From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Wed Sep  3 22:17:22 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 22:17:22 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: "Bill Gates Explains the Internet to Dave" (Letterman "
References: <1814471749.2061101.1756962496096@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <EDC47A77-F524-496D-8EE6-43F4C7C1D20D@icloud.com>

Forwarded for Barbara

> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2025 at 09:57:27 PM PDT
> Subject: "Bill Gates Explains the Internet to Dave" (Letterman "
> 
> Tripped on this video of Bill Gates on David Letterman (1995).  It starts off with Microsoft eventually getting to the Internet.
> 
> https://youtu.be/fs-YpQj88ew
> 
> You might need to put up with an ad first.
> 
> barbara



From david.sitman at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 06:36:58 2025
From: david.sitman at gmail.com (David Sitman)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 15:36:58 +0200
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
Message-ID: <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>

Daniele asked me to try to distribute this to the list because his attempt
appears to have been unsuccessful.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniele Bovio [mailto:Bovio at aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 3:17 PM
To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective

A couple of comments about AOL:

I was hired by AOL in 1995 to build and manage the network operations for
Europe, in order to allow the AOL-Bertelesmann joint venture to launch and
operate AOL in UK, Germany and France. The first question I was asked by
Suk S. Soo, ANS director, during my interview was: how do you make money on
the Internet? Coming from the academic world as former Technical Director
of the European Academic Research Network (EARN) and member of the EAT
(EBONE Action Team) the group which designed and implemented the first
pan-European Internet Backbone, you may imagine my answer was less than
adequate, as for the first time I was confronted with the concept of a
"commercial" Internet.
As I quickly learned the AOL business model was to sell content/media to
the residential market via a different mean than TV by allowing the
households PCs to connect via the telephone network. The problem was that
in 1995 there was no ISP in Europe yet able/interested to offer internet
access to the residential market and so we had to build everything from
scratch, i.e. a dial-up access network and transatlantic WAN circuits
connecting to the US AOL data centers and, via ANS, to the US Internet.
So, indeed, the main target of AOL was not to be an ISP, but becoming one
was an essential component of its business plan, and therefore, given its
popularity, AOL became quickly one of the largest ISPs in the US and in
Europe.

That the main target of AOL was not to be a pure ISP in the long run was
clearly apparent when in 1998 AOL acquired CompuServe via a 3-parties
agreement with WorldCom: AOL acquired the CompuServe subscribers and sold
to WorldCom ANS and the entire CompuServe Network Services department.

Network being a fundamental pillar of its business however AOL kept
in-house the management of all the network infrastructure in the US and
Europe, so still acting as an ISP to its users, but the cost was huge,
particularly for
Europe: in 1998 AOL spent $37M for transatlantic circuits and was
projecting an expenditure of $58M by Y2K. When in 1998 it became possible
to file for and get an International Telecom Operator license, following
the crumbling of the European Telecom monopolies and the first private
transatlantic cables were built (Gemini, Atlantic Crossing) I proposed to
the AOL management to file for a license so to be able to buy IRU
(Indefeasible Right of Use) capacity on the Gemini cable. The answer was:
Nope! AOL is a content provider, not a telecom operator, find another way
to reduce the cost.

As a matter of fact that AOL decision turned out to be beneficial to the
entire European ISPs club, as I managed to figure out how to buy IRU
capacity at wholesale prices by inventing the Capitalized Lease concept,
i.e. coaxing telecom operators to lease IRUs capacity to AOL via 10-years
pre-paid lease agreements, thus removing the need for AOL to become a Telco
Operator, and reported about it to the RIPE meetings in 1999 and 2000,
allowing several ISPs to take advantage of the concept ;-). If you are
interested you can find one of my presentations about transatlantic
capacity in the RIPE archives:
https://ripe36.ripe.net/presentations/cables2k/sld001.html

So in conclusion IMHO, although its mission was not to be a pure ISP, AOL
turned out to be one, and provided a fundamental push for the development
of the Internet in Europe.

Daniele Bovio


From lars at nocrew.org  Thu Sep  4 07:42:31 2025
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:42:31 +0000
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 (David Sitman via Internet-history's message of "Thu, 4 Sep 2025
 15:36:58 +0200")
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
told me this:

  "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
  ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
  every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
  sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
  few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
  than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
  minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
  paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
  been torn to shreds!"

They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!

Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
Tech Sq building.)


From crossd at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 08:05:35 2025
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 11:05:35 -0400
Subject: [ih] What does TELNET stand for?
In-Reply-To: <da61d978-8338-40a3-89b1-18529486e048@3kitty.org>
References: <20250822224511.39305D90FCD8@ary.qy>
 <CABf5zvKgdvHyqRMz0dvk4qWY_CPe87dV2waBbzboKfzrbLZYtQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <da61d978-8338-40a3-89b1-18529486e048@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W5vGS4EKrjXHAT2T5Aaqd85344gbUMYOjxw3GsmTBMrfg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 1:42?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Also at the time, telecommunications in general was fairly new.  In the
> early 60s, the ECHO satellites had been deployed in space. These were
> basically big metallic balloons that were inflated in orbit.  Radio
> signals could be bounced from one earth station to a distant one, using
> ECHO as a mirror.  ECHO also reflected visible light well, much better
> than the earlier Sputniks, so it was easy to spot visually from the
> ground.   ECHO was the star that moved across the sky as you watched.
>
> [snip]

I apologize for replying to an older message, but I thought list
readers might find this interesting. Around the time of the Project
Echo launches, Bell Telephone commissioned a short documentary film
about them: "The Big Bounce".  The film is short, but quite
interesting, and is available on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19kAuAVAnDc

Incidentally, the horn-shaped antenna at the Holmdel site in the film
was instrumental in the empirical detection of cosmic microwave
background radiation; clear proof of the Big Bang. Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for this
discovery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background#Discovery).

        - Dan C.


From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Thu Sep  4 10:06:48 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 10:06:48 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>

forwarded for Barbara
> 
> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
> Subject: Birth of European Internet
> 
> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one video so apologize for the other things attached.  It sounds like there are other history related panels. 
> 
> https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4
> 
> barbara
> 


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 10:09:54 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 13:09:54 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_U+TRfqNFgckS-LubVmp5-d3xSXG3tCz0WXYa0qjqRJog@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 9:37?AM David Sitman via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Daniele asked me to try to distribute this to the list because his attempt
> appears to have been unsuccessful.
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniele Bovio [mailto:Bovio at aol.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 3:17 PM
> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
>
> A couple of comments about AOL:
>
> I was hired by AOL in 1995 to build and manage the network operations for
> Europe, in order to allow the AOL-Bertelesmann joint venture to launch and
> operate AOL in UK, Germany and France. The first question I was asked by
> Suk S. Soo, ANS director, during my interview was: how do you make money on
> the Internet? Coming from the academic world as former Technical Director
> of the European Academic Research Network (EARN) and member of the EAT
> (EBONE Action Team) the group which designed and implemented the first
> pan-European Internet Backbone, you may imagine my answer was less than
> adequate, as for the first time I was confronted with the concept of a
> "commercial" Internet.
> As I quickly learned the AOL business model was to sell content/media to
> the residential market via a different mean than TV by allowing the
> households PCs to connect via the telephone network. The problem was that
> in 1995 there was no ISP in Europe yet able/interested to offer internet
> access to the residential market and so we had to build everything from
> scratch, i.e. a dial-up access network and transatlantic WAN circuits
> connecting to the US AOL data centers and, via ANS, to the US Internet.
> So, indeed, the main target of AOL was not to be an ISP, but becoming one
> was an essential component of its business plan, and therefore, given its
> popularity, AOL became quickly one of the largest ISPs in the US and in
> Europe.
>
> That the main target of AOL was not to be a pure ISP in the long run was
> clearly apparent when in 1998 AOL acquired CompuServe via a 3-parties
> agreement with WorldCom: AOL acquired the CompuServe subscribers and sold
> to WorldCom ANS and the entire CompuServe Network Services department.
>
The interesting thing about the above is that MCI did a deal in 1983 to
include all the CompuServe users in the MCI Mail system by building a mail
relay between MCI Mail and ConpuServe.

>
> Network being a fundamental pillar of its business however AOL kept
> in-house the management of all the network infrastructure in the US and
> Europe, so still acting as an ISP to its users, but the cost was huge,
> particularly for
> Europe: in 1998 AOL spent $37M for transatlantic circuits and was
> projecting an expenditure of $58M by Y2K. When in 1998 it became possible
> to file for and get an International Telecom Operator license, following
> the crumbling of the European Telecom monopolies and the first private
> transatlantic cables were built (Gemini, Atlantic Crossing) I proposed to
> the AOL management to file for a license so to be able to buy IRU
> (Indefeasible Right of Use) capacity on the Gemini cable. The answer was:
> Nope! AOL is a content provider, not a telecom operator, find another way
> to reduce the cost.
>
> As a matter of fact that AOL decision turned out to be beneficial to the
> entire European ISPs club, as I managed to figure out how to buy IRU
> capacity at wholesale prices by inventing the Capitalized Lease concept,
> i.e. coaxing telecom operators to lease IRUs capacity to AOL via 10-years
> pre-paid lease agreements, thus removing the need for AOL to become a Telco
> Operator, and reported about it to the RIPE meetings in 1999 and 2000,
> allowing several ISPs to take advantage of the concept ;-). If you are
> interested you can find one of my presentations about transatlantic
> capacity in the RIPE archives:
> https://ripe36.ripe.net/presentations/cables2k/sld001.html


nice hack!!!

>
>
> So in conclusion IMHO, although its mission was not to be a pure ISP, AOL
> turned out to be one, and provided a fundamental push for the development
> of the Internet in Europe.
>
> Daniele Bovio
> --
> 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 brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 13:42:11 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:42:11 +1200
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
In-Reply-To: <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
 <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>

For anyone who doesn't already know, there are at least three already published sources on this topic, but all mainly concerned with the pre-commercial Internet in Europe (and with non-TCP/IP networks):

1. doi.org/10.1002/9783527629336

2. https://ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf

3. http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 05-Sep-25 05:06, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
> forwarded for Barbara
>>
>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
>> Subject: Birth of European Internet
>>
>> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one video so apologize for the other things attached.  It sounds like there are other history related panels.
>>
>> https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4
>>
>> barbara
>>

From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Thu Sep  4 15:18:02 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 22:18:02 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
In-Reply-To: <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
 <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
 <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>

 I don't think the European Research Internet History file is available any more on that site (Site appears to be gone/changing).? I think I found the work on the Amazon site. Please correct if I am wrong.
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Prehistory-European-Research-Networking-ebook/dp/B0792XPN4G
barbara
    On Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 01:42:26 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 For anyone who doesn't already know, there are at least three already published sources on this topic, but all mainly concerned with the pre-commercial Internet in Europe (and with non-TCP/IP networks):

1. doi.org/10.1002/9783527629336

2. https://ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf

3. http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4

Regards/Ng? mihi
? ? Brian Carpenter

On 05-Sep-25 05:06, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
> forwarded for Barbara
>>
>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
>> Subject: Birth of European Internet
>>
>> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one video so apologize for the other things attached.? It sounds like there are other history related panels.
>>
>> https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4
>>
>> barbara


  

From jstitt at hop-electric.com  Thu Sep  4 15:32:41 2025
From: jstitt at hop-electric.com (John Stitt)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 22:32:41 +0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
In-Reply-To: <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
 <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
 <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>
 <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <SJ0PR13MB5269E1A30D41162685C3093CE800A@SJ0PR13MB5269.namprd13.prod.outlook.com>

I found the PDF on that site from hitting up a search engine for the filename, appears it's only accessible without HTTPS:  http://www.ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf

John Stitt

________________________________
From: Internet-history <internet-history-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on behalf of Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 5:18 PM
To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet

I don't think the European Research Internet History file is available any more on that site (Site appears to be gone/changing).  I think I found the work on the Amazon site. Please correct if I am wrong.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHidden-Prehistory-European-Research-Networking-ebook%2Fdp%2FB0792XPN4G&data=05%7C02%7Cjstitt%40hop-electric.com%7Cb5088b56314d4f869ba008ddec00f074%7C7707c291b2534ee2bcd6557cdf0fea43%7C0%7C0%7C638926211107611631%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=cs8pq2tJEFhvAyv7DM5j8eo%2Bh7Hdul5MjHh2YhRNQv8%3D&reserved=0<https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Prehistory-European-Research-Networking-ebook/dp/B0792XPN4G>

barbara
    On Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 01:42:26 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

 For anyone who doesn't already know, there are at least three already published sources on this topic, but all mainly concerned with the pre-commercial Internet in Europe (and with non-TCP/IP networks):

1. doi.org/10.1002/9783527629336

2. https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fictconsulting.ch%2Freports%2FEuropean-Research-Internet-History.pdf&data=05%7C02%7Cjstitt%40hop-electric.com%7Cb5088b56314d4f869ba008ddec00f074%7C7707c291b2534ee2bcd6557cdf0fea43%7C0%7C0%7C638926211107655807%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=TM54plTbgek8CjWgz2L%2FGqqLY4AesL97Wt%2Bp%2FrTtMJc%3D&reserved=0<https://ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf>

3. https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.springer.com%2Fcomputer%2Fgeneral%2Bissues%2Fbook%2F978-1-4471-5024-4&data=05%7C02%7Cjstitt%40hop-electric.com%7Cb5088b56314d4f869ba008ddec00f074%7C7707c291b2534ee2bcd6557cdf0fea43%7C0%7C0%7C638926211107682052%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=XNU69y25199Sqg3Xn%2FrPtTLB4yMVcuEwL5wfEuJTtFU%3D&reserved=0<http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4>

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 05-Sep-25 05:06, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
> forwarded for Barbara
>>
>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
>> Subject: Birth of European Internet
>>
>> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one video so apologize for the other things attached.  It sounds like there are other history related panels.
>>
>> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FRAyxbwZzjTw%3Fsi%3DNus0K8VcsMrCpqL4&data=05%7C02%7Cjstitt%40hop-electric.com%7Cb5088b56314d4f869ba008ddec00f074%7C7707c291b2534ee2bcd6557cdf0fea43%7C0%7C0%7C638926211107703388%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=zd4XFLaEr6WcwEMkeYQAfTVTFNceOTMce8Zb%2Fmvc%2B8w%3D&reserved=0<https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4>
>>
>> barbara



--
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From jeanjour at comcast.net  Thu Sep  4 16:57:18 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 19:57:18 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
Message-ID: <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>

In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.

Take care,
John

> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
> told me this:
> 
>  "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>  ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>  every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>  sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>  few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>  than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>  minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>  paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>  been torn to shreds!"
> 
> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> 
> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
> Tech Sq building.)
> -- 
> 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 vint at google.com  Thu Sep  4 17:25:20 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 20:25:20 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>

I had forgotten about that!

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




On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you
> connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of
> the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued
> when it would no longer fit on one page.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
> > On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> > previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
> > Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> > program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
> > told me this:
> >
> >  "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
> >  ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
> >  every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
> >  sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
> >  few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
> >  than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
> >  minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
> >  paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
> >  been torn to shreds!"
> >
> > They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
> > ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> >
> > Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
> > Tech Sq building.)
> > --
> > 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
>
> --
> 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  Thu Sep  4 17:27:06 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 20:27:06 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>

There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too popular.

> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
> 
> I had forgotten about that!
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>> 
>> Take care,
>> John
>> 
>> > On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
>> > previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
>> > Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>> > program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
>> > told me this:
>> > 
>> >  "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>> >  ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>> >  every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>> >  sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>> >  few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>> >  than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>> >  minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>> >  paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>> >  been torn to shreds!"
>> > 
>> > They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
>> > ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
>> > 
>> > Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>> > Tech Sq building.)
>> > -- 
>> > Internet-history mailing list
>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>> 
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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  Thu Sep  4 17:54:31 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 20:54:31 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
Message-ID: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>

I have the ARPANET Protocol Handbook (1978). It contains the Telnet Spec RFC 542 with NIC 18639. (Aug 1973). 
However, back in the early 90s, I downloaded all of the RFCs at the time from the RFC editor?s website.  In those files, RFC 542 is the 1973 FTP spec also Aug 1973!  

I have to note in my download, RFC numbers in that immediate range are a bit spotty and looking them up today for some it says they were never issued. 

Any ideas what is going on?  Alex McKenzie pointed out that back then official documents weren?t given RFC numbers, but just NIC numbers because RFCs were requests for *comment.* Official specs were not being circulated for comment. (I always thought that was a little strange.)

Take care,
John

From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Sep  4 18:23:36 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu,  4 Sep 2025 21:23:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
Message-ID: <20250905012336.97AFC18C075@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Lars Brinkhoff

Not important, but to correct the record:

    > the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's Tech Sq building.)

MIT didn't own any of the buildings in Tech Sq; they were all owned by
Cabot, Cabot and Forbes. I see that MIT once had an interest in Tech
Square, early on, but sold that interest in 1973 to its partner in
developing the complex, CCF.

The Datacomputer wasn't an MIT thing either; it was run by the Computer
Corporation of America.

	    Noel


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 18:32:57 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 13:32:57 +1200
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
In-Reply-To: <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
 <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
 <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>
 <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <d0e1c5d9-39eb-4c61-91cc-1ec37ed7c7af@gmail.com>

On 05-Sep-25 10:18, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   I don't think the European Research Internet History file is available any more on that site (Site appears to be gone/changing).? I think I found the work on the Amazon site. Please correct if I am wrong.
> https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Prehistory-European-Research-Networking-ebook/dp/B0792XPN4G

That's the same document. The address I gave worked from here (NZ) a few hours ago, but I haven't heard directly from the author recently (he used to work for me).

     Brian

> barbara
>      On Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 01:42:26 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   For anyone who doesn't already know, there are at least three already published sources on this topic, but all mainly concerned with the pre-commercial Internet in Europe (and with non-TCP/IP networks):
> 
> 1. doi.org/10.1002/9783527629336
> 
> 2. https://ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf
> 
> 3. http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4
> 
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>  ? ? Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 05-Sep-25 05:06, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
>> forwarded for Barbara
>>>
>>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
>>> Subject: Birth of European Internet
>>>
>>> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one video so apologize for the other things attached.? It sounds like there are other history related panels.
>>>
>>> https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4
>>>
>>> barbara
> 
> 
>    

From jack at 3kitty.org  Thu Sep  4 18:34:16 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 18:34:16 -0700
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>

This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental 
shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were 
subsequently designed.

In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by 
Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.? Human users connected to their 
computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which 
lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.? During that session, they might 
also do file transfers between two computers.? The ARPANET was pretty 
slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.? Sessions 
between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened 
or closed.

So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and 
responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers, 
mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.

Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e., 
mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short 
messages as well as long documents.? But email servers were pretty 
patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the 
characters they sent echoed immediately.

The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the 
IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and 
bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".?? In particular, there were 
IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and 
destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).? Those mechanisms created the 
reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable 
packet switching machinery.? The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit" 
reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now 
between two devices on the Internet.?? For anyone curious, the 1970s 
ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.

Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions 
in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.? 
I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same 
as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY 
was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short 
connections continuously happening.? The ARPANET wasn't designed for 
that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.

Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? Lots 
of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet, 
connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and 
one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something 
like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably a bit more 
colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had 
traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That made it my problem.

Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.? 
There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD included a new 
feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a 
status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.

The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.

Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of 
networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the 
model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead 
of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the 
transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet, 
in support of whatever humans wanted done.?? That was Lick's vision - 
everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with 
each other, and active all the time.? Pretty much seems like what we 
have today.

I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk 
traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.? There's 
probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.? But perhaps the 
growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.

Jack Haverty

On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too popular.
>
>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
>>
>> I had forgotten about that!
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>>>
>>> Take care,
>>> John
>>>
>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along with
>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
>>>> told me this:
>>>>
>>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>>>>   been torn to shreds!"
>>>>
>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
>>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
>>>>
>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>>>> Tech Sq building.)
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>>> -- 
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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

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From vint at google.com  Thu Sep  4 18:49:20 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:49:20 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggc+0WfcK0=R7Hx=pmpjwwXHpmYYqfKdQMOaVUt2ZMkeyg@mail.gmail.com>

something on the order of 80-85% of the bits flowing on the Internet today
are video  streaming, video conferencing.

v


On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 9:34?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> subsequently designed.
>
> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their
> computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which
> lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they might
> also do file transfers between two computers.  The ARPANET was pretty
> slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.  Sessions
> between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened
> or closed.
>
> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>
> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e.,
> mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short
> messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were pretty
> patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the
> characters they sent echoed immediately.
>
> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the
> IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and
> bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".   In particular, there were
> IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and
> destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those mechanisms created the
> reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable
> packet switching machinery.  The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit"
> reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now
> between two devices on the Internet.   For anyone curious, the 1970s
> ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
>
> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions
> in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.
> I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same
> as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY
> was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short
> connections continuously happening.  The ARPANET wasn't designed for
> that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
>
> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.  Lots
> of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet,
> connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and
> one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something
> like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more
> colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had
> traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my problem.
>
> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.
> There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new
> feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a
> status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.
>
> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> in support of whatever humans wanted done.   That was Lick's vision -
> everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> each other, and active all the time.  Pretty much seems like what we
> have today.
>
> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's
> probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the
> growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
>
> Jack Haverty
>
> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> popular.
> >
> >> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I had forgotten about that!
> >>
> >> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> >> Vint Cerf
> >> Google, LLC
> >> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> >> Reston, VA 20190
> >> +1 (571) 213 1346 <(571)%20213-1346>
> >>
> >>
> >> until further notice
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you
> connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of
> the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued
> when it would no longer fit on one page.
> >>>
> >>> Take care,
> >>> John
> >>>
> >>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> >>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along
> with
> >>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> >>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
> >>>> told me this:
> >>>>
> >>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
> >>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> logged
> >>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
> >>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since
> the
> >>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
> >>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
> >>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
> >>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that
> had
> >>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> >>>>
> >>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only
> an
> >>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> >>>>
> >>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
> >>>> Tech Sq building.)
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> 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
> >>> --
> >>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> 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
>
> --
> 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 ocl at gih.com  Thu Sep  4 18:50:26 2025
From: ocl at gih.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olivier_MJ_Cr=C3=A9pin-Leblond?=)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 02:50:26 +0100
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <d6dae2fc-d425-4ba8-b401-ee9a73e60eb5@gih.com>



On 04/09/2025 14:36, David Sitman via Internet-history wrote:
> Daniele asked me to try to distribute this to the list because his attempt
> appears to have been unsuccessful.
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniele Bovio [mailto:Bovio at aol.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 3:17 PM
> To:internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
>
> A couple of comments about AOL:
>
> I was hired by AOL in 1995 to build and manage the network operations for
> Europe, in order to allow the AOL-Bertelesmann joint venture to launch and
> operate AOL in UK, Germany and France. The first question I was asked by
> Suk S. Soo, ANS director, during my interview was: how do you make money on
> the Internet? Coming from the academic world as former Technical Director
> of the European Academic Research Network (EARN) and member of the EAT
> (EBONE Action Team) the group which designed and implemented the first
> pan-European Internet Backbone, you may imagine my answer was less than
> adequate, as for the first time I was confronted with the concept of a
> "commercial" Internet.
> As I quickly learned the AOL business model was to sell content/media to
> the residential market via a different mean than TV by allowing the
> households PCs to connect via the telephone network. The problem was that
> in 1995 there was no ISP in Europe yet able/interested to offer internet
> access to the residential market and so we had to build everything from
> scratch, i.e. a dial-up access network and transatlantic WAN circuits
> connecting to the US AOL data centers and, via ANS, to the US Internet.

The situation in the UK was a little more advanced with a handful of 
small ISPs like Demon Internet that had started its services in 1992. 
That was partly due to PIPEX that had started offering Internet Service 
in 1990 and was ready to sell to budding ISPs who had only one Internet 
option: to connect to the US.

Working on proprietary communication networks that were used for banks 
(and using X.25 + Leased Lines), I remember visiting a data centre in 
1993 or 1994 leased/owned (?) by WorldCom, that was located a couple 
hundred metres North East of Old Street roundabout (later called 
"silicon roundabout" and now no longer a roundabout), where one floor 
was used by the City's banks proprietary networks and servers which were 
already pretty full. We walked up to the next floor which was largely 
empty. The raised flooring had gaping holes here and there in order to 
pull cables through and in one corner of the room were no more than six 
or seven stacks. Three were empty. One stack was full, with some kind of 
PSU at the bottom, a couple of CISCO routers and three or four racks of 
USR modem cards with leds flashing, wired quite randomly - and a Dymo 
generated label saying "COMPUSERVE". Next to that stack was another 
stack that also had its PSU plus CISCO routers but only two racks of 
modems - probably no more than 16 or 20 modem cards in total... and a 
label "AOL" - even though the service was still sold as "America On 
Line". All of these modems were connected via a spaghetti-like mass of 
cables to the two other racks next to them on which rows and rows of 
standard BT telephone sockets had been fixed on a plank of chipboard and 
the telephone numbers scribbled using a pencil by each socket. "There's 
something like 40 telephone lines here", our host said.

We laughed at how artisan this all looked compared with the floor we 
were working on, where structured, coloured and labelled orthogonal 
cable routing was already in effect, with a mix of 10base2, 10baseT, 
whether through Ethernet or Krone blocks. But then the bank's floor was 
the "expensive" floor and the future Internet floor was the "cheap" 
floor... or at least that's what it looked like at the time. When I 
asked our host "so when are we doing to connect the floors together?", 
he laughed and said "are you joking? Banks don't want to get connected 
to this mess. Imagine the security risk!"

It took quite a few years to finally make the connection between the two 
floors - I was not around when it happened, but I am sure it was a big deal.

> So, indeed, the main target of AOL was not to be an ISP, but becoming one
> was an essential component of its business plan, and therefore, given its
> popularity, AOL became quickly one of the largest ISPs in the US and in
> Europe.

It also became the world's largest distributor of good quality coffee 
mug coasters in the shape of 3.5in floppy disks and CDs. :-)

>
> That the main target of AOL was not to be a pure ISP in the long run was
> clearly apparent when in 1998 AOL acquired CompuServe via a 3-parties
> agreement with WorldCom: AOL acquired the CompuServe subscribers and sold
> to WorldCom ANS and the entire CompuServe Network Services department.

Seeing how the services essentially used the same facilities, it 
probably made sense technically too.

>
> Network being a fundamental pillar of its business however AOL kept
> in-house the management of all the network infrastructure in the US and
> Europe, so still acting as an ISP to its users, but the cost was huge,
> particularly for
> Europe: in 1998 AOL spent $37M for transatlantic circuits and was
> projecting an expenditure of $58M by Y2K.

At the time I visited the data centre, I was quoted ?100K per annum for 
a 64K line from Old Street to MAE East so I can imagine the costs.

Thanks for sharing your struggles in dealing with European TelCos... I 
can see we young ones at the time were not the only ones struggling with 
them...

Kindest regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html



From j at shoch.com  Thu Sep  4 19:18:13 2025
From: j at shoch.com (John Shoch)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 19:18:13 -0700
Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <mailman.318.1757036979.8665.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
References: <mailman.318.1757036979.8665.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
Message-ID: <CAFrK2djfB+qLkced2RHF01JCOGHUbx-M1PY86ynFb41YXfXjXQ@mail.gmail.com>

Many of you may remember, decades ago, the hype on creating (or funding)
what would be the "Information Superhighway."
I used to quip:
  "In Southern California the 'Information Superhighway' means 500 channels
of on demand cable TV.
  In Northern California the 'Information Superhighway' means the Internet.
  And Northern California was right!"

But, looking back today, it seems that S. California won the day......

John


Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:49:20 -0400
From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
To: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
Cc: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
Message-ID:
        <CAHxHggc+0WfcK0=R7Hx=pmpjwwXHpmYYqfKdQMOaVUt2ZMkeyg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

something on the order of 80-85% of the bits flowing on the Internet today
are video  streaming, video conferencing.

v

On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 6:49?PM <internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org>
wrote:

> Send Internet-history mailing list submissions to
>         internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>         https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>         internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>         internet-history-owner at elists.isoc.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Internet-history digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: AOL in perspective (Jack Haverty)
>    2. Re: AOL in perspective (Vint Cerf)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 18:34:16 -0700
> From: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
> Message-ID: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c at 3kitty.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>
> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> subsequently designed.
>
> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.? Human users connected to their
> computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which
> lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.? During that session, they might
> also do file transfers between two computers.? The ARPANET was pretty
> slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.? Sessions
> between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened
> or closed.
>
> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>
> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e.,
> mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short
> messages as well as long documents.? But email servers were pretty
> patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the
> characters they sent echoed immediately.
>
> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the
> IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and
> bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".?? In particular, there were
> IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and
> destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).? Those mechanisms created the
> reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable
> packet switching machinery.? The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit"
> reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now
> between two devices on the Internet.?? For anyone curious, the 1970s
> ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
>
> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions
> in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.?
> I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same
> as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY
> was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short
> connections continuously happening.? The ARPANET wasn't designed for
> that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
>
> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? Lots
> of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet,
> connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and
> one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something
> like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably a bit more
> colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had
> traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That made it my problem.
>
> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.?
> There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD included a new
> feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a
> status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.
>
> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release
> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> in support of whatever humans wanted done.?? That was Lick's vision -
> everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> each other, and active all the time.? Pretty much seems like what we
> have today.
>
> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.? There's
> probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.? But perhaps the
> growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
>
> Jack Haverty
>
> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> popular.
> >
> >> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I had forgotten about that!
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you
> connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of
> the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued
> when it would no longer fit on one page.
> >>>
> >>> Take care,
> >>> John
> >>>
> >>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> >>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along
> with
> >>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> >>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
> >>>> told me this:
> >>>>
> >>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
> >>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> logged
> >>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
> >>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since
> the
> >>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
> >>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
> >>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
> >>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that
> had
> >>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> >>>>
> >>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only
> an
> >>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> >>>>
> >>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
> >>>> Tech Sq building.)
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> 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
> >>> --
> >>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> 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
>
> -------------- next part --------------
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> http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20250904/752e17f2/attachment-0001.asc
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:49:20 -0400
> From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
> To: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
> Cc: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHxHggc+0WfcK0=R7Hx=
> pmpjwwXHpmYYqfKdQMOaVUt2ZMkeyg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> something on the order of 80-85% of the bits flowing on the Internet today
> are video  streaming, video conferencing.
>
> v
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 9:34?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> > shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> > subsequently designed.
> >
> > In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> > Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their
> > computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which
> > lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they might
> > also do file transfers between two computers.  The ARPANET was pretty
> > slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.  Sessions
> > between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened
> > or closed.
> >
> > So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> > responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> > mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
> >
> > Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e.,
> > mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short
> > messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were pretty
> > patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the
> > characters they sent echoed immediately.
> >
> > The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the
> > IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and
> > bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".   In particular, there were
> > IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and
> > destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those mechanisms created the
> > reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable
> > packet switching machinery.  The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit"
> > reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now
> > between two devices on the Internet.   For anyone curious, the 1970s
> > ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
> >
> > Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions
> > in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.
> > I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same
> > as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY
> > was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short
> > connections continuously happening.  The ARPANET wasn't designed for
> > that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
> >
> > Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> > ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.  Lots
> > of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet,
> > connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and
> > one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something
> > like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more
> > colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had
> > traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my
> problem.
> >
> > Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> > released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.
> > There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new
> > feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a
> > status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of
> course.
> >
> > The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> > release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> > propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> > gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> > ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> > order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >
> > Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> > networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> > model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> > of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> > transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> > in support of whatever humans wanted done.   That was Lick's vision -
> > everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> > each other, and active all the time.  Pretty much seems like what we
> > have today.
> >
> > I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> > traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's
> > probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the
> > growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
> >
> > Jack Haverty
> >
> > On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > > There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> > popular.
> > >
> > >> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I had forgotten about that!
> > >>
> > >> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> > >> Vint Cerf
> > >> Google, LLC
> > >> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> > >> Reston, VA 20190
> > >> +1 (571) 213 1346 <(571)%20213-1346>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> until further notice
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > wrote:
> > >>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you
> > connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map
> of
> > the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued
> > when it would no longer fit on one page.
> > >>>
> > >>> Take care,
> > >>> John
> > >>>
> > >>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> > >>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along
> > with
> > >>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> > >>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.
> Marc
> > >>>> told me this:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the
> whole
> > >>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> > logged
> > >>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype
> machine
> > >>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since
> > the
> > >>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get
> more
> > >>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them
> once a
> > >>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to
> find
> > >>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that
> > had
> > >>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> > >>>>
> > >>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking
> only
> > an
> > >>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in
> MIT's
> > >>>> Tech Sq building.)
> > >>>> --
> > >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> > >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > 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
> > >>> --
> > >>> Internet-history mailing list
> > >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > 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
> >
> > --
> > 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
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Subject: Digest Footer
>
> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
> ***********************************************
>


From pugs78 at gmail.com  Thu Sep  4 19:31:38 2025
From: pugs78 at gmail.com (Tom Lyon)
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 19:31:38 -0700
Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <CAFrK2djfB+qLkced2RHF01JCOGHUbx-M1PY86ynFb41YXfXjXQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.318.1757036979.8665.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
 <CAFrK2djfB+qLkced2RHF01JCOGHUbx-M1PY86ynFb41YXfXjXQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CANxB0bTYJ-oeJrWGnkCXBuhiBdeZa-V6wEPj8tE+8ASnjTtkBg@mail.gmail.com>

Not just 500 channels, but 500 separate subscriptions. Sigh.

