastly over-designed.? 
The thought of implementing it was fearful and engendered nightmares of 
protocol stacks that had to remember higher level data.? But basically 
all it amounted to was a simple protocol to established named 
checkpoints as a network association progressed.? Capture, storage, and 
replay of higher level data was not part of the protocol, although that 
was not clear from the specification.? The end points would be 
responsible to hold (and be able to re-play) material after the latest 
named checkpoint (the protocol machinery would not do any of that 
holding/replay, that's up to the end points.)? Thus, each re-connection 
of a new underlying transport connection would begin with a conversation 
that was essentially "where were we, what was our last named 
checkpoint?"? If the two ends agreed on that named checkpoint then the 
ends would roll-back and re-play since that checkpoint.? (This kind of 
incremental commitment is not uncommon in the world of databases.)

Much of this can be done in end-point libraries (as we often do with 
TLS) rather than being built deeply into an in-kernel protocol stack.? 
Applications would have to understand that data since the last 
established checkpoint is data that could be delivered again. (Or a 
session protocol API could have a mode to help with that.)? Again, this 
kind of thing is fairly common in databases.? This would, of course, 
require changes to how applications use the network - rather than a 
transport byte stream they would be operating on streams that are 
punctuated by named checkpoints, re-synchronize events, and obligations 
to replay and re-receive upon those re-sync events.

(I might add that this kind of thing could deal with the fact that TCP 
is a stream without clear delineation of higher level "messages".? There 
is a lot of code that assumes that the data arriving out of a tcp.recv() 
function will always be the exact same sequence of bytes that were in a 
tcp.send() performed by the sender.? Remember the Nagle algorithm?)

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

On 7/21/25 7:08 AM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 03:24:58PM -0500, Karl Auerbach via 
> Internet-history wrote:
>>
>> The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This 
>> is particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network 
>> partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service 
>> interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers 
>> [and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses 
>> over time.)? (This is why I am so fond of the idea of an association 
>> protocol layer between applications and our transport layers.)? The 
>> ISO/OSI folks may have wrestled with this via things like 
>> "application entity titles", but they didn't do a very good job of 
>> expressing the problem they were trying to solve or their solutions.
>
> I have never understood why there is _supposed_ to be a problem 
> there.? DNS names are an indirection layer, and if we doubt this we 
> have CNAME and DNAME to correct our misundderstanding.? The True Name 
> of a thing is, to my mind, way too mystical for something like 
> services on a network.
>
> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ 
> did this perceived need arise?
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Jul 21 11:27:06 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:27:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>

On 7/21/2025 11:15 AM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol 
> (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?? 
> And why couldn't DNS take up the slack? 


Looking at the TLS spec, a long time ago, I discovered that it is 
extensible, in a way that seems designed to fill exactly that slot.

I had been interested in decoupling applications from direct linkage to 
TCP, so that it could maintain multiple, independent transport paths 
between end points, and thereby potentially be robust against an outage.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From karl at iwl.com  Mon Jul 21 11:39:36 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 11:39:36 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
Message-ID: <65ed6637-a5bb-458f-a71c-9406c8d3ff38@iwl.com>

On 7/21/25 8:46 AM, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history wrote:

> - Who decides the lifetime of a "name"
>
> Regarding lifetime, I think (influenced by a few discussions with Tim Berners Lee about lifetime of URLs) the most important thing with domain names is that the holder of a domain name can decide what the lifetime of a domain name is, because that is the key thing to a decision about the lifetime of a URL.

I am not sure I fully agree about the lifetime of a domain name. I agree 
that the holder of the name has a level of control.

However our world is ephemeral - people age, get bored, run out of 
funds, and die.? Same even for institutions, but usually on longer time 
scales.? (I work with astrophysicists who would quickly remind me that 
even the Earth and Sun are ephemeral. ;-)

One thing that came out in the early days of ICANN was a registration 
system driven by a calendar - one year increments, ten year maximum per 
renewal period.? It was never clear to me how or why this came about - 
it seems to me to be something in great need of review.

That calendar drive expiration of domain names pretty much guarantees 
that domain names (and the URLs based on them) will eventually expire 
and vanish.? Services have evolved (such as, I believe, Iron Mountain) 
that will manage a portfolio of domain names on behalf of a paying 
client to make sure that those names are not inadvertently lost to 
expiration.? That kind of service is not used by smaller business or 
individuals, thus essentially guaranteeing that a significant portion of 
our Internet URL namespace will eventually vanish, with potentially 
great loss

I fear that we are putting dry kindling around the Internet's horde of 
data - that we risk a reprise of the burning of the Library at Alexandria.

This is of concern to future historians.? (And as an intellectual 
property attorney I have concerns about the impact on the patent system 
as ideas once visible on the net become invisible and someone comes 
along to claim them again in a new patent.)? At this point I kinda thank 
the gods-of-the-net for people like Brewster Kahle and the Internet 
Archives. (I also make yearly contributions to the Internet Archives.)

 ? ? ? ? --karl--



From paf at paftech.se  Mon Jul 21 11:46:25 2025
From: paf at paftech.se (=?utf-8?Q?Patrik_F=C3=A4ltstr=C3=B6m?=)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 20:46:25 +0200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <65ed6637-a5bb-458f-a71c-9406c8d3ff38@iwl.com>
References: <65ed6637-a5bb-458f-a71c-9406c8d3ff38@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <F9554194-BA79-42AD-A050-F7405F18927E@paftech.se>

Personally, for reasons you mention and more, I do not classify URLs (as we know them) as long term stable identifiers. This is why I was working with others so much with URNs.

My point was only that for URLs to be well functional we must allow the creator of a URL to have the ability to choose the lifetime, and for that, control over the domain name is a minimum for what is needed.

I also, fwiw, believe ?register for 10 years? is a weird registry policy as I believe a registrar can offer such services for their customers and having registry and registrar policies mix is confusing.

Yes, completely agree on work done by Bruce and others is excellent. Also many libraries around the world do excellent job in preserving information for the future.

And for that, long term identifiers are really needed.

Patrik

> 21 juli 2025 kl. 20:39 skrev Karl Auerbach <karl at iwl.com>:
> 
> ?On 7/21/25 8:46 AM, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> - Who decides the lifetime of a "name"
>> 
>> Regarding lifetime, I think (influenced by a few discussions with Tim Berners Lee about lifetime of URLs) the most important thing with domain names is that the holder of a domain name can decide what the lifetime of a domain name is, because that is the key thing to a decision about the lifetime of a URL.
> 
> I am not sure I fully agree about the lifetime of a domain name. I agree that the holder of the name has a level of control.
> 
> However our world is ephemeral - people age, get bored, run out of funds, and die.  Same even for institutions, but usually on longer time scales.  (I work with astrophysicists who would quickly remind me that even the Earth and Sun are ephemeral. ;-)
> 
> One thing that came out in the early days of ICANN was a registration system driven by a calendar - one year increments, ten year maximum per renewal period.  It was never clear to me how or why this came about - it seems to me to be something in great need of review.
> 
> That calendar drive expiration of domain names pretty much guarantees that domain names (and the URLs based on them) will eventually expire and vanish.  Services have evolved (such as, I believe, Iron Mountain) that will manage a portfolio of domain names on behalf of a paying client to make sure that those names are not inadvertently lost to expiration.  That kind of service is not used by smaller business or individuals, thus essentially guaranteeing that a significant portion of our Internet URL namespace will eventually vanish, with potentially great loss
> 
> I fear that we are putting dry kindling around the Internet's horde of data - that we risk a reprise of the burning of the Library at Alexandria.
> 
> This is of concern to future historians.  (And as an intellectual property attorney I have concerns about the impact on the patent system as ideas once visible on the net become invisible and someone comes along to claim them again in a new patent.)  At this point I kinda thank the gods-of-the-net for people like Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archives. (I also make yearly contributions to the Internet Archives.)
> 
>         --karl--
> 


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Jul 21 11:52:41 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:52:41 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <1126F2EA-4556-4D5A-9FAA-E961FD42AA59@paftech.se>
Message-ID: <28CAF9AF-E0B3-4C0B-87C4-69A84E635863@comcast.net>

I knew I would have to wade into this sooner or later.

> On Jul 21, 2025, at 11:46, Patrik F?ltstr?m via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 21 Jul 2025, at 16:08, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_ did this perceived need arise?
> 
> I find the whole discussion about "naming" has to do with primarily two different questions which are mixed up:
> 
> - Identifier / location split (or mix)

This is a false distinction.  
Saltzer defines "resolve? as in ?resolving a name? as ?to locate an object in a particular context, given its name.?

IOW, in computing systems one can?t name something without locating and can?t locate it without naming it.

This is why all of the solutions trying to use it don?t scale very well. (I have written a longer essay on this, if anyone interested)

What was trying to be done with loc/id split was to find a work around to the fact that Internet lost the internet layer.
IP was supposed to be in the internet layer, not the network layer.

The early distinction between the Network part and the Host part of an IP address was correct then. Very early on, the host part merely enumerated the hosts within the block of IP addresses. But as the world got more complex, the Host Part came to be assigned in a way that was more compatible with CIDR, i.e., it reflected the structure of the organization?s network to which the block of addresses had been assigned. (Both were locators. This was confirmed by the RRG, when they discovered that the flat EID had to be ?aggregatable?. IOW , location-dependent. So loc/id split was really loc/loc split.  So by way of analogy to a postal address, the network part or locator part was the ?state/province and country? (perhaps city) and the Host part was 'the street and building number.?  But that still doesn?t fix that the Internet lost the internet layer.

All addresses name the entity in the layer, that they reside. To use Saltzer again, (N)-layer address is a node address, and (N-1)-layer address is a point of attachment address. (The terms are relative.)
Any point-to-point layer/link does not require an address. (There is only one place for a packet to come out.) It may be assigned a local identifier to distinguish multiple cases of point-to-point interfaces, but a global address is not required. For lower  layers with more than two members, an address is required. It usually a MAC address, but might be a network layer address.

Probably more than 95% of all IPv4 addresses assigned were assigned unnecessarily.

BTW, it has been explained to me that all Internet routers route on the node address. As it was explained to me, "if they didn?t do it, it wouldn?t work.?

This really requires a much longer explanation but this isn?t the place for it.


