[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 64, Issue 30

[Vint Cerf]

love the quip!!!!

v


On Thu, Mar 27, 2025 at 12:24 AM John Shoch via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> >> > On Mar 26, 2025, at 16:57, Vint Cerf via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>
> wrote:
>
> >> > I think we had a fair number of nodes - at least a half dozen,
> possibly
> >> > more? Don would know, if you don't Barbara.
> >> > Yes to multiple mountain sites. Eichler - sounds like somebody's
> house! I
> >> > used to live in an Eichler in Palo Alto but never had a packet radio
> >> > installed. Xerox PARC had one (fixed location) though.
>
> Vint is understating his generosity and support:
>
> --Vint (at Arpa) and Don Nielson and team (at SRI) supported us with TWO
> Packet Radio Units in Palo Alto.
> --They were stationary installations, at the main PARC building and another
> about a mile away.
> --The PRUs had an 1822 interface, and we had built an 1822 interface for
> the Alto (to connect to an Imp).
> --So we built 2 more interfaces, and had an Alto at each PRU -- which ran
> our standard internet gateway, and could also connect to an Ethernet, and
> then on to the rest of our internet.
> --We did not modify the PRU code.  A network driver was written to
> encapsulate internet packets for transmission through the PRNet, so it
> became a transit network between two Ethernets (and packets coming off the
> PRNet could be routed on through other gateways to machines elsewhere in
> the country).
> --The PRNet and an Ethernet differed in throughput by maybe 2 decimal
> orders of magnitude -- so it taught us all a lot about flow and congestion
> control, retransmission algorithms, lossy sub-neworks, delayed duplicates,
> intra-network fragmentation, and more..
> --It was a great experiment.
>
> Could not have done it without Vint, Don, et al.
> (I helped organize the project, but real kudos go to Larry Stewart, who
> made it all happen!)
>
> John
>
> PS:  I sometimes give a talk that includes a picture of a rack of equipment
> holding the PRU and the Alto gateway -- and then quip, "If you squint real
> hard, and apply pressure from 20-30 years of Moore's law, out pops a WiFi
> access point!"
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>


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