On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 7:18?PM John Shoch via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Many of you may remember, decades ago, the hype on creating (or funding)
> what would be the "Information Superhighway."
> I used to quip:
>   "In Southern California the 'Information Superhighway' means 500 channels
> of on demand cable TV.
>   In Northern California the 'Information Superhighway' means the Internet.
>   And Northern California was right!"
>
> But, looking back today, it seems that S. California won the day......
>
> John
>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:49:20 -0400
> From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
> To: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
> Cc: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHxHggc+0WfcK0=R7Hx=
> pmpjwwXHpmYYqfKdQMOaVUt2ZMkeyg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> something on the order of 80-85% of the bits flowing on the Internet today
> are video  streaming, video conferencing.
>
> v
>
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 6:49?PM <internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Send Internet-history mailing list submissions to
> >         internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> >         https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> >         internet-history-request at elists.isoc.org
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> >         internet-history-owner at elists.isoc.org
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of Internet-history digest..."
> >
> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Re: AOL in perspective (Jack Haverty)
> >    2. Re: AOL in perspective (Vint Cerf)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 18:34:16 -0700
> > From: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
> > To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
> > Message-ID: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c at 3kitty.org>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
> >
> > This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> > shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> > subsequently designed.
> >
> > In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> > Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.? Human users connected to their
> > computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which
> > lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.? During that session, they might
> > also do file transfers between two computers.? The ARPANET was pretty
> > slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.? Sessions
> > between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened
> > or closed.
> >
> > So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> > responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> > mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
> >
> > Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e.,
> > mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short
> > messages as well as long documents.? But email servers were pretty
> > patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the
> > characters they sent echoed immediately.
> >
> > The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the
> > IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and
> > bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".?? In particular, there were
> > IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and
> > destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).? Those mechanisms created the
> > reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable
> > packet switching machinery.? The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit"
> > reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now
> > between two devices on the Internet.?? For anyone curious, the 1970s
> > ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
> >
> > Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions
> > in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.?
> > I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same
> > as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY
> > was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short
> > connections continuously happening.? The ARPANET wasn't designed for
> > that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
> >
> > Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> > ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? Lots
> > of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet,
> > connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and
> > one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something
> > like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably a bit more
> > colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had
> > traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That made it my
> problem.
> >
> > Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> > released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.?
> > There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD included a new
> > feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a
> > status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of
> course.
> >
> > The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> > release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release
> > propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> > gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> > ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> > order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >
> > Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> > networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> > model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> > of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> > transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> > in support of whatever humans wanted done.?? That was Lick's vision -
> > everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> > each other, and active all the time.? Pretty much seems like what we
> > have today.
> >
> > I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> > traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.? There's
> > probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.? But perhaps the
> > growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
> >
> > Jack Haverty
> >
> > On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > > There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> > popular.
> > >
> > >> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I had forgotten about that!
> > >>
> > >> 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
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > wrote:
> > >>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you
> > connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map
> of
> > the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued
> > when it would no longer fit on one page.
> > >>>
> > >>> Take care,
> > >>> John
> > >>>
> > >>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > wrote:
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> > >>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along
> > with
> > >>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> > >>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.
> Marc
> > >>>> told me this:
> > >>>>
> > >>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the
> whole
> > >>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> > logged
> > >>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype
> machine
> > >>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since
> > the
> > >>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get
> more
> > >>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them
> once a
> > >>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to
> find
> > >>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that
> > had
> > >>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> > >>>>
> > >>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking
> only
> > an
> > >>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in
> MIT's
> > >>>> Tech Sq building.)
> > >>>> --
> > >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> > >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > 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
> > >>> --
> > >>> Internet-history mailing list
> > >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > 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
> >
> > -------------- next part --------------
> > A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
> > Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
> > Type: application/pgp-signature
> > Size: 665 bytes
> > Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
> > URL: <
> >
> http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20250904/752e17f2/attachment-0001.asc
> > >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 21:49:20 -0400
> > From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
> > To: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
> > Cc: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > Subject: Re: [ih] AOL in perspective
> > Message-ID:
> >         <CAHxHggc+0WfcK0=R7Hx=
> > pmpjwwXHpmYYqfKdQMOaVUt2ZMkeyg at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > something on the order of 80-85% of the bits flowing on the Internet
> today
> > are video  streaming, video conferencing.
> >
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 9:34?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > > This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> > > shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> > > subsequently designed.
> > >
> > > In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> > > Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their
> > > computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session",
> which
> > > lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they might
> > > also do file transfers between two computers.  The ARPANET was pretty
> > > slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.  Sessions
> > > between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened
> > > or closed.
> > >
> > > So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> > > responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> > > mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
> > >
> > > Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e.,
> > > mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short
> > > messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were pretty
> > > patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the
> > > characters they sent echoed immediately.
> > >
> > > The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the
> > > IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and
> > > bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".   In particular, there
> were
> > > IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and
> > > destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those mechanisms created
> the
> > > reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying
> unreliable
> > > packet switching machinery.  The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit"
> > > reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now
> > > between two devices on the Internet.   For anyone curious, the 1970s
> > > ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
> > >
> > > Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern.
> Sessions
> > > in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.
> > > I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT,
> same
> > > as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY
> > > was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short
> > > connections continuously happening.  The ARPANET wasn't designed for
> > > that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
> > >
> > > Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> > > ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> Lots
> > > of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet,
> > > connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and
> > > one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something
> > > like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more
> > > colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had
> > > traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my
> > problem.
> > >
> > > Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> > > released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.
> > > There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new
> > > feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated
> a
> > > status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of
> > course.
> > >
> > > The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> > > release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> > > propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> > > gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> > > ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> > > order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> > >
> > > Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> > > networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> > > model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> > > of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> > > transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> > > in support of whatever humans wanted done.   That was Lick's vision -
> > > everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> > > each other, and active all the time.  Pretty much seems like what we
> > > have today.
> > >
> > > I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> > > traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's
> > > probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the
> > > growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
> > >
> > > Jack Haverty
> > >
> > > On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > > > There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> > > popular.
> > > >
> > > >> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >> I had forgotten about that!
> > > >>
> > > >> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
> > > >> Vint Cerf
> > > >> Google, LLC
> > > >> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
> > > >> Reston, VA 20190
> > > >> +1 (571) 213 1346 <(571)%20213-1346>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> until further notice
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <
> > > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > > wrote:
> > > >>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If
> you
> > > connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map
> > of
> > > the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was
> discontinued
> > > when it would no longer fit on one page.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Take care,
> > > >>> John
> > > >>>
> > > >>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
> > > internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> > > wrote:
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He
> had
> > > >>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group.  He (along
> > > with
> > > >>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> > > >>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.
> > Marc
> > > >>>> told me this:
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the
> > whole
> > > >>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> > > logged
> > > >>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype
> > machine
> > > >>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system
> since
> > > the
> > > >>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get
> > more
> > > >>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them
> > once a
> > > >>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to
> > find
> > > >>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons
> that
> > > had
> > > >>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking
> > only
> > > an
> > > >>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in
> > MIT's
> > > >>>> Tech Sq building.)
> > > >>>> --
> > > >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> > > >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > > 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
> > > >>> --
> > > >>> Internet-history mailing list
> > > >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> > > 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
> > >
> > > --
> > > 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
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Subject: Digest Footer
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > End of Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
> > ***********************************************
> >
> --
> 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
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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Thu Sep  4 19:36:05 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Fri,  5 Sep 2025 02:36:05 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <CANxB0bTYJ-oeJrWGnkCXBuhiBdeZa-V6wEPj8tE+8ASnjTtkBg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <mailman.318.1757036979.8665.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
 <CAFrK2djfB+qLkced2RHF01JCOGHUbx-M1PY86ynFb41YXfXjXQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CANxB0bTYJ-oeJrWGnkCXBuhiBdeZa-V6wEPj8tE+8ASnjTtkBg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f62115de-da9a-4a72-8496-c5e4c6de4614@dcrocker.net>

On 9/4/2025 7:31 PM, Tom Lyon via Internet-history wrote:
> YUNot just 500 channels, but 500 separate subscriptions. Sigh.


You are ignoring the wonderful benefits of industry consolidation.

These days, you only need about 150 subscriptions for the 500 channels.

d/

ps. But for messaging, you still need 15 or 20 subscriptions and at 
least 10 apps.

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From lars at eggert.org  Fri Sep  5 00:08:13 2025
From: lars at eggert.org (Lars Eggert)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 10:08:13 +0300
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <22794482-41C1-4EC1-A2E5-7A2B1A20627B@eggert.org>

Hi,

I suggest emailing rfc-interest at rfc-editor.org <mailto:rfc-interest at rfc-editor.org>, which includes the RFC Production Center (what was the "RFC Editor" function previously). Folks there might know.

Thanks,
Lars


> On Sep 5, 2025, at 03:54, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I have the ARPANET Protocol Handbook (1978). It contains the Telnet Spec RFC 542 with NIC 18639. (Aug 1973). 
> However, back in the early 90s, I downloaded all of the RFCs at the time from the RFC editor?s website.  In those files, RFC 542 is the 1973 FTP spec also Aug 1973!  
> 
> I have to note in my download, RFC numbers in that immediate range are a bit spotty and looking them up today for some it says they were never issued. 
> 
> Any ideas what is going on?  Alex McKenzie pointed out that back then official documents weren?t given RFC numbers, but just NIC numbers because RFCs were requests for *comment.* Official specs were not being circulated for comment. (I always thought that was a little strange.)
> 
> 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

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From jim at deitygraveyard.com  Fri Sep  5 02:14:31 2025
From: jim at deitygraveyard.com (Jim Carpenter)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 05:14:31 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>

The handbook from January 1978?
https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA052594.xhtml

They just messed things up in the handbook. They wrote RFC 542 when
they meant 854. RFC 542 is for FTP, now and then, which is why they
correctly wrote RFC 542 for FTP starting on page 265 (pdf pg. 277).

Accidents happen, especially with lots of numbers floating around.

Jim


On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 8:54?PM John Day via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> I have the ARPANET Protocol Handbook (1978). It contains the Telnet Spec RFC 542 with NIC 18639. (Aug 1973).
> However, back in the early 90s, I downloaded all of the RFCs at the time from the RFC editor?s website.  In those files, RFC 542 is the 1973 FTP spec also Aug 1973!
>
> I have to note in my download, RFC numbers in that immediate range are a bit spotty and looking them up today for some it says they were never issued.
>
> Any ideas what is going on?  Alex McKenzie pointed out that back then official documents weren?t given RFC numbers, but just NIC numbers because RFCs were requests for *comment.* Official specs were not being circulated for comment. (I always thought that was a little strange.)


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 02:36:32 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 05:36:32 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>

Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the official Aug 1973 version.

I will contact the RFC-editor.

Take care,
John

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 05:14, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com> wrote:
> 
> The handbook from January 1978?
> https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/ADA052594.xhtml
> 
> They just messed things up in the handbook. They wrote RFC 542 when
> they meant 854. RFC 542 is for FTP, now and then, which is why they
> correctly wrote RFC 542 for FTP starting on page 265 (pdf pg. 277).
> 
> Accidents happen, especially with lots of numbers floating around.
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 8:54?PM John Day via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I have the ARPANET Protocol Handbook (1978). It contains the Telnet Spec RFC 542 with NIC 18639. (Aug 1973).
>> However, back in the early 90s, I downloaded all of the RFCs at the time from the RFC editor?s website.  In those files, RFC 542 is the 1973 FTP spec also Aug 1973!
>> 
>> I have to note in my download, RFC numbers in that immediate range are a bit spotty and looking them up today for some it says they were never issued.
>> 
>> Any ideas what is going on?  Alex McKenzie pointed out that back then official documents weren?t given RFC numbers, but just NIC numbers because RFCs were requests for *comment.* Official specs were not being circulated for comment. (I always thought that was a little strange.)



From jim at deitygraveyard.com  Fri Sep  5 03:17:09 2025
From: jim at deitygraveyard.com (Jim Carpenter)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 06:17:09 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>

Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.

But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
TELNET was just a typo.

Jim

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the official Aug 1973 version.
>


From ycor at iit.demokritos.gr  Fri Sep  5 03:49:24 2025
From: ycor at iit.demokritos.gr (Yannis Korovesis)
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:49:24 +0300
Subject: [ih] Fwd: Birth of European Internet
In-Reply-To: <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <1598320869.2277931.1757005160616@mail.yahoo.com>
 <13156D64-9419-4AB7-88E9-74E6156638DF@icloud.com>
 <1e84b818-84a3-422e-925a-5be50e12d567@gmail.com>
 <1769459071.112301.1757024282408@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <31ff71c6-55c8-4156-9b35-677b9d973c7d@iit.demokritos.gr>

Link also works from here GR, site loads slow


http://ictconsulting.ch/papers.html

????? ??? BlueMail ??? Android ?

???? 5 ??? 2025, 01:18 ,??? ??? 01:18 ,Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> ??????:
>I don't think the European Research Internet History file is available
>any more on that site (Site appears to be gone/changing).? I think I
>found the work on the Amazon site. Please correct if I am wrong.
>https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Prehistory-European-Research-Networking-ebook/dp/B0792XPN4G
>barbara
>On Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 01:42:26 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter
>via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
> 
>For anyone who doesn't already know, there are at least three already
>published sources on this topic, but all mainly concerned with the
>pre-commercial Internet in Europe (and with non-TCP/IP networks):
>
>1. doi.org/10.1002/9783527629336
>
>2.
>https://ictconsulting.ch/reports/European-Research-Internet-History.pdf
>
>3.
>http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-1-4471-5024-4
>
>Regards/Ng? mihi
>? ? Brian Carpenter
>
>On 05-Sep-25 05:06, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
>> forwarded for Barbara
>>>
>>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2025 at 09:31:55 AM PDT
>>> Subject: Birth of European Internet
>>>
>>> Tripped on another link to a RIPE panel in 2024 on the birth of the
>Internet in Europe. I wasn't able to quickly just get a link to the one
>video so apologize for the other things attached.? It sounds like there
>are other history related panels.
>>>
>>> https://youtu.be/RAyxbwZzjTw?si=Nus0K8VcsMrCpqL4
>>>
>>> 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


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 04:56:27 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 07:56:27 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>

Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.

As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents were published separately.

Take care,
John

* Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com> wrote:
> 
> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
> 
> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
> TELNET was just a typo.
> 
> Jim
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the official Aug 1973 version.
>> 



From steve at shinkuro.com  Fri Sep  5 05:05:54 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:05:54 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>

FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later called
NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't recall
seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.

Steve

Sent by a Verified

sender


On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the FTP
> meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>
> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
> were published separately.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing apples
> into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>
> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
> >
> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
> > TELNET was just a typo.
> >
> > Jim
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the
> official Aug 1973 version.
> >>
>
> --
> 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  Fri Sep  5 05:15:42 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:15:42 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>

I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.

I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)  In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)

Take care,
John

* And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly decade ahead of everyone else.

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> 
> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>> 
>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents were published separately.
>> 
>> Take care,
>> John
>> 
>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>> 
>> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>> > 
>> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>> > TELNET was just a typo.
>> > 
>> > Jim
>> > 
>> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
>> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the official Aug 1973 version.
>> >> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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 vgcerf at gmail.com  Fri Sep  5 05:23:02 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:23:02 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>

I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
Really amazing instruction set.

V

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>
> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>
> Take care,
> John
>
> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
> decade ahead of everyone else.
>
> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> >
> > FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later called
> NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't recall
> seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> wrote:
> >> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the FTP
> meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
> >>
> >> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
> were published separately.
> >>
> >> Take care,
> >> John
> >>
> >> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
> >>
> >> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
> >> >
> >> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
> >> > TELNET was just a typo.
> >> >
> >> > Jim
> >> >
> >> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
> >> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
> the official Aug 1973 version.
> >> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Internet-history mailing list
> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> 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
>
> --
> 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  Fri Sep  5 05:44:44 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:44:44 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>

It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11 OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.

I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.

Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD. A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.

Why can?t we build systems like that any more.


> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford. Really amazing instruction set.
> 
> V
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>> 
>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)  In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>> 
>> Take care,
>> John
>> 
>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly decade ahead of everyone else.
>> 
>> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com <mailto:steve at shinkuro.com>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>> > 
>> > Steve
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>> wrote:
>> >> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>> >> 
>> >> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents were published separately.
>> >> 
>> >> Take care,
>> >> John
>> >> 
>> >> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>> >> 
>> >> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>>> wrote:
>> >> > 
>> >> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>> >> > 
>> >> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>> >> > TELNET was just a typo.
>> >> > 
>> >> > Jim
>> >> > 
>> >> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>>> wrote:
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May 1983.
>> >> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on the official Aug 1973 version.
>> >> >> 
>> >> 
>> >> -- 
>> >> Internet-history mailing list
>> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org> <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>> 
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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 dhc at dcrocker.net  Fri Sep  5 06:17:56 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Fri,  5 Sep 2025 13:17:56 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <53d212f1-52ef-4b76-b395-af3a8cccb038@dcrocker.net>

On 9/5/2025 5:05 AM, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.


In the early 1970s, email formats were highly variable.? Efforts, such 
as RFC 561, to get them to be consistent did not gain traction.

So when we did RFC 733, in 1977, we wanted to communicate a clear and 
strong intent to get everyone on the same format page.

We petitioned ARPA (Steve Walker) to have the document's title 
communicate this and he agreed.

As I recall, the assertive nature of the title, 'Standard for the format 
of ARPA network text message' got a significant amount of push-back, 
when the RFC was published.


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From steve at shinkuro.com  Fri Sep  5 06:20:13 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 09:20:13 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>

I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
and its elegant architecture.

It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
(Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)

Steve

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>
> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>
> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>
> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>
>
> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
> Really amazing instruction set.
>
> V
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>
>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>
>> Take care,
>> John
>>
>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>
>> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>> >
>> > Steve
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>> wrote:
>> >> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>> >>
>> >> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>> were published separately.
>> >>
>> >> Take care,
>> >> John
>> >>
>> >> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>> >>
>> >> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>> >> >
>> >> > But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>> >> > TELNET was just a typo.
>> >> >
>> >> > Jim
>> >> >
>> >> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>> 1983.
>> >> >> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>> >> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Internet-history mailing list
>> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
>> 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
>>
>> --
>> 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 nigel at channelisles.net  Fri Sep  5 06:35:10 2025
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 14:35:10 +0100
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>

I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975 
aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer 
science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)


The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and 
elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.

The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.

On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
> and its elegant architecture.
>
> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
>
> Steve
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>>
>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>>
>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>>
>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>>
>>
>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
>> Really amazing instruction set.
>>
>> V
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>>
>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>>
>>> Take care,
>>> John
>>>
>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>>
>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>>>> Steve
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>>> wrote:
>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>>> were published separately.
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jim
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>>> 1983.
>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>>>>> --
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
>>> 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
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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 steve at shinkuro.com  Fri Sep  5 06:46:59 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 09:46:59 -0400
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re:  Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvK1pU-vmpO4+DJoVgyvummuK384049s+FtWnPm0BY8t5Q@mail.gmail.com>

Originally, I used the term Host-Host protocol, and I used the term Network
Control *Program *to designate the software that had to be added to the
operating system to make the Arpanet accessible to user level programs.  I
felt it was important to highlight the need for operating system
incisions.  And, indeed, when we explained the proposed design to the
Multics guys, they declared they could not implement it.  I was quite
surprised because I had taken inspiration from the Multics architecture.
(It turned out that the two guys who attended our meeting weren't
authorized to make modifications at Ring zero ;)

After a while, there wasn't a need to refer to the software incision into
the operating system, and the vanilla term "Host-Host" lost traction.
Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network Control
*Protocol* and that became the designation for the host-host protocol.  For
anyone not familiar with the details, that protocol provided a simple
stream.  TCP was a direct replacement, albeit with some key differences and
improvements.  IP, on the other hand, was an additional layer, underneath
TCP, that provided the glue connecting independently operated networks.

Steve


On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:15?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>  In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.
>


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Sep  5 07:40:38 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri,  5 Sep 2025 10:40:38 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re:  Confusion in the RFCs)
Message-ID: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Steve Crocker

    > Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network
    > Control *Protocol*

When there was only one protocol stack running on the ARPANET (HHP et al), it
didn't need a name. When the second one (TCP/IP) appeared, we needed names
for each, and we started using 'NCP' as the name for the first one ('NCP' was
sort of in use already to refer to that collection of things, as the name for
the software that implemented it), and backronymed it to the more
sensible/appropriate 'Network Control Protocol'.

Fun fact: the CHAOS people at MIT retained, for some years, 'NCP', and the
old expansion of it, as the name for the CHAOS protocol implementation; for
example, see:

  https://github.com/bill790/chaos/blob/master/ncp.c

	Noel


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 07:45:34 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 10:45:34 -0400
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re:  Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <763A0CB9-F8B4-4799-B147-5E765ACB3FE3@comcast.net>

So, you are saying that NCP didn?t come into use until 74-76? First TCP spec I saw was in mid-75.

I can?t cite anything off the top of my head but I think it was in use well before that.
Someone else will remember.
John

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:40, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Steve Crocker
> 
>> Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network
>> Control *Protocol*
> 
> When there was only one protocol stack running on the ARPANET (HHP et al), it
> didn't need a name. When the second one (TCP/IP) appeared, we needed names
> for each, and we started using 'NCP' as the name for the first one ('NCP' was
> sort of in use already to refer to that collection of things, as the name for
> the software that implemented it), and backronymed it to the more
> sensible/appropriate 'Network Control Protocol'.
> 
> Fun fact: the CHAOS people at MIT retained, for some years, 'NCP', and the
> old expansion of it, as the name for the CHAOS protocol implementation; for
> example, see:
> 
>  https://github.com/bill790/chaos/blob/master/ncp.c
> 
> 	Noel
> -- 
> 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  Fri Sep  5 07:59:29 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 10:59:29 -0400
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re:  Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <763A0CB9-F8B4-4799-B147-5E765ACB3FE3@comcast.net>
References: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <763A0CB9-F8B4-4799-B147-5E765ACB3FE3@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <AC9D29A5-FE1B-4C4F-9F16-6807745E5F7D@comcast.net>

Well, a little earlier but indicates it was in wide use prior to Oct 74.

Postel, J. B., Survey of Network Control Programs in the ARPA Computer Network, MITRE Technical Report #6722, October 1974, Revision 1, 89 pp.

BTW, this is a very important document. There is an important result in it even though Jon didn?t note it . 

Reading it is clear that NCPs fall into two categories: big and little. The difference was those OSs with good IPC had small NCP implementations.



> On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:45, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> So, you are saying that NCP didn?t come into use until 74-76? First TCP spec I saw was in mid-75.
> 
> I can?t cite anything off the top of my head but I think it was in use well before that.
> Someone else will remember.
> John
> 
>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:40, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> From: Steve Crocker
>> 
>>> Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network
>>> Control *Protocol*
>> 
>> When there was only one protocol stack running on the ARPANET (HHP et al), it
>> didn't need a name. When the second one (TCP/IP) appeared, we needed names
>> for each, and we started using 'NCP' as the name for the first one ('NCP' was
>> sort of in use already to refer to that collection of things, as the name for
>> the software that implemented it), and backronymed it to the more
>> sensible/appropriate 'Network Control Protocol'.
>> 
>> Fun fact: the CHAOS people at MIT retained, for some years, 'NCP', and the
>> old expansion of it, as the name for the CHAOS protocol implementation; for
>> example, see:
>> 
>> https://github.com/bill790/chaos/blob/master/ncp.c
>> 
>> 	Noel
>> -- 
>> 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
> 
> -- 
> 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 clemc at ccc.com  Fri Sep  5 08:04:14 2025
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 11:04:14 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2OWLiZK3Pr8c0PWMJ8=Oeg3NQNRDcE+okbExVg63A8=pA@mail.gmail.com>

below.. [note this really belongs in COFF, as it's less Internet History
and more reminiscent of us old guys]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>
Fascinating - did that survive? Could you tell us more? I did not know that
someone had tried to make an ESPOL for the 11. Was it a cross compiler, and
what was the native OS?  I grew up on BLISS and C, of course, and knew
about other system languages like BCPL and concurrent Pascal that targeted
the 11, but I never knew about an implementation of ESPOL for it.

>
> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>
No doubt, the B5000 was the first "high-level" system design, incorporating
everything you describe, along with some interesting support for its
multi-tasking concepts. [I remember trying to wrap my head around the idea
of how a cactus stack worked].  One of my old colleagues at Tektronix was
Bill Price, who was earlier one of the MCP's designers and implementors,
and he took great pride in schooling us youngsters in those days.  He
pointed out to us that if Burroughs' management had had any real idea of
what they were doing and how far out it was and different from anything
else being done at IBM in White Plains or Remington Rand/Eckert-Mauchly in
North Philly, he is pretty sure they would have shut it down.

 As Bill explained it to us (then UNIX guys in the late 1970s), the
designers of the MCP were very rigorous in their design, but had a
great sense of humor and used really marvelous names for some of the data
structures and kernel tasks.  The MCP was extremely well structured, but
when they ended up with something that did not quite fit in their
structured design, they gave the special case to Bill to deal with in his
"Old Weird Harold" kernel task, which, among other things, maintained "the
bed," which was a list of tasks awaiting actions.  One of my favorite
actions was when Bill shared the comments from some of the code he still
had, which revealed that Old Weird Harold was responsible for "monitoring
the bed for something to fork."

Also, one minor correction, while I do believe that Burroughs had an
LA-based team, I am under the impression that most of the work on both HS
and SW for the B5000 and B6000 families was done in Philadelphia (well,
Paoli to be more precise).

>
> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>
Yeah, they got it about language-driven architectures.  My favorite
Burroughs machine was their mid-range B1700, which they targeted at small
businesses. This machine changed its microcode on the fly depending on the
application (*i.e.,* it had Cobol microcode, Algol microcode, etc.).  We
studied this system in great detail in Dan Siewiorek's computer
architecture class when I was an undergrad.   It was a very cool machine
that really learned a great deal about how microcoding could be used (and
some of you have heard my story during my UCB grad qualifiers when I was
asked a question about microcoding and used the B1700 to answer it).

>
> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>
Sadly, because often simpler is much less costly, and as I have said many
times,* "Simple Economics always beats Sophisticated Architecture."*


From steve at shinkuro.com  Fri Sep  5 08:34:56 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 11:34:56 -0400
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re: Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <AC9D29A5-FE1B-4C4F-9F16-6807745E5F7D@comcast.net>
References: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <763A0CB9-F8B4-4799-B147-5E765ACB3FE3@comcast.net>
 <AC9D29A5-FE1B-4C4F-9F16-6807745E5F7D@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvK9mMjDs=ETsdRn6faZc9W3Sk7pAhVuuLBwT4Kv_qxW6g@mail.gmail.com>

John,

Thanks!  I don't think I ever saw that survey.  October 1974 was an
interesting time for me.  I had finished three years at DARPA, where my
primary focus was on AI, not networking.  I had gotten married in September
and was on an extended vacation/honeymoon and cross country to move to
ISI.  We were on the road for about six weeks, from mid September to early
November.  And when I arrived at ISI, I plunged directly into formal
methods.

The division of Network Control Programs into big and little and their
correlation to the quality of existing interprocess communication
facilities seems exactly right to me.

Steve


On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 10:59?AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Well, a little earlier but indicates it was in wide use prior to Oct 74.
>
> Postel, J. B., Survey of Network Control Programs in the ARPA Computer
> Network, MITRE Technical Report #6722, October 1974, Revision 1, 89 pp.
>
> BTW, this is a very important document. There is an important result in it
> even though Jon didn?t note it .
>
> Reading it is clear that NCPs fall into two categories: big and little.
> The difference was those OSs with good IPC had small NCP implementations.
>
>
>
> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:45, John Day via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > So, you are saying that NCP didn?t come into use until 74-76? First TCP
> spec I saw was in mid-75.
> >
> > I can?t cite anything off the top of my head but I think it was in use
> well before that.
> > Someone else will remember.
> > John
> >
> >> On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:40, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> From: Steve Crocker
> >>
> >>> Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network
> >>> Control *Protocol*
> >>
> >> When there was only one protocol stack running on the ARPANET (HHP et
> al), it
> >> didn't need a name. When the second one (TCP/IP) appeared, we needed
> names
> >> for each, and we started using 'NCP' as the name for the first one
> ('NCP' was
> >> sort of in use already to refer to that collection of things, as the
> name for
> >> the software that implemented it), and backronymed it to the more
> >> sensible/appropriate 'Network Control Protocol'.
> >>
> >> Fun fact: the CHAOS people at MIT retained, for some years, 'NCP', and
> the
> >> old expansion of it, as the name for the CHAOS protocol implementation;
> for
> >> example, see:
> >>
> >> https://github.com/bill790/chaos/blob/master/ncp.c
> >>
> >>      Noel
> >> --
> >> 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
> >
> > --
> > 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
>
> --
> 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 jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 08:35:49 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 11:35:49 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
 <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>

DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.

Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the MCP.

Yes, it was an impressive machine.

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975 aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
> 
> 
> The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
> 
> The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
> 
> On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
>> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
>> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
>> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
>> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
>> and its elegant architecture.
>> 
>> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
>> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
>> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
>> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
>> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
>> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
>> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
>> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
>>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>>> 
>>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
>>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
>>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
>>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>>> 
>>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
>>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
>>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
>>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
>>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
>>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
>>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
>>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>>> 
>>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
>>> Really amazing instruction set.
>>> 
>>> V
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>>> 
>>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>>>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>>> 
>>>> Take care,
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>>>>> Steve
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>>>> were published separately.
>>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>> John
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
>>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Jim
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>>>> 1983.
>>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
>>>> 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
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> 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
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>>> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
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> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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> Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 08:53:05 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 11:53:05 -0400
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re: Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvK9mMjDs=ETsdRn6faZc9W3Sk7pAhVuuLBwT4Kv_qxW6g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <763A0CB9-F8B4-4799-B147-5E765ACB3FE3@comcast.net>
 <AC9D29A5-FE1B-4C4F-9F16-6807745E5F7D@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9mMjDs=ETsdRn6faZc9W3Sk7pAhVuuLBwT4Kv_qxW6g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B7E60700-06A7-4F6F-80D0-AB97EC39F7B4@comcast.net>

;-) It looks like one of *those* deliverables (you know what I mean) put into a contract that we would have considered ?make-work? for the bureaucrats.  ;-)  But like I said, there is an important result in it.

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 11:34, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> 
> John,
> 
> Thanks!  I don't think I ever saw that survey.  October 1974 was an interesting time for me.  I had finished three years at DARPA, where my primary focus was on AI, not networking.  I had gotten married in September and was on an extended vacation/honeymoon and cross country to move to ISI.  We were on the road for about six weeks, from mid September to early November.  And when I arrived at ISI, I plunged directly into formal methods.
> 
> The division of Network Control Programs into big and little and their correlation to the quality of existing interprocess communication facilities seems exactly right to me.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 10:59?AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> Well, a little earlier but indicates it was in wide use prior to Oct 74.
>> 
>> Postel, J. B., Survey of Network Control Programs in the ARPA Computer Network, MITRE Technical Report #6722, October 1974, Revision 1, 89 pp.
>> 
>> BTW, this is a very important document. There is an important result in it even though Jon didn?t note it . 
>> 
>> Reading it is clear that NCPs fall into two categories: big and little. The difference was those OSs with good IPC had small NCP implementations.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:45, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > So, you are saying that NCP didn?t come into use until 74-76? First TCP spec I saw was in mid-75.
>> > 
>> > I can?t cite anything off the top of my head but I think it was in use well before that.
>> > Someone else will remember.
>> > John
>> > 
>> >> On Sep 5, 2025, at 10:40, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> >> 
>> >>> From: Steve Crocker
>> >> 
>> >>> Somewhere along the way, people repurposed "NCP" to mean Network
>> >>> Control *Protocol*
>> >> 
>> >> When there was only one protocol stack running on the ARPANET (HHP et al), it
>> >> didn't need a name. When the second one (TCP/IP) appeared, we needed names
>> >> for each, and we started using 'NCP' as the name for the first one ('NCP' was
>> >> sort of in use already to refer to that collection of things, as the name for
>> >> the software that implemented it), and backronymed it to the more
>> >> sensible/appropriate 'Network Control Protocol'.
>> >> 
>> >> Fun fact: the CHAOS people at MIT retained, for some years, 'NCP', and the
>> >> old expansion of it, as the name for the CHAOS protocol implementation; for
>> >> example, see:
>> >> 
>> >> https://github.com/bill790/chaos/blob/master/ncp.c
>> >> 
>> >>      Noel
>> >> -- 
>> >> Internet-history mailing list
>> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > Internet-history mailing list
>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>> 
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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 darius.kazemi at gmail.com  Fri Sep  5 09:28:01 2025
From: darius.kazemi at gmail.com (Darius Kazemi)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 09:28:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
 <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>
 <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CADHc3QHbJ_WR=Weavg6KRUg5BXF=ywoFs2XkTYMx=vUqrMM=Pw@mail.gmail.com>

When I was researching early RFCs I encountered all sorts of errors in the
various official handbooks and guides from the time, particularly when it
came to references. Understandable, of course, this was a mountain of
sometimes manually collated information.