> 
> - Who decides the lifetime of a "name"

The owner of the name and/or the namespace.

Take care,
John
> 
> Regarding lifetime, I think (influenced by a few discussions with Tim Berners Lee about lifetime of URLs) the most important thing with domain names is that the holder of a domain name can decide what the lifetime of a domain name is, because that is the key thing to a decision about the lifetime of a URL.
> 
> That has for me been a key goal during the years when looking at policies for domain names in ICANN and protocol design in the IETF (epp primarily, but also DNS), the domain holder must be the entity that controls a domain name, and we must minimise the risk of external events that can terminate a domain name.
> 
> Because it boils down to the lifetime of a functioning URL.
> 
> Patrik
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Jul 21 11:56:42 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:56:42 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <031DD17A-C7D9-41B0-9C5F-F9BC3C420278@comcast.net>

Minor nit. TLS is misnamed, SSL was closer to right.  But it is at the root of many problems.

The first rule for security must be ?Every layer, including the Application Layer, must protect itself.?

John

> On Jul 21, 2025, at 14:27, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 7/21/2025 11:15 AM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?  And why couldn't DNS take up the slack?
> 
> 
> Looking at the TLS spec, a long time ago, I discovered that it is extensible, in a way that seems designed to fill exactly that slot.
> 
> I had been interested in decoupling applications from direct linkage to TCP, so that it could maintain multiple, independent transport paths between end points, and thereby potentially be robust against an outage.
> 
> d/
> 
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> 
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From jtk at dataplane.org  Mon Jul 21 12:12:26 2025
From: jtk at dataplane.org (John Kristoff)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:12:26 -0500
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <20250721141226.6a7f269d@dataplane.org>

On Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:55:58 -0700
Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
wrote:

> So, my question is -- How has the Internet mechanisms for Naming
> evolved over the last 55 years, from the Users' perspective??? Is
> Naming even still relevant on The Internet?

I think for many domain names are becoming as abstract as IP addresses
grew to be.  In place of domain names you often see instead @acme
(referring to some entity on a set of social media sites) or a QR
code that contains an embedded URL.  Many of you in the U.S. have surely
seen the latter replacing printed menus in restaurants for example.

The mechanisms for DNS have changed quite significantly in the past few
years.  Two noticeable examples have been the introduction and
increasing use of qname minimization and DNS over HTTPS (DoH). This has
greatly altered who gets to see the full query (and their answers),
along with where control over the system can be exerted.

I think naming remains relevant, but the DNS is changing and naming
is evolving.  Lots of people seem to be having to pay less and less
attention to them, because the apps and UIs are changing. The
DNS portion of the From/To/Cc headers and web URL bars for example seem
to be increasingly hidden from an average user's consciousness.

John


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Jul 21 12:17:42 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:17:42 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <20250721141226.6a7f269d@dataplane.org>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <20250721141226.6a7f269d@dataplane.org>
Message-ID: <d79917ce-fea6-4590-aa27-797b97f85d23@dcrocker.net>

On 7/21/2025 12:12 PM, John Kristoff via Internet-history wrote:
> In place of domain names you often see instead @acme


I think that is a case of having default domain names, implying a 
context, rather than being 'instead of'.

That is, @acme only has global utility if there is a specific domain 
name that is used to get there.? Using a proprietary app can hide the 
domain name, of course, but it's still there, since the app needs to get 
to the server and that's done using a domain name, even if the user 
doesn't see it.

Stated differently:? The user interface is often able to hide the domain 
name, for popular services, but the domain name is still there.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From carsten at schiefner.berlin  Mon Jul 21 12:52:03 2025
From: carsten at schiefner.berlin (Carsten Schiefner)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:52:03 +0200
Subject: [ih] 1/2 OT: AfriNIC - now a "declared company"?
In-Reply-To: <8431e4ae-45c6-3dcd-6ed9-cb2243bac25f@schiefner.berlin>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
 <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>
 <93f6f271-3623-4cca-9c11-b8fe5ba7656f@Spark>
 <8431e4ae-45c6-3dcd-6ed9-cb2243bac25f@schiefner.berlin>
Message-ID: <4bea1e90-beb4-4747-66aa-c263b730d62a@schiefner.berlin>

Hi Eberhard & all -

to wrap this 1/2 OT side thread up: Eberhard suggested to consider the 
most recent version of Mauritius' Companies Act - the one of 2001 that 
can be accessed via:

	https://companies.govmu.org/pages/legislations/companies-act-2001.aspx

Section 230 (& 231) read as following:

===
230. Declared companies

Where the Minister is satisfied that-
	(a) for the protection of the public, the shareholders or creditors of 
a company, it is desirable that the affairs of the company should be 
investigated;
	(b) it is in the public interest that the affairs of a company should 
be investigated; or
	(c) in the case of a foreign company, the appropriate authority of 
another country had requested that a designation be made under this 
section in respect of the company,
he may, by notice published in the Gazette, designate the company or 
foreign company to be a declared company.

231. Investigation of declared companies

(1) The Registrar shall require an inspector to investigate the affairs 
of every declared company and to make a report on his investigation in 
such form and manner as the Registrar may direct.
(2) The expenses of and incidental to an investigation of a declared 
company shall, subject to subsection (3), be paid out of the 
Consolidated Fund.
(3) Where the Minister is of the opinion that the whole or any part of 
the expenses of and incidental to the investigation should be paid or 
refunded -
	(a) by the company; or
	(b) by the person or authority who requested the designation of a 
declared company,
he may direct that the expenses be so paid or refunded.
===

My understanding is that with the legal act based on this provision, 
AfriNIC is now under investigation by the Mauritius government, acting 
through the Companies Registrar.

Best,

	-C.

On 19.07.2025 16:00, Carsten Schiefner via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi Eberhard,
> 
> On 19.07.2025 14:25, Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history wrote:
>> google shows me this
>>
>> https://companies.govmu.org/Documents/legislation/act84.doc
> 
> thanks!
> 
> Currently, it is rendered unreadable in LibreOffice.
> 
> Let me play with some tools to get this rectified.
> 
> In case I'd fail eventually, I'd ask for a PDF.
> 
>> It's a little off topic for this list, but I make amends by pointing 
>> to the SLD/TLD used, I seem to recall some drama about gov.MU a while 
>> back :-)-O
> 
> Oh, absolutely - now, that you mention it...! ;->
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  ????-C.


From frantisek.borsik at gmail.com  Mon Jul 21 13:11:59 2025
From: frantisek.borsik at gmail.com (Frantisek Borsik)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 22:11:59 +0200
Subject: [ih] 1/2 OT: AfriNIC - now a "declared company"?
In-Reply-To: <4bea1e90-beb4-4747-66aa-c263b730d62a@schiefner.berlin>
References: <20250718093824.0c145c1a@dataplane.org>
 <16995.1752871511@hop.toad.com>
 <fa1b8786-7c1f-4ccc-bad3-68a5b660ff52@iwl.com>
 <63FC11E8-29C7-43A0-9CA7-C6967E515599@pch.net>
 <2AB9C47F-57FB-4F27-B0D5-4A21CFEB74B3@schiefner.berlin>
 <93f6f271-3623-4cca-9c11-b8fe5ba7656f@Spark>
 <8431e4ae-45c6-3dcd-6ed9-cb2243bac25f@schiefner.berlin>
 <4bea1e90-beb4-4747-66aa-c263b730d62a@schiefner.berlin>
Message-ID: <CAJUtOOhyHRhcX8bCh1gGhwmb+Sm2rs+t13jj0-uQuvjhcaeJwQ@mail.gmail.com>

If anyone is interested to learn more about AFRINIC situation, here is an
upcoming webinar you all can join:

Dear Colleagues,

You are invited to register for the webinar on *"Behind the Ballot:
Navigating the AFRINIC Election Process"* Webinar.

   -

   *Date: Wednesday 23rd July 2025*
   -

   *Time: 11:00 - 12:00 UTC*
   -

   *Duration: 1:00 Hr *
   -

   *Registration link
   <https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5317529182972/WN_2OuSIH_OSc-v8VjqjB121Q>*

------------------------------
What happened?

   -

   Annulment of June 2025 election due to alleged irregularities through
   voting by POAs which is being investigated by the Police.

What has changed?

   -

   *No PoAs or proxies allowed*?members will designate voters directly,
   enhancing trust and security.
   -

   New, rigorous voter-verification procedures ensuring accurate voter
   identity.
   -

   Increased transparency: all voter designations published clearly online
   for public verification.
   -

   Stronger safeguards to guarantee accountability and fairness throughout
   the election cycle.

Why you should attend?

   -

   Clearly understand why the previous election was annulled.
   -

   Learn in detail about the reforms AFRINIC has implemented, particularly
   the removal of PoAs and proxies.
   -

   Gain clarity on the entire revised 2025 election timeline, with
   important dates and milestones explained.

Who will be speaking?

   -

   *Mr. Musa Stephen HONLUE*, Chair, Election Committee
   -

   *Mrs. Madhvi Gokool*, Election Committee Member
   -

   *Mr. Kishna Dhondee*, Election Committee Member
   -

   *Mr. Mukom Tamon*, Election Committee Member

------------------------------
Act now:

*Register for the webinar now
<https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5317529182972/WN_2OuSIH_OSc-v8VjqjB121Q>!*

After registration, you?ll receive an email with webinar details,
reminders, and an opportunity to send in questions beforehand.

*Join us to ensure your voice is heard, help rebuild trust, and shape a
stronger AFRINIC election process?one rooted in fairness, transparency, and
accountability.*
------------------------------



Kind Regards,

The 2025 Elections Committee.

_______________________________________________
zanog-discuss mailing list -- zanog-discuss at lists.nog.net.za
To unsubscribe send an email to zanog-discuss-leave at lists.nog.net.za
...

All the best,

Frank

Frantisek (Frank) Borsik


*In loving memory of Dave T?ht: *1965-2025

https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/


https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik

Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp: +421919416714

iMessage, mobile: +420775230885

Skype: casioa5302ca

frantisek.borsik at gmail.com


On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 9:54?PM Carsten Schiefner via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi Eberhard & all -
>
> to wrap this 1/2 OT side thread up: Eberhard suggested to consider the
> most recent version of Mauritius' Companies Act - the one of 2001 that
> can be accessed via:
>
>
> https://companies.govmu.org/pages/legislations/companies-act-2001.aspx
>
> Section 230 (& 231) read as following:
>
> ===
> 230. Declared companies
>
> Where the Minister is satisfied that-
>         (a) for the protection of the public, the shareholders or
> creditors of
> a company, it is desirable that the affairs of the company should be
> investigated;
>         (b) it is in the public interest that the affairs of a company
> should
> be investigated; or
>         (c) in the case of a foreign company, the appropriate authority of
> another country had requested that a designation be made under this
> section in respect of the company,
> he may, by notice published in the Gazette, designate the company or
> foreign company to be a declared company.
>
> 231. Investigation of declared companies
>
> (1) The Registrar shall require an inspector to investigate the affairs
> of every declared company and to make a report on his investigation in
> such form and manner as the Registrar may direct.
> (2) The expenses of and incidental to an investigation of a declared
> company shall, subject to subsection (3), be paid out of the
> Consolidated Fund.
> (3) Where the Minister is of the opinion that the whole or any part of
> the expenses of and incidental to the investigation should be paid or
> refunded -
>         (a) by the company; or
>         (b) by the person or authority who requested the designation of a
> declared company,
> he may direct that the expenses be so paid or refunded.
> ===
>
> My understanding is that with the legal act based on this provision,
> AfriNIC is now under investigation by the Mauritius government, acting
> through the Companies Registrar.
>
> Best,
>
>         -C.
>
> On 19.07.2025 16:00, Carsten Schiefner via Internet-history wrote:
> > Hi Eberhard,
> >
> > On 19.07.2025 14:25, Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history wrote:
> >> google shows me this
> >>
> >> https://companies.govmu.org/Documents/legislation/act84.doc
> >
> > thanks!
> >
> > Currently, it is rendered unreadable in LibreOffice.
> >
> > Let me play with some tools to get this rectified.
> >
> > In case I'd fail eventually, I'd ask for a PDF.
> >
> >> It's a little off topic for this list, but I make amends by pointing
> >> to the SLD/TLD used, I seem to recall some drama about gov.MU a while
> >> back :-)-O
> >
> > Oh, absolutely - now, that you mention it...! ;->
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >      -C.
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Mon Jul 21 17:03:08 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:03:08 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
References: <1288043789.1719266.1753141670001@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <040A6FCE-704E-4070-8013-741FEE44CDBD@icloud.com>

Forwarded for Barbara

> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 21, 2025 at 04:38:33 PM PDT
> Subject: Re: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
> 
> Unfortunately, I am behind in several things right  now so I haven't had a chance to really follow and comment on this thread.
> 
> I do hope people will find some interesting information regarding early thoughts on naming, etc . in some of the references mentioned in this link.  I was trying to check into works by Zaw-Sing Su.  
> 
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/964661.800901
> 
> barbara
> 



From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Mon Jul 21 17:07:05 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 12:07:05 +1200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <8c8549f8-3117-4321-a56a-56e45f505eff@gmail.com>

Karl,

> It would be useful if there were a more generalized mechanism so that 
> one could establish something like a TCP transport connection but which 
> spanned the lives of more than one underlying TCP transport connection.

Or multipath transport with failover.

I think that is where QUIC multipath [1] is taking us. We tried to
do something similar with SHIM6 [2] some years ago, but it didn't fly.

The idea of a session layer was not stupid.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-quic-multipath/
[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5533

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 22-Jul-25 06:15, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol
> (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?? And
> why couldn't DNS take up the slack?
> 
> (This may not be strictly a "history" point.? But when we talk about
> Internet history it can be as interesting to note the roads not taken as
> to deal with those roads that were taken.? I wish modern RFCs were more
> willing to discuss rejected alternatives.)
> 
> Consider an IPv4/6 connection between an application on a mobile device
> (whether that be a phone, a vehicle, etc).? Suppose that application is
> doing something that takes time - such as you are watching a video or
> you are engaged in a game.
> 
> As you move you may be acquiring and losing IPv4/6 connectivity and
> addresses as you move from provider to provider.? That means that you
> can't sustain a single, continuous TCP connection; rather you need to
> re-form that transport but maintain the association with the remote
> service.? (This can get more "fun" if that service is itself in motion
> across the net or, for cloud services, the service itself may have a
> dynamic set of instances.)
> 
> When I was working on mobile computing we had to deal with connectivity
> changes that were rapid - our worst case at the time was John Roberts on
> his bicycle riding across the Sun campus - transitions every few
> seconds. (We were operating below the level of TCP.)? In the world of
> vehicle-to-* communications, transitions and connectivity persistence
> can be at the sub-second level. (Not all of those transitions would
> result in IP address changes.)
> 
> Just walking down the street with a mobile phone can result in that
> phone dancing to IP connectivity changes as the phone binds to different
> wi-fi access points or 4/5G providers.? (I am sure we have all
> experienced the delay when a mobile application has not yet realized
> that it has lost access via a provider and needs to switch.)
> 
> DNS can not handle the dynamics of such a situation; DNS greatly depends
> on caching in order to scale.? In our modern world, the load of doing
> updates and cache-updates to deal with mobility could be immense.
> 
> We've seen how mobile-IP deals with things: a kind of juggling act with
> multiple IP addresses and a kind of triangular packet routing.? It is
> not elegant (and I'm not sure how much it is used in practice.)
> 
> In the world-wide-web context (HTTP/HTTPS) we've got a state identifier
> that is useful for transport-spanning associations - cookies.
> 
> It would be useful if there were a more generalized mechanism so that
> one could establish something like a TCP transport connection but which
> spanned the lives of more than one underlying TCP transport connection.
> 
> The ISO/OSI approach was scary to read and was vastly over-designed.
> The thought of implementing it was fearful and engendered nightmares of
> protocol stacks that had to remember higher level data.? But basically
> all it amounted to was a simple protocol to established named
> checkpoints as a network association progressed.? Capture, storage, and
> replay of higher level data was not part of the protocol, although that
> was not clear from the specification.? The end points would be
> responsible to hold (and be able to re-play) material after the latest
> named checkpoint (the protocol machinery would not do any of that
> holding/replay, that's up to the end points.)? Thus, each re-connection
> of a new underlying transport connection would begin with a conversation
> that was essentially "where were we, what was our last named
> checkpoint?"? If the two ends agreed on that named checkpoint then the
> ends would roll-back and re-play since that checkpoint.? (This kind of
> incremental commitment is not uncommon in the world of databases.)
> 
> Much of this can be done in end-point libraries (as we often do with
> TLS) rather than being built deeply into an in-kernel protocol stack.
> Applications would have to understand that data since the last
> established checkpoint is data that could be delivered again. (Or a
> session protocol API could have a mode to help with that.)? Again, this
> kind of thing is fairly common in databases.? This would, of course,
> require changes to how applications use the network - rather than a
> transport byte stream they would be operating on streams that are
> punctuated by named checkpoints, re-synchronize events, and obligations
> to replay and re-receive upon those re-sync events.
> 
> (I might add that this kind of thing could deal with the fact that TCP
> is a stream without clear delineation of higher level "messages".? There
> is a lot of code that assumes that the data arriving out of a tcp.recv()
> function will always be the exact same sequence of bytes that were in a
> tcp.send() performed by the sender.? Remember the Nagle algorithm?)
> 
>   ? ? ? ? --karl--
> 
> On 7/21/25 7:08 AM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 03:24:58PM -0500, Karl Auerbach via
>> Internet-history wrote:
>>>
>>> The second is a note about the question of "what are we naming?" This
>>> is particularly an issue in modern applications in which the network
>>> partner of a client may move, split, or merge during a client-service
>>> interaction (and thus take on different IP addresses and port numbers
>>> [and different transport connections] as that interaction progresses
>>> over time.)? (This is why I am so fond of the idea of an association
>>> protocol layer between applications and our transport layers.)? The
>>> ISO/OSI folks may have wrestled with this via things like
>>> "application entity titles", but they didn't do a very good job of
>>> expressing the problem they were trying to solve or their solutions.
>>
>> I have never understood why there is _supposed_ to be a problem
>> there.? DNS names are an indirection layer, and if we doubt this we
>> have CNAME and DNAME to correct our misundderstanding.? The True Name
>> of a thing is, to my mind, way too mystical for something like
>> services on a network.
>>
>> So, to bring this remark back to something to do with history, _why_
>> did this perceived need arise?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> A
>>

From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jul 22 04:04:28 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 07:04:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
Message-ID: <20250722110428.5F96818C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Joe Touch

Ghosts from the past - "endpoint IDs"; "endpoint ID / forwarding ID split";
"flat vs. structure names"; "name/locator split" - although it's unclear if
the _ideas_ referred to by these terms, here, are the same as the ones I had
in mind when I/we first dreamed them up. 

    > From: Karl Auerbach

    > In the world-wide-web context (HTTP/HTTPS) we've got a state identifier
    > that is useful for transport-spanning associations - cookies.

A common patttern in the TCP/IP 'world' - a problem exists, quickly throw
together something to deal with it, and over time the solution becomes
irretrievably embedded. See IPv4, BGP, etc.

Speaking of BGP, I wonder if networking as a field will ever come to accept
that doing path selection by exchanging 'routing tables' (as BGP does), and
not by exchanging map elements, was the wrong way to go? Maybe eventually,
although I don't think I'll be here to see it.

	Noel


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Jul 22 05:15:51 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:15:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
Message-ID: <20250722121551.B8D1818C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: John Day

    > Saltzer defines "resolve" as in "resolving a name" as "to locate an
    > object in a particular context, given its name."
    > IOW, in computing systems one can't name something without locating and
    > can't locate it without naming it.
    > This is why all of the solutions trying to use it don't scale very
    > well. 
    > What was trying to be done with loc/id split was to find a work around
    > to the fact that Internet lost the internet layer. IP was supposed to
    > be in the internet layer, not the network layer.
    > ...
    > All addresses name the entity in the layer, that they reside. To use
    > Saltzer again, (N)-layer address is a node address, and (N-1)-layer
    > address is a point of attachment address.

I waited to read this until first thing in the morning, when my myalgic
encephalomyelitis has the least effect on my ability to think, but I afraid
that I still do not understand what point you are trying to make.