There was a process of digitizing and normalizing the RFCs that happened in
(I believe) the early to mid 1990s. Sometimes errors were introduced in
that digitization process. Here's an example I found of a flow chart that
the person drawing ASCII art got backwards compared to the original source:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/rfc194

I often go back to scans of original documents. The Computer History Museum
has Jake Feinler's SRI/NIC document collection and they can be contacted
and asked to scan RFC 542, which they will also put online. I asked them to
do this for RFCs 1-40, which are now available here:

https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/600000210/

Of course even the NIC back in the 70s got things wrong from time to time,
as was the case with RFC-32, where the (likely) wrong document was assigned
that number based on an error probably originating at the NIC:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-flanagan-rfc32alt-00

The only way to be reasonably certain what the "real" RTC 542 was would be
to cross reference multiple paper collections of RFCs from the time,
confirm that they all are the same document, and then one could conclude
that yeah, probably the 1978 handbook just had an error in it.

I tend to agree with Jim Carpenter - while John is correct that the 1978
handbook was not intending to refer to a 1980s document, Jim is correct
that reference errors do exist not infrequently in these handbooks.

-Darius

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 8:35?AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the
> 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.
>
> Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the
> MCP.
>
> Yes, it was an impressive machine.
>
> > On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975
> aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer
> science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
> >
> >
> > The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and
> elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
> >
> > The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
> >
> > On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> >> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA
> campus.
> >> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford
> and
> >> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for
> more
> >> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
> >> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at
> Stanford
> >> and its elegant architecture.
> >>
> >> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los
> Angeles,
> >> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
> >> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine
> was
> >> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
> >> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three
> node
> >> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
> >> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
> >> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
> >>
> >> Steve
> >>
> >> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our
> PDP-11
> >>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
> >>>
> >>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
> >>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a
> stack for
> >>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor
> based
> >>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
> >>>
> >>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit
> mantissa
> >>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end
> of
> >>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
> >>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out
> to me
> >>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to
> BCD.
> >>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros
> 3500 was
> >>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
> >>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
> >>>
> >>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
> >>> Really amazing instruction set.
> >>>
> >>> V
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
> >>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent
> out as
> >>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But
> the
> >>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I
> thought
> >>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different
> status.
> >>>>
> >>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became
> NCP
> >>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue
> easier.)
> >>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the
> Burroughs
> >>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control
> Program. So
> >>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively
> unknown
> >>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
> >>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA
> area
> >>>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in
> TRON.)
> >>>>
> >>>> Take care,
> >>>> John
> >>>>
> >>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and
> nearly
> >>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
> >>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I
> don't
> >>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the
> RFCs
> >>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it
> seemed
> >>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that
> process.  The
> >>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of
> openness and
> >>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or
> exclusionary.  It
> >>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
> >>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of
> work.
> >>>>> Steve
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
> >>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
> >>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
> >>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
> >>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official
> documents
> >>>> were published separately.
> >>>>>> Take care,
> >>>>>> John
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
> >>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
> >>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
> >>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention.
> Sorry.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
> >>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Jim
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
> >>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
> >>>> 1983.
> >>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
> >>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
> >>>> 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
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> 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
> >>>>
> >>>
> > --
> > 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
>
> --
> 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 jack at 3kitty.org  Fri Sep  5 11:15:35 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 11:15:35 -0700
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>

Telenet was before my time at BBN.? I don't recall ever hearing much 
about it other than it was an offshoot from BBN.

But your timeline seems skewed.? Terminal access to ARPANET began by 
using TIPs, which were an IMP with a multi-line TTY controller 
attached.?? TIPs became TACs when TCP was added to them, which IIRC was 
done by Bob Hinden.

There was also a mechanism called "TIP Login", and a follow-on called 
"TACACS", which provided a way for humans to "log in to the network" by 
supplying their name and password.?? Most host computers on the ARPANET 
had some kind of scheme for their users to log in to their machines - if 
only to know what account to charge their CPU time to.

I recall that Bob Kahn was especially interested in DLE - Double Login 
Elimination, with mechanisms to be added to TIP Login and/or TACACS.? 
The idea was that once you logged in to the ARPANET, the network could 
tell your computer who you were, so you didn't have to log in again 
after opening a Telnet connection.? I don't recall how much, if any, of 
that was implemented.

There was a battle brewing between the resource owners, who wanted to 
know who was using their stuff, and the users, many of whom valued 
privacy and anonymity more.

But whether or not any of those terminal access mechanisms were used in 
AOL, or who did it -- I have no idea.

Jack

On 9/5/25 09:11, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Jack,
>
> Do I recall correctly that BBN (or maybe Telenet) provided the dial-up 
> network for AOL, modeled on the ARPANET TACs?
>
> Miles
>
> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental 
>> shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were 
>> subsequently designed.
>>
>> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by 
>> Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.? Human users connected to their 
>> computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", 
>> which lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.? During that session, they 
>> might also do file transfers between two computers.? The ARPANET was 
>> pretty slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.? 
>> Sessions between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and 
>> infrequently opened or closed.
>>
>> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and 
>> responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers, 
>> mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>>
>> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, 
>> i.e., mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including 
>> short messages as well as long documents.? But email servers were 
>> pretty patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see 
>> the characters they sent echoed immediately.
>>
>> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside 
>> the IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - 
>> interactive and bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions". In 
>> particular, there were IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end 
>> connections between the source and destination IMPs (not the attached 
>> hosts).? Those mechanisms created the reliable "virtual circuit" 
>> behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable packet switching 
>> machinery.? The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit" reliable 
>> byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now between 
>> two devices on the Internet.?? For anyone curious, the 1970s ARPANET 
>> IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
>>
>> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. 
>> Sessions in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in 
>> human-based traffic.? I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in 
>> Lick's group at MIT, same as Marc), but I suspect part of the 
>> backlash Marc received about SURVEY was because it was seriously 
>> "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short connections continuously 
>> happening.? The ARPANET wasn't designed for that kind of continuous 
>> very short session traffic load.
>>
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably 
>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and 
>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That 
>> made it my problem.
>>
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>> Updated automatically of course.
>>
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>>
>> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of 
>> networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the 
>> model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". 
>> Instead of humans interacting with remote computers, we were 
>> beginning the transition to computers interacting with each other 
>> over the Internet, in support of whatever humans wanted done.?? That 
>> was Lick's vision - everyone would have their own computer, all able 
>> to communicate with each other, and active all the time.? Pretty much 
>> seems like what we have today.
>>
>> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of 
>> interactive/bulk traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years 
>> ago.? There's probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.? 
>> But perhaps the growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will 
>> replace it.
>>
>> Jack Haverty
>>
>> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too 
>>> popular.
>>>
>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I had forgotten about that!
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history 
>>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If 
>>>>> you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a 
>>>>> ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. 
>>>>> It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>>>>>
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history 
>>>>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Speaking of.? Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.? He had
>>>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group. He (along 
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>>>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.? 
>>>>>> Marc
>>>>>> told me this:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ? "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.? For a few days, the 
>>>>>> whole
>>>>>> ? ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems 
>>>>>> logged
>>>>>> ? every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype 
>>>>>> machine
>>>>>> ? sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.? A decent system 
>>>>>> since the
>>>>>> ? few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get 
>>>>>> more
>>>>>> ? than a few connections a day.? All of sudden, I'm poking them 
>>>>>> once a
>>>>>> ? minute or so.? System managers would come in in the morning to 
>>>>>> find
>>>>>> ? paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons 
>>>>>> that had
>>>>>> ? been torn to shreds!"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking 
>>>>>> only an
>>>>>> ARPANET to survey.? Watch your teletypes!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in 
>>>>>> MIT's
>>>>>> Tech Sq building.)
>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>>>> <mailto: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 
>>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>>> <mailto: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 
>>>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Sep  5 11:48:28 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 14:48:28 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
 <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <A8D332D8-C446-4DF1-8566-3B5D5C199F22@comcast.net>

There was also TIPSERV to augment the TIP user interface.

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 14:15, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Telenet was before my time at BBN.  I don't recall ever hearing much about it other than it was an offshoot from BBN.
> 
> But your timeline seems skewed.  Terminal access to ARPANET began by using TIPs, which were an IMP with a multi-line TTY controller attached.   TIPs became TACs when TCP was added to them, which IIRC was done by Bob Hinden.
> 
> There was also a mechanism called "TIP Login", and a follow-on called "TACACS", which provided a way for humans to "log in to the network" by supplying their name and password.   Most host computers on the ARPANET had some kind of scheme for their users to log in to their machines - if only to know what account to charge their CPU time to.
> 
> I recall that Bob Kahn was especially interested in DLE - Double Login Elimination, with mechanisms to be added to TIP Login and/or TACACS.  The idea was that once you logged in to the ARPANET, the network could tell your computer who you were, so you didn't have to log in again after opening a Telnet connection.  I don't recall how much, if any, of that was implemented.
> 
> There was a battle brewing between the resource owners, who wanted to know who was using their stuff, and the users, many of whom valued privacy and anonymity more.
> 
> But whether or not any of those terminal access mechanisms were used in AOL, or who did it -- I have no idea.
> 
> Jack
> 
> On 9/5/25 09:11, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>> Jack,
>> 
>> Do I recall correctly that BBN (or maybe Telenet) provided the dial-up network for AOL, modeled on the ARPANET TACs?
>> 
>> Miles
>> 
>> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were subsequently designed.
>>> 
>>> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they might also do file transfers between two computers.  The ARPANET was pretty slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.  Sessions between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened or closed.
>>> 
>>> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers, mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>>> 
>>> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e., mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were pretty patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the characters they sent echoed immediately.
>>> 
>>> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions". In particular, there were IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those mechanisms created the reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable packet switching machinery.  The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit" reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now between two devices on the Internet.   For anyone curious, the 1970s ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
>>> 
>>> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.  I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short connections continuously happening.  The ARPANET wasn't designed for that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
>>> 
>>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.  Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my problem.
>>> 
>>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.
>>> 
>>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>>> 
>>> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet, in support of whatever humans wanted done.   That was Lick's vision - everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with each other, and active all the time.  Pretty much seems like what we have today.
>>> 
>>> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
>>> 
>>> Jack Haverty
>>> 
>>> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too popular.
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I had forgotten about that!
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>> John
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
>>>>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group. He (along with
>>>>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>>>>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
>>>>>>> told me this:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>>>>>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>>>>>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>>>>>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>>>>>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>>>>>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>>>>>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>>>>>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>>>>>>>   been torn to shreds!"
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
>>>>>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>>>>>>> Tech Sq building.)
>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>> 
>> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
>> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
>> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
>> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
> 
> -- 
> 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  Fri Sep  5 12:25:23 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 15:25:23 -0400
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2OWLiZK3Pr8c0PWMJ8=Oeg3NQNRDcE+okbExVg63A8=pA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
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Message-ID: <6F776C78-C317-4EFD-878C-6A3CD74A4FF9@comcast.net>



> On Sep 5, 2025, at 11:04, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> below.. [note this really belongs in COFF, as it's less Internet History and more reminiscent of us old guys]
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11 OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
> Fascinating - did that survive? Could you tell us more? I did not know that someone had tried to make an ESPOL for the 11. Was it a cross compiler, and what was the native OS?  I grew up on BLISS and C, of course, and knew about other system languages like BCPL and concurrent Pascal that targeted the 11, but I never knew about an implementation of ESPOL for it.

PEESPOL was written by Dave Grothe, no longer with us. It was patterned after ESPOL, it wasn?t trying to *be* ESPOL.  ESPOL had the Burros hardware to rely on. Lots of functionality that the 11 didn?t support. Yes it was a cross-compiler. It had a very sophisticated Macro processor that allowed us to treat it like an extensible language and declare macros that  looked like language constructs so that we could then program in terms of the system we were building. I know there were parsing errors in BLISS or BCPL one that PEESPOL had avoided. (Don?t remember exactly what they were but they had to do with getting the order of processing right.)
>> 
>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.

Another innovation was treating interrupts as an accidental procedure entry which nearly everyone does now. (The PDP-11 did.)  However, that in the 5500 (because they did call-by-name in hardware) was a degenerate case of a thunk. ;-)

> No doubt, the B5000 was the first "high-level" system design, incorporating everything you describe, along with some interesting support for its multi-tasking concepts. [I remember trying to wrap my head around the idea of how a cactus stack worked].

;-) Simple. Everything was a procedure including the MCP. The only difference between a process and a procedure was what it returned to. A procedure returned within the same stack, a process returned to a different stack.

>   One of my old colleagues at Tektronix was Bill Price, who was earlier one of the MCP's designers and implementors, and he took great pride in schooling us youngsters in those days.  He pointed out to us that if Burroughs' management had had any real idea of what they were doing and how far out it was and different from anything else being done at IBM in White Plains or Remington Rand/Eckert-Mauchly in North Philly, he is pretty sure they would have shut it down.

;-) I didn?t know that, but we suspected that was the case. ;-)
> 
>  As Bill explained it to us (then UNIX guys in the late 1970s), the designers of the MCP were very rigorous in their design, but had a great sense of humor and used really marvelous names for some of the data structures and kernel tasks.

;-) Indeed they did.  ;-) And file attributes too.

>   The MCP was extremely well structured, but when they ended up with something that did not quite fit in their structured design, they gave the special case to Bill to deal with in his "Old Weird Harold" kernel task, which, among other things, maintained "the bed," which was a list of tasks awaiting actions.  One of my favorite actions was when Bill shared the comments from some of the code he still had, which revealed that Old Weird Harold was responsible for "monitoring the bed for something to fork.

;-)  ?  This was something other than the schedule of processes to run?  The schedule was called the sheet. So of course there were variables called, ?stackofsheet? and ?pileofsheet?.

Of course, the one that got them in trouble (the top line of the B6700 operator console would display the name of the procedure the MCP was in and one day a prim lady from a bank was standing behind the operator) when the procedure that forked new user processes ran. It was called motherforker, and had been for over a decade.  ;-)
> 
> Also, one minor correction, while I do believe that Burroughs had an LA-based team, I am under the impression that most of the work on both HS and SW for the B5000 and B6000 families was done in Philadelphia (well, Paoli to be more precise).

The large systems, 7800, 8800 were done in Paoli, but the 5500 and 6700 were done in California. We were making the transition from the 5500 to the 6700 for IlliacIV. We were getting pre-beta listings and releases of the MCP.
>> 
>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD. A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
> Yeah, they got it about language-driven architectures.  My favorite Burroughs machine was their mid-range B1700, which they targeted at small businesses. This machine changed its microcode on the fly depending on the application (i.e., it had Cobol microcode, Algol microcode, etc.).  We studied this system in great detail in Dan Siewiorek's computer architecture class when I was an undergrad.   It was a very cool machine that really learned a great deal about how microcoding could be used (and some of you have heard my story during my UCB grad qualifiers when I was asked a question about microcoding and used the B1700 to answer it). 

Indeed it was!! We thought it was pretty fascinating too. Burros tried to give us one, but the U decided it would cost too much to accept it. Sad.
>> 
>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
> Sadly, because often simpler is much less costly, and as I have said many times, "Simple Economics always beats Sophisticated Architecture."

The machine was more expensive, but the cost of operations was orders of magnitude less. There were companies with entire dept that wrote JCL for IBM machines that were unnecessary for Burros. Anyone could do it.

Also, the 5500/6700 machines were secure. Only the compilers generated code, there was no assembler, the stack was tagged non-executable, and with the descriptor-based memory one couldn?t index off the end of an array.  I also recently learned that it all still exists in Unisys. They have updated it. There are now 8 bits of tag and they have generalized the descriptor-based memory to be ?object-based memory? and other things. They are very proud of the fact that when they ported it to Intel hardware, they didn?t have to change a single line of user code.

Take care,
John
>  



From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Fri Sep  5 13:23:41 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 20:23:41 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
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 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
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Message-ID: <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>

 I have been trying quite a while to remember whether I used a tip or a tac to get back to cmua from BBN (or perhaps something else?? Somehow I associate Rob Gurwitz with this).? My friends, who were working in the cs department at CMU, let me keep my account when I started to work at BBN (Not all undergrads had access to cmua. I worked as a programmer for the grad cs department so I had accounts on various machines). I used to go up to a computer room at BBN to do this. I don't remember having a way to do it from my office.? If the command set was different between the access mechanisms, I might be able to figure out which I was using.
Actually having access to the network was one of the reasons I chose BBN for work after graduation.? I didn't really know much about networking at the point.? My part-time job in the CS department was a project called Gandalf which was a software engineering research project involving integrated programming environments.??
BTW,? in searching for information on cmua,? I found this write-up on the coke machine. I thought people might be interested in reading it if this hasn't been posted before.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
barbara
    On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 11:15:47 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Telenet was before my time at BBN.? I don't recall ever hearing much 
about it other than it was an offshoot from BBN.

But your timeline seems skewed.? Terminal access to ARPANET began by 
using TIPs, which were an IMP with a multi-line TTY controller 
attached.?? TIPs became TACs when TCP was added to them, which IIRC was 
done by Bob Hinden.

There was also a mechanism called "TIP Login", and a follow-on called 
"TACACS", which provided a way for humans to "log in to the network" by 
supplying their name and password.?? Most host computers on the ARPANET 
had some kind of scheme for their users to log in to their machines - if 
only to know what account to charge their CPU time to.

I recall that Bob Kahn was especially interested in DLE - Double Login 
Elimination, with mechanisms to be added to TIP Login and/or TACACS.? 
The idea was that once you logged in to the ARPANET, the network could 
tell your computer who you were, so you didn't have to log in again 
after opening a Telnet connection.? I don't recall how much, if any, of 
that was implemented.

There was a battle brewing between the resource owners, who wanted to 
know who was using their stuff, and the users, many of whom valued 
privacy and anonymity more.

But whether or not any of those terminal access mechanisms were used in 
AOL, or who did it -- I have no idea.

Jack






  

From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Fri Sep  5 14:11:49 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 09:11:49 +1200
Subject: [ih] B6700 CANDE [was: Confusion in the RFCs]
In-Reply-To: <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
 <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>
 <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <baca422f-8587-4d06-badc-4d6db6197ec5@gmail.com>

CANDE was a Burroughs product. It stood for "Command AND Edit".

I used it on the B6700 at Massey University, NZ in 1974-6. It supported Burroughs TD800 block mode terminals, and I had a hand in developing a PDP-11 based TD800 emulator that allowed us to use VT-05s, which were much cheaper than the Burroughs terminals. (Those were priced to compete with IBM block mode terminals, but that left them plenty of scope to be expensive.)

The PDP-11 code was written in PL-11. If we'd known of PDP-11 Espol we might well have used that, but I brought the PL-11 compiler from CERN and ported it to run on the B6700.

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 06-Sep-25 03:35, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.
> 
> Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the MCP.
> 
> Yes, it was an impressive machine.
> 
>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975 aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
>>
>>
>> The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
>>
>> The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
>>
>> On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>>> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
>>> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
>>> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
>>> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
>>> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
>>> and its elegant architecture.
>>>
>>> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
>>> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
>>> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
>>> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
>>> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
>>> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
>>> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
>>> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
>>>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>>>>
>>>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
>>>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
>>>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
>>>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>>>>
>>>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
>>>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
>>>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
>>>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
>>>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
>>>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
>>>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
>>>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>>>>
>>>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
>>>> Really amazing instruction set.
>>>>
>>>> V
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>>>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>>>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>>>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>>>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>>>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>>>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>>>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>>>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>>>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>>>>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>>>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>>>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>>>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>>>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>>>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>>>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>>>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>>>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>>>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>>>>>> Steve
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
>>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>>>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>>>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>>>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>>>>> were published separately.
>>>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>>> John
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
>>>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>>>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>>>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Jim
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>>>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>>>>> 1983.
>>>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>>>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
>>>>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>
>> -- 
>> 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 clemc at ccc.com  Fri Sep  5 14:35:28 2025
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 17:35:28 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
 <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
 <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2MF3QoXcYK=rJ4vyKSv5WxfqyhOeHHsHLYdmHH8A-q+Xw@mail.gmail.com>

below

On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 4:25?PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
> BTW,  in searching for information on cmua,  I found this write-up on the
> coke machine. I thought people might be interested in reading it if this
> hasn't been posted before.
> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt


Nice write-up, but it's unfortunate that the history appears to begin in
1982 and lacks some context and history from the 1970s, when we had the CS
Terminal room off the main CS machine room (and the door closer was >>just
timed<< so could go into the hallway were the machine was, purchase at .25
a single a cold 12oz coke in a bottle, and still get back into the terminal
room before it locked and you had to walk around).

The Coke machine itself, BTW, was privately owned and was
basically operated by the same folks that ran the CS "Cheese" COOP.   Since
it was not owned or serviced by the local Coke distributor, it was
hackable, and they could set our own price. At the time, the University had
contracts for other machines around campus from a vendor, and they had
different prices (and selection). Initially, this machine was very much
under the radar, and only CS and EE people tended to know about it.    The
key was that it was an early 1960s-style machine salvaged from somewhere
where it was being discarded.  It was then resurrected (IIRC, they had to
fix the refrigeration system, but otherwise it worked well mechanically).
Note there were six buttons and six choices - all being Coke.

The bottles of Coke itself (along with Cheese) were picked by people
involved in the COOP.  They were stored with other supplies, such as
line printer paper.  At the time, one of the jobs of the operators (like
me) was to refill it.  IIRC, it was Jim Tetter who did the original
instrumentation (he was undoubtedly part of hacking it), as Jim ran the CS
hardware lab in the 1970s.  The original instrumentation was to tell the
operator that it needed to be refilled, IIRC, that was it getting to under
30% capacity.  Adding features like sensors to the different columns was
done early on, because if a column was recently reloaded, users needed to
know not to use the button for that column, or else risk getting a
yet-to-be-chilled bottle.

Also note the Coke machine was connected to the CS Front End (a dedicated
PDP-11/20 with a ton of CMU "ASLIs - async line interfaces and some DR-IIBs
to the different systems), which connected the terminals and allowed access
to CMUA/CMUB/CMUC or C.mmp.  CMUA got the info about the Coke machine via
the front-end connection [which I seem to remember was "hardwired" to it].
Later, when the distributed front-end was developed in the 1977/78
timeframe (originally on Xerox 3M Ethernet), I seem to remember that the
coke machine was run as part of one of the DFE's LSI-11s.  I left soon
thereafter, but I would suspect the LSI-11 interface was replaced by what
is described in that history as being done by John Zsarnay and Mike Kazar
in 1982 (who clearly took the coke machine interface to the next level  ?
Tetter probably remembers more of this).

Until the 1980s, when the rest of the world heard about it, it was just
another hack that proved helpful to all of us.

Clem


From galmes at tamu.edu  Fri Sep  5 15:32:47 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 18:32:47 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2MF3QoXcYK=rJ4vyKSv5WxfqyhOeHHsHLYdmHH8A-q+Xw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
 <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
 <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>
 <CAC20D2MF3QoXcYK=rJ4vyKSv5WxfqyhOeHHsHLYdmHH8A-q+Xw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <62f496f9-0c56-458c-8e57-db12176ecafa@tamu.edu>

Hi Clem and Barbara,
   Both the Coke hack and the CS Cheese Coop were wonderful.
   The Coke hack helped keep our CS students awake during long terminal 
sessions, of course.  The elegance of the hack in allowing one to know 
which column of cokes would be coldest was a wonderful extra.
   And the Cheese Coop probably deserves a high place in the early 
history of e-commerce.  It also permitted students to combine a 
sophisticated taste in cheese with a low budget.
   Many fond memories,
	-- Guy

On 9/5/25 5:35 PM, Clem Cole via Internet-history wrote:
> below
> 
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 4:25?PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>> BTW,  in searching for information on cmua,  I found this write-up on the
>> coke machine. I thought people might be interested in reading it if this
>> hasn't been posted before.
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.cmu.edu/*coke/ 
> history_long.txt__;fg!!KwNVnqRv! 
> Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe5z3j2wCQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.cmu.edu/*coke/history_long.txt__;fg!!KwNVnqRv!Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe5z3j2wCQ$>
> 
> 
> Nice write-up, but it's unfortunate that the history appears to begin in
> 1982 and lacks some context and history from the 1970s, when we had the CS
> Terminal room off the main CS machine room (and the door closer was >>just
> timed<< so could go into the hallway were the machine was, purchase at .25
> a single a cold 12oz coke in a bottle, and still get back into the terminal
> room before it locked and you had to walk around).
> 
> The Coke machine itself, BTW, was privately owned and was
> basically operated by the same folks that ran the CS "Cheese" COOP.   Since
> it was not owned or serviced by the local Coke distributor, it was
> hackable, and they could set our own price. At the time, the University had
> contracts for other machines around campus from a vendor, and they had
> different prices (and selection). Initially, this machine was very much
> under the radar, and only CS and EE people tended to know about it.    The
> key was that it was an early 1960s-style machine salvaged from somewhere
> where it was being discarded.  It was then resurrected (IIRC, they had to
> fix the refrigeration system, but otherwise it worked well mechanically).
> Note there were six buttons and six choices - all being Coke.
> 
> The bottles of Coke itself (along with Cheese) were picked by people
> involved in the COOP.  They were stored with other supplies, such as
> line printer paper.  At the time, one of the jobs of the operators (like
> me) was to refill it.  IIRC, it was Jim Tetter who did the original
> instrumentation (he was undoubtedly part of hacking it), as Jim ran the CS
> hardware lab in the 1970s.  The original instrumentation was to tell the
> operator that it needed to be refilled, IIRC, that was it getting to under
> 30% capacity.  Adding features like sensors to the different columns was
> done early on, because if a column was recently reloaded, users needed to
> know not to use the button for that column, or else risk getting a
> yet-to-be-chilled bottle.
> 
> Also note the Coke machine was connected to the CS Front End (a dedicated
> PDP-11/20 with a ton of CMU "ASLIs - async line interfaces and some DR-IIBs
> to the different systems), which connected the terminals and allowed access
> to CMUA/CMUB/CMUC or C.mmp.  CMUA got the info about the Coke machine via
> the front-end connection [which I seem to remember was "hardwired" to it].
> Later, when the distributed front-end was developed in the 1977/78
> timeframe (originally on Xerox 3M Ethernet), I seem to remember that the
> coke machine was run as part of one of the DFE's LSI-11s.  I left soon
> thereafter, but I would suspect the LSI-11 interface was replaced by what
> is described in that history as being done by John Zsarnay and Mike Kazar
> in 1982 (who clearly took the coke machine interface to the next level  ?
> Tetter probably remembers more of this).
> 
> Until the 1980s, when the rest of the world heard about it, it was just
> another hack that proved helpful to all of us.
> 
> Clem
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe7U2Q5yyQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe7U2Q5yyQ$>
> -
> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
> KwNVnqRv! 
> Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe6XZFi25g$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!Bnk2hqMtnYpkjVy90PIb1Ws_ZbPBWwXrncktK4SqouBdKXIR7jry7Jaoe_Mjf42znMf50B6rru79zidkehiRFe6XZFi25g$>
> 



From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Fri Sep  5 20:10:18 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 20:10:18 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>

forwarded for Barbara

> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> 
> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> 
> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> 
> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
> 
> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> 
> barbara


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Fri Sep  5 20:33:26 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 03:33:26 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>

 Oops.? Somehow a .? got inserted in the url.
This one should work.?
https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
barbara
    On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 forwarded for Barbara

> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> To: Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> 
> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> 
> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> 
> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.? They were recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
> 
> The messages include when the ARPAnet? temporarily shut off? NCP twice before flag day.? Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> 
> barbara
-- 




  

From lars at nocrew.org  Fri Sep  5 21:48:51 2025
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2025 04:48:51 +0000
Subject: [ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re:  Confusion in the RFCs)
In-Reply-To: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> (Noel Chiappa
 via Internet-history's message of "Fri, 5 Sep 2025 10:40:38 -0400
 (EDT)")
References: <20250905144038.DF15118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7wplc418zw.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Also note that early no TCP was sometimes used to mean Transmission
Control *Program*, probably in analog with the first meaning of NCP.


From nigel at channelisles.net  Sat Sep  6 00:32:07 2025
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:32:07 +0100
Subject: [ih] Confusion in the RFCs
In-Reply-To: <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
References: <30997E86-9BC4-496E-86CE-AC6AFAF3DC8F@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqyRF=nsj_PXciTQ_3331HfBdi2a0YVejD1AM8t6iiHfGw@mail.gmail.com>
 <C6046EEC-53EF-41ED-8A23-361C6A67BCC9@comcast.net>
 <CA+oaVqz0c_r4g7UgSDHebvWXW1=ZQhP1YH4z4ptPDTVmYfhD6A@mail.gmail.com>
 <240F434C-AFF1-44F3-A072-66DC658B1B0F@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK7Gv-EtAWvWpjND5OM_xwYbog+TBxfJEjJCc55mzKbyQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <30A88A33-049B-456E-A51F-69EDD0D301D9@comcast.net>
 <CAAFtm_XKAG-fDcpC50ErgRcNxaGK80ae5CFexp0XLRQcOC=GHA@mail.gmail.com>
 <4A3E1B0C-0AEB-458D-BFFC-7428DDCCC983@comcast.net>
 <CABf5zvK9ckXLNvN1PCnZAB3k6VLXOT-HNphgWVhgjx65gSQE3A@mail.gmail.com>
 <924768b6-83d8-48fd-8846-bbeab3d132a2@channelisles.net>
 <F740128E-26FD-4210-8415-2BCB0F31F481@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <7df5dc73-a52f-4c4f-9316-f5e5814c5970@channelisles.net>

John

That's an interesting thing - I didn't know anything of the previous 
history.

CANDE (I may even be misspelling) was the name that was used at UoW for 
the timesharing system. You would log in with an alphabetic username 
(mine was UWMSUAL) and the password was a single fullstop (period) which 
you could then change.? But there wasn't much point in secret passwords 
as they had to urnbe
supplied in card decks on card #2 when submitting batch jobs, and those 
card decks were returned to open pigeon-holes where anyone could read 
them!!!

But I was only there for 7-8 months and it was literally 50 years ago, 
so my memory may be fading.