Let me briefly recount the process I go through in considering this problem,
as my process seems to be very different from the one you are using.

To me, one has to start by ignoring _all_ potential names; one first has to
consider the _kinds of things_ one will need/want to name. I saw/see the need
for two kinds of things (at least, at the levels I was considering; further
up, things like associations might get added, but I'm ignoring them for now).

First, there are the actual things used to carry bits around: physical
links/networks, switches (routers, at the moment), the interfaces to hosts,
etc. Then, we need names for all these things - and the naming system has to
also be able to name (recursively) connected _groups_ of these things - so
that path selection will scale. (Several PhD theses about what to do when
a connected group becomes disconnected ignored.)

Next, there are the fate-sharing entities which are the players in the
end-end communications. I pass over the things one will want to _do_ with the
names for these - which will drive the semantics and syntax of those names.

And, once one has all that, on will need mechanisms to able to relate them
all - e.g. to be able to find the name of the network location (interface) at
which the desired end-end entity is currently to be found.

But, one has to start with the _things_ - the names come later.

	Noel

PS: The "loc/id split" was because a thing (of either of the two classes
above) always has both an identity ('who am I') and a location - but if one
only has a _single_ name to convey both, if the thing changes its location,
one is stuck.


From touch at strayalpha.com  Tue Jul 22 20:39:15 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 20:39:15 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>


> On Jul 21, 2025, at 11:27?AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 7/21/2025 11:15 AM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?  And why couldn't DNS take up the slack?
> 
> 
> Looking at the TLS spec, a long time ago, I discovered that it is extensible, in a way that seems designed to fill exactly that slot.
> 
> I had been interested in decoupling applications from direct linkage to TCP, so that it could maintain multiple, independent transport paths between end points, and thereby potentially be robust against an outage.

Considering the protocol stack as a dynamic path through a tree of possibilities (rather than a static ?stack?), this can be easily achieved. I have an example in my course materials of how this approach can support a ?shift? of traffic from a TCP connection to an optical circuit on-the-fly - and back, as needed.

Joe

From julf at Julf.com  Wed Jul 23 07:56:52 2025
From: julf at Julf.com (Johan Helsingius)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 16:56:52 +0200
Subject: [ih] ARPANET Reconstruction
Message-ID: <9ab921a7-3301-4e1b-8de6-1bd4fe7ff9e2@Julf.com>

This is an interesting project:

https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-jul-2025.html#c3

	Julf



From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Jul 23 11:30:15 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 11:30:15 -0700
Subject: [ih] ARPANET Reconstruction
In-Reply-To: <9ab921a7-3301-4e1b-8de6-1bd4fe7ff9e2@Julf.com>
References: <9ab921a7-3301-4e1b-8de6-1bd4fe7ff9e2@Julf.com>
Message-ID: <f8db58b2-66fb-4dab-9c2a-0f72021bfa98@3kitty.org>

Lots more of the backstory and history is here, for anyone curious:

https://walden-family.com/impcode/

and especially:

https://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf

The reconstruction of the IMP as a running system was triggered by a 
patent lawsuit, where the IMP was highly relevant as a proof of 1970s 
"prior art", and getting it running again to be a demonstration at trial 
was the motivator.

Enjoy,
Jack Haverty

On 7/23/25 07:56, Johan Helsingius via Internet-history wrote:
> This is an interesting project:
>
> https://obsolescence.dev/obsolescence-newsletter-jul-2025.html#c3
>
> ????Julf
>

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From jeanjour at comcast.net  Wed Jul 23 17:40:32 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:40:32 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <20250722121551.B8D1818C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250722121551.B8D1818C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <D3BAC621-B0D5-4CF7-BCF8-B04A50F50A73@comcast.net>

Finally, getting to this

> On Jul 22, 2025, at 08:15, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: John Day
> 
>> Saltzer defines "resolve" as in "resolving a name" as "to locate an
>> object in a particular context, given its name."
>> IOW, in computing systems one can't name something without locating and
>> can't locate it without naming it.
>> This is why all of the solutions trying to use it don't scale very
>> well. 
>> What was trying to be done with loc/id split was to find a work around
>> to the fact that Internet lost the internet layer. IP was supposed to
>> be in the internet layer, not the network layer.
>> ...
>> All addresses name the entity in the layer, that they reside. To use
>> Saltzer again, (N)-layer address is a node address, and (N-1)-layer
>> address is a point of attachment address.
> 
> I waited to read this until first thing in the morning, when my myalgic
> encephalomyelitis has the least effect on my ability to think, but I afraid
> that I still do not understand what point you are trying to make.

;-)  I have to agree with you. Getting old is a pain in the ?you know what?! ;-) But as they say, the alternative is worse.

At least you are just fighting fatigue. Besides some minor joint issues, I am down to less than one eye, but it doesn?t seem to affect my vision too much or my enjoyment of the pursuit of ideas.

> 
> Let me briefly recount the process I go through in considering this problem,
> as my process seems to be very different from the one you are using.
> 
> To me, one has to start by ignoring _all_ potential names; one first has to
> consider the _kinds of things_ one will need/want to name. I saw/see the need
> for two kinds of things (at least, at the levels I was considering; further
> up, things like associations might get added, but I'm ignoring them for now).
> 
> First, there are the actual things used to carry bits around: physical
> links/networks, switches (routers, at the moment), the interfaces to hosts,
> etc. Then, we need names for all these things - and the naming system has to
> also be able to name (recursively) connected _groups_ of these things - so
> that path selection will scale. (Several PhD theses about what to do when
> a connected group becomes disconnected ignored.)

I can see where you go off the rails. But keep going.

I have seen lots of PhD?s written on flawed assumptions. On this topic, it has been especially amusing.

> Next, there are the fate-sharing entities which are the players in the
> end-end communications.

;-) Yes, this played a major role in the original endpoint paper as the means to escape an infinite regress.

> I pass over the things one will want to _do_ with the
> names for these - which will drive the semantics and syntax of those names.
> 
> And, once one has all that, on will need mechanisms to able to relate them
> all - e.g. to be able to find the name of the network location (interface) at
> which the desired end-end entity is currently to be found.

;-) Still hung up on interfaces, I can see?

Do layers fit into this somewhere? What are they? What sort of objects?
> 
> But, one has to start with the _things_ - the names come later.
> 
> 	Noel
> 
> PS: The "loc/id split" was because a thing (of either of the two classes
> above) always has both an identity ('who am I') and a location - but if one
> only has a _single_ name to convey both, if the thing changes its location,
> one is stuck.

That can happen if you aren?t careful. 

But the trick is to define a class of identifiers (name spaces) that are location-dependent (relative to one topology) and route-independent relative to that topology. As well as, name-spaces of identifiers that appear location-independent (relative to the previous topology, but actually location-dependent relative to a different topology.)

BTW, in the last 20 years you have learned the definition of a topology, right?

However, your response above is pretty much at the 50,000 foot level, how do you bring it down to your endpoint paper and to the RRG discussions?

Take care,
John

> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Wed Jul 23 17:44:07 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:44:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>

I agree, this is quite straightforward.

One question though,  is this with a general model or with TCP?

John

> On Jul 22, 2025, at 23:39, touch--- via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jul 21, 2025, at 11:27?AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On 7/21/2025 11:15 AM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?  And why couldn't DNS take up the slack?
>> 
>> 
>> Looking at the TLS spec, a long time ago, I discovered that it is extensible, in a way that seems designed to fill exactly that slot.
>> 
>> I had been interested in decoupling applications from direct linkage to TCP, so that it could maintain multiple, independent transport paths between end points, and thereby potentially be robust against an outage.
> 
> Considering the protocol stack as a dynamic path through a tree of possibilities (rather than a static ?stack?), this can be easily achieved. I have an example in my course materials of how this approach can support a ?shift? of traffic from a TCP connection to an optical circuit on-the-fly - and back, as needed.
> 
> Joe
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From touch at strayalpha.com  Wed Jul 23 17:54:52 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 17:54:52 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>

> On Jul 23, 2025, at 5:44?PM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I agree, this is quite straightforward.
> 
> One question though,  is this with a general model or with TCP?

The user thinks in terms of socket connections; the rest can be opaque.

Joe

> 
> John
> 
>> On Jul 22, 2025, at 23:39, touch--- via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 21, 2025, at 11:27?AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 7/21/2025 11:15 AM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Why do I (and also ISO/OSI) believe that an association protocol (between application layer and transport layer) ought to be there?  And why couldn't DNS take up the slack?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Looking at the TLS spec, a long time ago, I discovered that it is extensible, in a way that seems designed to fill exactly that slot.
>>> 
>>> I had been interested in decoupling applications from direct linkage to TCP, so that it could maintain multiple, independent transport paths between end points, and thereby potentially be robust against an outage.
>> 
>> Considering the protocol stack as a dynamic path through a tree of possibilities (rather than a static ?stack?), this can be easily achieved. I have an example in my course materials of how this approach can support a ?shift? of traffic from a TCP connection to an optical circuit on-the-fly - and back, as needed.
>> 
>> Joe
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> -
>> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
> 



From craig at tereschau.net  Wed Jul 23 18:28:24 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:28:24 -0600
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 6:55?PM touch--- via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> The user thinks in terms of socket connections; the rest can be opaque.
>
>
I'd argue that the history of the Internet says that's not quite true.
Users care about the path their traffic takes in the network (various
issues about ensuring certain traffic did not transit certain countries
over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta
figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with
reaching into the routing layer.

I think in today's world, we can probably think in terms of a socket -- but
understanding that was not always so helps understand how we're in the
muddle we're in now.

Craig

-- 
*****
Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
mailing lists.


From dhc at dcrocker.net  Wed Jul 23 18:44:29 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 01:44:29 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <043fa1ad-19f1-43c9-9d36-868d77bc5d5f@dcrocker.net>

On 7/23/2025 6:28 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> Users care about the path their traffic takes in the network (various
> issues about ensuring certain traffic did not transit certain countries
> over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta
> figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with
> reaching into the routing layer.