On 05/09/2025 16:35, John Day wrote:
> DC-Algol was the Algol they did for the transition form the 5500 to the 6700. We had serial #2 of the 6700.
>
> Never heard of CANDE. Was it a local development. The OS was called the MCP.
>
> Yes, it was an impressive machine.
>
>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 09:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> I used a B6700 as a Chemistry undergrad at Warwick University in 1975 aged 17. (In fact it was what really got me into a lifetime of computer science as I left there after a year and went to Essex to do Comp. Sci.)
>>
>>
>> The monitor was called CANDE and it indeed had the coherence and elegance that mentioned in respect of the 5500 earlier in this thread.
>>
>> The OS was written in a variant of ALGOL called, IIRC, DC-ALGOL.
>>
>> On 05/09/2025 14:20, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>>> I don't think there was a Burrough's machine anywhere on the UCLA campus.
>>> I would have known if there was.  Vint and I were freshmen at Stanford and
>>> UCLA respectively starting in fall 1961.  I had hung around UCLA for more
>>> than a year before that, and I was pretty aware of essentially all the
>>> machines on campus.  I was also aware of the Burrough's machine at Stanford
>>> and its elegant architecture.
>>>
>>> It's possible there was a Burrough's machine somewhere else in Los Angeles,
>>> but I wasn't aware of it.  UCLA was "blessed" with three IBM 7094s, each
>>> run by a different organization.  The culture surrounding each machine was
>>> distinct and not particularly friendly toward any of the others.  In
>>> 1965-66 I participated in an ARPA-sponsored attempt to build a three node
>>> network connecting the three computing centers.  It failed for multiple
>>> reasons, one of which was the hostility between the three centers.
>>> (Nonetheless, I learned a lot.)
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 8:44?AM John Day<jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It inspired everything we did. It was a revelation. That is why our PDP-11
>>>> OS language was called PDP-11 Espol, their OS language.
>>>>
>>>> I knew there was one around UCLA somewhere and at Stanford. Knuth wrote
>>>> the early Algol compiler for it. It was the first system to use a stack for
>>>> procedures, as well as arithmetic. Tagged architecture, descriptor based
>>>> memory. The system had a coherence I have never seen again.
>>>>
>>>> Trivial example: 48-bit word. Floating point format was a 39-bit mantissa
>>>> (sign bit, 8-bit exponent) but the decimal point was at the right end of
>>>> the word. Integers were merely unnormalized floating point numbers. No
>>>> integer to real conversion. It just worked. Also, it was pointed out to me
>>>> recently that there was a hardware operator that convert an integer to BCD.
>>>> A 39-bit binary integer would convert within 48 bits.  (The Burros 3500 was
>>>> a COBOL machine and all decimal including the addressing!) Burros was
>>>> architecture-agnostic. One could go on and on.
>>>>
>>>> Why can?t we build systems like that any more.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:23, vinton cerf<vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I used the B5500 from 1961 to 1965 while a math undergrad at Stanford.
>>>> Really amazing instruction set.
>>>>
>>>> V
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025, 08:15 John Day via Internet-history <
>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I agree and yes, drafts of what became standards were usually sent out as
>>>>> RFCs to make sure the author had done what the group agreed to.  But the
>>>>> majority of RFCs in those early days were really Comments, which I thought
>>>>> was a great idea and that agreed documents should have a different status.
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree with you that it was quite odd that Host-Host Protocol became NCP
>>>>> and not HHP. (Although for some reason, NCP rolls of the tongue easier.)
>>>>> In fact, even NCP is a bit of an odd choice.  We were using the Burroughs
>>>>> 5500* at the time and its OS is called the MCP, Master Control Program. So
>>>>> it always seemed to be related, although that system was relatively unknown
>>>>> in ARPANET circles. Although I have read elsewhere that it had an
>>>>> influence, even early on, on Hollywood, so it being coined in the LA area
>>>>> perhaps isn?t that far off. (Much earlier than the use of MCP in TRON.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> * And of course, B5500 was the finest system design ever done and nearly
>>>>> decade ahead of everyone else.
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 08:05, Steve Crocker<steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> FWIW, I was slightly bemused to see the host-host protocol (later
>>>>> called NCP) published as a standard outside of the RFC series.  I don't
>>>>> recall seeing a formal decision to do that.  In my mind, although the RFCs
>>>>> certainly included drafts and preliminary versions of protocols, it seemed
>>>>> natural to me they would also include the culmination of that process.  The
>>>>> term "Request for Comments" was intended to convey a spirit of openness and
>>>>> invitation but it was not intended to be restrictive or exclusionary.  It
>>>>> was a pro forma requirement that each document be labeled "Request for
>>>>> Comments," but it was not intended to exclude completed pieces of work.
>>>>>> Steve
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 7:56?AM John Day via Internet-history <
>>>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Well, the Telnet meeting (in 1972) occurred considerably before the
>>>>> FTP meeting* (Mar 73), so I am not so sure it was a typo.
>>>>>>> As I said before back then, RFCs were Requests for *Comments*, not
>>>>> Internet Standards, which always seemed pretty absurd. Official documents
>>>>> were published separately.
>>>>>>> Take care,
>>>>>>> John
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * Where Padlipsky made his famous comment: ?Sometimes when changing
>>>>> apples into oranges, you get lemons.? ;-)
>>>>>>>> On Sep 5, 2025, at 06:17, Jim Carpenter <jim at deitygraveyard.com
>>>>> <mailto:jim at deitygraveyard.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Yup. RFC 854 *obsoleted* NIC 18639. I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But RFC 542 is listed in that handbook for FTP. So including it for
>>>>>>>> TELNET was just a typo.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Jim
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 5:36?AM John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net
>>>>> <mailto:jeanjour at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Doubtful.  Unless they had a time machine. RFC 854 is dated May
>>>>> 1983.
>>>>>>>>> As I pointed out (or should have) the NIC number is the same as on
>>>>> the official Aug 1973 version.
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:
>>>>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> 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
>>>>>
>> -- 
>> 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 ocl at gih.com  Sat Sep  6 01:33:51 2025
From: ocl at gih.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olivier_MJ_Cr=C3=A9pin-Leblond?=)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 09:33:51 +0100
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>

Fascinating.
I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of 
EARN/BITNET.

Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
Kindest regards,

Olivier


On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Oops.? Somehow a .? got inserted in the url.
> This one should work.
> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> barbara
>      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   forwarded for Barbara
>
>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>
>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>
>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>
>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.? They were recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
>>
>> The messages include when the ARPAnet? temporarily shut off? NCP twice before flag day.? Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>>
>> barbara



From el at lisse.na  Sat Sep  6 01:47:58 2025
From: el at lisse.na (Eberhard W Lisse)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 10:47:58 +0200
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
Message-ID: <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>

Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?

el

--
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
> Fascinating.
> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> EARN/BITNET.
>
> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
>
> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> > Oops.? Somehow a .? got inserted in the url.
> > This one should work.
> > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > barbara
> > On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > forwarded for Barbara
> >
> > > > ----- Forwarded Message -----
> > > > From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> > > > To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > > > Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> > > > Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> > > >
> > > > Some of you might be interested in this link.
> > > >
> > > > https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > > >
> > > > It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.? They were recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
> > > >
> > > > The messages include when the ARPAnet? temporarily shut off? NCP twice before flag day.? Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> > > >
> > > > 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


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Sat Sep  6 03:12:58 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:12:58 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>

I don't think so but weren't they connected to a major IBM facility by way
of JANET?
v


On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 3:48?AM Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?
>
> el
>
> --
> Sent from my iPhone
> On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
> > Fascinating.
> > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> > EARN/BITNET.
> >
> > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> > Kindest regards,
> >
> > Olivier
> >
> >
> > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> > > Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
> > > This one should work.
> > > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > > barbara
> > > On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > forwarded for Barbara
> > >
> > > > > ----- Forwarded Message -----
> > > > > From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> > > > > To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > > > > Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> > > > > Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> > > > >
> > > > > Some of you might be interested in this link.
> > > > >
> > > > > https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > > > >
> > > > > It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were
> recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-)
> bboard post.
> > > > >
> > > > > The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP
> twice before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
> remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> > > > >
> > > > > 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
> --
> 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 ocl at gih.com  Sat Sep  6 03:38:39 2025
From: ocl at gih.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olivier_MJ_Cr=C3=A9pin-Leblond?=)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 11:38:39 +0100
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
 <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <22d69d89-1088-4fee-bc2c-75008f35914c@gih.com>

That was the Rutherford Appleton Lab IBM-B, uk.ac.rl.ib aka 
UKACRL.BITNET / EARN.UKACRL

But I do not think that this was ever connected to the Arpanet using NCP.
Kindest regards,

Olivier


On 06/09/2025 11:12, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> I don't think so but weren't they connected to a major IBM facility by way
> of JANET?
> v
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 3:48?AM Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?
>>
>> el
>>
>> --
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
>>> Fascinating.
>>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>>> EARN/BITNET.
>>>
>>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>>> Kindest regards,
>>>
>>> Olivier
>>>
>>>
>>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>>>> This one should work.
>>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>> barbara
>>>> On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> forwarded for Barbara
>>>>
>>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were
>> recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-)
>> bboard post.
>>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP
>> twice before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
>> remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>>>>>> 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
>> --
>> 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 vint at google.com  Sat Sep  6 04:04:49 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 06:04:49 -0500
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <22d69d89-1088-4fee-bc2c-75008f35914c@gih.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
 <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <22d69d89-1088-4fee-bc2c-75008f35914c@gih.com>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggfQY6T1i10k2+Uz5Z__eMYC0naPoAmz1ZSY8qCO=qdOFQ@mail.gmail.com>

i agree with that conclusion, Olivier
v


On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 5:38?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> That was the Rutherford Appleton Lab IBM-B, uk.ac.rl.ib aka
> UKACRL.BITNET / EARN.UKACRL
>
> But I do not think that this was ever connected to the Arpanet using NCP.
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
>
> On 06/09/2025 11:12, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> > I don't think so but weren't they connected to a major IBM facility by
> way
> > of JANET?
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 3:48?AM Eberhard W Lisse via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?
> >>
> >> el
> >>
> >> --
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >> On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
> >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
> >>> Fascinating.
> >>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> >>> EARN/BITNET.
> >>>
> >>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> >>> Kindest regards,
> >>>
> >>> Olivier
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>> Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
> >>>> This one should work.
> >>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> >>>> barbara
> >>>> On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
> >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>> forwarded for Barbara
> >>>>
> >>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> >>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> >>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> >>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> >>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were
> >> recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-)
> >> bboard post.
> >>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP
> >> twice before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
> >> remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am
> wrong.
> >>>>>> 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
> >> --
> >> 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
> >>
>
> --
> 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 steve at shinkuro.com  Sat Sep  6 04:21:53 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 07:21:53 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>

IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
communicating over the Arpanet.

Steve

Sent by a Verified

sender


On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Fascinating.
> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> EARN/BITNET.
>
> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
>
> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >   Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
> > This one should work.
> > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > barbara
> >      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >   forwarded for Barbara
> >
> >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> >> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> >> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> >>
> >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> >>
> >> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> >>
> >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
> when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
> >>
> >> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
> before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember
> you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> >>
> >> 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
>


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sat Sep  6 04:53:15 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 07:53:15 -0400
Subject: [ih] As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <889C345F-910C-48B2-9968-D6E7E1576ED1@comcast.net>

That isn?t surprising. IPC in a single system requires shared memory of some sort (There are lots of ways to do it). With separate partitions, they couldn?t share memory. With an IMP, they could go between what was effectively two systems.

If I remember right, a good example from Postel?s Survey was the UCLA CCN 360/91 had a relatively large NCP and OS/360 didn?t do IPC.

> On Sep 6, 2025, at 07:21, Steve Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
> being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
> interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
> communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
> working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
> partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
> communicating over the Arpanet.
> 
> Steve
> 
> Sent by a Verified
> 
> sender
> 
> 
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> Fascinating.
>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>> EARN/BITNET.
>> 
>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>> Kindest regards,
>> 
>> Olivier
>> 
>> 
>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>  Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>>> This one should work.
>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>> barbara
>>>     On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>>  forwarded for Barbara
>>> 
>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>>> 
>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>>> 
>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>> 
>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
>> when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
>>>> 
>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
>> before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember
>> you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>>>> 
>>>> 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
>> 
> -- 
> 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 steve at shinkuro.com  Sat Sep  6 04:55:02 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 07:55:02 -0400
Subject: [ih] As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <889C345F-910C-48B2-9968-D6E7E1576ED1@comcast.net>
References: <889C345F-910C-48B2-9968-D6E7E1576ED1@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <CE52BF52-11A4-4681-8A11-A8DB9635170E@shinkuro.com>

Does anybody have a copy of Postel's survey?  I'm interested in reading it.

Thanks,

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 6, 2025, at 7:53?AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> ?That isn?t surprising. IPC in a single system requires shared memory of some sort (There are lots of ways to do it). With separate partitions, they couldn?t share memory. With an IMP, they could go between what was effectively two systems.
> 
> If I remember right, a good example from Postel?s Survey was the UCLA CCN 360/91 had a relatively large NCP and OS/360 didn?t do IPC.
> 
>> On Sep 6, 2025, at 07:21, Steve Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
>> being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
>> interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
>> communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
>> working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
>> partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
>> communicating over the Arpanet.
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> Sent by a Verified
>> 
>> sender
>> 
>> 
>>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Fascinating.
>>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>>> EARN/BITNET.
>>> 
>>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>>> Kindest regards,
>>> 
>>> Olivier
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>>>> This one should work.
>>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>> barbara
>>>>    On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> forwarded for Barbara
>>>> 
>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>>>> 
>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>>>> 
>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>>> 
>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
>>> when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
>>> before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember
>>> you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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
>>> 
>> --
>> 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  Sat Sep  6 05:02:34 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:02:34 -0400
Subject: [ih] As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CE52BF52-11A4-4681-8A11-A8DB9635170E@shinkuro.com>
References: <889C345F-910C-48B2-9968-D6E7E1576ED1@comcast.net>
 <CE52BF52-11A4-4681-8A11-A8DB9635170E@shinkuro.com>
Message-ID: <517EB57A-5FF4-4A73-82F2-612159D13405@comcast.net>

Somewhere. But I couldn?t say where right now. Also, it might be with some of the stuff I sent to CBI years ago. I remember the binding of my copy had failed with age and it was stapled together. If I come across I will let you know.
(It had a Yellow cover, if that helps.)

Take care,
John

> On Sep 6, 2025, at 07:55, Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro.com> wrote:
> 
> Does anybody have a copy of Postel's survey?  I'm interested in reading it.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Steve
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>> On Sep 6, 2025, at 7:53?AM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ?That isn?t surprising. IPC in a single system requires shared memory of some sort (There are lots of ways to do it). With separate partitions, they couldn?t share memory. With an IMP, they could go between what was effectively two systems.
>> 
>> If I remember right, a good example from Postel?s Survey was the UCLA CCN 360/91 had a relatively large NCP and OS/360 didn?t do IPC.
>> 
>>> On Sep 6, 2025, at 07:21, Steve Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
>>> being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
>>> interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
>>> communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
>>> working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
>>> partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
>>> communicating over the Arpanet.
>>> 
>>> Steve
>>> 
>>> Sent by a Verified
>>> 
>>> sender
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>>>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Fascinating.
>>>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>>>> EARN/BITNET.
>>>> 
>>>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>>>> Kindest regards,
>>>> 
>>>> Olivier
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>> Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>>>>> This one should work.
>>>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>>> barbara
>>>>>   On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>>>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> forwarded for Barbara
>>>>> 
>>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
>>>> when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard post.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
>>>> before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I remember
>>>> you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 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
>>>> 
>>> --
>>> 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 clemc at ccc.com  Sat Sep  6 05:46:39 2025
From: clemc at ccc.com (Clem Cole)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:46:39 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>

The early maps show the CMU IBM 360/67 running TSS, but I was a programmer
in that shop.  I don't think we ever had an NCP that worked with TSS.  It
certainly was not on the ARPANET when I was a programmer.   However, I note
that later maps, the fourth port on the CMU IMP starts to show it as
C.mmp.  Guy Almes might remember if that was ever active.

Clem

On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:22?AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
> being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
> interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
> communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
> working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
> partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
> communicating over the Arpanet.
>
> Steve
>
> Sent by a Verified
>
> sender
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Fascinating.
> > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> > EARN/BITNET.
> >
> > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> > Kindest regards,
> >
> > Olivier
> >
> >
> > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> > >   Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
> > > This one should work.
> > > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > > barbara
> > >      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
> > Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >   forwarded for Barbara
> > >
> > >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> > >> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
> > >> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> > >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> > >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> > >>
> > >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> > >>
> > >> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> > >>
> > >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
> > when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard
> post.
> > >>
> > >> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
> > before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
> remember
> > you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> > >>
> > >> 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
> >
> --
> 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 wayne at playaholic.com  Sat Sep  6 06:11:40 2025
From: wayne at playaholic.com (Wayne Hathaway)
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2025 09:11:40 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1757164300.lnjafi0skkoc8084@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>

An IBM 360/67 running TSS was at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA.  It was host 16 and its IMP was an early TIP..  And i can attest that it DID have an NCP because I wrote essentially all of it! And that was followed by a TCP/IP version just slightly after the switchover date.  I don't know about CMU.



On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:46:39 -0400, Clem Cole via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>> The early maps show the CMU IBM 360/67 running TSS, but I was a programmer
>> in that shop.  I don't think we ever had an NCP that worked with TSS.  It
>> certainly was not on the ARPANET when I was a programmer.   However, I note
>> that later maps, the fourth port on the CMU IMP starts to show it as
>> C.mmp.  Guy Almes might remember if that was ever active.
>> 
>> Clem
>> 
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:22?AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> > IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
>> > being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
>> > interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
>> > communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
>> > working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
>> > partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
>> > communicating over the Arpanet.
>> >
>> > Steve
>> >
>> > Sent by a Verified
>> >
>> > sender
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>> > Internet-history  wrote:
>> >
>> > > Fascinating.
>> > > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>> > > EARN/BITNET.
>> > >
>> > > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>> > > Kindest regards,
>> > >
>> > > Olivier
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> > > >   Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>> > > > This one should work.
>> > > > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>> > > > barbara
>> > > >      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>> > > Internet-history wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > >   forwarded for Barbara
>> > > >
>> > > >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> > > >> From: Barbara Denny
>> > > >> To: Internet-history
>> > > >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>> > > >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>> > > >>
>> > > >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>> > > >>
>> > > >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
>> > > when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard
>> > post.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
>> > > before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
>> > remember
>> > > you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> 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
>> > >
>> > --
>> > 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
>> >
>> -- 
>> 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 vint at google.com  Sat Sep  6 06:36:23 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 09:36:23 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <1757164300.lnjafi0skkoc8084@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
 <1757164300.lnjafi0skkoc8084@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggfoYxN4fMh2uNriKyE6yOEZs=pLo8m5CvdZZkcd0GFjLw@mail.gmail.com>

Great to hear from you, Wayne!!

Vint

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




On Sat, Sep 6, 2025, 09:11 Wayne Hathaway via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> An IBM 360/67 running TSS was at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett
> Field, CA.  It was host 16 and its IMP was an early TIP..  And i can attest
> that it DID have an NCP because I wrote essentially all of it! And that was
> followed by a TCP/IP version just slightly after the switchover date.  I
> don't know about CMU.
>
>
>
> On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:46:39 -0400, Clem Cole via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> >> The early maps show the CMU IBM 360/67 running TSS, but I was a
> programmer
> >> in that shop.  I don't think we ever had an NCP that worked with TSS.
> It
> >> certainly was not on the ARPANET when I was a programmer.   However, I
> note
> >> that later maps, the fourth port on the CMU IMP starts to show it as
> >> C.mmp.  Guy Almes might remember if that was ever active.
> >>
> >> Clem
> >>
> >> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:22?AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
> >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> > IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.
> Prior to
> >> > being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to
> add
> >> > interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
> >> > communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
> >> > working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
> >> > partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as
> processes
> >> > communicating over the Arpanet.
> >> >
> >> > Steve
> >> >
> >> > Sent by a Verified
> >> >
> >> > sender
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
> >> > Internet-history  wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > Fascinating.
> >> > > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
> >> > > EARN/BITNET.
> >> > >
> >> > > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
> >> > > Kindest regards,
> >> > >
> >> > > Olivier
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >> > > >   Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
> >> > > > This one should work.
> >> > > > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> >> > > > barbara
> >> > > >      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg
> Skinner via
> >> > > Internet-history wrote:
> >> > > >
> >> > > >   forwarded for Barbara
> >> > > >
> >> > > >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> >> > > >> From: Barbara Denny
> >> > > >> To: Internet-history
> >> > > >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
> >> > > >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were
> recovered
> >> > > when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard
> >> > post.
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP
> twice
> >> > > before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
> >> > remember
> >> > > you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> 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
> >> > >
> >> > --
> >> > 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
> >> >
> >> --
> >> 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
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
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From galmes at tamu.edu  Sat Sep  6 08:13:34 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 11:13:34 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2ff96442-b0b3-4fc0-98ba-c1d8110ed4de@tamu.edu>

Hi Clem,
   My experience with CMU's 360/67 was running batch jobs using its 
wonderful Algol-W compiler.  Excellent for teaching programming with.

   C.mmp was an experimental multiprocessor designed by Bill Wulf and a 
number of CS students and staff in the very early 1970s.  As hardware, 
it was an elegant multiprocessor with up to 16 separate PDP-11s, each 
with its own local memory and peripherals, all sharing a massive (2 
MBytes!) shared (mostly) core primary store.  As software, it ran a 
capability-based operating system called Hydra.  The vast majority of 
the programming I did in research related to my thesis project dealt 
with C.mmp.  A wonderful experimental system with enough flaws that it 
was not going to be the next big thing.
   But C.mmp was connected to the ARPAnet through one of the ports on 
CMU's IMP.  This was almost entirely used to support logging into C.mmp 
from the department's PDP-10s.  Also, since the wonderful Bliss-11 
compiler we used actually ran on the PDP-10s, we'd compile our programs 
there and then move them over the ARPAnet to C.mmp for execution.
   So, at least in this case, the ARPAnet was, in effect, our LAN for 
moving files and logging in to various systems within the CMU CS 
department, including this highly experimental system.

   A medium-good explanation can be found at 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.mmp>

   There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet served 
this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
	-- Guy

On 9/6/25 8:46 AM, Clem Cole via Internet-history wrote:
> The early maps show the CMU IBM 360/67 running TSS, but I was a programmer
> in that shop.  I don't think we ever had an NCP that worked with TSS.  It
> certainly was not on the ARPANET when I was a programmer.   However, I note
> that later maps, the fourth port on the CMU IMP starts to show it as
> C.mmp.  Guy Almes might remember if that was ever active.
> 
> Clem
> 
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:22?AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.  Prior to
>> being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
>> interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
>> communicate with each other.  As I understand it, they never got it
>> working.  However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
>> partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
>> communicating over the Arpanet.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> Sent by a Verified
>>
>> sender
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Fascinating.
>> > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>> > EARN/BITNET.
>> >
>> > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>> > Kindest regards,
>> >
>> > Olivier
>> >
>> >
>> > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> > >   Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>> > > This one should work.
>> > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://self-issued.info/Smiley/ 
> Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc- 
> dNCOj5OdQHl1_fkgq7XBGIa8quLvQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html__;!!KwNVnqRv!CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc-dNCOj5OdQHl1_fkgq7XBGIa8quLvQ$>
>> > > barbara
>> > >      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>> > Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >   forwarded for Barbara
>> > >
>> > >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> > >> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>> > >> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> > >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>> > >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>> > >>
>> > >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>> > >>
>> > >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://self-issued.info/S.miley/ 
> Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc- 
> dNCOj5OdQHl1_fkgq7XBGJUHbeQvw$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html__;!!KwNVnqRv!CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc-dNCOj5OdQHl1_fkgq7XBGJUHbeQvw$>
>> > >>
>> > >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were recovered
>> > when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard
>> post.
>> > >>
>> > >> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut off  NCP twice
>> > before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
>> remember
>> > you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>> > >>
>> > >> barbara
>> >
>> > --
>> > Internet-history mailing list
>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc- 
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>> > -
>> > Unsubscribe:
>> >
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
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>> >
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc- 
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>> -
>> Unsubscribe:
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> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
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>>
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
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> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
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> -
> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
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> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
> KwNVnqRv! 
> CwuvUVeri51FGqp0FEJ_k7BVZip4r2gnntIIxgbXrlSDBy2g5L9yc4_IAhbj_znc- 
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> 



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sat Sep  6 08:35:51 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sat,  6 Sep 2025 11:35:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
Message-ID: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Guy Almes

    > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
    > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.

Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems over the
ARPANET.

	Noel


From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net  Fri Sep  5 09:11:21 2025
From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2025 12:11:21 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>

Jack,

Do I recall correctly that BBN (or maybe Telenet) provided the dial-up 
network for AOL, modeled on the ARPANET TACs?

Miles

Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental 
> shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were 
> subsequently designed.
>
> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by 
> Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.? Human users connected to their 
> computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", 
> which lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.? During that session, they 
> might also do file transfers between two computers. The ARPANET was 
> pretty slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.? 
> Sessions between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and 
> infrequently opened or closed.
>
> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and 
> responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers, 
> mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>
> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, 
> i.e., mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including 
> short messages as well as long documents.? But email servers were 
> pretty patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see 
> the characters they sent echoed immediately.
>
> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside 
> the IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive 
> and bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".?? In particular, 
> there were IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the 
> source and destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).? Those 
> mechanisms created the reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of 
> the underlying unreliable packet switching machinery.? The IMPs 
> delivered a "virtual circuit" reliable byte-stream service to their 
> hosts - much like TCP does now between two devices on the Internet.?? 
> For anyone curious, the 1970s ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected 
> and is available online.
>
> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. 
> Sessions in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in 
> human-based traffic.? I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in 
> Lick's group at MIT, same as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash 
> Marc received about SURVEY was because it was seriously "thrashing" 
> the ARPANET with so many short connections continuously happening.? 
> The ARPANET wasn't designed for that kind of continuous very short 
> session traffic load.
>
> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably a 
> bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the 
> NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That made it 
> my problem.
>
> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
> Updated automatically of course.
>
> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of 
> networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the 
> model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead 
> of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the 
> transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet, 
> in support of whatever humans wanted done. That was Lick's vision - 
> everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with 
> each other, and active all the time. Pretty much seems like what we 
> have today.
>
> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk 
> traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.? There's 
> probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.? But perhaps the 
> growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
>
> Jack Haverty
>
> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too 
>> popular.
>>
>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I had forgotten about that!
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history 
>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If 
>>>> you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a 
>>>> ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. 
>>>> It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>>>>
>>>> Take care,
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history 
>>>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Speaking of.? Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.? He had
>>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group. He (along 
>>>>> with
>>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.? 
>>>>> Marc
>>>>> told me this:
>>>>>
>>>>> ? "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.? For a few days, the 
>>>>> whole
>>>>> ? ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems 
>>>>> logged
>>>>> ? every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>>>>> ? sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.? A decent system 
>>>>> since the
>>>>> ? few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>>>>> ? than a few connections a day.? All of sudden, I'm poking them 
>>>>> once a
>>>>> ? minute or so.? System managers would come in in the morning to find
>>>>> ? paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons 
>>>>> that had
>>>>> ? been torn to shreds!"
>>>>>
>>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking 
>>>>> only an
>>>>> ARPANET to survey.? Watch your teletypes!
>>>>>
>>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>>>>> Tech Sq building.)
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>>> <mailto: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 
>>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org 
>>>> <mailto: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 
>>>>
>
>


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown



From galmes at tamu.edu  Sat Sep  6 09:28:37 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 12:28:37 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>

Noel,
   So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
   Very interesting,
	-- Guy

On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>      > From: Guy Almes
> 
>      > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>      > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
> 
> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems over the
> ARPANET.
> 
> 	Noel
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
> -
> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
> 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Sep  6 12:15:10 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 12:15:10 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>

ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files -- 
<device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2>?? So, for example, I logged in to 
MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6??? 
File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less 
(motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory location).

Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so people of 
course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the details or 
timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message 
Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some 
other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK 
on some other ITS machine.

So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on 
the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.

Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's 
files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's file 
on the AI machine.

This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote file in 
any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the 
remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less - 
problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)

I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it.? IIRC, it 
took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the 
"JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and 
another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, and 
send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.

We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all 
of another process' address space into its own address space.? I can't 
recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET 
though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same 
internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.

However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has 
even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on your 
modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its

Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)

On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> Noel,
> ? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
> ? Very interesting,
> ????-- Guy
>
> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>> ???? > From: Guy Almes
>>
>> ???? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>> ???? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>
>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems over the
>> ARPANET.
>>
>> ????Noel
>> -- 
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>> -
>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>>
>

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From ocl at gih.com  Sat Sep  6 12:18:41 2025
From: ocl at gih.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Olivier_MJ_Cr=C3=A9pin-Leblond?=)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 20:18:41 +0100
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CAHxHggfQY6T1i10k2+Uz5Z__eMYC0naPoAmz1ZSY8qCO=qdOFQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
 <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <22d69d89-1088-4fee-bc2c-75008f35914c@gih.com>
 <CAHxHggfQY6T1i10k2+Uz5Z__eMYC0naPoAmz1ZSY8qCO=qdOFQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <0d8d5509-f0ff-4669-8203-fe1f80a15100@gih.com>

After John Day told me he thinks Rutherford Appleton Labs was on the 
ARPANET, I did a bit of research and found some interesting papers that 
indeed confirm this.

UCL ARPANET Project Report for Year 1977. The London UCL node was set-up 
as a gateway from which access to EPSS was possible to the IBM at RL. 
The paper does not explain whether this was transparent to the user.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA135020.pdf

Monitoring and access control of the London node of ARPANET. provides 
more info on how the system is monitored;
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1499799.1499882

And then a fuller report for 1976.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/5793285/National-Security-Archive-Peter-T-Kirstein.pdf

Later (late eighties), when TCP-IP was implemented, the links to 
Internet were the same, but the UCL-CS.ARPA turned to uk.ac.ucl.cs.nss 
as a gateway and as a user of that gateway from JANET, the access was 
not transparent to the user. You had to log into the machine (there was 
first a vax and then a sun) and from there, select where you wanted to 
go. Lots and lots of choices of gateways... but that's another story.

Happy reading!

Olivier

On 06/09/2025 12:04, Vint Cerf wrote:
> i agree with that conclusion, Olivier
> v
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 5:38?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via 
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     That was the Rutherford Appleton Lab IBM-B, uk.ac.rl.ib aka
>     UKACRL.BITNET / EARN.UKACRL
>
>     But I do not think that this was ever connected to the Arpanet
>     using NCP.
>     Kindest regards,
>
>     Olivier
>
>
>     On 06/09/2025 11:12, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
>     > I don't think so but weren't they connected to a major IBM
>     facility by way
>     > of JANET?
>     > v
>     >
>     >
>     > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 3:48?AM Eberhard W Lisse via
>     Internet-history <
>     > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>     >
>     >> Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?
>     >>
>     >> el
>     >>
>     >> --
>     >> Sent from my iPhone
>     >> On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>     >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
>     >>> Fascinating.
>     >>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the
>     mainstay of
>     >>> EARN/BITNET.
>     >>>
>     >>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>     >>> Kindest regards,
>     >>>
>     >>> Olivier
>     >>>
>     >>>
>     >>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>     >>>> Oops.? Somehow a .? got inserted in the url.
>     >>>> This one should work.
>     >>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>     >>>> barbara
>     >>>> On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>     >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>     >>>> forwarded for Barbara
>     >>>>
>     >>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>     >>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>     >>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>     >>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>     >>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>     >>>>>>
>     >>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>     >>>>>>
>     >>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>     >>>>>>
>     >>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.? They were
>     >> recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's
>     smiley :-)
>     >> bboard post.
>     >>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet? temporarily shut
>     off? NCP
>     >> twice before flag day.? Vint, was one of those times you ?????
>     I think I
>     >> remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised
>     if I am wrong.
>     >>>>>> 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
>     >> --
>     >> 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
>     >>
>
>     -- 
>     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 jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Sep  6 12:37:55 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 12:37:55 -0700
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
 <a5f2412a-1c80-41a6-8d37-db2699288ee8@3kitty.org>
 <1486169879.499382.1757103821710@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <7d8688ef-e63e-4e48-b0c3-a1d739e8412f@3kitty.org>

Hi Barbara,

I joined BBN in 1977.? BBN had its own clone of the ARPANET, called the 
RCCNET.? Offices at BBN were connected to some BBN computer. IIRC at 
first terminals were hardwired to some PDP-10, but later they were 
connected to a TIP (actually a Pluribus TIP, or PTIP). BBN used its 
ARPANET clone as an internal LAN.?? It also made a good testbed for new 
ARPANET code.

All of the main timesharing machines were on the RCCNET.?? But only a 
few were also on the ARPANET.? Those machines handled things like email 
or FTP transfers to/from the ARPANET.

Chances are your office terminal was connected to some PDP-10 which was 
on the RCCNET but not on the ARPANET.?? So from your machine, you were 
possibly using a TIP, attached to the RCCNET, but didn't have an acount 
on any machine on the RCCNET which was also on the ARPANET.?? You 
couldn't use the BBN internal TIP on RCCNET to directly access any 
ARPANET machines.

Connectivity between the RCCNET and ARPANET happened early in the 
development of the Internet, since the first gateways were developed by 
Ginny Strazisar at BBN.?? You could then use TCP to get from a machine 
on the RCCNET to a machine on the ARPANET.? But TCP was still being 
developed (Bill Plummer was driving the PDP-10 TENEX implementation).?? 
You probably just didn't have the right wiring or accounts to be able to 
get to CMU from your office.

Rob Gurwitz wrote TCP for the Vax.? So it's possible that you went to 
the computer room where the Vax lived (bottom floor of the 50 Moulton 
tower IIRC) in order to use one of its terminals to get to CMU.

Jack

On 9/5/25 13:23, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   I have been trying quite a while to remember whether I used a tip or a tac to get back to cmua from BBN (or perhaps something else?? Somehow I associate Rob Gurwitz with this).? My friends, who were working in the cs department at CMU, let me keep my account when I started to work at BBN (Not all undergrads had access to cmua. I worked as a programmer for the grad cs department so I had accounts on various machines). I used to go up to a computer room at BBN to do this. I don't remember having a way to do it from my office.? If the command set was different between the access mechanisms, I might be able to figure out which I was using.
> Actually having access to the network was one of the reasons I chose BBN for work after graduation.? I didn't really know much about networking at the point.? My part-time job in the CS department was a project called Gandalf which was a software engineering research project involving integrated programming environments.
> BTW,? in searching for information on cmua,? I found this write-up on the coke machine. I thought people might be interested in reading it if this hasn't been posted before.
> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
> barbara
>      On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 11:15:47 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   Telenet was before my time at BBN.? I don't recall ever hearing much
> about it other than it was an offshoot from BBN.
>
> But your timeline seems skewed.? Terminal access to ARPANET began by
> using TIPs, which were an IMP with a multi-line TTY controller
> attached.?? TIPs became TACs when TCP was added to them, which IIRC was
> done by Bob Hinden.
>
> There was also a mechanism called "TIP Login", and a follow-on called
> "TACACS", which provided a way for humans to "log in to the network" by
> supplying their name and password.?? Most host computers on the ARPANET
> had some kind of scheme for their users to log in to their machines - if
> only to know what account to charge their CPU time to.
>
> I recall that Bob Kahn was especially interested in DLE - Double Login
> Elimination, with mechanisms to be added to TIP Login and/or TACACS.
> The idea was that once you logged in to the ARPANET, the network could
> tell your computer who you were, so you didn't have to log in again
> after opening a Telnet connection.? I don't recall how much, if any, of
> that was implemented.
>
> There was a battle brewing between the resource owners, who wanted to
> know who was using their stuff, and the users, many of whom valued
> privacy and anonymity more.
>
> But whether or not any of those terminal access mechanisms were used in
> AOL, or who did it -- I have no idea.
>
> Jack
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    

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From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sat Sep  6 13:03:27 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 16:03:27 -0400
Subject: [ih] As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <0d8d5509-f0ff-4669-8203-fe1f80a15100@gih.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <3f519bdf-002b-417d-8121-ddbb45207fa6@Spark>
 <CAAFtm_VmnR+TKN_rSeYVhL3o3OjmZRe7OYwu7XNvE7MOwQFrzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <22d69d89-1088-4fee-bc2c-75008f35914c@gih.com>
 <CAHxHggfQY6T1i10k2+Uz5Z__eMYC0naPoAmz1ZSY8qCO=qdOFQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <0d8d5509-f0ff-4669-8203-fe1f80a15100@gih.com>
Message-ID: <86F2EA36-17C7-4A65-9BF9-69D4E26E4D69@comcast.net>

As I have related before, this was when FermiLab was being built. There was a lot of transfers from CERN to Rutherford and then Rutherford to Illinois to mag tape and driven to Argonne National Lab. Yes, I know they weren?t supposed be doing that, but . . . ;-)

This was before there were Interstates to Chicago. If you look at a map, Champaign-Urbana is almost due south of Argonne on the south side of Chicago. The physics dept had a name for their route (now lost), that they could drive back country roads to Argonne and make much better time than using the highways. (The Midwest states were surveyed into one mile squares called sections and the country roads tend to follow the section lines. Yes, the whole thing is pretty much a grid.  The whole area is very flat, all corn and soybean fields and at night one could go quite fast, if one knew the road and they did.)

Take care,
John0

Before college, I remember doing 60+ mph on roads like that and I was cautious.

> On Sep 6, 2025, at 15:18, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> After John Day told me he thinks Rutherford Appleton Labs was on the ARPANET, I did a bit of research and found some interesting papers that indeed confirm this.
> 
> UCL ARPANET Project Report for Year 1977. The London UCL node was set-up as a gateway from which access to EPSS was possible to the IBM at RL. The paper does not explain whether this was transparent to the user.
> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA135020.pdf
> 
> Monitoring and access control of the London node of ARPANET. provides more info on how the system is monitored;
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1499799.1499882
> 
> And then a fuller report for 1976.
> https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/5793285/National-Security-Archive-Peter-T-Kirstein.pdf
> 
> Later (late eighties), when TCP-IP was implemented, the links to Internet were the same, but the UCL-CS.ARPA turned to uk.ac.ucl.cs.nss as a gateway and as a user of that gateway from JANET, the access was not transparent to the user. You had to log into the machine (there was first a vax and then a sun) and from there, select where you wanted to go. Lots and lots of choices of gateways... but that's another story.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> Olivier
> 
> On 06/09/2025 12:04, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> i agree with that conclusion, Olivier
>> v
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 5:38?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>>    That was the Rutherford Appleton Lab IBM-B, uk.ac.rl.ib aka
>>    UKACRL.BITNET / EARN.UKACRL
>> 
>>    But I do not think that this was ever connected to the Arpanet
>>    using NCP.
>>    Kindest regards,
>> 
>>    Olivier
>> 
>> 
>>    On 06/09/2025 11:12, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
>>    > I don't think so but weren't they connected to a major IBM
>>    facility by way
>>    > of JANET?
>>    > v
>>    >
>>    >
>>    > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 3:48?AM Eberhard W Lisse via
>>    Internet-history <
>>    > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>    >
>>    >> Didn't UCL use IBM in 73?
>>    >>
>>    >> el
>>    >>
>>    >> --
>>    >> Sent from my iPhone
>>    >> On Sep 6, 2025 at 10:34 +0200, Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>>    >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:
>>    >>> Fascinating.
>>    >>> I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the
>>    mainstay of
>>    >>> EARN/BITNET.
>>    >>>
>>    >>> Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>>    >>> Kindest regards,
>>    >>>
>>    >>> Olivier
>>    >>>
>>    >>>
>>    >>> On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>    >>>> Oops.  Somehow a .  got inserted in the url.
>>    >>>> This one should work.
>>    >>>> https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>    >>>> barbara
>>    >>>> On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>>    >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>    >>>> forwarded for Barbara
>>    >>>>
>>    >>>>>> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>>    >>>>>> From: Barbara Denny<b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>    >>>>>> To: Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>    >>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>>    >>>>>> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>>    >>>>>>
>>    >>>>>> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>>    >>>>>>
>>    >>>>>> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>>    >>>>>>
>>    >>>>>> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.  They were
>>    >> recovered when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's
>>    smiley :-)
>>    >> bboard post.
>>    >>>>>> The messages include when the ARPAnet  temporarily shut
>>    off  NCP
>>    >> twice before flag day.  Vint, was one of those times you ?????
>>    I think I
>>    >> remember you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised
>>    if I am wrong.
>>    >>>>>> 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
>>    >> --
>>    >> 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
>>    >>
>> 
>>    --     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
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> 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 galmes at tamu.edu  Sat Sep  6 13:04:26 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 16:04:26 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>

Jack,
   Thanks very much.
   So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
	-- Guy

On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2>?? So, for example, I logged in to
> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory location).
> 
> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so people of
> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the details or
> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
> on some other ITS machine.
> 
> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
> 
> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's file
> on the AI machine.
> 
> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote file in
> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
> 
> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it.? IIRC, it
> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, and
> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
> 
> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
> of another process' address space into its own address space.? I can't
> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
> 
> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on your
> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
> 
> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
> 
> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>> Noel,
>> ? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
>> ? Very interesting,
>> ????-- Guy
>>
>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>
>>> ???? > From: Guy Almes
>>>
>>> ???? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>>> ???? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>>
>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems over the
>>> ARPANET.
>>>
>>> ????Noel
>>> -- 
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>>>>-
>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>>>
>>
> 
> 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Sep  6 13:32:44 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 13:32:44 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <a8320ca0-3cb9-4014-9819-6e38706edde5@3kitty.org>

Yes.? I left MIT in June 1977 and it had been in place for a while by 
then, and had spread to include the MIT-ML and MIT-MC machines. There 
may be more info at https://its.victor.se/wiki/ or the associated 
mailing list. ? /Jack


On 9/6/25 13:04, Guy Almes wrote:
> Jack,
> ? Thanks very much.
> ? So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
> ????-- Guy
>
> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged in to
>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory 
>> location).
>>
>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so people of
>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the details or
>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
>> on some other ITS machine.
>>
>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>>
>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's file
>> on the AI machine.
>>
>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote file in
>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>>
>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it. IIRC, it
>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, and
>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
>>
>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
>> of another process' address space into its own address space.? I can't
>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>>
>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on your
>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
>>
>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>>
>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Noel,
>>> ? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
>>> ? Very interesting,
>>> ????-- Guy
>>>
>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ???? > From: Guy Almes
>>>>
>>>> ???? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>>>> ???? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>>>
>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems 
>>>> over the
>>>> ARPANET.
>>>>
>>>> ????Noel
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ 
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >> 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>>>>> -
>>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
>>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ 
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

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From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Sep  6 14:27:08 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 09:27:08 +1200
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at CMU]
In-Reply-To: <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>

I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems. Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone else do it first?

My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 07-Sep-25 08:04, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> Jack,
>     Thanks very much.
>     So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
> 	-- Guy
> 
> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2>?? So, for example, I logged in to
>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory location).
>>
>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so people of
>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the details or
>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
>> on some other ITS machine.
>>
>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>>
>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's file
>> on the AI machine.
>>
>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote file in
>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>>
>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it.? IIRC, it
>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, and
>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
>>
>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
>> of another process' address space into its own address space.? I can't
>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>>
>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on your
>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
>>
>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>>
>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Noel,
>>>  ? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
>>>  ? Very interesting,
>>>  ????-- Guy
>>>
>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  ???? > From: Guy Almes
>>>>
>>>>  ???? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>>>>  ???? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>>>
>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems over the
>>>> ARPANET.
>>>>
>>>>  ????Noel
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>>>>> -
>>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!
>>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-
>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$
>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
> 

From galmes at tamu.edu  Sat Sep  6 14:56:53 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 17:56:53 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <a8320ca0-3cb9-4014-9819-6e38706edde5@3kitty.org>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <a8320ca0-3cb9-4014-9819-6e38706edde5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <0d857f66-2d05-480b-ab0d-14f753da43ca@tamu.edu>

   Very interesting; thanks,
	-- Guy

On 9/6/25 4:32 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:
> Yes.? I left MIT in June 1977 and it had been in place for a while by 
> then, and had spread to include the MIT-ML and MIT-MC machines. There 
> may be more info at https://its.victor.se/wiki/ or the associated 
> mailing list. ? /Jack
> 
> 
> On 9/6/25 13:04, Guy Almes wrote:
>> Jack,
>> ? Thanks very much.
>> ? So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
>> ????-- Guy
>>
>> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged in to
>>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory 
>>> location).
>>>
>>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so people of
>>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the details or
>>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
>>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
>>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
>>> on some other ITS machine.
>>>
>>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
>>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>>>
>>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
>>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's file
>>> on the AI machine.
>>>
>>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote file in
>>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
>>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>>>
>>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it. IIRC, it
>>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
>>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
>>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, and
>>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
>>>
>>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
>>> of another process' address space into its own address space.? I can't
>>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
>>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>>>
>>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
>>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on your
>>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
>>>
>>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>>>
>>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Noel,
>>>> ? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
>>>> ? Very interesting,
>>>> ????-- Guy
>>>>
>>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> ???? > From: Guy Almes
>>>>>
>>>>> ???? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet
>>>>> ???? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>>>>
>>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems 
>>>>> over the
>>>>> ARPANET.
>>>>>
>>>>> ????Noel
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/ 
>>>>> listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/ 
>>>>> mailman/listinfo/>
>>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>>>> W92d1QCtfI- NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/ 
>>>>> __https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>> W92d1QCtfI- NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >> <https://urldefense.com/v3/ 
>>> __https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!! 
>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>>>>>> -
>>>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/ 
>>>>> b/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
>>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet- 
>>>>> history__;JSUlJSU!! KwNVnqRv! 
>>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/ 
>>>>> __https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
>>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b? 
>>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet- 
>>>>> history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv! 
>>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30- 
>>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> 



From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sat Sep  6 15:36:20 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 22:36:20 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <391569525.758426.1757198180625@mail.yahoo.com>

 Andrew File System, part of Andrew project, at CMU but maybe that isn't early enough for you.? Don't have a good reference off the top of my head.
barbara
    On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 02:27:20 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems. Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone else do it first?

My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
Regards/Ng? mihi
? ? Brian Carpenter  

From karl at iwl.com  Sat Sep  6 16:03:39 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 16:03:39 -0700
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <391569525.758426.1757198180625@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
 <391569525.758426.1757198180625@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <5866c5b6-f96d-4cb6-9f52-c9a0f8670739@iwl.com>

My close friend (now gone) Frank Heinrich worked on a distributed file 
system as part of Farber's DCS project at UC Irvine in the late 1960's.? 
I don't know much more than that except that, like much of DCS, there 
was a request-for-bid, bid, binding handshake to allocate resources.

 ? ? --karl--

On 9/6/25 3:36 PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Andrew File System, part of Andrew project, at CMU but maybe that isn't early enough for you.? Don't have a good reference off the top of my head.
> barbara
>      On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 02:27:20 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems. Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone else do it first?
>
> My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.
>
> [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>  ? ? Brian Carpenter


From norwayjose at mac.com  Sat Sep  6 16:11:20 2025
From: norwayjose at mac.com (Rod Bartlett)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 19:11:20 -0400
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <E852806B-78A3-4F15-9CA7-3DFC94687EB2@mac.com>

Miles,

I think Telenet was running AOL's dial-up network when they switched to their unlimited pricing plan.  I was working at Sprint International which had inherited Telenet's equipment development/maintenance team from GTE/Telenet.  The heavy load caused by so many users who no longer had to worry about limiting their online time was causing stability problems for Sprint's X.28 PADs (async to packet switch interface).

 - Rod

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 12:11?PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Jack,
> 
> Do I recall correctly that BBN (or maybe Telenet) provided the dial-up network for AOL, modeled on the ARPANET TACs?
> 
> Miles
> 
> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were subsequently designed.
>> 
>> In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session", which lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they might also do file transfers between two computers. The ARPANET was pretty slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.  Sessions between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and infrequently opened or closed.
>> 
>> So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers, mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
>> 
>> Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users, i.e., mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including short messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were pretty patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see the characters they sent echoed immediately.
>> 
>> The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside the IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive and bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".   In particular, there were IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the source and destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those mechanisms created the reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of the underlying unreliable packet switching machinery.  The IMPs delivered a "virtual circuit" reliable byte-stream service to their hosts - much like TCP does now between two devices on the Internet.   For anyone curious, the 1970s ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected and is available online.
>> 
>> Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern. Sessions in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in human-based traffic.  I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in Lick's group at MIT, same as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash Marc received about SURVEY was because it was seriously "thrashing" the ARPANET with so many short connections continuously happening.  The ARPANET wasn't designed for that kind of continuous very short session traffic load.
>> 
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.  Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my problem.
>> 
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.
>> 
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>> 
>> Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet, in support of whatever humans wanted done. That was Lick's vision - everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with each other, and active all the time. Pretty much seems like what we have today.
>> 
>> I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
>> 
>> Jack Haverty
>> 
>> On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too popular.
>>> 
>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I had forgotten about that!
>>>> 
>>>> 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
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down. It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Take care,
>>>>> John
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
>>>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group. He (along with
>>>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
>>>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.  Marc
>>>>>> told me this:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the whole
>>>>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems logged
>>>>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
>>>>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system since the
>>>>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
>>>>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them once a
>>>>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
>>>>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons that had
>>>>>>   been torn to shreds!"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking only an
>>>>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
>>>>>> Tech Sq building.)
>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto: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
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
> 
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
> 
> -- 
> 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 jack at 3kitty.org  Sat Sep  6 16:24:30 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 16:24:30 -0700
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>

I doubt anything was published.?? It just wasn't that big a deal, and 
wasn't part of the research mission.

The "distributed file system" I described was "a hack" probably coded 
overnight when someone realized that it could be easily done by using 
the mechanisms that already existed inside ITS - like the JOB/BOJ 
pseudo-devices.? Such work wasn't part of any official project, but was 
done primarily to mitigate the scarcity of CPU cycles, memory, or disk 
space.?? It might have been mentioned in the annual report of the AI Lab 
work, but I doubt there was ever a paper published.

With several ITSes on the ARPANET, and the hassle of dealing with FTP to 
move files, someone likely noticed that a "remote disk" capability would 
be useful and was an easy thing to try.?? I recall someone once 
wondering why there was a lot of traffic between hosts on the MIT IMP, 
where other sites traffic patterns were mostly long distance.? MIT used 
the IMP as a poor man's LAN, and made it as easy as possible by coding 
up things like remote disks.

If anyone else had "done it first" I never heard about it.? There was no 
network yet, so information about other projects was not readily 
available.?? Professors might have read journals, but hackers mostly 
wrote code.

Most of the OS changes to ITS were done by the MIT AI Lab.?? But their 
focus was AI, and changes to the OS were often done to help with some AI 
project.? In DM, we changed software as needed, mostly focussed on 
research on use of the network such as email.

AI changed their PDP-10 hardware when that was useful, e.g., by adding a 
new instruction to ROTate memory in a counterclockwise direction, which 
was helpful to the AI Chess program.?? I recall someone at some point 
made some hardware changes (might have been on the DM machine) that 
enabled a program? to be run "in reverse" for a bit.? That was helpful 
in debugging to figure out how the OS code actually got to some weird 
place, e.g., in some data structure, where it crashed because data as 
"instructions" made little sense.

ITS was a lot like Unix, in the sense that it was not an official 
project to research issues of operating systems.? That was more Multics 
territory.? ITS was just a tool to be used and modified as needed to 
help with the actual research topics of AI, DM, and later ML (MathLab) 
and MC (Macsyma Consortium).

The DEC field service techs used to hate coming to ITS land, but also 
liked it because they always learned something.

Jack


On 9/6/25 14:27, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems. 
> Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone 
> else do it first?
>
> My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.
>
> [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
> Regards/Ng? mihi
> ?? Brian Carpenter
>
> On 07-Sep-25 08:04, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>> Jack,
>> ??? Thanks very much.
>> ??? So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
>> ????-- Guy
>>
>> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged in to
>>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory 
>>> location).
>>>
>>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so 
>>> people of
>>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the 
>>> details or
>>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
>>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
>>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
>>> on some other ITS machine.
>>>
>>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
>>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>>>
>>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
>>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's 
>>> file
>>> on the AI machine.
>>>
>>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote 
>>> file in
>>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
>>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>>>
>>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it. IIRC, it
>>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
>>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
>>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device, 
>>> and
>>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
>>>
>>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
>>> of another process' address space into its own address space. I can't
>>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
>>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>>>
>>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
>>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on 
>>> your
>>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
>>>
>>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>>>
>>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Noel,
>>>> ?? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of 
>>>> FTP)?
>>>> ?? Very interesting,
>>>> ?????-- Guy
>>>>
>>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> ????? > From: Guy Almes
>>>>>
>>>>> ????? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the 
>>>>> ARPAnet
>>>>> ????? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>>>>>
>>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems 
>>>>> over the
>>>>> ARPANET.
>>>>>
>>>>> ?????Noel
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI- 
>>>>>
>>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>>>>>
>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >> 
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>>>>>> -
>>>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ 
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
>>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!! 
>>>>>
>>>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-
>>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$
>>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$> 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>

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From steve at shinkuro.com  Sat Sep  6 17:05:21 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 20:05:21 -0400
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
 <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>

Jack,

I spent a year and half in the MIT-AI lab (Feb 1967 to May 1968), the next
three years (May 1968 to May 1971)at UCLA working on the Arpanet protocols,
the next three years (July 1971 to August 1974) at (D)ARPA primarily
overseeing the AI portfolio but also paying attention occasionally to
Arpanet issues.  As part of this work I saw the multiple operating system
and architecture projects at the various sites, including in particular the
C.mmp and other efforts at CMU.

Later, around 1990 or so, Jerry Popek at UCLA and I at Trusted Information
Systems worked together on extending his shared Unix file structure to work
over the Internet using secured file transfer.  That project was called
Truffles.  I share these biographical details as a preface to my remarks
embedded below.

On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:24?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I doubt anything was published.   It just wasn't that big a deal, and
> wasn't part of the research mission.
>

Heh, heh.  This is an example of some really great work done at MIT-AI lab
that was IMO underplayed.  Documentation and publication of the MIT-AI work
was almost non-existent.  From the perspective of sitting at my desk at
DARPA, it was pretty challenging figuring out what to write each year.
Further, the small hack you're describing could have been the basis for a
more common network service.  However, it would have required a fair amount
of work to deal with the differences across the operating systems and, of
course, the access control problems.  The ITS designers, at least in the
early days, took pride in avoiding heavy duty access control.  It was a
delight to use ITS, and I fully admired the MIT-AI hackers.  But Tenex had
stronger controls and quite usable software, so it won the day.  (DEC had
its own operating system, TOPS-10, which was much weaker.  They eventually
licensed Tenex from BBN and brought it out as  TOPS-20.)

>
> The "distributed file system" I described was "a hack" probably coded
> overnight when someone realized that it could be easily done by using
> the mechanisms that already existed inside ITS - like the JOB/BOJ
> pseudo-devices.  Such work wasn't part of any official project, but was
> done primarily to mitigate the scarcity of CPU cycles, memory, or disk
> space.   It might have been mentioned in the annual report of the AI Lab
> work, but I doubt there was ever a paper published.
>

Yeah.  See above.  It would have been an excellent and substantial
contribution to the Internet if the work had been pursued.  It took a very
long time before there were semi-sensible solutions to the file-sharing
problem.  The early commercial offerings were ridiculously expensive.  Two
of us founded Shinkuro to provide an essentially free way to share files
across the net based on everyone having a local copy of each shared file,
i.e. no central servers.  Dropbox, et al eventually won the day.

>
> With several ITSes on the ARPANET, and the hassle of dealing with FTP to
> move files, someone likely noticed that a "remote disk" capability would
> be useful and was an easy thing to try.   I recall someone once
> wondering why there was a lot of traffic between hosts on the MIT IMP,
> where other sites traffic patterns were mostly long distance.  MIT used
> the IMP as a poor man's LAN, and made it as easy as possible by coding
> up things like remote disks.
>

MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area
net.  And it wasn't long before there was a broad realization that the
majority of the communication in the Internet was local.

My favorite example was at UCSB where they had been trying to add
interprocess communication to OS/MVT on their IBM 360/75 to make it
possible for two partitions, i.e. separate jobs running concurrently,
to communicate.  I don't believe they ever got it working.  However, when
they connected their machine to the IMP and got their host-host protocol
software working...

>
> If anyone else had "done it first" I never heard about it.  There was no
> network yet, so information about other projects was not readily
> available.   Professors might have read journals, but hackers mostly
> wrote code.
>
> Most of the OS changes to ITS were done by the MIT AI Lab.   But their
> focus was AI, and changes to the OS were often done to help with some AI
> project.  In DM, we changed software as needed, mostly focussed on
> research on use of the network such as email.
>
> AI changed their PDP-10 hardware when that was useful, e.g., by adding a
> new instruction to ROTate memory in a counterclockwise direction, which
> was helpful to the AI Chess program.   I recall someone at some point
> made some hardware changes (might have been on the DM machine) that
> enabled a program  to be run "in reverse" for a bit.  That was helpful
> in debugging to figure out how the OS code actually got to some weird
> place, e.g., in some data structure, where it crashed because data as
> "instructions" made little sense.
>
> ITS was a lot like Unix, in the sense that it was not an official
> project to research issues of operating systems.  That was more Multics
> territory.  ITS was just a tool to be used and modified as needed to
> help with the actual research topics of AI, DM, and later ML (MathLab)
> and MC (Macsyma Consortium).
>

The MIT-AI lab, along with the AI labs at CMU, Stanford, BBN, et al
produced some great systems work.

>
> The DEC field service techs used to hate coming to ITS land, but also
> liked it because they always learned something.
>
> Jack
>
>
> On 9/6/25 14:27, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems.
> > Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone
> > else do it first?
> >
> > My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.
> >
> > [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
> > http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
> > Regards/Ng? mihi
> >    Brian Carpenter
> >
> > On 07-Sep-25 08:04, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> >> Jack,
> >>     Thanks very much.
> >>     So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
> >>     -- Guy
> >>
> >> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
> >>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged in to
> >>> MIT-DM as JFH.  My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
> >>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
> >>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory
> >>> location).
> >>>
> >>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so
> >>> people of
> >>> course experimented with how to use it.  I don't remember the
> >>> details or
> >>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
> >>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
> >>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
> >>> on some other ITS machine.
> >>>
> >>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
> >>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
> >>>
> >>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
> >>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's
> >>> file
> >>> on the AI machine.
> >>>
> >>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.  You could use a remote
> >>> file in
> >>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.  To the program, the
> >>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
> >>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
> >>>
> >>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it. IIRC, it
> >>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
> >>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
> >>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device,
> >>> and
> >>> send whatever they liked back and forth.  But I don't remember details.
> >>>
> >>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
> >>> of another process' address space into its own address space. I can't
> >>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
> >>> though.   If so, it would probably have been done using the same
> >>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
> >>>
> >>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
> >>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on
> >>> your
> >>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
> >>>
> >>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
> >>>
> >>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>> Noel,
> >>>>    So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of
> >>>> FTP)?
> >>>>    Very interesting,
> >>>>      -- Guy
> >>>>
> >>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>       > From: Guy Almes
> >>>>>
> >>>>>       > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the
> >>>>> ARPAnet
> >>>>>       > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems
> >>>>> over the
> >>>>> ARPANET.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>      Noel
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>>>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
> >>>>> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
> >>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
> >>>>>
> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
> >>>>>
> >>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
> >>>>> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
> >>>>>
> >>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
> >>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
> >>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >>
> >>> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
> >
> >>>>>> -
> >>>>> Unsubscribe:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/
> >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
> >>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
> >>>>>
> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-
> >>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$
> >>>>> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
>
> --
> 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 olejacobsen at me.com  Sat Sep  6 17:14:32 2025
From: olejacobsen at me.com (Ole Jacobsen)
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2025 17:14:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BCBD8622-7202-4135-801E-2C9BDF2B5E39@me.com>


(Speaking as a graduate of Newcastle University and friend of the authors):

The Newcastle Connection (as described in the link given by Brian Carpenter)
was not only a distributed file system but also a distributed computing environment.

For example, suppose my home directory is /usr/ole on "local-machine" and I type the following:

/../remote-machine/bin/ls -l

... this will cause the ls program to run on "remote-machine", but the resulting
file listing will show files in MY home (or current) directory on "local-machine"

So a form of RPC using standard Unix syntax.

Ole


> On Sep 6, 2025, at 14:27, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems. Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone else do it first?
> 
> My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.
> 
> [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
> http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>   Brian Carpenter
> 

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
The Internet Protocol Journal
Office: +1 415-550-9433
Cell:   +1 415-370-4628
Docomo: +81 90 3337-9311
Norway: +47 98 00 26 30
Web: protocoljournal.org
E-mail: olejacobsen at me.com
E-mail: ole at protocoljournal.org










From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sat Sep  6 18:33:25 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun,  7 Sep 2025 01:33:25 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
 <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>
 <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <228e0f41-efd5-4bb4-a826-33a109d165c2@dcrocker.net>

On 9/6/2025 5:05 PM, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area
> net.


Whimsically stretching of this model, with the net, itself, being a kind 
of LAN...

At the UCLA Arpanet project, I was responsible for doing documentation.? 
But I'd been infected with the Engelbart bug.

So from UCLA, I or a secretary would connect to the ARC system to do the 
document editing.

When done, we'd FTP the file down to USC-ISI, and then run a NetRJE 
program to submit the document to the UCLA Campus Computing machine, 
which had a high-speed, upper/lower case printer.

Side note:? The secretaries complained that the scenario would only work 
about half the time. I turned to my officemate, Jon Postel, to ask 
whether he had any theories.? He made me estimate the component 
reliabilities, where our own system was maybe .8, the net .0, each ARC 
and ISI also maybe 8, and the UCLA campus computer maybe .8.? (I am 
inventing the numbers and not bothering to reconcile them here, so both 
worry about checking them.)

Anyhow, the cumulative probability came out to about .5...

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sat Sep  6 18:46:49 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun,  7 Sep 2025 01:46:49 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <dc1ac5e4-3b85-4e38-910a-877965fd543e@dcrocker.net>

On 9/6/2025 12:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files

One of my earliest bits of technical specification was trying to get a 
common way of doing that.? First in RFC 615, then:

    RFC 645: Network Standard Data Specification syntax <#>

    ? https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc645.html
    <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc645.html>

It was an educational exercise for me, but never got any traction.

I find myself wondering whether it can be compared to a URL, at least in 
spirit.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sat Sep  6 18:55:37 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 13:55:37 +1200
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
 <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>
 <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a73379e7-0e2f-4ed5-83ce-58b237b966cd@gmail.com>

"MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area net."

Which reminded me of Scrapbook at NPL. It was an early hyperlinked system but was also a (small scale) distributed file system by the mid 1970s. It was not widely known and is badly documented.

I happened to meet and interview one of the Scrapbook team last year:
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/download.php?selected-id=884

The Andrew File System and its descendants, like NFS, only came along in the 1980s. AFS in particular *must* have been influenced by the Unix United paper, which had examples like:

cd /../unix2/user/brian
quicksort a > /../unix1/user/brian/b

(where unix1 and unix2 were host names, and brian wasn't me, it was Brian Randell.)

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 07-Sep-25 12:05, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Jack,
> 
> I spent a year and half in the MIT-AI lab (Feb 1967 to May 1968), the next three years (May 1968 to May 1971)at UCLA working on the Arpanet protocols, the next three years (July 1971 to August 1974) at (D)ARPA primarily overseeing the AI portfolio?but also paying attention occasionally?to Arpanet issues.? As part of this work I saw the multiple operating system and architecture projects at the various sites, including in particular the C.mmp and other efforts at CMU.
> 
> Later, around 1990 or so, Jerry Popek at UCLA and I at Trusted?Information Systems worked together on extending?his shared Unix file structure to work over the Internet using secured file transfer.? That project was called Truffles.? I share these?biographical details as a preface to my remarks embedded below.
> 
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:24?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> 
>     I doubt anything was published.?? It just wasn't that big a deal, and
>     wasn't part of the research mission.
> 
> 
> Heh, heh.? This is an example of some really great work done at MIT-AI lab that was IMO underplayed.? Documentation and publication of the MIT-AI work was almost non-existent.? From the perspective of sitting at my desk at DARPA, it was pretty challenging figuring out what to write each year.? Further, the small hack you're describing could have been the basis for a more common network service.? However, it would have required a fair amount of work to deal with the differences across the operating systems and, of course, the access control problems.? The ITS designers, at least in the early days, took pride in avoiding heavy?duty access control.? It was a delight to use ITS, and I fully admired the MIT-AI hackers.? But Tenex had stronger controls and quite usable software, so it won the day.? (DEC had its own operating?system, TOPS-10, which was much weaker.? They eventually licensed Tenex from BBN and brought it out as? TOPS-20.)
> 
> 
>     The "distributed file system" I described was "a hack" probably coded
>     overnight when someone realized that it could be easily done by using
>     the mechanisms that already existed inside ITS - like the JOB/BOJ
>     pseudo-devices.? Such work wasn't part of any official project, but was
>     done primarily to mitigate the scarcity of CPU cycles, memory, or disk
>     space.?? It might have been mentioned in the annual report of the AI Lab
>     work, but I doubt there was ever a paper published.
> 
> 
> Yeah.? See above.? It would have been an excellent and substantial contribution to the Internet if the work had been pursued.? It took a very long time before there were semi-sensible solutions to the file-sharing problem.? The early commercial offerings were ridiculously expensive.? Two of us founded Shinkuro to provide an essentially free way to share files across the net based on everyone having a local copy of each shared file, i.e. no central servers.? Dropbox, et al eventually won the day.
> 
> 
>     With several ITSes on the ARPANET, and the hassle of dealing with FTP to
>     move files, someone likely noticed that a "remote disk" capability would
>     be useful and was an easy thing to try.?? I recall someone once
>     wondering why there was a lot of traffic between hosts on the MIT IMP,
>     where other sites traffic patterns were mostly long distance.? MIT used
>     the IMP as a poor man's LAN, and made it as easy as possible by coding
>     up things like remote disks.
> 
> 
> MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area net.? And it wasn't long before there was a broad realization that the majority of the communication in the Internet was local.
> 
> My favorite example was at UCSB where they had been trying to add interprocess communication to OS/MVT on their IBM 360/75 to make it possible for two partitions, i.e. separate jobs running concurrently, to?communicate.? I don't believe they ever got it working.? However, when they connected their machine to the IMP and got their host-host protocol software working...
> 
> 
>     If anyone else had "done it first" I never heard about it.? There was no
>     network yet, so information about other projects was not readily
>     available.?? Professors might have read journals, but hackers mostly
>     wrote code.
> 
>     Most of the OS changes to ITS were done by the MIT AI Lab.?? But their
>     focus was AI, and changes to the OS were often done to help with some AI
>     project.? In DM, we changed software as needed, mostly focussed on
>     research on use of the network such as email.
> 
>     AI changed their PDP-10 hardware when that was useful, e.g., by adding a
>     new instruction to ROTate memory in a counterclockwise direction, which
>     was helpful to the AI Chess program.?? I recall someone at some point
>     made some hardware changes (might have been on the DM machine) that
>     enabled a program? to be run "in reverse" for a bit.? That was helpful
>     in debugging to figure out how the OS code actually got to some weird
>     place, e.g., in some data structure, where it crashed because data as
>     "instructions" made little sense.
> 
>     ITS was a lot like Unix, in the sense that it was not an official
>     project to research issues of operating systems.? That was more Multics
>     territory.? ITS was just a tool to be used and modified as needed to
>     help with the actual research topics of AI, DM, and later ML (MathLab)
>     and MC (Macsyma Consortium).
> 
> 
> The MIT-AI lab, along with the AI labs at CMU, Stanford, BBN, et al produced some great systems work.
> 
> 
>     The DEC field service techs used to hate coming to ITS land, but also
>     liked it because they always learned something.
> 
>     Jack
> 
> 
>     On 9/6/25 14:27, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>      > I've never looked into the early history of distributed file systems.
>      > Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did someone
>      > else do it first?
>      >
>      > My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1] from 1982.
>      >
>      > [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 <https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206> (paywalled) or
>      > http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf <http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf>
>      > Regards/Ng? mihi
>      > ?? Brian Carpenter
>      >
>      > On 07-Sep-25 08:04, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>      >> Jack,
>      >> ??? Thanks very much.
>      >> ??? So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
>      >> ????-- Guy
>      >>
>      >> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>      >>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>      >>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged in to
>      >>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>      >>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>      >>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory
>      >>> location).
>      >>>
>      >>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so
>      >>> people of
>      >>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the
>      >>> details or
>      >>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the Message
>      >>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on some
>      >>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to specify the DSK
>      >>> on some other ITS machine.
>      >>>
>      >>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to my file on
>      >>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>      >>>
>      >>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another machine's
>      >>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom Knight's
>      >>> file
>      >>> on the AI machine.
>      >>>
>      >>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote
>      >>> file in
>      >>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the program, the
>      >>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>      >>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>      >>>
>      >>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it. IIRC, it
>      >>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability called the
>      >>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB device, and
>      >>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed) device,
>      >>> and
>      >>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember details.
>      >>>
>      >>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map some or all
>      >>> of another process' address space into its own address space. I can't
>      >>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the ARPANET
>      >>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>      >>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>      >>>
>      >>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online and has
>      >>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run it on
>      >>> your
>      >>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its <https://github.com/PDP-10/its>
>      >>>
>      >>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>      >>>
>      >>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>      >>>> Noel,
>      >>>> ?? So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of
>      >>>> FTP)?
>      >>>> ?? Very interesting,
>      >>>> ?????-- Guy
>      >>>>
>      >>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> ????? > From: Guy Almes
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> ????? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the
>      >>>>> ARPAnet
>      >>>>> ????? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems
>      >>>>> over the
>      >>>>> ARPANET.
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> ?????Noel
>      >>>>> --
>      >>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>      >>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>      >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>      >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>>
>      >>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>      >>>>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
>      >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>      >>>>>
>      >>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>      >>> C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>      >>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >>
>      >>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>>
>      >>>>>> -
>      >>>>> Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>      >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>>
>      >>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
>      >>>>> The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>> KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-
>      >>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$
>      >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>>
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>>
>      >>>>
>      >>>
>      >>>
>      >>
> 
>     -- 
>     Internet-history mailing list
>     Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>     https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>
>     -
>     Unsubscribe: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history <https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sent by a Verified
> 
> sender

From lars at nocrew.org  Sat Sep  6 20:46:20 2025
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2025 03:46:20 +0000
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu> (Guy Almes via
 Internet-history's message of "Sat, 6 Sep 2025 16:04:26 -0400")
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <7wv7luzzzn.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Guy Almes 
>   So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?