This nicely exemplifies a) just how much variance there is, among the 
attributes associated with 'user', and b) just how profoundly different 
the current Internet is, from the pre-/early- commercial Internet was.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Jul 23 19:03:10 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2025 14:03:10 +1200
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <043fa1ad-19f1-43c9-9d36-868d77bc5d5f@dcrocker.net>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <043fa1ad-19f1-43c9-9d36-868d77bc5d5f@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <ca2f02e2-3a61-4072-abfe-7f9207b2ddc7@gmail.com>

On 24-Jul-25 13:44, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 7/23/2025 6:28 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
>> Users care about the path their traffic takes in the network (various
>> issues about ensuring certain traffic did not transit certain countries
>> over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta
>> figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with
>> reaching into the routing layer.
> 
> 
> This nicely exemplifies a) just how much variance there is, among the
> attributes associated with 'user', and b) just how profoundly different
> the current Internet is, from the pre-/early- commercial Internet was.

True, but many actors (not just state actors) have learned the lessons
from the fact that most international cable routes went through British
territory during World War I. So I think the concern about routing is
still important for some categories of 'user'.

Of course, CDNs etc have their own effect on the concept of naming.
Where I sit, google.com is 27 msec away and is seemingly a synonym for
syd09s25-in-x0e.1e100.net, which I'm guessing is in Sydney, Australia.
What kind of a "unique" name is google.com?

     Brian



From touch at strayalpha.com  Wed Jul 23 19:08:59 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:08:59 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <81935A64-68C1-400E-8313-9A9AC7D61B67@strayalpha.com>

> On Jul 23, 2025, at 6:28?PM, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 6:55?PM touch--- via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> The user thinks in terms of socket connections; the rest can be opaque.
>> 
> 
> I'd argue that the history of the Internet says that's not quite true.  Users care about the path their traffic takes in the network (various issues about ensuring certain traffic did not transit certain countries over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with reaching into the routing layer.

Most people want some combination of opacity and transparency. E.g., if you can get a TCP connection and a WDM channel, both with the same constraints (country routing, policy, price, etc.), it?s nice to let your system attach in a way that can shift between the two seamlessly.

Joe

From karl at iwl.com  Wed Jul 23 20:31:28 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:31:28 -0700
Subject: [ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cf4a2af7-5d06-4293-bdb8-133dba9d72f7@iwl.com>

On 7/23/25 6:28 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 6:55?PM touch--- via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> The user thinks in terms of socket connections; the rest can be opaque.
>>
> I'd argue that the history of the Internet says that's not quite true.
> Users care about the path their traffic takes in the network (various
> issues about ensuring certain traffic did not transit certain countries
> over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta
> figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with
> reaching into the routing layer.

The socket abstraction has a meritorious aspect: it is simple.

But users need ways to express the kind of service that a socket should 
provide.? And, indeed, there are some simple mechanisms for that.

But once one digs into the idea of expressing "what kind of service does 
this connection need" things can get complicated really fast.

Fred Baker and I worked on the RSVP protocol.? (I did a fairly extensive 
client implementation, Fred the the in-router hooks.) It was hard.? 
There are so many dimensions of "service" ranging from a simple 
"bit/second rate" (over what time span?) to some sort of expression of 
dynamics (burst behavior of the flow).? But even with a reasonably 
extensive means to express connection service RSVP was largely stuck 
with a relatively limited ability to affect actual routing path setup 
(and re-setup).? And RSVP did nothing to help a client chose among 
multiple equivalent service peers (equivalent except for the network 
path to reach them.)

Steve Casner and I were doing network video with potentially many 
separate streams of video and audio from many sources to many 
destinations.? Lip sync was a huge problem.? Beyond the fact that clocks 
on senders and receivers drift with respect to one another, often our 
code was faced with the question "do we pause the stream or do we insert 
a fig-leaf to cover the missing data?"? If the fig leaf got large or 
frequent that coverage could involve switching to an alternative (but 
equivalent, except for the network path) data source.

Our code was on top of UDP, which somewhat simplified things. But even 
then we never found a good solution except to ask the providers 
administratively to provision more resources.

But sometimes the problem was not the data path itself but rather, the 
client's choice of which (equivalent) server to select (which would 
imply a choice among data paths.)

I took the effort further and asked whether we could figure out a way to 
let a client discover an alternative content source, or select among 
multiple potential sources, within a reasonably short period of time 
(not much more than a single round trip time) and without seriously 
burdening the routing fabric or the routers themselves?

The method I came up with (circa year 2000) was inspired by Van 
Jacobson's multicast traceroute (mtrace).? I never had a chance to 
implement it in Cisco IOS (I was going to use the on-again/off-again 
Java VM engine that was in some IOS experimental versions.)

I used a combination of a hypothetical IP header and an Integrated 
Services T-Spec (RFC 2215) as a means to express the proposed service level.

There is a very rough, incomplete draft of the idea up on my website.? 
(It was never sufficiently developed even to reach the level of an 
Internet Draft.)

Fast Path Characterization Protocol (FPCP)

https://www.cavebear.com/archive/fpcp/fpcp-sept-19-2000.html

 ? ? --karl--



From johnl at iecc.com  Sun Jul 27 12:02:19 2025
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 27 Jul 2025 15:02:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] user annoyances,
 was History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>

It appears that Craig Partridge via Internet-history <craig at tereschau.net> said:
>over the years).   Users care about performance, and before carriers sorta
>figured out how to ensure good service, we found users playing around with
>reaching into the routing layer.

I think it's generally true that when some feature doesn't work well, users ask for lots
of knobs and dials to adjust and tune it.  Once it does work, they don't.

We certainly found this with spam filtering. Twenty years ago people wanted all
sorts of ways to tweak the rules to deliver or block their mail. These days it
works well enough that there's usually only two buttons, one to say that
something marked as spam isn't, or vice versa, and one to put someone into your
address book so they're a known correspondent.

R's,
John


From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Jul 28 16:20:05 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:20:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
Message-ID: <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>

On 7/27/25 12:02, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> We certainly found this with spam filtering. Twenty years ago people wanted all
> sorts of ways to tweak the rules to deliver or block their mail. These days it
> works well enough that there's usually only two buttons, one to say that
> something marked as spam isn't, or vice versa, and one to put someone into your
> address book so they're a known correspondent.
The History of the Internet mostly seems to focus on all the things that 
happened over the last half-century.? But there's another aspect of 
History.?? Things that did not happen are also a part of the historical 
record.

Personally, I've been involved with email since the early 1970s.?? I 
wrote one of the first email servers on the ARPANET.? Email, and 
annoyances such as "spam", are just facts of life today.? People have, 
IMHO, largely given up and just accept spam, "phishing", and other 
aspects of email today as just the way it is.

I even receive email allegedly sent by me, but that I never wrote. Or 
email from what looks like a legitimate person or company, but isn't 
actually from them.? The "known correspondent" technique isn't helpful 
for such things.

But it wasn't always this way.

Back in the ARPANET era, in order to use the 'net you had to be 
authorized.?? Computers and long-distance circuits were very expensive, 
and the people who paid for them understandably wanted assurance that 
their computers, and the 'net, were being used appropriately.

Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators, who 
protected their expensive resources with the technology of the day, such 
as passwords and quotas.? To "log in" to a computer you needed to have 
an account, and an associated password.

The computer knew who you were, and was required to enforce rules for 
use of the 'net.

When people started to use terminals to access their computer accounts 
using the network, things changed.? Computers still required passwords, 
but the network was now unprotected.? The obvious fix was to add 
passwords to the 'net itself.? A program called "TIP Login" first did 
that on the ARPANET.? As the 'net evolved into the Defense Data Network 
(DDN) and The Internet, a similar program called TACACS (Terminal Access 
Concentrator Access Control System) was similarly developed.

In order to use a terminal from a remote site, you could dial up a local 
number, type in your user name and password, and then use the 'net to 
connect to a remote computer.? I still have my "DDN TACACS Card" with 
the username and password I used 40 years ago to get on the 'net.

The 'net knew who you were, and could make sure you were a legitimate 
user.? It could even tell a remote computer who you were, so you didn't 
have to login there again.

As a User, you could be pretty confident that email you sent would get 
to its destination.?? You could believe that an email you received 
actually came from the User in the From: field.

Over decades, computing changed.?? Computers became personal, then 
handheld, then pervasive.? They became much much more powerful, and much 
much less expensive.? They were no longer attended by hordes of 
administrative staff.

Technology also developed.? Mechanisms such as "digital signatures" were 
invented, which seemed promising as replacements for the old name and 
password schemes.? Protocols, algorithms, and procedures were invented, 
and even implemented in many popular user programs.

Yet today I rarely receive any email that uses such technologies. It's 
allegedly available "on the shelf", but few people seem to use it.

Other aspects of the 'net seem to have successfully evolved to use such 
modern tech.? For example, websites now often use https rather than the 
original http, with "certificates" providing some guarantee of 
authenticity and privacy.

But email is different for some reason.? All sorts of newer technology 
seems to exist, but hardly anyone uses it.

Why not?? Is the technology somehow fatally flawed?? Is it just too 
complicated for end users to deal with?? Was it fatally delayed by legal 
issues such as patents??? Is it too hard to understand?

Perhaps it's a failure of government?? In the non-electronic world, 
legal concepts such as "fraud" are well established.?? Forging a 
document can lead to fines or jail time.? Forging an email seems somehow 
treated very differently.

Personally, I think email has been degenerating over the last 
half-century.? We've become accustomed to spam, and have even created a 
new vocabulary, containing words such as "phishing." Sometimes mail just 
disappears, especially if it traverses a "mailing list" - like this 
one.? I'd like an email service where you can have some confidence that 
an email was actually sent by who it appears to have sent it.

So, Internet Historians, perhaps you know what's happened, or hasn't 
happened, over the last half-century:

Why is there (still) spam?

/Jack Haverty


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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Jul 28 16:51:59 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 23:51:59 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>

On 7/28/2025 4:20 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> I even receive email allegedly sent by me, but that I never wrote. Or 
> email from what looks like a legitimate person or company, but isn't 
> actually from them.? The "known correspondent" technique isn't helpful 
> for such things.
>
> But it wasn't always this way.

By some measure, yes it was.

People were always able to use whatever name in the From: field they 
wanted.? They were always able to put anything they wanted in the 
Subject: field and the body.

The most important difference is that in a small, tightly-knit, closed 
society it quite a bit easier to ensure accountability and control than 
in a much larger, open and diverse communit.



> Back in the ARPANET era, in order to use the 'net you had to be 
> authorized.

Heh. Consider this for a moment.? Everyone who uses the net today needs 
to be 'authorized'.? The venues for authorization have expanded quite a 
bit and the rules for authorization have changed quite a bit.? But 
everyone gets authorized.



> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators, who 
> protected their expensive resources with the technology of the day, 
> such as passwords and quotas. 

That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the 
operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...



> ?To "log in" to a computer you needed to have an account, and an 
> associated password.
>
> The computer knew who you were, and was required to enforce rules for 
> use of the 'net.

Oh?? What sort of code was there, in these machines, that enforced the 
rules for use of the net?? I don't recall hearing of any system that had 
software enforcing such rules.

Interestingly, at Rand, circa 1976-8 when I was there, there was 
something almost like that.? But it was a Rand internal policy, stemming 
from their requirement that every single piece of paper that left the 
building be vetting by a special office.? My understanding was that this 
did not have to do with 'security' but was for brand protection, since I 
was told that Rand's real value was in being credible.

(I of course thought this absurdly onerous, but the first time I had to 
get some paper document or letter shipped quickly, their processed 
delayed me only maybe 15 minutes.? Color me impressed.)

Anyhow, they required the same ability for email.? We tried to explain 
that email was more like a phone than postal mail, and we finally got 
them to agree to a copying mechanism, rather than actual serial, 
gatekeeping.? And they permitted a switch to turn this on and off.? When 
on, they got a copy of every email that went out.

When we put this into place, it was of course set to on.? I don't 
remember when they turned it off, but it was not more than a few days.? 
And I never saw it turned on again...


> Technology also developed.? Mechanisms such as "digital signatures" 
> were invented, which seemed promising as replacements for the old name 
> and password schemes.? Protocols, algorithms, and procedures were 
> invented, and even implemented in many popular user programs.
>
> Yet today I rarely receive any email that uses such technologies. It's 
> allegedly available "on the shelf", but few people seem to use it.

Over the open Internet, the usability of these authentication mechanisms 
remains poor.



> ?Other aspects of the 'net seem to have successfully evolved to use 
> such modern tech.? For example, websites now often use https rather 
> than the original http, with "certificates" providing some guarantee 
> of authenticity and privacy.
>
> But email is different for some reason. 

Arguably, it isn't really different.? Scamming is on the Web, too.? And 
lots of other apps.

The problem is thinking that 'technology' can prevent human crime and 
the like.? It can't.



> Why is there (still) spam? 

Because there are still bad actors.


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From touch at strayalpha.com  Mon Jul 28 18:05:58 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:05:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <71611EEC-4A6C-4C84-9B9E-CF71B8D6BEB0@strayalpha.com>

On Jul 28, 2025, at 4:20?PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Why is there (still) spam?

Or telemarketing phone calls.

Or junk mail.

I?m sure all technologies that evolve from costly to relatively cheap end up with ?unwanted? traffic. I.e., I doubt anyone sent replacement window flyers by Pony Express.

;-)

Joe

From nigel at channelisles.net  Tue Jul 29 00:31:50 2025
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:31:50 +0100
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>

>> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators, 
>> who protected their expensive resources with the technology of the 
>> day, such as passwords and quotas. 
>
> That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the 
> operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...
>
Not exactly my recollection, either.

If we are talking about MIT computers I remember the following 
interchange, the first time I connected to ITS in early 1978. (It's been 
a long time so please forgive the many inaccuracies in remembered syntax)

@O70

:LOGIN NIGEL

YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ACCOUNT. WOULD YOU LIKE ONE?

:Y

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE CALLED?

NIGEL

WELCOME, TOURIST.



Such casual use by this stranger from overseas who just happened to have 
worked out how to connect to the only ARPAnet node in the UK and thence 
to the systems, particularly MIT-AI (134) and MIT-DM (70) was actively 
encouraged.

Following which we found DUNGEON aka ZORK.

And it was this passwordless openness that inspired the creation of MUD, 
the ancestor of most all multiplayer games.

(I know the folks at DM were really doing some statistical stuff, and 
the DM stood for Dynamic Modelling or something close to that, but I 
always remember it as "dungeon masters".)

The ITS command :OS allowed you to watch what was going on any other 
terminal, and I even have a vague recollection that there was a command 
that allowed anyone to crash the system.

So, not exactly that guarded.




From joly at punkcast.com  Tue Jul 29 01:29:04 2025
From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 04:29:04 -0400
Subject: [ih] Vint talks Internet history on ISOC Alumni Network podcast
Message-ID: <CAM9VJk2+as3EK5k81+0mDUS0cbwi_xXDReYJOxf-wkSz7yCeOA@mail.gmail.com>

Vint recently appeared on the ISOC Alumni Network podcast talking about
Internet history.

I have archived it
<https://archive.org/details/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers>, and, in
the process produced a transcript and a summary.

*TRANSCRIPT
<https://archive.org/download/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers/02_THE_INTERNET_ECOSYSTEM.EN.TRANSCRIPT.pdf>
|  SUMMARY
<https://archive.org/download/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers/01_HISTORY_OF_THE_INTERNET.EN.SUMMARY.pdf>*

-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-


From steve at shinkuro.com  Tue Jul 29 02:35:06 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 05:35:06 -0400
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>

Nigel,

If I recall correctly, ITS had a command, Gun, that killed a specific
process, not the entire system.  Any user could kill another user's
process.  This explicit lack of security was included to make it
uninteresting to find ways to find hacks -- a word that meant "interesting
and clever tricks," not the later and current negative meaning -- of
breaking into the system.  It was, in my opinion, an amusing and quirky way
to counter the tendency of smart youngsters to find ways to misbehave, but
it seemed obvious to me this strategy would only work within relatively
small communities.

Perhaps someone on this list can comment further.

Thanks,

Steve


I was in the MIT-AI lab in 1967-68, before the machine was connected to the
Arpanet.  I don't know if security was added later.

On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 3:32?AM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> >> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators,
> >> who protected their expensive resources with the technology of the
> >> day, such as passwords and quotas.
> >
> > That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the
> > operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...
> >
> Not exactly my recollection, either.
>
> If we are talking about MIT computers I remember the following
> interchange, the first time I connected to ITS in early 1978. (It's been
> a long time so please forgive the many inaccuracies in remembered syntax)
>
> @O70
>
> :LOGIN NIGEL
>
> YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ACCOUNT. WOULD YOU LIKE ONE?
>
> :Y
>
> WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE CALLED?
>
> NIGEL
>
> WELCOME, TOURIST.
>
>
>
> Such casual use by this stranger from overseas who just happened to have
> worked out how to connect to the only ARPAnet node in the UK and thence
> to the systems, particularly MIT-AI (134) and MIT-DM (70) was actively
> encouraged.
>
> Following which we found DUNGEON aka ZORK.
>
> And it was this passwordless openness that inspired the creation of MUD,
> the ancestor of most all multiplayer games.
>
> (I know the folks at DM were really doing some statistical stuff, and
> the DM stood for Dynamic Modelling or something close to that, but I
> always remember it as "dungeon masters".)
>
> The ITS command :OS allowed you to watch what was going on any other
> terminal, and I even have a vague recollection that there was a command
> that allowed anyone to crash the system.
>
> So, not exactly that guarded.
>
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>


-- 
Sent by a Verified

sender


From joly at punkcast.com  Tue Jul 29 02:40:34 2025
From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 05:40:34 -0400
Subject: [ih] Coorection: Vint talks Internet history on ISOC Alumni Network
 podcast
In-Reply-To: <CAM9VJk2+as3EK5k81+0mDUS0cbwi_xXDReYJOxf-wkSz7yCeOA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAM9VJk2+as3EK5k81+0mDUS0cbwi_xXDReYJOxf-wkSz7yCeOA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAM9VJk0Yw1e-BwA_DM6ydasxRJ7y3sYWkZjNKhxUtL5EGnWAVA@mail.gmail.com>

Excuse me!

Fixed transcript link
*TRANSCRIPT
<https://archive.org/download/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers/01_HISTORY_OF_THE_INTERNET.EN.TRANSCRIPT.pdf>
|  SUMMARY
<https://archive.org/download/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers/01_HISTORY_OF_THE_INTERNET.EN.TRANSCRIPT.pdf>*


On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 4:29?AM Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> wrote:

>
> Vint recently appeared on the ISOC Alumni Network podcast talking about
> Internet history.
>
> I have archived it
> <https://archive.org/details/isoc-alumni-internet-changemakers>, and, in
> the process produced a transcript and a summary.
>
>

-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-


From nigel at channelisles.net  Tue Jul 29 04:36:28 2025
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 12:36:28 +0100
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>

That may indeed be what I was thinking of.

Then again, was it perhaps possible to use that to kill some important 
process?.

It's a very long time ago!


I may also be confusing this with a proposal we had for MUD which would 
allow any adventurer to bring down the system.

THERE IS A BUTTON HERE, UPON WHICH IS A LABEL "DON'T PRESS ME"

 >PRESS BUTTON


A HOLLOW VOICE SAYS "DON'T PRESS ME AGAIN"


 >PRESS BUTTON

THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS BEEN COLLAPSES INTO A POINT SINGULARITY

(crash).


Again, maybe that never got implemented and was merely talk over 
coffee/pinball after the teletype room closed for the evening.