ITS' network files system is usually called MLDEV, supposedly for the
MIT AI PDP-10 to access the ML (MathLab) PDP-10.  But before it was
called that, the program to implement this feature was a program called
"ATSIGN OTHER".  The earliest timestamp for this file goes back to
November 1972.


From lars at nocrew.org  Sat Sep  6 20:49:31 2025
From: lars at nocrew.org (Lars Brinkhoff)
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2025 03:49:31 +0000
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com> (Brian
 E. Carpenter via Internet-history's message of "Sun, 7 Sep 2025
 09:27:08 +1200")
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7wqzwizzuc.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>

Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> I've never looked into the early history of distributed file
> systems. Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did
> someone else do it first?

It was not published.  I have asked around, and November 1972 seems very
early for this kind of thing.  It's usually difficult to say who was
first, since the definition for what is a "distributed file system" can
be a bit vague.


From wayne at playaholic.com  Sun Sep  7 06:47:07 2025
From: wayne at playaholic.com (Wayne Hathaway)
Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2025 09:47:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CAC20D2PxU3pydRLKD29qjVZUDonVnApGH_Jg4iBnjvAM-0L_rw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
 <1757164300.lnjafi0skkoc8084@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
 <CAC20D2PxU3pydRLKD29qjVZUDonVnApGH_Jg4iBnjvAM-0L_rw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1757252827.kticnzj36w4s8840@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>


	


Alas. no.? I left NASA just before the TCP/IP cutoff -- they hired me as an independent contractor to update my NCP to TCP/IP just before/after the cutover.? From there I went into the startup world trying to build "the next great thing."? Fortunately one of those tries (Alteon WebSystems) went public so I retired from the networking world and joined the ranks of wannabe world explorers.? That was some 24 years ago and as I tell people, I was technically obsolete two weeks after I quit.? (For what it's worth, I'm writing this aboard a riverboat in Bordeaux at the start of a weeklong "Chateaux, Rivers, and Wine" tour.)

Anyway, it seems to me IBM never really did much with TSS, and all my code was written in 360 Assembler Language, so it really wouldn't make a lot of sense to anybody.? Although it should be available -- I wrote it for NASA as a Civil Servant -- I have no idea how to get to it.? I am pretty sure mine was the only TCP/IP stack for the ARPANET itself (ie, talking directly to an IMP), although there may well be something later than mine.

Sorry about that.? It'd be cool to see it resurrected.

wayne
?


On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 14:14:44 -0400, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
?


Awesome -- any chance you?have any of that code?? The reason I ask is that you?may know about Oscar Vermueln's?PiPD systems ?? https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence (I've been a beta site for most of these?since he first started offering them).? ?He just finished the PDP-1 in the last few weeks.? He has been exploring creating?a pIBM 360, with one of the targets being TSS (a number of us have suggested he use the 67 and its DAT unit as the two displays since they have lots of lights and the 67 can run many of the more intreresting?IBM OS flavors [note, like the PiDP-10 which uses a KA10 as the console model, many people run a KL or KS emulator for the OS since things like Twenex require it.? ?An IBM would work the same way; later models, such as some of the 370s, can be emulated, and any "blinkenlites" will be mapped, but not historically accurate.

?

But one of the downsides of the IBM targets has been a lack of networking support, although?that is not a reason for exclusion, as you?can see with PiDP-1 or the original PiDP-8; but having networking in the hosted OS, like we have for the PiDP-11s and PiDP-10, makes them easier to use.? That said, if we can find a copy of TSS/360 that also includes an IP/TCP stack, that makes it even more attractive.

?

Also, besides just running the OS, Oscar has asked about applications that might be interesting.? In the case of the PiDPs, each OS offers some interesting?historical applications [e.g., PDP-1 Spacewar, or many PDP-11, PDP-8, and PDP-10 hacks - often games - from back in the day]. So far, that has been a stumbling block.? York/APL is unique, as well as the original Algol-W and the Waterloo compiler suites.? But things like games we know from the IBM world are essentially stuff moved from other systems (like Advent or some of the Trek games), so they don't make the IBM world stand out.

?

Clem

?


On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 9:11?AM Wayne Hathaway <wayne at playaholic.com> wrote:

An IBM 360/67 running TSS was at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA.? It was host 16 and its IMP was an early TIP..? And i can attest that it DID have an NCP because I wrote essentially all of it! And that was followed by a TCP/IP version just slightly after the switchover date.? I don't know about CMU.



On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 08:46:39 -0400, Clem Cole via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>> The early maps show the CMU IBM 360/67 running TSS, but I was a programmer
>> in that shop.? I don't think we ever had an NCP that worked with TSS.? It
>> certainly was not on the ARPANET when I was a programmer.? ?However, I note
>> that later maps, the fourth port on the CMU IMP starts to show it as
>> C.mmp.? Guy Almes might remember if that was ever active.
>>
>> Clem
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:22?AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> > IIRC, UCSB , Arpanet node #3, had an IBM 360/75 running OS/MVT.? Prior to
>> > being connected to the Arpanet they had a long-suffering attempt to add
>> > interprocess communication to operating system so two partitions could
>> > communicate with each other.? As I understand it, they never got it
>> > working.? However, when they connected the machine to the IMP, two
>> > partitions could communicate with each other by treating them as processes
>> > communicating over the Arpanet.
>> >
>> > Steve
>> >
>> > Sent by a Verified
>> >
>> > sender
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:34?AM Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond via
>> > Internet-history? wrote:
>> >
>> > > Fascinating.
>> > > I notice there's not mention of IBM VM/CMS which was the mainstay of
>> > > EARN/BITNET.
>> > >
>> > > Is it because there were no such computers on the Arpanet?
>> > > Kindest regards,
>> > >
>> > > Olivier
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On 06/09/2025 04:33, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> > > >? ?Oops.? Somehow a .? got inserted in the url.
>> > > > This one should work.
>> > > > https://self-issued.info/Smiley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>> > > > barbara
>> > > >? ? ? On Friday, September 5, 2025 at 08:10:41 PM PDT, Greg Skinner via
>> > > Internet-history wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > >? ?forwarded for Barbara
>> > > >
>> > > >> ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> > > >> From: Barbara Denny
>> > > >> To: Internet-history
>> > > >> Sent: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 07:49:12 PM PDT
>> > > >> Subject: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
>> > > >>
>> > > >> Some of you might be interested in this link.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> https://self-issued.info/S.miley/Arpanet_Protocol_Thread.html
>> > > >>
>> > > >> It covers cmu messages as flag day approaches.? They were recovered
>> > > when Jeff Baird was trying to find Scott Fahlman's smiley :-) bboard
>> > post.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> The messages include when the ARPAnet? temporarily shut off? NCP twice
>> > > before flag day.? Vint, was one of those times you ????? I think I
>> > remember
>> > > you mentioned doing this but I wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> 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
>> > >
>> > --
>> > 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
>> >
>> --
>> 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  Sun Sep  7 07:29:11 2025
From: el at lisse.na (Eberhard W Lisse)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 16:29:11 +0200
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <1757252827.kticnzj36w4s8840@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
 <1757164300.lnjafi0skkoc8084@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
 <CAC20D2PxU3pydRLKD29qjVZUDonVnApGH_Jg4iBnjvAM-0L_rw@mail.gmail.com>
 <1757252827.kticnzj36w4s8840@hostingemail.digitalspace.net>
Message-ID: <5dd083ac-a1c2-45ed-ad6e-e34bbbd8d99e@Spark>

Wayne,

like the Veteran's Administration Hospital Management system (VistA, written in MUMPS) this might probably be obtainable under the Freedom of Information Act.

el

--
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 7, 2025 at 15:47 +0200, Wayne Hathaway via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>, wrote:





> Alas. no.? I left NASA just before the TCP/IP cutoff -- they hired me as an independent contractor to update my NCP to TCP/IP just before/after the cutover.? From there I went into the startup world trying to build "the next great thing."? Fortunately one of those tries (Alteon WebSystems) went public so I retired from the networking world and joined the ranks of wannabe world explorers.? That was some 24 years ago and as I tell people, I was technically obsolete two weeks after I quit.? (For what it's worth, I'm writing this aboard a riverboat in Bordeaux at the start of a weeklong "Chateaux, Rivers, and Wine" tour.)
>
> Anyway, it seems to me IBM never really did much with TSS, and all my code was written in 360 Assembler Language, so it really wouldn't make a lot of sense to anybody.? Although it should be available -- I wrote it for NASA as a Civil Servant -- I have no idea how to get to it.? I am pretty sure mine was the only TCP/IP stack for the ARPANET itself (ie, talking directly to an IMP), although there may well be something later than mine.
>
> Sorry about that.? It'd be cool to see it resurrected.
>
> wayne
>
> [?]


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Sep  7 11:13:01 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun,  7 Sep 2025 14:13:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
Message-ID: <20250907181301.2A23318C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Barbara Denny

    > I found this write-up on the coke machine. I thought people might
    > be interested in reading it if this hasn't been posted before.
    > https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt

Very interesting! Again, a minor correction for the record, here:

    >> This is a list of various coke or other vending machines that are
    >> accessible via the Internet.

This list appears to omit the 'Prancing Pony' vending machine at SAIL, which
SAIL claims:

  http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html

was "the first computer-controlled vending machine". Given that it was
originally in the Donald C. Power building, it was indeed fairly early.
Perhaps 'the first vending machines that was accessible via the ARPANET?' :-)

I did a Web search for more about it, but could find almost nothing
online, including in the SAILDART Prolegomenon:

  https://saildart.org/simple/book/2019.pdf

(Thanks for writing down the history of the CMU one, Clem!)

I can't believe there wasn't a way to interrogate its status remotely, via
'finger', although with so little recorded about it...

	Noel


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep  7 14:37:59 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 21:37:59 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <20250907181301.2A23318C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250907181301.2A23318C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <533586142.948934.1757281079225@mail.yahoo.com>

 I found some more detailed info on the coke machine which includes mentioning pony.
Happy Reading!barbara

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/coke.history.txt
    On Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 11:13:10 AM PDT, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 ? ? > From: Barbara Denny

? ? > I found this write-up on the coke machine. I thought people might
? ? > be interested in reading it if this hasn't been posted before.
? ? > https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt

Very interesting! Again, a minor correction for the record, here:

? ? >> This is a list of various coke or other vending machines that are
? ? >> accessible via the Internet.

This list appears to omit the 'Prancing Pony' vending machine at SAIL, which
SAIL claims:

? http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html

was "the first computer-controlled vending machine". Given that it was
originally in the Donald C. Power building, it was indeed fairly early.
Perhaps 'the first vending machines that was accessible via the ARPANET?' :-)

I did a Web search for more about it, but could find almost nothing
online, including in the SAILDART Prolegomenon:

? https://saildart.org/simple/book/2019.pdf

(Thanks for writing down the history of the CMU one, Clem!)

I can't believe there wasn't a way to interrogate its status remotely, via
'finger', although with so little recorded about it...

??? Noel
  

From craig at tereschau.net  Sun Sep  7 15:22:30 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 16:22:30 -0600
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <2ac17a18-e41b-dac1-3319-a2897c0555d1@meetinghouse.net>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CcgogNZhK=cCTsgqJJJrEkq4YDx3xXSjp6xZavhqQBSDg@mail.gmail.com>

BBN Planet (the ISP BBN created) did a big build out for AOL in the 1990s.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB854067026226959000?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAgAzzNoP6-xfZWwGGyv3L4itmrH87Vfevd9eT_aDOa3ZAS5Y0JpCf_zXKFWhnQ%3D&gaa_ts=68be08ef&gaa_sig=I3h0R0z7sd7L7GOwTyw4hGk1p2Dq4qKojWQJyqrm1ABTuPQpQGGz4X9H5ZnMwloHFLoqrlHRMPA5nJ0NXd-oCg%3D%3D

Craig

On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 10:09?AM Miles Fidelman via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Jack,
>
> Do I recall correctly that BBN (or maybe Telenet) provided the dial-up
> network for AOL, modeled on the ARPANET TACs?
>
> Miles
>
> Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > This "network status" usage was, IMHO, the beginning of a fundamental
> > shift in how networks were used, and influenced how they were
> > subsequently designed.
> >
> > In the early ARPANET era (1970s), network traffic was dominated by
> > Telnet, FTP, and a bit later email.  Human users connected to their
> > computers using Telnet and worked for the duration of a "session",
> > which lasted for minutes or perhaps hours.  During that session, they
> > might also do file transfers between two computers. The ARPANET was
> > pretty slow, so file transfers could easily take minutes or more.
> > Sessions between two ARPANET hosts were relatively long and
> > infrequently opened or closed.
> >
> > So network traffic was largely short packets containing typing and
> > responses, as well as larger packets associated with file transfers,
> > mostly part of sessions lasting minutes or more.
> >
> > Email added to this traffic with the addition of non-human users,
> > i.e., mail servers, who transported mail around the net, including
> > short messages as well as long documents.  But email servers were
> > pretty patient compared to humans, and certainly didn't expect to see
> > the characters they sent echoed immediately.
> >
> > The internal mechanisms of the ARPANET (i.e., the mechanisms inside
> > the IMP code) were designed to carry that mix of traffic - interactive
> > and bulk transfers, carried out over "sessions".   In particular,
> > there were IMP mechanisms to set up end-to-end connections between the
> > source and destination IMPs (not the attached hosts).  Those
> > mechanisms created the reliable "virtual circuit" behavior, on top of
> > the underlying unreliable packet switching machinery.  The IMPs
> > delivered a "virtual circuit" reliable byte-stream service to their
> > hosts - much like TCP does now between two devices on the Internet.
> > For anyone curious, the 1970s ARPANET IMP code has been resurrected
> > and is available online.
> >
> > Marc Seriff's SURVEY program broke the ARPANET traffic pattern.
> > Sessions in SURVEY were extremely short, unlike sessions in
> > human-based traffic.  I wasn't at BBN at the time (actually I was in
> > Lick's group at MIT, same as Marc), but I suspect part of the backlash
> > Marc received about SURVEY was because it was seriously "thrashing"
> > the ARPANET with so many short connections continuously happening.
> > The ARPANET wasn't designed for that kind of continuous very short
> > session traffic load.
> >
> > Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> > ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> > Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> > Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
> > at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
> > said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a
> > bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the
> > NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it
> > my problem.
> >
> > Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> > released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> > community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
> > included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> > ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> > Updated automatically of course.
> >
> > The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> > release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> > propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> > gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> > ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> > order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >
> > Looking back over the history, I see this as the progression of
> > networking from the "human user" model of Telnet and FTP towards the
> > model Licklider had envisioned in his "intergalactic network". Instead
> > of humans interacting with remote computers, we were beginning the
> > transition to computers interacting with each other over the Internet,
> > in support of whatever humans wanted done. That was Lick's vision -
> > everyone would have their own computer, all able to communicate with
> > each other, and active all the time. Pretty much seems like what we
> > have today.
> >
> > I don't have the data, but I suspect the mix today of interactive/bulk
> > traffic is quite different from what it was 50 years ago.  There's
> > probably not a lot of Telnet-style activity any more.  But perhaps the
> > growing population of "IOT" microcomputers will replace it.
> >
> > Jack Haverty
> >
> > On 9/4/25 17:27, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> >> There were complaints when it disappeared, but it also gotten too
> >> popular.
> >>
> >>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 20:25, Vint Cerf<vint at google.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I had forgotten about that!
> >>>
> >>> 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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2025, 19:57 John Day via Internet-history
> >>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> >>>> In the very early days, the NMC at UCLA did something similar. If
> >>>> you connected to a particular well-known socket, it would print a
> >>>> ASCII map of the current ARPANET and which hosts were up or down.
> >>>> It was discontinued when it would no longer fit on one page.
> >>>>
> >>>> Take care,
> >>>> John
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Sep 4, 2025, at 10:42, Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history
> >>>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Speaking of.  Marc Seriff was one of the co-founders of AOL.  He had
> >>>>> previously been part of the MIT Dynamic Modeling group. He (along
> >>>>> with
> >>>>> Bob Metcalfe and others) had a hand in making the ARPANET "SURVEY"
> >>>>> program, which would probe network hosts to see if they were up.
> >>>>> Marc
> >>>>> told me this:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   "I tell the story of SURVEY all the time.  For a few days, the
> >>>>> whole
> >>>>>   ARPANET was pissed at me since, in those days, all the systems
> >>>>> logged
> >>>>>   every connection attempt - typically to a model 33 teletype machine
> >>>>>   sitting in front of the PDP/10 or whatever.  A decent system
> >>>>> since the
> >>>>>   few computers on the network at the time weren't likely to get more
> >>>>>   than a few connections a day.  All of sudden, I'm poking them
> >>>>> once a
> >>>>>   minute or so.  System managers would come in in the morning to find
> >>>>>   paper piled behind the teletype and, frequently, ink ribbons
> >>>>> that had
> >>>>>   been torn to shreds!"
> >>>>>
> >>>>> They program has been recovered and seems to be working, lacking
> >>>>> only an
> >>>>> ARPANET to survey.  Watch your teletypes!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Survey results were stored on the Datacomputer (also located in MIT's
> >>>>> Tech Sq building.)
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>>> <mailto: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
> >>>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>> <mailto: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
> >>>>
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>
> --
> 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
>


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


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Sep  7 16:11:52 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun,  7 Sep 2025 19:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
Message-ID: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Guy Almes

    > So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?

Yes; the protocol was not, I think, documented in an RFC or anything;
although an ITS halp file:

  https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/mldev.protoc

described it. It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
the first ever).


    > From: Jack Haverty

    > IIRC, it took advantage of an interprocess communication capability
    > called the "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a
    > JOB device, and another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB
    > reversed) device, and send whatever they liked back and forth. But
    > I don't remember details.

Interesting that you don't - because you co-wrote the JOB/BOJ spec!

  The JOB/BOJ Device:  A Mechanism for Implementing Non-standard Devices
  Marc S. Seriff, Jack Haverty, Richard Stallman
  September 18, 1974
  https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysdoc/jobonl.100

	Noel


From geoff at iconia.com  Sun Sep  7 17:25:14 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 17:25:14 -0700
Subject: [ih] AOL in perspective
In-Reply-To: <20250907181301.2A23318C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250907181301.2A23318C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrjSzu0phxfsLWN2WQiip1O=LRNu2GXr64fSTyVFTBHQNg@mail.gmail.com>

the source files for the Prancing Pony vending machine connected to the DEC
PDP-10 at the Stanford AI lab (SAIL) -- written in SAIL (*.SAI) -- can be
seen at https://saildart.org/[PNY,SYS]/

geoff

On Sun, Sep 7, 2025 at 11:13?AM Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>     > From: Barbara Denny
>
>     > I found this write-up on the coke machine. I thought people might
>     > be interested in reading it if this hasn't been posted before.
>     > https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
>
> Very interesting! Again, a minor correction for the record, here:
>
>     >> This is a list of various coke or other vending machines that are
>     >> accessible via the Internet.
>
> This list appears to omit the 'Prancing Pony' vending machine at SAIL,
> which
> SAIL claims:
>
>
> http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html
>
> was "the first computer-controlled vending machine". Given that it was
> originally in the Donald C. Power building, it was indeed fairly early.
> Perhaps 'the first vending machines that was accessible via the ARPANET?'
> :-)
>
> I did a Web search for more about it, but could find almost nothing
> online, including in the SAILDART Prolegomenon:
>
>   https://saildart.org/simple/book/2019.pdf
>
> (Thanks for writing down the history of the CMU one, Clem!)
>
> I can't believe there wasn't a way to interrogate its status remotely, via
> 'finger', although with so little recorded about it...
>
>         Noel
> --
> 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
>
>

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


From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sun Sep  7 17:30:40 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2025 12:30:40 +1200
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>

> It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
> the first ever).

I looked at Bruce Nelson's thesis on RPC (a.k.a. Xerox PARC CSL-81-9) to investigate that. He cites this paper:

[22] Jerome A. Feldman and Robert F. Sproull. System support for the Stanford hand-eye system. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 183-89. IJCAI, London, September, 1971.
Sproull and Feldman talk about extensions to Sail and TopslO which allowed them to do IPC via message procedures. While not really RPC in the true sense, their scheme did allow a remote call to have apparently normal syntax.

and this:

[92] David C. Walden. A system for interprocess communication in a resource-sharing computer network. Communications of the ACM 15(4):221-30, April, 1972.
One of the earliest descriptions of an IPC facility. Walden's pioneering scheme was an extension of the Arpanet's Initial Connection Protocol.

So it seems that the question of remote calls was very much in the wind at the beginning of the 1970s.

Nelson also cited RFC 674 (dated 1974) which mentions "procedures for obtaining access to groups of remote procedures and data stores" at SRI.

He also cited RFC 722 (dated 1976), which in turn cited:

[4] Haverty, Jack, RRP, A Process Communication Protocol for
Request-reply Disciplines, NWG RFC 723, NIC 36807, (to
be issued)

But RFC 723 is listed as "Not issued." Jack, you've left a 49-year technical debt :-).

Finally, Nelson reminded me that by the late 1970s, the equivalence between message passing and procedure calls was *the* major talking point in distributed systems architecture. It seems obvious that when there's a network in the way, only message passing is available (even if it's disguised as RPC). He cited:

[52] Hugh C. Lauer and Roger M. Needham. On the duality of operating system structures. Operating Systems Review 13(2):3-19, April, 1979. Under some loose assumptions, messages and procedures are shown to have the same power for operating system communication. The authors claim that the choice between these primitives should be based on considerations of the programming environment.

Overall I think Bruce Nelson's thesis is the inescapable reference for this topic.

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 08-Sep-25 11:11, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>      > From: Guy Almes
> 
>      > So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
> 
> Yes; the protocol was not, I think, documented in an RFC or anything;
> although an ITS halp file:
> 
>    https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/mldev.protoc
> 
> described it. It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
> the first ever).
> 
> 
>      > From: Jack Haverty
> 
>      > IIRC, it took advantage of an interprocess communication capability
>      > called the "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a
>      > JOB device, and another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB
>      > reversed) device, and send whatever they liked back and forth. But
>      > I don't remember details.
> 
> Interesting that you don't - because you co-wrote the JOB/BOJ spec!
> 
>    The JOB/BOJ Device:  A Mechanism for Implementing Non-standard Devices
>    Marc S. Seriff, Jack Haverty, Richard Stallman
>    September 18, 1974
>    https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysdoc/jobonl.100
> 
> 	Noel

From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sun Sep  7 17:40:16 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 20:40:16 -0400
Subject: [ih] As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>
References: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C718E3E0-47A8-4F79-AEE7-FF4072F4BB49@comcast.net>

The Dave Walden reference is also RFC 61.

For FWIW, one might cite the debate between RPC and IPC that occurred in the late 80s.
Tanenbaum, A. ?A Critique of the Remote Procedure Call Paradigm?
https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/Publications/Papers/euteco-1988.pdf

John

> On Sep 7, 2025, at 20:30, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
>> the first ever).
> 
> I looked at Bruce Nelson's thesis on RPC (a.k.a. Xerox PARC CSL-81-9) to investigate that. He cites this paper:
> 
> [22] Jerome A. Feldman and Robert F. Sproull. System support for the Stanford hand-eye system. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 183-89. IJCAI, London, September, 1971.
> Sproull and Feldman talk about extensions to Sail and TopslO which allowed them to do IPC via message procedures. While not really RPC in the true sense, their scheme did allow a remote call to have apparently normal syntax.
> 
> and this:
> 
> [92] David C. Walden. A system for interprocess communication in a resource-sharing computer network. Communications of the ACM 15(4):221-30, April, 1972.
> One of the earliest descriptions of an IPC facility. Walden's pioneering scheme was an extension of the Arpanet's Initial Connection Protocol.
> 
> So it seems that the question of remote calls was very much in the wind at the beginning of the 1970s.
> 
> Nelson also cited RFC 674 (dated 1974) which mentions "procedures for obtaining access to groups of remote procedures and data stores" at SRI.
> 
> He also cited RFC 722 (dated 1976), which in turn cited:
> 
> [4] Haverty, Jack, RRP, A Process Communication Protocol for
> Request-reply Disciplines, NWG RFC 723, NIC 36807, (to
> be issued)
> 
> But RFC 723 is listed as "Not issued." Jack, you've left a 49-year technical debt :-).
> 
> Finally, Nelson reminded me that by the late 1970s, the equivalence between message passing and procedure calls was *the* major talking point in distributed systems architecture. It seems obvious that when there's a network in the way, only message passing is available (even if it's disguised as RPC). He cited:
> 
> [52] Hugh C. Lauer and Roger M. Needham. On the duality of operating system structures. Operating Systems Review 13(2):3-19, April, 1979. Under some loose assumptions, messages and procedures are shown to have the same power for operating system communication. The authors claim that the choice between these primitives should be based on considerations of the programming environment.
> 
> Overall I think Bruce Nelson's thesis is the inescapable reference for this topic.
> 
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
> On 08-Sep-25 11:11, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>     > From: Guy Almes
>>     > So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of FTP)?
>> Yes; the protocol was not, I think, documented in an RFC or anything;
>> although an ITS halp file:
>>   https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/mldev.protoc
>> described it. It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
>> the first ever).
>>     > From: Jack Haverty
>>     > IIRC, it took advantage of an interprocess communication capability
>>     > called the "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a
>>     > JOB device, and another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB
>>     > reversed) device, and send whatever they liked back and forth. But
>>     > I don't remember details.
>> Interesting that you don't - because you co-wrote the JOB/BOJ spec!
>>   The JOB/BOJ Device:  A Mechanism for Implementing Non-standard Devices
>>   Marc S. Seriff, Jack Haverty, Richard Stallman
>>   September 18, 1974
>>   https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysdoc/jobonl.100
>> 	Noel
> -- 
> 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 geoff at iconia.com  Sun Sep  7 17:53:46 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 17:53:46 -0700
Subject: [ih] Stanford AI Labs vending machine Prancing Pony Cooperative
 Point-of-sale Terminal
Message-ID: <CAEf-zri-J1Qga8kZKoz+pT+iE+acMptztWU_jqPcTdhFb+N9ug@mail.gmail.com>

EXCERPTing from
1975-10-19 10:34  PONYSY.SAI [PNY,SYS] at https://saildart.org/[PNY,SYS]/
"
      Prancing Pony Cooperative
    Point-of-sale Terminal

If you are a "local" user of our system you may charge food on this
terminal.  Example: if your programmer initials are "LEO" and you
want to buy a cup of coffee, type
  LEO C<return>

COFFEE POOL: Normally the Pony will ask you once a month if you want
to join the coffee pool ($3/month).  If you say "Y" it will bill you
accordingly.  If you type something else, it will wait till next
month, unless you type precisely "NO, NO, 1000*NO", in which case it
will never ask you again.  Even if you choose to charge by the cup,
you will not be billed for more than $3 each month for coffee and
tea.

LUCKY WINNER FEATURE:  Occasionally, the program will decide that you
are such a good customer that it will give you the food free.  It will
inform you of this decision with suitable bell-ringing.

GAMBLER MODE: If you type an "F", the Pony flips you for it, double
or nothing, and announces the outcome (50:50 chance -- honest!).  The
Pony declines to play for negative entries or for cash ("M" code, see
below).

For example, to buy two bagels, a donut, a 20 cent vending machine
item, a 35 cent vending machine item, mild indigestion, and flip for
double or nothing, type
  LEO BBD V20 V35 F
In this case, it will open the 20 cent door first and wait for you to
hit <return> again before it opens the .35 door and tells you whether
you won or lost.

The complete list of item codes is:
B - Bagels
C - Coffee or tea
D - Donuts
M - Money (stealing from the change box)
S - Snacks (munches, soup, hot chocolate, etc.)
V - Vending machine

F - Flip for it, double or nothing
G - to enter Gripes, compliments, remarks
I - Itemize your charges day-by-day.
P - change your Password
T - show your Total changes for the month

The B, C, and D codes can be used without a number following, since
their prices are known to the machine.  For the V, S, and M codes the
amount must be specified.  You can also "uncharge" by specifying a
negative value.  For example,
  LEO -CCC M-25 V-35
credits your account for three cups of coffee, 25 cents in cash, and a
35 cent vending machine purchase, and arouses the suspicions of the
accountants.

BILLS: If you would like to know about charges for earlier months,
use the "T" (for "total") or "I" (for "itemize") commands followed by
":" and 3 or more letters of the month name, optionally followed by
"." and the last two digits of the year.  Thus if LEO were interested
in totals for the preceding July and August and itemized charges for
September 1974, he would type
  LEO T:JUL T:AUG I:SEP.74

RANDOM INFORMATION: If you would like to know how much has been given
away by the LUCKY WINNER FEATURE, type "SYS T" or "SYS I".  To find
out the house net on DOUBLE OR NOTHING this month, type "F T" or "F I".
A positive total means the house is losing.  Each of these commands
also lists gross sales for the month.

Bon appetit!"


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


From steve at shinkuro.com  Sun Sep  7 17:57:07 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 20:57:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>
References: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvLkf6n0nrhMBsQY1bUv+dx-3pwetibbY_UpG89tEsjrzw@mail.gmail.com>

See also RFC 674 by Jon Postel and Jim White, Procedure Call Protocol
Documents Version 2, 12 December 1974.  I believe Jim White had been
pursuing remote procedure calls for a while prior to this date.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc674

Steve




On Sun, Sep 7, 2025 at 8:30?PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> > It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
> > the first ever).
>
> I looked at Bruce Nelson's thesis on RPC (a.k.a. Xerox PARC CSL-81-9) to
> investigate that. He cites this paper:
>
> [22] Jerome A. Feldman and Robert F. Sproull. System support for the
> Stanford hand-eye system. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint
> Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 183-89. IJCAI, London,
> September, 1971.
> Sproull and Feldman talk about extensions to Sail and TopslO which allowed
> them to do IPC via message procedures. While not really RPC in the true
> sense, their scheme did allow a remote call to have apparently normal
> syntax.
>
> and this:
>
> [92] David C. Walden. A system for interprocess communication in a
> resource-sharing computer network. Communications of the ACM 15(4):221-30,
> April, 1972.
> One of the earliest descriptions of an IPC facility. Walden's pioneering
> scheme was an extension of the Arpanet's Initial Connection Protocol.
>
> So it seems that the question of remote calls was very much in the wind at
> the beginning of the 1970s.
>
> Nelson also cited RFC 674 (dated 1974) which mentions "procedures for
> obtaining access to groups of remote procedures and data stores" at SRI.
>
> He also cited RFC 722 (dated 1976), which in turn cited:
>
> [4] Haverty, Jack, RRP, A Process Communication Protocol for
> Request-reply Disciplines, NWG RFC 723, NIC 36807, (to
> be issued)
>
> But RFC 723 is listed as "Not issued." Jack, you've left a 49-year
> technical debt :-).
>
> Finally, Nelson reminded me that by the late 1970s, the equivalence
> between message passing and procedure calls was *the* major talking point
> in distributed systems architecture. It seems obvious that when there's a
> network in the way, only message passing is available (even if it's
> disguised as RPC). He cited:
>
> [52] Hugh C. Lauer and Roger M. Needham. On the duality of operating
> system structures. Operating Systems Review 13(2):3-19, April, 1979. Under
> some loose assumptions, messages and procedures are shown to have the same
> power for operating system communication. The authors claim that the choice
> between these primitives should be based on considerations of the
> programming environment.
>
> Overall I think Bruce Nelson's thesis is the inescapable reference for
> this topic.
>
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 08-Sep-25 11:11, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> >      > From: Guy Almes
> >
> >      > So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of
> FTP)?
> >
> > Yes; the protocol was not, I think, documented in an RFC or anything;
> > although an ITS halp file:
> >
> >    https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/mldev.protoc
> >
> > described it. It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
> > the first ever).
> >
> >
> >      > From: Jack Haverty
> >
> >      > IIRC, it took advantage of an interprocess communication
> capability
> >      > called the "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a
> >      > JOB device, and another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB
> >      > reversed) device, and send whatever they liked back and forth. But
> >      > I don't remember details.
> >
> > Interesting that you don't - because you co-wrote the JOB/BOJ spec!
> >
> >    The JOB/BOJ Device:  A Mechanism for Implementing Non-standard Devices
> >    Marc S. Seriff, Jack Haverty, Richard Stallman
> >    September 18, 1974
> >
> https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysdoc/jobonl.100
> >
> >       Noel
> --
> 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 jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep  7 19:42:11 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 19:42:11 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvLkf6n0nrhMBsQY1bUv+dx-3pwetibbY_UpG89tEsjrzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250907231152.5F99C18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c2253e23-0634-4b42-b011-c564850e8c47@gmail.com>
 <CABf5zvLkf6n0nrhMBsQY1bUv+dx-3pwetibbY_UpG89tEsjrzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fe67ab89-0883-4e41-ad39-f24eef9f89fd@3kitty.org>

Good catch, Noel.? That's probably why I remembered that JOB/BOJ had 
something to do with the remote file system too.? But I had even 
forgotten that I coauthored that document.