On 29/07/2025 10:35, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Nigel,
>
> If I recall correctly, ITS had a command, Gun, that killed a specific 
> process, not the entire system.? Any user could kill another user's 
> process.? This explicit lack of security was included to make it 
> uninteresting to find ways to find hacks -- a word that meant 
> "interesting and clever tricks," not the later and current negative 
> meaning -- of breaking into the system.? It was, in my opinion, an 
> amusing and quirky way to counter the tendency of smart youngsters to 
> find ways to misbehave, but it seemed obvious to me this strategy 
> would only work within relatively small communities.
>
> Perhaps someone?on this list can comment further.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
>
> I was in the MIT-AI lab in 1967-68, before the machine was connected 
> to the Arpanet.? I don't know if security was added later.
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 3:32?AM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     >> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators,
>     >> who protected their expensive resources with the technology of the
>     >> day, such as passwords and quotas.
>     >
>     > That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the
>     > operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...
>     >
>     Not exactly my recollection, either.
>
>     If we are talking about MIT computers I remember the following
>     interchange, the first time I connected to ITS in early 1978.
>     (It's been
>     a long time so please forgive the many inaccuracies in remembered
>     syntax)
>
>     @O70
>
>     :LOGIN NIGEL
>
>     YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ACCOUNT. WOULD YOU LIKE ONE?
>
>     :Y
>
>     WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE CALLED?
>
>     NIGEL
>
>     WELCOME, TOURIST.
>
>
>
>     Such casual use by this stranger from overseas who just happened
>     to have
>     worked out how to connect to the only ARPAnet node in the UK and
>     thence
>     to the systems, particularly MIT-AI (134) and MIT-DM (70) was
>     actively
>     encouraged.
>
>     Following which we found DUNGEON aka ZORK.
>
>     And it was this passwordless openness that inspired the creation
>     of MUD,
>     the ancestor of most all multiplayer games.
>
>     (I know the folks at DM were really doing some statistical stuff, and
>     the DM stood for Dynamic Modelling or something close to that, but I
>     always remember it as "dungeon masters".)
>
>     The ITS command :OS allowed you to watch what was going on any other
>     terminal, and I even have a vague recollection that there was a
>     command
>     that allowed anyone to crash the system.
>
>     So, not exactly that guarded.
>
>
>     -- 
>     Internet-history mailing list
>     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>     -
>     Unsubscribe:
>     https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>
>
>
> -- 
> Sent by a Verified
>
> sender


From steve at shinkuro.com  Tue Jul 29 04:38:57 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:38:57 -0400
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvKPLjHkN94tTD4tZ5YUP09Prz+LfFDvycZP=BHhmx++1Q@mail.gmail.com>

Nigel,

Thanks.  I never looked into MUD, so I can't comment on it.

In ITS, I believe any user could kill any of the processes run by any user,
but I may not have all the details.  I don't recall there being a command
to bring down the operating system itself.

Steve


On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 7:36?AM Nigel Roberts <nigel at channelisles.net>
wrote:

> That may indeed be what I was thinking of.
>
> Then again, was it perhaps possible to use that to kill some important
> process?.
>
> It's a very long time ago!
>
>
> I may also be confusing this with a proposal we had for MUD which would
> allow any adventurer to bring down the system.
>
> THERE IS A BUTTON HERE, UPON WHICH IS A LABEL "DON'T PRESS ME"
>
>  >PRESS BUTTON
>
>
> A HOLLOW VOICE SAYS "DON'T PRESS ME AGAIN"
>
>
>  >PRESS BUTTON
>
> THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS BEEN COLLAPSES INTO A POINT SINGULARITY
>
> (crash).
>
>
> Again, maybe that never got implemented and was merely talk over
> coffee/pinball after the teletype room closed for the evening.
>
>
>
>
> On 29/07/2025 10:35, Steve Crocker wrote:
> > Nigel,
> >
> > If I recall correctly, ITS had a command, Gun, that killed a specific
> > process, not the entire system.  Any user could kill another user's
> > process.  This explicit lack of security was included to make it
> > uninteresting to find ways to find hacks -- a word that meant
> > "interesting and clever tricks," not the later and current negative
> > meaning -- of breaking into the system.  It was, in my opinion, an
> > amusing and quirky way to counter the tendency of smart youngsters to
> > find ways to misbehave, but it seemed obvious to me this strategy
> > would only work within relatively small communities.
> >
> > Perhaps someone on this list can comment further.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> > I was in the MIT-AI lab in 1967-68, before the machine was connected
> > to the Arpanet.  I don't know if security was added later.
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 3:32?AM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history
> > <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >     >> Computers were attended by armies of administrators and operators,
> >     >> who protected their expensive resources with the technology of the
> >     >> day, such as passwords and quotas.
> >     >
> >     > That does not sound like what I remember hearing about, for the
> >     > operations and use of some of the MIT research computers...
> >     >
> >     Not exactly my recollection, either.
> >
> >     If we are talking about MIT computers I remember the following
> >     interchange, the first time I connected to ITS in early 1978.
> >     (It's been
> >     a long time so please forgive the many inaccuracies in remembered
> >     syntax)
> >
> >     @O70
> >
> >     :LOGIN NIGEL
> >
> >     YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO HAVE ACCOUNT. WOULD YOU LIKE ONE?
> >
> >     :Y
> >
> >     WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE CALLED?
> >
> >     NIGEL
> >
> >     WELCOME, TOURIST.
> >
> >
> >
> >     Such casual use by this stranger from overseas who just happened
> >     to have
> >     worked out how to connect to the only ARPAnet node in the UK and
> >     thence
> >     to the systems, particularly MIT-AI (134) and MIT-DM (70) was
> >     actively
> >     encouraged.
> >
> >     Following which we found DUNGEON aka ZORK.
> >
> >     And it was this passwordless openness that inspired the creation
> >     of MUD,
> >     the ancestor of most all multiplayer games.
> >
> >     (I know the folks at DM were really doing some statistical stuff, and
> >     the DM stood for Dynamic Modelling or something close to that, but I
> >     always remember it as "dungeon masters".)
> >
> >     The ITS command :OS allowed you to watch what was going on any other
> >     terminal, and I even have a vague recollection that there was a
> >     command
> >     that allowed anyone to crash the system.
> >
> >     So, not exactly that guarded.
> >
> >
> >     --
> >     Internet-history mailing list
> >     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >     -
> >     Unsubscribe:
> >
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Sent by a Verified
> >
> > sender
>


-- 
Sent by a Verified

sender


From lars at nocrew.org  Tue Jul 29 07:15:44 2025
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 14:15:44 +0000
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvKPLjHkN94tTD4tZ5YUP09Prz+LfFDvycZP=BHhmx++1Q@mail.gmail.com>
 (Steve Crocker via Internet-history's message of "Tue, 29 Jul 2025
 07:38:57 -0400")
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zvKPLjHkN94tTD4tZ5YUP09Prz+LfFDvycZP=BHhmx++1Q@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7wseiff5gv.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Steve Crocker wrote:
> In ITS, I believe any user could kill any of the processes run by any
> user, but I may not have all the details.  I don't recall there being
> a command to bring down the operating system itself.

I have been puzzling over this.  The JARGON file (as stored on ITS)
says:

  GUN [from the GUN command on ITS] v. To forcibly terminate a program
     or job (computer, not career).  "Some idiot left a background
     process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it."

But there is no straightforward GUN command on ITS.  There is no TS GUN
program, and no GUN command in DDT.  There is a GUN command in LOCK,
which is used to kill an entire user job tree.  LOCK also has a command
to bring the system down: DOWN a.k.a KILL.


From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Jul 29 16:20:17 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:20:17 -0700
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <7wseiff5gv.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zvKPLjHkN94tTD4tZ5YUP09Prz+LfFDvycZP=BHhmx++1Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wseiff5gv.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Message-ID: <20609872-9233-4eba-b859-9a02c6174836@3kitty.org>

This list reminds me of the Internet meetings in the early 1980s. 
Whatever the topic was, we commonly wandered off into other topics.?? 
That even motivated the invention of a new protocol - the RatHole 
Protocol, or RHP.?? Basically anyone in those early Internet meetings, 
at any time, no matter who was talking, could shout out "Rathole!".? 
That would cause an immediate survey of the room to see if the majority 
agreed we had gotten off track, and needed to get back to the topic at 
hand.?? There is probably some similar mechanism in Robert's Rules of 
Order, but we weren't familiar with such stuff back then.

I'm still interested in Why There Is Still Spam, but hold your Rathole! 
thoughts for a minute more, while I recall ITS a bit...

To answer DaveC's comment - there was a small army of operators and 
administrators caring for the MIT-DM PDP-10 in the 1970s.?? I know 
because I was one of them.? We called them "System Managers" (SM) , and 
everyone on the research staff had an assigned day to be SM. The SM's 
job was to fix whatever was broken.? Our PDP-10 broke a lot, usually a 
memory problem, and unfortunately I was one of the two on our staff who 
dealt with hardware.

Historical Trivia question - when fixing a memory, I often had to create 
a Shmoo Diagram and use it to tweak the controls inside the memory 
cabinet.? Does anyone know what I was doing?? Hint - it's not mentioned 
in the Wikipedia writeup.

Re commands like GUN - Such commands didn't appear until after more 
memory, and paging hardware, allowed such a waste of space.? System 
hackers used the shortcut character sequences in DDT to do everything.

So, for example, to "attach" to a running job you would type 
<jobname><ESC>J?? To then destroy that job, IIRC you would just type 
<ESC><CTRL-X>.? (the period is part of the command).? Or something like 
that - it's been a long time.....

You could attach to the running ITS system by typing SYS<ESC>J? Anyone 
who did that could change the ITS system itself, while it was running.?? 
I don't remember exactly, but by changing the contents of some memory 
location, you could cause the system to shut down gracefully.? Most 
often though, ITS just committed suicide, and the SM had to go fix it.

Of course Security was an issue, especially with hordes of very smart 
and curious undergraduates and visitors running around at all hours.? At 
one point, ARPA insisted that we add passwords to ITS. Mike Brescia (MB) 
wrote the code, and after many announcements it was made "live" one 
Friday afternoon.

On Monday morning, a friendly, but unsigned, MOTD (Message Of The Day) 
announced to everyone that a new utility had been built, to help people 
who couldn't remember their password.? Simply typing (something like) 
"passwd jfh" would print out jfh's password.

So we practiced Security By Obscurity.

For example, before you could change the running ITS system at all, you 
had to type a magic incantation - <ESC><ESC><CTRL-R> - but in case 
someone was watching you type, the system echoed $$^D instead.? The D 
key was right above the R key, to fool a lurker about what you actually 
typed. ? If that lurker noticed and subsequently tried $$^D it wouldn't 
work and the system wouldn't respond to $$^R any more either.

By the way, I've always thought that such techniques inspired some of 
the aspects of Zork.? Same people were involved.

Another Security By Obscurity technique was the Maze Guncher (MG). 
MazeWars had become quite popular, but it could easily interfere with 
"real work".

Dave Lebling wrote MG, which occasionally would methodically "map" every 
running job on ITS into its own address space, and look for certain 
instruction sequences that were unique to the MazeWars program.? Then it 
would silently alter some instruction, guaranteeing that the program 
would shortly crash, with an indication that a memory error had occurred.

For a while, SYS:ATSIGN MG existed, primarily patrolling during "work 
hours".? IIRC, after gamers discovered MG, we put it into the printer 
spooler to give it some protection.? Security By Obscurity.

I remember "fixing" a lot of memory problems that were actually MG's 
work.?? Those needed no Shmoo.

RatHole!!!!

---------------------

So, ... Why Is There Still Spam??? I've never concluded that it's just 
part of human nature, or a problem that cannot be solved. Vint's comment 
in the Podcast that Joly posted seems to me to be a way forward:

"Dr. Vinton Cerf: I think that a primary challenge, is accountability. 
Because of the
way that the Internet can be abused, it's essential that we find ways of 
holding
parties accountable for abusive behaviors, and that will interfere with 
anonymity in
some cases, and so under the right circumstances, you have to penetrate 
the veil of
anonymity in order to hold parties accountable."

Maybe someone will solve the Spam Problem.? I think the solution will 
span not only technology mechanisms but also legal and even 
international agreements.

Meanwhile, for History, what did we do, or not do, that allowed Spam to 
infect The Internet?

Jack Haverty


On 7/29/25 07:15, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history wrote:
> Steve Crocker wrote:
>> In ITS, I believe any user could kill any of the processes run by any
>> user, but I may not have all the details.  I don't recall there being
>> a command to bring down the operating system itself.
> I have been puzzling over this.  The JARGON file (as stored on ITS)
> says:
>
>    GUN [from the GUN command on ITS] v. To forcibly terminate a program
>       or job (computer, not career).  "Some idiot left a background
>       process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it."
>
> But there is no straightforward GUN command on ITS.  There is no TS GUN
> program, and no GUN command in DDT.  There is a GUN command in LOCK,
> which is used to kill an entire user job tree.  LOCK also has a command
> to bring the system down: DOWN a.k.a KILL.

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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Tue Jul 29 16:41:52 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 23:41:52 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <20609872-9233-4eba-b859-9a02c6174836@3kitty.org>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zvKPLjHkN94tTD4tZ5YUP09Prz+LfFDvycZP=BHhmx++1Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wseiff5gv.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <20609872-9233-4eba-b859-9a02c6174836@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <12c01dde-db1c-4055-805c-b2d005404a78@dcrocker.net>

On 7/29/2025 4:20 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> "Dr. Vinton Cerf: I think that a primary challenge, is accountability. 
> Because of the
> way that the Internet can be abused, it's essential that we find ways 
> of holding
> parties accountable for abusive behaviors, and that will interfere 
> with anonymity in
> some cases, and so under the right circumstances, you have to 
> penetrate the veil of
> anonymity in order to hold parties accountable."


Except that the power to pierce that veil is, itself, a power to be 
abusive.? And there might even be some examples at hand of such abuses.

but, really, my point was that any interesting population always 
demonstrates the presence of some bad actors.? Some of those will 
demonstrate badness via spam.

The view that greater accountability will eliminate spam is pretty much 
driving the current IETF anti-spam work.? It's not clear to me how much 
the past decade of such efforts has moved towards elimination, but it's 
certainly reduce the flexibility of email. And the latest round of work 
promises to reduce it further.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From geoff at iconia.com  Tue Jul 29 16:57:50 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:57:50 -0700
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
References: <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64c26e7c00@dcrocker.net>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <1E64CCA6-A2D1-42E2-93CC-84642B194E13@strayalpha.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <8a7d93c9-4a06-4e39-a971-bbdaf8b92ca5@3kitty.org>
 <7e2fefe1-4fbb-4f61-b518-8f6b2d74c9e7@dcrocker.net>
 <66983119-00d0-421c-ae24-ef52e139ebe5@channelisles.net>
 <CABf5zv+1r42aH-pRrs4QP4gHvVFJ-17yCC0a4ai9uWLDaUukTw@mail.gmail.com>
 <dd8a74e7-79e0-4ad8-a0ea-daab829e4cc5@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrhRDb5G572zv1eJHQg2RoKABRijFTHxGKRpGmCzUDRhLw@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 4:36?AM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> That may indeed be what I was thinking of.
>
> Then again, was it perhaps possible to use that to kill some important
> process?.
>
> It's a very long time ago!
>

if you'd like a remembrance/history refresher head on over to the
Interim Computer Museum's collection of resurrected and online
"ancient" machines (that includes an ITS reincarnation) at

https://icm.museum/

and checkout the [Collections] tab and the [Recollections] tab to get
online
where you'll find the Currently offered remote systems include:

[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]
   -+-  SDF Vintage Systems               REMOTE ACCESS  -+-
[-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-]

[a] multics             Multics MR12.8          Honeywell 6180
[b] toad-2              TOPS-20 7(110131)-1     XKL TOAD-2
[c] twenex              TOPS-20 7(63327)-6      XKL TOAD-2
[d] sc40                  TOPS-20 MARS 7(21733)   SC Group SC40
[e] sc40                  TOPS-10 MARS 7.05       SC Group SC40
[f] lc                       ITS ver 1648            PDP-10 KS10
[g] ka1050              TOPS-10 6.03a           sim KA10 1050
[h] kl2065               TOPS-10 7.04            sim KL10 2065
[i] rosenkrantz         OpenVMS 7.3             VAX 4000-96
[j] tss8                    TSS/8                   PDP-8/e
[k] ibm4361             VM/SP5                  Hercules 4361
[l] ibm7094              CTSS                    i7094
[m] cdc6500             NOS 1.3                 DTCyber CDC-6500
[n] sigma9                Honeywell CP-V          sim XDS
[z] bitzone                NetBSD BBS              AMD64
[a] misspiggy           UNIX v7                 PDP-11/70
[c] lcm3b2               UNIX SVR3.2.3           AT&T 3B2/1000-70
[d] guildenstern        BSD 4.3                 simh MicroVAX 3900
[e] snake                 BSD 2.11                PDP-11/84
[f] hkypux                HP/UX 10.20             HP9000/715
[g] truly                   TRU64 5.0               DEC Alpha 200/166
[h] three                  SunOS 4.1.1             Sun-3/160
[i] indy                     IRIX 6.5                SGI Indy R5000
[j] ultra                    Ultrix 4.5              simh MicroVAX 3900
[k] m-net                 FreeBSD 14.2            x86_64
[l] nostromo             DG/UX R4.11             AViiON m88k


-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True


From johnl at iecc.com  Wed Jul 30 09:11:07 2025
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 30 Jul 2025 12:11:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] Why is there (still) spam...?
In-Reply-To: <71611EEC-4A6C-4C84-9B9E-CF71B8D6BEB0@strayalpha.com>
References: <9840e6cf-c438-4ce1-af00-a53d3f3dc74d@iwl.com>
 <ve4wmgvfw4sn5qsh73zgmukrcnmz7vfmf2zwmjawjcfd6l44qs@iw4umonxmw6h>
 <20250727190219.AEB09D4B621D@ary.qy>
 <4bdec498-0261-469b-bf22-b4a8b93152bb@iwl.com>
 <DBE043C1-DF87-44C9-BA61-02DC56A908CE@paftech.se>
 <28132221-A5CD-4FAA-88FB-0176786091A1@strayalpha.com>
 <02095226-1E4F-4FA2-B1BF-D92B1EDADFC7@comcast.net>
 <CAHQj4CeFk37=TsH-i4vnBe8CHEUxOvm9ZbSDPtAR=j+_yr077A@mail.gmail.com>
 <5414c9a2-b37d-4a51-9356-e5719f400027@3kitty.org>
 <70463542-5ce3-4a62-9597-2e64
 <71611EEC-4A6C-4C84-9B9E-CF71B8D6BEB0@strayalpha.com>
Message-ID: <20250730161107.4DADCD561ABD@ary.qy>

It appears that touch--- via Internet-history <touch at strayalpha.com> said:
>I?m sure all technologies that evolve from costly to relatively cheap end up with ?unwanted? traffic. I.e., I doubt anyone
>sent replacement window flyers by Pony Express.

I have read that there was a short lived flat rate telegraph service in the late
1800s which of course failed because it was overun with spam. Any communication
scheme needs some kind of friction or when the cost is zero the quality of the
messages approaches zero, too.

Look at the history of phone spam. For the first century and a half, junk phone
calls were limited both by technology, it was hard to make a lot of phone calls,
and by money, telcos all had reciprocal compensation, the calling telco paying a
per-call or per-minute amount to the called telco that was supposed to reflect
costs. Business phone lines used to make many calls were expensive.

The high point of reciprocal compensation was the early days of cellular
telephony. Most calls were from cell to landline, so the comp flowed to the
incumbent landline companies. That was OK with the cellcos since their per
minute rates more than covered the cost, and the money gave the incumbents an
incentive to connect to the cellcos (which they were required to do, but we know
what happens when a telco doesn't want to do something.)

Then dialup online services happened, the incumbents didn't want to spend money
building modem banks, CLECs stepped in, and the recip comp flowed freely in the
other direction. The incumbents then made a screeching U-turn, insisted that
recip comp was a a terrible idea and bill-and-keep, i.e., no payments, was the
way to go. So that's what we have now everywhere except a handful of high-cost
rural telcos which are another story.

Back in the day, being a telco was hard, connecting to SS#7 was complex, so
there were a small number of telcos, all of whom knew each other since they had
to know where to send the recip comp checks. Now with VoIP, connection is no
harder than connecting to your local ISP, and so we have sleazy anonymous telcos
sending voice spam. STIR/SHAKEN is supposed to put enough identifying info on
the calls to return some accountability but the results so far are mixed.

For anything as cheap and easy to use as e-mail, there will be spam and nobody
has come up with a way to stop it.

R's,
John

PS: If someone is about to propose e-postage, it is a Well Known Bad Idea that
just won't go away. I wrote this white paper explaining why two decades ago and
nothing has changed other than adding a few more zeros to some of the numbers.
https://taugh.com/epostage.pdf

PPS: Other people have explained why forcing all the users to identify themselves
would be a bad idea if it were practical, which it is not.