I think this was just another example of something we did pragmatically 
in ITS, not as part of the actual research mission at the time.?? Lick's 
group (as well as the AI group) wasn't very focussed on writing papers 
or research in OS topics of the day.? We were all more targetting 
figuring out how to use computers (and network) to do stuff - part of 
Lick's vision of computers talking amongst themselves to help humans do 
what humans do.

At the time, we had a stream of students passing through our group. Some 
(like me) were pursuing degrees.? Others were just taking a course and 
had to implement something as part of the coursework.? So much of the 
internal documentation was targetting that audience, to reveal enough 
details about something so they could quickly use it in their class 
projects.

I can't recall exactly what motivated the JOB/BOJ IPC.? In addition to 
the connection to the ARPANET, we had started working in a 
multiprocessor environment.? The Evans&Sutherland display was one such 
processor.?? We also had a growing collection of Imlacs, which were 
separate minicomputers offering enticing ways to offload the PDP-10.? We 
were also starting to use a PDP-11 as a front-end device.? Any one of 
those might have been the thing that we wanted to somehow attach to the 
PDP-10 as a "non-standard device".

We were also trying all sorts of things with shared memory and splitting 
functionality into multiple processes that of course had need to 
communicate.?? The JOB/BOJ IPC made creation of the "remote file system" 
pretty easy.? Chances are Stallman just implemented it one night, after 
we had? convinced him it was a good idea.? That was pretty common.

So there were a lot of things that got implemented, just as pragmatic 
solutions to some goal, but weren't part of the actual research focus, 
so they didn't get much attention.

I need to answer Steve's original post more fully.? I promise it won't 
take 49 years, and I'll explain why that RFC723 delay happened.

Jack

On 9/7/25 17:57, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> See also RFC 674 by Jon Postel and Jim White, Procedure Call Protocol
> Documents Version 2, 12 December 1974.  I believe Jim White had been
> pursuing remote procedure calls for a while prior to this date.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc674
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 7, 2025 at 8:30?PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>>> It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
>>> the first ever).
>> I looked at Bruce Nelson's thesis on RPC (a.k.a. Xerox PARC CSL-81-9) to
>> investigate that. He cites this paper:
>>
>> [22] Jerome A. Feldman and Robert F. Sproull. System support for the
>> Stanford hand-eye system. In Proceedings of the Second International Joint
>> Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 183-89. IJCAI, London,
>> September, 1971.
>> Sproull and Feldman talk about extensions to Sail and TopslO which allowed
>> them to do IPC via message procedures. While not really RPC in the true
>> sense, their scheme did allow a remote call to have apparently normal
>> syntax.
>>
>> and this:
>>
>> [92] David C. Walden. A system for interprocess communication in a
>> resource-sharing computer network. Communications of the ACM 15(4):221-30,
>> April, 1972.
>> One of the earliest descriptions of an IPC facility. Walden's pioneering
>> scheme was an extension of the Arpanet's Initial Connection Protocol.
>>
>> So it seems that the question of remote calls was very much in the wind at
>> the beginning of the 1970s.
>>
>> Nelson also cited RFC 674 (dated 1974) which mentions "procedures for
>> obtaining access to groups of remote procedures and data stores" at SRI.
>>
>> He also cited RFC 722 (dated 1976), which in turn cited:
>>
>> [4] Haverty, Jack, RRP, A Process Communication Protocol for
>> Request-reply Disciplines, NWG RFC 723, NIC 36807, (to
>> be issued)
>>
>> But RFC 723 is listed as "Not issued." Jack, you've left a 49-year
>> technical debt :-).
>>
>> Finally, Nelson reminded me that by the late 1970s, the equivalence
>> between message passing and procedure calls was *the* major talking point
>> in distributed systems architecture. It seems obvious that when there's a
>> network in the way, only message passing is available (even if it's
>> disguised as RPC). He cited:
>>
>> [52] Hugh C. Lauer and Roger M. Needham. On the duality of operating
>> system structures. Operating Systems Review 13(2):3-19, April, 1979. Under
>> some loose assumptions, messages and procedures are shown to have the same
>> power for operating system communication. The authors claim that the choice
>> between these primitives should be based on considerations of the
>> programming environment.
>>
>> Overall I think Bruce Nelson's thesis is the inescapable reference for
>> this topic.
>>
>> Regards/Ng? mihi
>>      Brian Carpenter
>>
>> On 08-Sep-25 11:11, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>       > From: Guy Almes
>>>
>>>       > So this was a real networked file system (and not just lots of
>> FTP)?
>>> Yes; the protocol was not, I think, documented in an RFC or anything;
>>> although an ITS halp file:
>>>
>>>     https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/doc/sysdoc/mldev.protoc
>>>
>>> described it. It's basicalled a 'remote system call' protocol (perhaps
>>> the first ever).
>>>
>>>
>>>       > From: Jack Haverty
>>>
>>>       > IIRC, it took advantage of an interprocess communication
>> capability
>>>       > called the "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a
>>>       > JOB device, and another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB
>>>       > reversed) device, and send whatever they liked back and forth. But
>>>       > I don't remember details.
>>>
>>> Interesting that you don't - because you co-wrote the JOB/BOJ spec!
>>>
>>>     The JOB/BOJ Device:  A Mechanism for Implementing Non-standard Devices
>>>     Marc S. Seriff, Jack Haverty, Richard Stallman
>>>     September 18, 1974
>>>
>> https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/sysdoc/jobonl.100
>>>        Noel
>> --
>> 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
>>
>

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From craig at tereschau.net  Sun Sep  7 19:44:57 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 20:44:57 -0600
Subject: [ih] Fwd: As Flag Day approaches at CMU
In-Reply-To: <2ff96442-b0b3-4fc0-98ba-c1d8110ed4de@tamu.edu>
References: <633623783.581045.1757127599174@mail.yahoo.com>
 <7A32034D-C7AD-462D-8489-9F7F27730D3A@icloud.com>
 <1949036839.587147.1757129606073@mail.yahoo.com>
 <cdfe01d5-647f-40d0-ae97-ed284d110dc5@gih.com>
 <CABf5zvJ_B4npT-0a4KNND=3eoF4w2JkdbeA90zF6gHnWL4G7Hw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAC20D2PAESsk5HLauUg8R6dA1+is2fqkJqZ6LD3zHRE1qxUc1w@mail.gmail.com>
 <2ff96442-b0b3-4fc0-98ba-c1d8110ed4de@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CfgGV__yMkBDHjXGqF1fmNBp8aGHmVOJP2b+zNqsMBTCQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 9:13?AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
>    There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the ARPAnet served
> this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>         -- Guy
>

Others on this list probably remember better, but when I arrived at BBN in
1983, most of the company's local area network was a standalone IMP network
(net 8, as I recall) that had about as many IMPs as ARPANET and, beyond
keeping the company connected, was used to test major releases of IMP code.

I was lucky enough to be given an office on the 4th floor of 10 Moulton St,
which had one of BBN's few Ethernets (net 128.89), I believe to support
Rick Schantz's projects on distributed object oriented systems and Bob
Thomas's project on multimedia mail.

Soon BBN moved to put Ethernet everywhere (I gather this led to lots of
cables tucked above ceiling tiles -- which caused issues when the fire
codes were updated and we wanted to upgrade the wiring, I think in the
1990s).

Craig

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


From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Sep  8 16:55:48 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2025 16:55:48 -0700
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250906153551.10BBF18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <13c6928e-2039-4c29-9054-98071e40604a@tamu.edu>
 <63ef206a-77ce-4350-8dde-6c48ffbbb401@3kitty.org>
 <3a0a1503-9e16-4ba0-a7cd-015aae9e8723@tamu.edu>
 <d15df9da-2d11-4859-a598-84e7d802fd37@gmail.com>
 <c59441a4-6377-406c-a9fe-e973b78e8a64@3kitty.org>
 <CABf5zvJCLV+hRJHEcy5NH6uydZxtQg0d06bOTCipQTAujx8Y3A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2e952657-7fec-4094-83c4-1d0433a30bf6@3kitty.org>

Thanks for the history.? I think a part of history often ignored is the 
movement of people, and their skills, interests, and ideas, from place 
to place.? It can explain some of the "why" things happened, or not.

Totally agree that a lot of the MIT work was underplayed and 
underreported.? I think that much of that was due to the work being 
viewed as some pragmatic "hack" that somehow helped advance the "real" 
work of the research mission.?? IMHO, that kind of attitude has evolved 
into the "open source" community today, where lots of people work 
together as a team to build some kind of tool that they need for their 
own use.?? There were a lot of "distributed file system" research 
projects over the years, but I didn't find the one that I personally use 
now every day until I stumbled on Syncthing (see syncthing.net).

With 50 years of musing, I've come up with another hypothesis about the 
early days of networking and ARPA research:? ARPA had not figured out 
what was required to establish network-wide mechanisms, i.e., rules for 
funding research activities and establishing mission goals for the 
scattered research groups scattered across the ARPANET.

I experienced this personally.? At MIT in the early 70s, Licklider was 
especially interested in using networked computers to assist human 
activities.? So at some point our (his) group became the "Office 
Automation" group - one of many names we had over the 8 years I was 
there.? We were chartered, and I assume funded by ARPA, to figure out 
how to use the ARPANET and our computers to assist humans in all types 
of office work.

That led to a focus on "electronic mail", but in Lick's vision that 
covered a wide range of activities.? In the business environment, there 
was interoffice and intraoffice correspondence of many types. Short 
notes, formal invoices, workflows involving approval stages, bills of 
lading, and many other types of such correspondence travelled both 
within a company and between companies.? External services also could be 
involved, such as escrow agents, certified or registered transmission 
(as in postal service), legal reviews of contracts, and many more.? 
Office interaction could even include interactions such as telephone 
conversations, collaborative creation of formal documents, and what we 
now know as email.?? Even paper.

The idea was that all of the correspondence that travelled within or 
between companies could be handled by those organizations' computers 
interacting over the ARPANET.?? (LANs didn't exist yet)? The military 
environment had similar needs, for all of the correspondence that it 
required.

So we dove into that problem space, and built some of the pieces. One of 
the more esoteric pieces was the capability to direct correspondence to 
the Datacomputer, which could serve not only as an archive, but also as 
a type of escrow agent, able to independently verify the existence of a 
document.? It might even also deliver it to the addressees and then 
verify that it was delivered at a certain date and time.

All that kind of activity would require the computers at the ends of 
ARPANET connections to interact.? So we began to define protocols and 
formats to carry out that interaction between computers.? But, as the 
saying goes - It Takes Two To Tango - and we only had our MIT-DM 
PDP-10.?? So other ARPANET sites had to be working on the same research 
goal.

Several RFCs were planned, and the first two written and released. 
RFC713 described a more computer-friendly syntax for carrying data 
structures across the ARPANET.? RFC722 described a kind of "philosophy" 
of computer-computer interactions and rules to be followed.?? RFC723 
contained a "request response protocol" using the RFC713 data syntax, 
modelled after the DO/DONT/WILL/WONT scheme already in use on the ARPANET.

There was a lot of debate and discussion about email in those days, but 
it is not captured in RFCs since it was primarily done using our then 
new toy of electronic mail.? IIRC, many people saw the need for some 
more rigorous scheme for computer-computer interaction over the 
ARPANET.?? Someday.? But it wasn't part of their own research focus, and 
they weren't funded to spend a lot of time implementing the admittedly 
complicated schemes proposed.

So someone (ARPA? "Rough consensus"? ??) decided that a simple mechanism 
should be done first, i.e., one that every site could implement without 
distracting from their real research work.? The more elaborate mechanism 
was also needed, but it would be "on the back burner" while the simple 
solution was deployed.

So, at MIT we stopped working on the protocols, formats, and 
architecture for office automation, since there wouldn't be anyone else 
implementing it.?? That's why RFC723 was never published. Work would 
resume when the simple email mechanism was finished.?? I never expected 
it would take more than 50 years.

In retrospect, the ARPANET itself was successful (IMHO) because every 
site was somehow funded and motivated to get their computer "on the 
net".? IMPs arrived, hardware was designed and built, NCPs, Telnets, and 
FTPs were coded, and even simple email, because they were all necessary 
to be considered "on the net".

Other research areas, perhaps "distributed file systems", "operating 
systems", and such, had lots of projects, but perhaps never broadly 
enough throughout the ARPANET community to achieve that necessary 
critical mass.

Not much happened for quite a while.? The ARPANET grew, but 
Telnet/FTP/Email were the primary use.

TCP managed to achieve critical mass.? I think that had a lot to do with 
Vint/Bob's decision to fund implementations in all of the common types 
of computers then in use on the 'net, to make implementations "open" and 
free, and to work with other parts of government to get the Internet 
technology into "real world" use. That enabled TCP to reach critical mass.

I don't remember any other "critical mass" attainment until the Web in 
the early 1990s.? Curiously, the Web also involved Lick's group at MIT.? 
But that's another story, and ARPA didn't seem to be much involved.

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is exponentially 
related to the number of users on it.? I think a similar rule might 
apply to research projects on networks - their success is dependent on 
the number of network sites with the same research goals and required 
funding to work on and implement the resultant technology.

Jack Haverty



On 9/6/25 17:05, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Jack,
>
> I spent a year and half in the MIT-AI lab (Feb 1967 to May 1968), the 
> next three years (May 1968 to May 1971)at UCLA working on the Arpanet 
> protocols, the next three years (July 1971 to August 1974) at (D)ARPA 
> primarily overseeing the AI portfolio?but also paying attention 
> occasionally?to Arpanet issues.? As part of this work I saw the 
> multiple operating system and architecture projects at the various 
> sites, including in particular the C.mmp and other efforts at CMU.
>
> Later, around 1990 or so, Jerry Popek at UCLA and I at 
> Trusted?Information Systems worked together on extending?his shared 
> Unix file structure to work over the Internet using secured file 
> transfer.? That project was called Truffles.? I share 
> these?biographical details as a preface to my remarks embedded below.
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 7:24?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>     I doubt anything was published.?? It just wasn't that big a deal, and
>     wasn't part of the research mission.
>
>
> Heh, heh.? This is an example of some really great work done at MIT-AI 
> lab that was IMO underplayed.? Documentation and publication of the 
> MIT-AI work was almost non-existent. From the perspective of sitting 
> at my desk at DARPA, it was pretty challenging figuring out what to 
> write each year.? Further, the small hack you're describing could have 
> been the basis for a more common network service. However, it would 
> have required a fair amount of work to deal with the differences 
> across the operating systems and, of course, the access control 
> problems.? The ITS designers, at least in the early days, took pride 
> in avoiding heavy?duty access control.? It was a delight to use ITS, 
> and I fully admired the MIT-AI hackers.? But Tenex had stronger 
> controls and quite usable software, so it won the day.? (DEC had its 
> own operating?system, TOPS-10, which was much weaker.? They eventually 
> licensed Tenex from BBN and brought it out as? TOPS-20.)
>
>
>     The "distributed file system" I described was "a hack" probably coded
>     overnight when someone realized that it could be easily done by using
>     the mechanisms that already existed inside ITS - like the JOB/BOJ
>     pseudo-devices.? Such work wasn't part of any official project,
>     but was
>     done primarily to mitigate the scarcity of CPU cycles, memory, or
>     disk
>     space.?? It might have been mentioned in the annual report of the
>     AI Lab
>     work, but I doubt there was ever a paper published.
>
>
> Yeah. See above.? It would have been an excellent and substantial 
> contribution to the Internet if the work had been pursued. It took a 
> very long time before there were semi-sensible solutions to the 
> file-sharing problem.? The early commercial offerings were 
> ridiculously expensive.? Two of us founded Shinkuro to provide an 
> essentially free way to share files across the net based on everyone 
> having a local copy of each shared file, i.e. no central servers.? 
> Dropbox, et al eventually won the day.
>
>
>     With several ITSes on the ARPANET, and the hassle of dealing with
>     FTP to
>     move files, someone likely noticed that a "remote disk" capability
>     would
>     be useful and was an easy thing to try.?? I recall someone once
>     wondering why there was a lot of traffic between hosts on the MIT
>     IMP,
>     where other sites traffic patterns were mostly long distance.? MIT
>     used
>     the IMP as a poor man's LAN, and made it as easy as possible by
>     coding
>     up things like remote disks.
>
>
> MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area 
> net.? And it wasn't long before there was a broad realization that the 
> majority of the communication in the Internet was local.
>
> My favorite example was at UCSB where they had been trying to add 
> interprocess communication to OS/MVT on their IBM 360/75 to make it 
> possible for two partitions, i.e. separate jobs running concurrently, 
> to?communicate.? I don't believe they ever got it working.? However, 
> when they connected their machine to the IMP and got their host-host 
> protocol software working...
>
>
>     If anyone else had "done it first" I never heard about it. There
>     was no
>     network yet, so information about other projects was not readily
>     available.?? Professors might have read journals, but hackers mostly
>     wrote code.
>
>     Most of the OS changes to ITS were done by the MIT AI Lab. But their
>     focus was AI, and changes to the OS were often done to help with
>     some AI
>     project.? In DM, we changed software as needed, mostly focussed on
>     research on use of the network such as email.
>
>     AI changed their PDP-10 hardware when that was useful, e.g., by
>     adding a
>     new instruction to ROTate memory in a counterclockwise direction,
>     which
>     was helpful to the AI Chess program.?? I recall someone at some point
>     made some hardware changes (might have been on the DM machine) that
>     enabled a program? to be run "in reverse" for a bit.? That was
>     helpful
>     in debugging to figure out how the OS code actually got to some weird
>     place, e.g., in some data structure, where it crashed because data as
>     "instructions" made little sense.
>
>     ITS was a lot like Unix, in the sense that it was not an official
>     project to research issues of operating systems.? That was more
>     Multics
>     territory.? ITS was just a tool to be used and modified as needed to
>     help with the actual research topics of AI, DM, and later ML
>     (MathLab)
>     and MC (Macsyma Consortium).
>
>
> The MIT-AI lab, along with the AI labs at CMU, Stanford, BBN, et al 
> produced some great systems work.
>
>
>     The DEC field service techs used to hate coming to ITS land, but also
>     liked it because they always learned something.
>
>     Jack
>
>
>     On 9/6/25 14:27, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>     > I've never looked into the early history of distributed file
>     systems.
>     > Was that work at MIT ever published? Was it pioneering or did
>     someone
>     > else do it first?
>     >
>     > My favourite paper in that area is the "Unix United" paper [1]
>     from 1982.
>     >
>     > [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380121206 (paywalled) or
>     > http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/Papers-Articles/399.pdf
>     > Regards/Ng? mihi
>     > ?? Brian Carpenter
>     >
>     > On 07-Sep-25 08:04, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>     >> Jack,
>     >> ??? Thanks very much.
>     >> ??? So this was in place by the mid-70s, right?
>     >> ????-- Guy
>     >>
>     >> On 9/6/25 3:15 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>     >>> ITS at MIT circa early 1970s used a naming convention for files --
>     >>> <device>:<directory>;<name1> <name2> So, for example, I logged
>     in to
>     >>> MIT-DM as JFH.? My files on disk were things like
>     DSK:JFH;THESIS TJ6
>     >>> File names were limited to alphanumerics of 6 characters or less
>     >>> (motivated by what you could encode into a 36-bit PDP-10 memory
>     >>> location).
>     >>>
>     >>> Once the ARPANET and NCPs appeared, the 'net was a new toy, so
>     >>> people of
>     >>> course experimented with how to use it.? I don't remember the
>     >>> details or
>     >>> timing (sometime in early 1970s), but at but at some point the
>     Message
>     >>> Of The Day announced a new capability - you could use files on
>     some
>     >>> other ITS machine just by using a different <device> to
>     specify the DSK
>     >>> on some other ITS machine.
>     >>>
>     >>> So, for example, from the MIT-AI machine a user could get to
>     my file on
>     >>> the DM machine by specifying DM:JFH;THESIS TJ6.
>     >>>
>     >>> Similarly, from my account on MIT-DM, I could get to another
>     machine's
>     >>> files by using a name such as AI:TK;NEWS ITS to get at Tom
>     Knight's
>     >>> file
>     >>> on the AI machine.
>     >>>
>     >>> This provided more flexibility than FTP.? You could use a remote
>     >>> file in
>     >>> any program that knew how to use files on devices.? To the
>     program, the
>     >>> remote disk looked and behaved like a local disk. (More or less -
>     >>> problems of "global LANs" were still be be surfaced)
>     >>>
>     >>> I don't recall at all how this worked, or who implemented it.
>     IIRC, it
>     >>> took advantage of an interprocess communication capability
>     called the
>     >>> "JOB/BOJ device", which enabled one program to open a JOB
>     device, and
>     >>> another program to open the corresponding BOJ (JOB reversed)
>     device,
>     >>> and
>     >>> send whatever they liked back and forth.? But I don't remember
>     details.
>     >>>
>     >>> We also had the ability for one process (aka "job") to map
>     some or all
>     >>> of another process' address space into its own address space.
>     I can't
>     >>> recall if anyone got motivated to get that working across the
>     ARPANET
>     >>> though.?? If so, it would probably have been done using the same
>     >>> internal mechanisms that got the remote file systems capability.
>     >>>
>     >>> However, for anyone curious, the ancient ITS system is online
>     and has
>     >>> even been resurrected so you can look at the code or even run
>     it on
>     >>> your
>     >>> modern computer - see https://github.com/PDP-10/its
>     >>>
>     >>> Jack Haverty (JFH at MIT-DM in the 70s)
>     >>>
>     >>> On 9/6/25 09:28, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
>     >>>> Noel,
>     >>>> ?? So this was a real networked file system (and not just
>     lots of
>     >>>> FTP)?
>     >>>> ?? Very interesting,
>     >>>> ?????-- Guy
>     >>>>
>     >>>> On 9/6/25 11:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>> ????? > From: Guy Almes
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>> ????? > There are probably a number of ARPAnet sites where the
>     >>>>> ARPAnet
>     >>>>> ????? > served this LAN role in the pre-Ethernet days.
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>> Notably MIT, where the 4 ITS machines shared their file systems
>     >>>>> over the
>     >>>>> ARPANET.
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>> ?????Noel
>     >>>>> --
>     >>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>     >>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>     >>>>>
>     https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
>     >>>>>
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/>
>     >>>>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>     >>>>>
>     C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$
>     >>>>>
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
>
>     >>>>>
>     >>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
>     >>>
>     C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-
>     >>> NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$> >>
>     >>>
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtXfTXzJRA$>
>     >>>>>> -
>     >>>>>
>     Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/
>     >>>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/>
>     >>>>> form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
>     >>>>>
>     The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!
>
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>>
>     KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-
>     >>>>> W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$
>     >>>>>
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!C8xpr0pcWUCRUGu5ny4SaIVDwdiMWrntxKhWopeJnt_Ni81FeTKeUj6hb30-W92d1QCtfI-NdmswzrIufFLHCtVmthkWew$>
>
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>>
>     >>>>
>     >>>
>     >>>
>     >>
>
>     -- 
>     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

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From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 10 20:41:01 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2025 03:41:01 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
References: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549.ref@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549@mail.yahoo.com>

 I was curious about the potential influence of the Unix United paper on work at CMU so I decided to just ask Satya. In my message to him, I included the part starting with? the sentence "AFS in particular *must* .."? and the 2 examples that follow from Brian's email.
I did tell him I wanted to post his answer to this list and he hasn't said no so ...
Excuse my trimming of the thread.? I seem to have problems posting to the list, especially when the body of the message is long.

barbara

----- Forwarded Message -----From:?Mahadev Satyanarayanan <satya at cs.cmu.edu>To:?Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Sent:?Monday, September 8, 2025 at 01:45:16 PM PDTSubject:?Re: AFS question
Hi Barbara,
The Unix United paper (aka "Newcastle Connection") was published in
1982.? We were indeed aware of that work by mid-1983, when serious
work on what eventually led to AFS began.? The name "Andrew" for the
whole project did not emerge until late 1985.? In fact, the first
published paper on AFS did not even use the name "AFS".? It referred
to the system as "The ITC Distributed File System" and the server
and client components as "Vice" and "Virtue" respectively.
Here is that very first AFS paper, from 1985:
? ??https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/323647.323633

Alas, the influence of Unix United on AFS was quite the opposite of
what the person who spoke with you thinks.? We actively worked hard to
AVOID an aspect of Unix United that we thought was totally wrong.
>From the beginning we believed that AFS needed to have Location
Transparency.? i.e. you could not tell where a file was located by
just looking at its pathname.? You had to ask the system to tell you,
and that location could change over time.? The 1985 paper explicitly
contrasts AFS with the design of Unix United.? If you look at
Section 6.1 in the above paper, it says this:
>
> Location transparency is a key issue in this context. In Locus,
> Vice-Virtue, Apollo and Roe it is not possible to deduce the
> location of a file by examing its name. In contrast, the Cedar File
> System and the Newcastle Connection embed storage site information
> in pathnames.
>

Location transparency was identified as a non-negotiable requirement
of AFS since the very earliest conception of its design.? See, for
example, this September 1983 design document:
??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/itc/CMU-ITC-008.pdf

BTW, there is a whole treasure trove of very early (1983-1985) design
documents from the ITC (Andrew project) at
??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/itc85.html
Many things evolved over time, of course, but these early documents
capture the state of thinking at the time they were written.

So the answer to your colleague is "Yes, Unix United was a big
influence on AFS, but in a totally negative way".? You may wish
to soften the blow in how you present it to him/her :-)

Cheers
? ? ? ? ? ? ? --- Satya

On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 06:55:51 PM PDT,

?Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

"MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area net."

Which reminded me of Scrapbook at NPL. It was an early hyperlinked system but was also a (small scale) distributed file system by the mid 1970s. It was not widely known and is badly documented.

I happened to meet and interview one of the Scrapbook team last year:
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/download.php?selected-id=884

The Andrew File System and its descendants, like NFS, only came along in the 1980s. AFS in particular *must* have been influenced by the Unix United paper, which had examples like:

cd /../unix2/user/brian
quicksort a > /../unix1/user/brian/b

(where unix1 and unix2 were host names, and brian wasn't me, it was Brian Randell.)

Regards/Ng? mihi
? ? Brian Carpenter





  

From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Wed Sep 10 21:27:18 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2025 16:27:18 +1200
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549.ref@mail.yahoo.com>
 <653784717.2383549.1757562061549@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4d8012ad-b98a-4ceb-b203-c592a0ccbbfe@gmail.com>

Hi Barbara,

That makes total sense, and I doubt if Brian Randell would be surprised. I've put him in Bcc in case he wants to comment.

The Named Data Networking project is still tackling this space:
https://named-data.net/project/execsummary/

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 11-Sep-25 15:41, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   I was curious about the potential influence of the Unix United paper on work at CMU so I decided to just ask Satya. In my message to him, I included the part starting with? the sentence "AFS in particular *must* .."? and the 2 examples that follow from Brian's email.
> I did tell him I wanted to post his answer to this list and he hasn't said no so ...
> Excuse my trimming of the thread.? I seem to have problems posting to the list, especially when the body of the message is long.
> 
> barbara
> 
> ----- Forwarded Message -----From:?Mahadev Satyanarayanan <satya at cs.cmu.edu>To:?Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Sent:?Monday, September 8, 2025 at 01:45:16 PM PDTSubject:?Re: AFS question
> Hi Barbara,
> The Unix United paper (aka "Newcastle Connection") was published in
> 1982.? We were indeed aware of that work by mid-1983, when serious
> work on what eventually led to AFS began.? The name "Andrew" for the
> whole project did not emerge until late 1985.? In fact, the first
> published paper on AFS did not even use the name "AFS".? It referred
> to the system as "The ITC Distributed File System" and the server
> and client components as "Vice" and "Virtue" respectively.
> Here is that very first AFS paper, from 1985:
>  ? ??https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/323647.323633
> 
> Alas, the influence of Unix United on AFS was quite the opposite of
> what the person who spoke with you thinks.? We actively worked hard to
> AVOID an aspect of Unix United that we thought was totally wrong.
>  From the beginning we believed that AFS needed to have Location
> Transparency.? i.e. you could not tell where a file was located by
> just looking at its pathname.? You had to ask the system to tell you,
> and that location could change over time.? The 1985 paper explicitly
> contrasts AFS with the design of Unix United.? If you look at
> Section 6.1 in the above paper, it says this:
>>
>> Location transparency is a key issue in this context. In Locus,
>> Vice-Virtue, Apollo and Roe it is not possible to deduce the
>> location of a file by examing its name. In contrast, the Cedar File
>> System and the Newcastle Connection embed storage site information
>> in pathnames.
>>
> 
> Location transparency was identified as a non-negotiable requirement
> of AFS since the very earliest conception of its design.? See, for
> example, this September 1983 design document:
>  ??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/itc/CMU-ITC-008.pdf
> 
> BTW, there is a whole treasure trove of very early (1983-1985) design
> documents from the ITC (Andrew project) at
>  ??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/itc85.html
> Many things evolved over time, of course, but these early documents
> capture the state of thinking at the time they were written.
> 
> So the answer to your colleague is "Yes, Unix United was a big
> influence on AFS, but in a totally negative way".? You may wish
> to soften the blow in how you present it to him/her :-)
> 
> Cheers
>  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? --- Satya
> 
> On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 06:55:51 PM PDT,
> 
>  ?Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> "MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area net."
> 
> Which reminded me of Scrapbook at NPL. It was an early hyperlinked system but was also a (small scale) distributed file system by the mid 1970s. It was not widely known and is badly documented.
> 
> I happened to meet and interview one of the Scrapbook team last year:
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/download.php?selected-id=884
> 
> The Andrew File System and its descendants, like NFS, only came along in the 1980s. AFS in particular *must* have been influenced by the Unix United paper, which had examples like:
> 
> cd /../unix2/user/brian
> quicksort a > /../unix1/user/brian/b
> 
> (where unix1 and unix2 were host names, and brian wasn't me, it was Brian Randell.)
> 
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>  ? ? Brian Carpenter
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>    

From sob at sobco.com  Sat Sep 13 09:30:01 2025
From: sob at sobco.com (Scott Bradner)
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:30:01 -0400
Subject: [ih] Panel lights as a source of computer failure
In-Reply-To: <CAMusaY_4_Veg8LB2M5yjduv=b6eDq_SHh=6C-m-cJ4JafiZjwA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAMusaY_4_Veg8LB2M5yjduv=b6eDq_SHh=6C-m-cJ4JafiZjwA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <FBB5EA36-C198-4C08-8F03-EEE4EFBEC00F@sobco.com>

fwiw - I created the printer circuit layout that substituted LEDs for at least some of the IMPs
for Bill Barker

and I was told that the "send a tech" went way way down from the once a week that it had been

Scott

> On Aug 21, 2025, at 3:39?PM, Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Steve Crocker suggested that re-engineering the panel lights on the IMP
> raised reliability from 98% to 99,98%.  That's not the only fix implemented
> to up the reliability, but it was a significant part.  The whole story is
> in the article "Seeking High IMP Reliability in the 1970' ARPAnet" by
> Walden, McKenzie, and Barker, published in Vol 44, No 2 (April - June 2022)
> of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. The panel light problem was
> specific to the second-generation Honeywell-316 IMPs; the original
> Honeywell-516 IMPs did not have this problem.
> 
> Cheers,
> Alex
> -- 
> 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 lk at cs.ucla.edu  Sat Sep 13 11:14:10 2025
From: lk at cs.ucla.edu (Leonard Kleinrock)
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:14:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] Panel lights as a source of computer failure
In-Reply-To: <FBB5EA36-C198-4C08-8F03-EEE4EFBEC00F@sobco.com>
References: <FBB5EA36-C198-4C08-8F03-EEE4EFBEC00F@sobco.com>
Message-ID: <6328B5F1-0E79-457F-ABFD-1B421A7B1EC3@cs.ucla.edu>

FYI, as you know, we have an original Honeywell-516 IMP at UCLA whose lights could be inspected if it helps in any of these questions. Of course as Steve said the 516 didn?t have that problem.
Len.


Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 13, 2025, at 9:30?AM, Scott Bradner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> ?fwiw - I created the printer circuit layout that substituted LEDs for at least some of the IMPs
> for Bill Barker
> 
> and I was told that the "send a tech" went way way down from the once a week that it had been
> 
> Scott
> 
>> On Aug 21, 2025, at 3:39?PM, Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Steve Crocker suggested that re-engineering the panel lights on the IMP
>> raised reliability from 98% to 99,98%.  That's not the only fix implemented
>> to up the reliability, but it was a significant part.  The whole story is
>> in the article "Seeking High IMP Reliability in the 1970' ARPAnet" by
>> Walden, McKenzie, and Barker, published in Vol 44, No 2 (April - June 2022)
>> of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. The panel light problem was
>> specific to the second-generation Honeywell-316 IMPs; the original
>> Honeywell-516 IMPs did not have this problem.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Alex
>> --
>> 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
> 
> --
> 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 8a0a73507e8e at ewoof.net  Sun Sep 14 05:21:23 2025
From: 8a0a73507e8e at ewoof.net (Michael =?utf-8?B?S2rDtnJsaW5n?=)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 12:21:23 +0000
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
Message-ID: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>

Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.

I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
that.

Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
or at least described? Thanks!

-- 
Michael Kj?rling
??https://michael.kjorling.se



From craig at tereschau.net  Sun Sep 14 05:56:55 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 06:56:55 -0600
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>

IEN 21 (TCP v. 3) specifies a network.host.port format, which I suspect is
the origin of the net.host form.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien21.pdf

Craig

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:21?AM Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
> can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
> specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
> add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
>
> I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
> actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
> that.
>
> Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
> dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
> or at least described? Thanks!
>
> --
> Michael Kj?rling
> ? https://michael.kjorling.se
>
> --
> 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
>


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


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 14 09:30:52 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 09:30:52 -0700
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
Message-ID: <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>

In the late 1970s, SRI built a device called a TIU (Terminal Interface 
Unit), which was used in the Packet Radio projects.?? I recall at one 
point struggling to use a TIU because its user interface required IP 
addresses in the form of decimal numbers.? An IP address such as 
10.0.0.5 (a BBN PDP-10 on the ARPANET at the time) had to be specified 
to the TIU as a rather large, and very hard to remember, decimal number 
derived from the 32-bit IP address.

This user interface was described in documents from SRI.?? There was a 
collection of published documents called PRTNs (Packet Radio Technical 
Notes) that may have been where you saw the TIU address format you 
described.? Sorry, I don't know where to find PRTNs today.?? A search on 
discover.dtic.mil for "sri tiu internet" will give you a place to 
start.? There's an index of PRTNs at: 
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA141528.pdf

Personally I never saw most of the PRTNs, since their distribution was 
typically limited to people working on the various Packet Radio 
contracts.? The Index notes that PRTNs were available only after ARPA 
approval as well as approval by the authoring company of each specific 
PRTN.?? Unlike RFCs and IENs, PRTNs were more difficult to access, even 
in the 1970s/80s, but I don't know why.?? I don't recall that they were 
available from the NIC like RFCs and IENs.

Jack Haverty


On 9/14/25 05:21, Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history wrote:
> Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
> can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
> specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
> add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
>
> I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
> actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
> that.
>
> Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
> dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
> or at least described? Thanks!
>

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From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep 14 09:40:28 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 16:40:28 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>

 I always thought the ARPAnet was number 10.? On page 1 in this document, the example says 12. Am I missing something? I haven't read the entire document.
barbara
    On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 05:57:16 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 IEN 21 (TCP v. 3) specifies a network.host.port format, which I suspect is
the origin of the net.host form.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien21.pdf

Craig

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:21?AM Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
> can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
> specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
> add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
>
> I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
> actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
> that.
>
> Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
> dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
> or at least described? Thanks!
>
> --
> Michael Kj?rling
> ? https://michael.kjorling.se

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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep 14 09:59:05 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 16:59:05 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <336040986.3458900.1757869145448@mail.yahoo.com>

 Looks like an error.? The binary representation is right.
barbara
    On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 09:40:36 AM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
  I always thought the ARPAnet was number 10.? On page 1 in this document, the example says 12. Am I missing something? I haven't read the entire document.
barbara
? ? On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 05:57:16 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
 IEN 21 (TCP v. 3) specifies a network.host.port format, which I suspect is
the origin of the net.host form.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien21.pdf

Craig

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:21?AM Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
> can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
> specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
> add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
>
> I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
> actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
> that.
>
> Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
> dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
> or at least described? Thanks!
>
> --
> Michael Kj?rling
> ? https://michael.kjorling.se

  

From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 14 10:05:48 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 10:05:48 -0700
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <f7b787af-aea2-456e-879c-371b3a473c19@3kitty.org>

Probably confusion between decimal and octal.? Octal 12 = decimal 10.? 
At that time, the technical world hadn't even agreed on how many bits 
were in a byte, or whether decimal should be replaced by octal or 
hexadecimal.? Or if ASCII was good enough for text encoding.?? Or how 
many bits were in a computer word.

The PDP-10 I was using at BBN was (if memory serves...) 10.1.0.5 (not 
10.0.05 as I misremembered).?? Arpanet (10), Host 1, IMP 5. Easy to 
remember as dotted quad.? Almost impossible to remember as decimal.?? 
The TIU we used had a cheat sheet listing the decimal addresses for the 
hosts we were using.

Jack

On 9/14/25 09:40, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   I always thought the ARPAnet was number 10.? On page 1 in this document, the example says 12. Am I missing something? I haven't read the entire document.
> barbara
>      On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 05:57:16 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   IEN 21 (TCP v. 3) specifies a network.host.port format, which I suspect is
> the origin of the net.host form.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien21.pdf
>
> Craig
>
> On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:21?AM Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
>> can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
>> specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
>> add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
>>
>> I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
>> actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
>> that.
>>
>> Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
>> dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
>> or at least described? Thanks!
>>
>> --
>> Michael Kj?rling
>> ?https://michael.kjorling.se
> mailing lists.

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From vint at google.com  Sun Sep 14 12:14:20 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 21:14:20 +0200
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <CAHQj4CeapYTWAbUREX3RKbGQExx9v+NCLhdcsgdUFE=Ww2XskQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <678684276.3468496.1757868028075@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggdcax+2b2Mm_d1RVaV8u5epvJQArq=PR+4uzNzd+BXn2Q@mail.gmail.com>

12 would be correct in octal
v


On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:40?PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>  I always thought the ARPAnet was number 10.  On page 1 in this document,
> the example says 12. Am I missing something? I haven't read the entire
> document.
> barbara
>     On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 05:57:16 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>  IEN 21 (TCP v. 3) specifies a network.host.port format, which I suspect is
> the origin of the net.host form.
>
> https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien21.pdf
>
> Craig
>
> On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 6:21?AM Michael Kj?rling via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Every once in a while I see people being surprised that IPv4 addresses
> > can be expressed in formats other than dotted-decimal-quad; more
> > specifically, in classful-style <net>.<host> (where net and host can
> > add up to less than four octets) or even single-large-integer format.
> >
> > I am _almost_ certain that I have seen an early IP or TCP RFC which
> > actually describes this representation, but have been unable to locate
> > that.
> >
> > Can anyone point me at an authoritative source where the
> > dotted-not-quad textual IPv4 address representation format is defined
> > or at least described? Thanks!
> >
> > --
> > Michael Kj?rling
> > ? https://michael.kjorling.se
>
> 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
>
> --
> 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 jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Sep 14 13:58:04 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 16:58:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
Message-ID: <20250914205804.1D9C718C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jack Haverty

    > Probably confusion between decimal and octal.

Yup. Amusingly, at one point, very early on, at MIT we were using octal for
addresses, in the very similar form 'a,b,c,d'. (I'll bet I could find an
example of that in the archives of the MIT-CSR UNIX machine, whose
file-system has been preserved.) I don't think we would have done octal just
to be different; it was almost certainly before decimal 'a.b.c.d' was the
effective standard.

	Noel


From nethead at gmail.com  Sun Sep 14 17:05:59 2025
From: nethead at gmail.com (Joe Hamelin)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 17:05:59 -0700
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAO0-hXa2cXmxVF-AN5f4H24gMzHsD4mU0Zsr8-ZHmLueXKdMKQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 9:31?AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote

>
> This user interface was described in documents from SRI.   There was a
> collection of published documents called PRTNs (Packet Radio Technical
> Notes) that may have been where you saw the TIU address format you
> described.  Sorry, I don't know where to find PRTNs today.
> Jack Haverty
>
> If you're thinking of the Packet Radio Temporary Notes they can be found
in the DLARC on archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/packet-radio-temporary-notes
Contact kay at archive.org for more information.  He gave a talk yesterday at
the Zero Retries Digital Conference in Everett, WA and mentioned these.
-Joe


-- 
Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Portland, OR, +1 360 474 7474


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 14 18:21:14 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2025 18:21:14 -0700
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <CAO0-hXa2cXmxVF-AN5f4H24gMzHsD4mU0Zsr8-ZHmLueXKdMKQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>
 <CAO0-hXa2cXmxVF-AN5f4H24gMzHsD4mU0Zsr8-ZHmLueXKdMKQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cd9c9d71-8c9c-480e-bb83-7756ae25c078@3kitty.org>

Good find!? Yes, I expanded the acronym incorrectly.

It looks like these were scanned from someone's paper copies, rather 
than being captured from some website.? I'm still curious about why 
PRTNs were treated differently from other similar notes such as IENs and 
RFCs, which were accessible online at SRI-NIC even in the 1970s.

According to a reliable source, namely a plaque at Rossotti's Alpine Inn 
in Portola Valley, the "Beginning of the Internet Age" occurred on 
August 27, 1976 when an "electronic message ... was sent via a radio 
network to SRI and on through a second network, the ARPANET, to 
Boston.?? Full story is here: 
https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/core-2002-02.pdf

So, Packet Radio and ARPANET were the first networks interconnected by 
Gateways to form the Internet.

But IIRC information, e.g., PRTNs, about the Packet Radio work was not 
online like RFCs and IENs.?? Anybody remember the reason?

Jack Haverty



On 9/14/25 17:05, Joe Hamelin wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 9:31?AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote
>
>
>     This user interface was described in documents from SRI. There was a
>     collection of published documents called PRTNs (Packet Radio
>     Technical
>     Notes) that may have been where you saw the TIU address format you
>     described.? Sorry, I don't know where to find PRTNs today.
>     Jack Haverty
>
> If you're thinking of the Packet Radio Temporary Notes they can be 
> found in the DLARC on archive.org <http://archive.org>.
> https://archive.org/details/packet-radio-temporary-notes
> Contact kay at archive.org for more?information.? He gave a talk 
> yesterday at the Zero Retries Digital Conference in Everett, WA and 
> mentioned these.
> -Joe
>
> -- 
> Joe Hamelin, W7COM,?Portland, OR, +1 360 474 7474

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From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep 14 23:07:06 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2025 06:07:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format
In-Reply-To: <cd9c9d71-8c9c-480e-bb83-7756ae25c078@3kitty.org>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>
 <CAO0-hXa2cXmxVF-AN5f4H24gMzHsD4mU0Zsr8-ZHmLueXKdMKQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <cd9c9d71-8c9c-480e-bb83-7756ae25c078@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <82429957.3620676.1757916426464@mail.yahoo.com>

 Yes great find!!! I wonder where these copies came from. It isn't a complete set.? ?They do seem to be recently scanned.? I certainly didn't get any of them, even the ones like the X-NET cross-net debugger (PRTN 141)? which I used.? Mike Beeler wrote the PRTN and I am pretty sure he just talked to me about how to use it. I probably got a minimal cheat sheet too.
Just to let you know, I noticed the X-NET debugger document specifies the convention for octal versus decimal. It follows what we saw for IEN 21? ( TCPv3).?
BTW,? I don't think gateways were a separate piece of hardware yet. It was still in the packet radio station. The diagram for the 1976 demo makes this clearer.? I? know I sent a prior message with a link to this diagram but I am having a little bit of trouble locating it right now.? Searching email in yahoo is not great so maybe I will have more luck tomorrow.?Maybe I didn't send this link to the list regarding the '76 demo. It has some nice shots of Zotts. It is nice the google search understands Zotts is Alpine Inn.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/15/how-the-internet-was-invented-1976-arpa-kahn-cerf?CMP=share_btn_link
barbara?

    On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 06:21:25 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Good find!? Yes, I expanded the acronym incorrectly.

It looks like these were scanned from someone's paper copies, rather 
than being captured from some website.? I'm still curious about why 
PRTNs were treated differently from other similar notes such as IENs and 
RFCs, which were accessible online at SRI-NIC even in the 1970s.

According to a reliable source, namely a plaque at Rossotti's Alpine Inn 
in Portola Valley, the "Beginning of the Internet Age" occurred on 
August 27, 1976 when an "electronic message ... was sent via a radio 
network to SRI and on through a second network, the ARPANET, to 
Boston.?? Full story is here: 
https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/core-2002-02.pdf

So, Packet Radio and ARPANET were the first networks interconnected by 
Gateways to form the Internet.

But IIRC information, e.g., PRTNs, about the Packet Radio work was not 
online like RFCs and IENs.?? Anybody remember the reason?

Jack Haverty



On 9/14/25 17:05, Joe Hamelin wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 9:31?AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote
>
>
>? ? This user interface was described in documents from SRI. There was a
>? ? collection of published documents called PRTNs (Packet Radio
>? ? Technical
>? ? Notes) that may have been where you saw the TIU address format you
>? ? described.? Sorry, I don't know where to find PRTNs today.
>? ? Jack Haverty
>
> If you're thinking of the Packet Radio Temporary Notes they can be 
> found in the DLARC on archive.org <http://archive.org>.
> https://archive.org/details/packet-radio-temporary-notes
> Contact kay at archive.org for more?information.? He gave a talk 
> yesterday at the Zero Retries Digital Conference in Everett, WA and 
> mentioned these.
> -Joe
>
> -- 
> Joe Hamelin, W7COM,?Portland, OR, +1 360 474 7474

  

From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 15 17:12:52 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:12:52 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] The classful <net>.<host> IPv4 address format (early
 Internet demos)
In-Reply-To: <82429957.3620676.1757916426464@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <26a3e75c-cf62-4ea2-bf9d-324821fab2c5@home.arpa>
 <1351184f-9902-4018-a725-a952fc8404c5@3kitty.org>
 <CAO0-hXa2cXmxVF-AN5f4H24gMzHsD4mU0Zsr8-ZHmLueXKdMKQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <cd9c9d71-8c9c-480e-bb83-7756ae25c078@3kitty.org>
 <82429957.3620676.1757916426464@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <658860457.3988637.1757981572835@mail.yahoo.com>

 For those not familiar with the diagrams for 1976 and 1977, I finally found the message with the link to the write-up that includes legible demo diagrams.? The '76 demo is the diagram that talks about the weekly report.
https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CORE-3-1-SRI-TCP-IP.html
Not sure why my message below lost the blank lines between the paragraphs.??
barbara
    On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 11:07:19 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
  Yes great find!!! I wonder where these copies came from. It isn't a complete set.? ?They do seem to be recently scanned.? I certainly didn't get any of them, even the ones like the X-NET cross-net debugger (PRTN 141)? which I used.? Mike Beeler wrote the PRTN and I am pretty sure he just talked to me about how to use it. I probably got a minimal cheat sheet too.
Just to let you know, I noticed the X-NET debugger document specifies the convention for octal versus decimal. It follows what we saw for IEN 21? ( TCPv3).?
BTW,? I don't think gateways were a separate piece of hardware yet. It was still in the packet radio station. The diagram for the 1976 demo makes this clearer.? I? know I sent a prior message with a link to this diagram but I am having a little bit of trouble locating it right now.? Searching email in yahoo is not great so maybe I will have more luck tomorrow.?Maybe I didn't send this link to the list regarding the '76 demo. It has some nice shots of Zotts. It is nice the google search understands Zotts is Alpine Inn.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/15/how-the-internet-was-invented-1976-arpa-kahn-cerf?CMP=share_btn_link
barbara?

? ? On Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 06:21:25 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
 Good find!? Yes, I expanded the acronym incorrectly.

It looks like these were scanned from someone's paper copies, rather 
than being captured from some website.? I'm still curious about why 
PRTNs were treated differently from other similar notes such as IENs and 
RFCs, which were accessible online at SRI-NIC even in the 1970s.

According to a reliable source, namely a plaque at Rossotti's Alpine Inn 
in Portola Valley, the "Beginning of the Internet Age" occurred on 
August 27, 1976 when an "electronic message ... was sent via a radio 
network to SRI and on through a second network, the ARPANET, to 
Boston.?? Full story is here: 
https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/core-2002-02.pdf

So, Packet Radio and ARPANET were the first networks interconnected by 
Gateways to form the Internet.

But IIRC information, e.g., PRTNs, about the Packet Radio work was not 
online like RFCs and IENs.?? Anybody remember the reason?

Jack Haverty



On 9/14/25 17:05, Joe Hamelin wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 9:31?AM Jack Haverty via Internet-history 
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote
>
>
>? ? This user interface was described in documents from SRI. There was a
>? ? collection of published documents called PRTNs (Packet Radio
>? ? Technical
>? ? Notes) that may have been where you saw the TIU address format you
>? ? described.? Sorry, I don't know where to find PRTNs today.
>? ? Jack Haverty
>
> If you're thinking of the Packet Radio Temporary Notes they can be 
> found in the DLARC on archive.org <http://archive.org>.
> https://archive.org/details/packet-radio-temporary-notes
> Contact kay at archive.org for more?information.? He gave a talk 
> yesterday at the Zero Retries Digital Conference in Everett, WA and 
> mentioned these.
> -Joe
>
> -- 
> Joe Hamelin, W7COM,?Portland, OR, +1 360 474 7474

  

From reed at reedmedia.net  Wed Sep 17 08:46:10 2025
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:46:10 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re:  AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>

On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:

> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably a 
> bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the 
> NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That made it 
> my problem.
>
> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
> Updated automatically of course.
>
> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.

What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a 
report?

(I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)

I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had 
a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the 
Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who I 
got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from but 
no memory of it.)

Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?

Any example of the status report or display?


From karl at iwl.com  Wed Sep 17 12:52:58 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:52:58 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <e2da6c16-3efe-4835-a750-5f3f943d3c10@iwl.com>

Ah, automatic probing of the net... that got me into a bit of hot water.

 From my experiences building/operating the Interop show networks (late 
1980s through 2000+) I realized that we very much needed what was the 
internet equivalent of the "butt set" that telco repair folks carry.

So in the early 1990s I formed a company (Empirical Tools and 
Technologies [also known as Empirical Tools and Toys] - ETNT) to build 
such a thing.

And I built it - It was called "Dr. Watson, The Network Detective's 
Assistant" (DWTNDA).? It ran on PC-DOS and could be up and running (on 
those early laptops) within a relatively few seconds, which is something 
needed because from my experience network problems always require 
somebody to get into an uncomfortable place (such as a cold, damp wiring 
closet) where nobody wants to spend much time (not to mention the time 
pressure to resolve the network problem.)

In one of the modes of operation DWTNDA would go in and out of 
promiscuous mode (many times a second), sampling local traffic (for IP, 
Decnet, Netware) as a way of capturing addresses and names to explore 
further.

Once it had an address (and was not in promiscuous mode) DWTNDA would 
begin to explore using a variety of methods such as ARP, ICMP ECHO, 
reverse DNS, etc, including SNMP queries (from which it tried to do 
things like obtain the remote machine's ARP, routing, and TCP connection 
data - thus feeding more addresses into the list of "nodes I should I 
look at".

Trouble was that the early versions of DWTNDA had no limits on the range 
or pace of exploration - It was pretty amazing to watch it when it 
started up and began exploring.? The display would quickly fill with 
nodes it had found and was exploring.? It also used various heuristics - 
such as presuming that IP and Netware probably had similar routing.

The tool was pretty amazing - we usually had several running at all 
times on the Interop show network.? (I also got a couple 
"Troubleshooting Product of the Year" awards.? And it was robust - it 
would, and did, run for years without stopping - a unique attribute back 
in the early 1990's.)

The lack of limits on DWTNDA's exploration first came to my notice when 
I came in one morning after leaving a unit running. There was a very 
angry phone message from Columbia University.? I thought "I am in Santa 
Cruz, California, why is someone at Columbia calling and screaming at 
me?"? Well, it turned out that my test machine had caught an address or 
name at Columbia and had begun to probe it.? The target machine at 
Columbia turned out to be a big IBM mainframe with a buggy SNMP agent 
that would crash when I probed it.? Crashing mainframes tend to get 
attention - and this got a lot of attention because this early version 
of DWTNDA was relentless and kept probing.

(I kinda had to bite my tongue and not tell the folks at Columbia that 
they ought to have used a better SNMP agent engine - In particular one 
that I had built and sold via my previous company, Epilogue Technology.? 
Had they done so they would not have crashed.? But had I mentioned it I 
am sure somebody from Columbia would have sent Guido From Baltimore to 
pay me a visit.)

It was from these events that I also began to realize that there is a 
mutual embrace between security and diagnosis/repair - and that we are 
going increasing far out onto the security end of the seesaw without 
much going onto the counterbalancing monitoring/diagnosis/repair end of 
the seesaw.? I foresee trouble coming to the net from this imbalance - 
see my note "Is The Internet At Risk From Too Much Security?" at 
https://www.cavebear.com/cavebear-blog/netsecurity/

Unfortunately DWTNDA died due to the machinations of an unscrupulous 
investor as well as me not paying adequate to the financial ledgers and 
statements.? (It was that event that started me on the path of paying 
attention to financial data - particularly the raw ledgers and 
supporting documents (purchase orders, invoices, checks, etc) when I was 
on boards of directors of various companies.)

I've had an on-again/off-again project to resurrect DTWNDA is a modern 
form as part of an overall Internet fault detection, isolation system.? 
The idea is similar to RIPE's ATLAS but far more elaborate and also 
incorporating some ideas that I have borrowed from my local UC Santa 
Cruz astrophysics friends.

One of the ideas that I want to explore in this is based on the wisdom 
that you can't be two places at once and that you are rarely at the 
right place at the right time with the right tools. I was beginning to 
define a system of electronic work requests and work-reports that test 
tools could exchange with one another so that tools that were in the 
right place could run tests and then, at some later time, deliver the 
results.? (There is some similarity to how things like Apple's Air Tags 
work.? And there are lots of big security issues.)

This idea extended rather further - at the data gathering side I wanted 
vibration and sound sensor data from network devices (power supply 
noises are great sources of diagnostic data) to inference engines (I 
used Prolog in my prototypes), to an expert database of network 
pathologies (with paths leading from symptoms to methods to 
differentiate among different possible causes, to running of those 
methods, etc).? One important aspect was the creation of baselines so 
one could note deviations.? I suspect some modern AI tools could be 
helpful, much as they are on the new Vera Rubin telescope to quickly 
note events of interest so that more focused telescopes could be quickly 
re-targeted to capture hot-off-the-star data.

I've been working on this idea for at least 40 years - I keep getting 
interrupted and I doubt I'll survive long enough to finish it.? But 
somebody will do something like this, eventually, at which point 
Internet probing will become rather more formalized and intensive.? (But 
hopefully not as wild-west crazed as the web and AI data mining bots 
that plague so many of us who run network servers.)

It bothers me that the IETF does not have a formal effort to assure that 
all Internet protocol designs are coupled to evaluations of failure 
modes, designation of test points, and tools to exercise those test 
points.? I really fear a Rub-Goldberg-ization of the Internet.

 ? ? ? ? ? ? --karl--



From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Sep 17 12:58:18 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:58:18 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>

FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably 
because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much 
of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident involved 
the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.?? It 
was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983 
when I switched jobs.

I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at 
ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over 
the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the 
changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some 
user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new 
OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because 
ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun emerged a 
bit later in the 1980s.

/Jack

On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably 
>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and 
>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That 
>> made it my problem.
>>
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>> Updated automatically of course.
>>
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>
> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>
> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had 
> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the 
> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who 
> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from 
> but no memory of it.)
>
> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>
> Any example of the status report or display?

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From crossd at gmail.com  Wed Sep 17 13:16:38 2025
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 16:16:38 -0400
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W5WMeCE1hjdi4CM43nzdrZ5PbaqnVQdQKG9yq7B=J9cPA@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:58?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
> of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident involved
> the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.   It
> was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
> when I switched jobs.
>
> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
> OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
> ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun emerged a
> bit later in the 1980s.

Could it have been that this was due to `ripd`, the RIP routing daemon?

        - Dan C.

> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> >> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> >> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
> >> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
> >> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably
> >> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
> >> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
> >> made it my problem.
> >>
> >> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> >> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
> >> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> >> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> >> Updated automatically of course.
> >>
> >> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> >> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> >> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> >> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> >> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> >> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >
> > What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> >
> > (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> >
> > I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
> > a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
> > Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who
> > I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
> > but no memory of it.)
> >
> > Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >
> > Any example of the status report or display?
>
> --
> 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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 17 13:28:59 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 20:28:59 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>

 Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not all of them).? I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in South Korea.?
barbara
    On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably 
because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much 
of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident involved 
the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.?? It 
was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983 
when I switched jobs.

I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at 
ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over 
the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the 
changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some 
user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new 
OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because 
ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun emerged a 
bit later in the 1980s.

/Jack

On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably 
>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and 
>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That 
>> made it my problem.
>>
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>> Updated automatically of course.
>>
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>
> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>
> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had 
> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the 
> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who 
> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from 
> but no memory of it.)
>
> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>
> Any example of the status report or display?
  

From karl at iwl.com  Wed Sep 17 13:34:05 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 13:34:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <61985c7c-46c3-4445-b716-1a6232c6f5a3@iwl.com>

When Steve Casner and I were developing entertainment grade network 
video code Steve brought out what he called "eggbeater" diagrams that he 
had developed with Van Jacobson.? These diagrams tended to show that the 
network had a definite pulsing, much of which came from the fixed 
timeouts on protocols such as RIP and ARP.

(This led us to randomize all of the timers in our code by +/- 50%.)

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

On 9/17/25 12:58 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably 
> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much 
> of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident 
> involved the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the 
> time.?? It was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before 
> July 1983 when I switched jobs.
>
> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at 
> ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over 
> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the 
> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some 
> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new 
> OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only 
> because ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun 
> emerged a bit later in the 1980s.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with 
>>> the ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around 
>>> it.? Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet 
>>> guy" at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office 
>>> and said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was 
>>> probably a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing 
>>> again, and the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from 
>>> gateways.?? That made it my problem.
>>>
>>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there. The new BSD 
>>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>>> Updated automatically of course.
>>>
>>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new 
>>> release propagated out into all those systems, they all started 
>>> probing every gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, 
>>> this caused the ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to 
>>> ARPA, and a quick order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. 
>>> Took a while IIRC.
>>
>> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>>
>> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>>
>> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley 
>> had a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on 
>> the Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot 
>> find who I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I 
>> got it from but no memory of it.)
>>
>> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>>
>> Any example of the status report or display?
>
>


From craig at tereschau.net  Wed Sep 17 13:40:28 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:40:28 -0600
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <61985c7c-46c3-4445-b716-1a6232c6f5a3@iwl.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <61985c7c-46c3-4445-b716-1a6232c6f5a3@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4Cesr_W+S7Bj4NSQf2DghQGi9wpw=gCUq7H-w2Z8XAXnQQ@mail.gmail.com>

There's the great Floyd/Jacobson paper on this topic:
https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/sync_94.pdf

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 2:34?PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> When Steve Casner and I were developing entertainment grade network
> video code Steve brought out what he called "eggbeater" diagrams that he
> had developed with Van Jacobson.  These diagrams tended to show that the
> network had a definite pulsing, much of which came from the fixed
> timeouts on protocols such as RIP and ARP.
>
> (This led us to randomize all of the timers in our code by +/- 50%.)
>
>          --karl--
>
> On 9/17/25 12:58 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
> > because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
> > of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident
> > involved the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the
> > time.   It was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before
> > July 1983 when I switched jobs.
> >
> > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> > ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
> > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
> > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> > user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
> > OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only
> > because ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun
> > emerged a bit later in the 1980s.
> >
> > /Jack
> >
> > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>
> >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with
> >>> the ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around
> >>> it.  Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet
> >>> guy" at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office
> >>> and said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was
> >>> probably a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing
> >>> again, and the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from
> >>> gateways.   That made it my problem.
> >>>
> >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there. The new BSD
> >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> >>> Updated automatically of course.
> >>>
> >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> >>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new
> >>> release propagated out into all those systems, they all started
> >>> probing every gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program,
> >>> this caused the ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to
> >>> ARPA, and a quick order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped.
> >>> Took a while IIRC.
> >>
> >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> >>
> >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> >>
> >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley
> >> had a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on
> >> the Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot
> >> find who I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I
> >> got it from but no memory of it.)
> >>
> >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >>
> >> Any example of the status report or display?
> >
> >
> --
> 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
>


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


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 17 13:46:29 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 20:46:29 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>

 Jack,
I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,? not SNMP.
SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management startups.
barbara
    On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
  Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not all of them).? I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in South Korea.?
barbara
? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
 FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably 
because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much 
of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident involved 
the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.?? It 
was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983 
when I switched jobs.

I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at 
ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over 
the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the 
changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some 
user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new 
OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because 
ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun emerged a 
bit later in the 1980s.

/Jack

On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably 
>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and 
>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That 
>> made it my problem.
>>
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>> Updated automatically of course.
>>
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>
> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>
> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had 
> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the 
> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who 
> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from 
> but no memory of it.)
>
> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>
> Any example of the status report or display?
? 

  

From crossd at gmail.com  Wed Sep 17 14:01:48 2025
From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 17:01:48 -0400
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <e2da6c16-3efe-4835-a750-5f3f943d3c10@iwl.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <e2da6c16-3efe-4835-a750-5f3f943d3c10@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W4N7G2r_F=rpHnB5f+MkmQS22rRxz-e36Zw_SjoP3RcGw@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:53?PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> [snip]
> (I kinda had to bite my tongue and not tell the folks at Columbia that
> they ought to have used a better SNMP agent engine - In particular one
> that I had built and sold via my previous company, Epilogue Technology.
> Had they done so they would not have crashed.  But had I mentioned it I
> am sure somebody from Columbia would have sent Guido From Baltimore to
> pay me a visit.)
> [snip]

As a Columbia alum, I can assure you that would not be the case.

However, you might have had a wizened professor of classics arrive at
your door and proceed to lecture you at length on ancient Greek
philosophy, assigning non-trivial chunks of the Iliad for that
evening's reading, with an oral quiz to follow the next day.

Honestly, I'm not sure which is worse.

        - Dan C.


From winowicki at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 17 14:06:05 2025
From: winowicki at yahoo.com (Bill Nowicki)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 21:06:05 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1172762915.4001530.1758143165157@mail.yahoo.com>

Do not think it can be blamed on Sun, since I was the token Sun Internet guy in the 1980s. Sun marketing decided in their infinite wisdom that the real demand would be for the ISO OSI stack, so focused its efforts there, alas. (Although you can blame Sun and BSD for the "Morris Worm", another story?) The only dabbling Sun did on the Arpanet I remember was a quick product I glued together we called SunLink DDN, which used our X.25 support and a simple connection manager I wrote to be our gateway between the Sun corporate network and the IMP at SRI. Not sure any other customer bought one?
As a fallout to the Morris Worm I did write a program which would do an SMTP (e-mail) probe to every IP address in a range, which at the time gave a good indication of which OS it was running if it was up or not.
The real melt-downs I dealt with were due to multicast routing into loops, but that was later in the 1990s and mostly over LANs.
Bill   On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:46:38 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
  Jack,
I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,? not SNMP.
SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management startups.
barbara
? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
? Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not all of them).? I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in South Korea.?
barbara
? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
 FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably 
because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much 
of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident involved 
the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.?? It 
was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983 
when I switched jobs.

I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at 
ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over 
the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the 
changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some 
user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new 
OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because 
ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun emerged a 
bit later in the 1980s.

/Jack

On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the 
>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.? 
>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the 
>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy" 
>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and 
>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably 
>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and 
>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That 
>> made it my problem.
>>
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just 
>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user 
>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD 
>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the 
>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". 
>> Updated automatically of course.
>>
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS 
>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release 
>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every 
>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the 
>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick 
>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>
> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>
> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>
> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had 
> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the 
> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who 
> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from 
> but no memory of it.)
>
> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>
> Any example of the status report or display?
? 

? 
-- 
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Sep 17 14:32:47 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:32:47 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>

Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network 
Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.

IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David 
Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in 
some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt

All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be 
recognized today.

Jack

On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Jack,
> I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,? not SNMP.
> SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management startups.
> barbara
>      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>    Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
> Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not all of them).? I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in South Korea.
> barbara
>  ? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much
> of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the incident involved
> the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.?? It
> was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
> when I switched jobs.
>
> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had leverage over
> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source of the
> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
> OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
> ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought Sun emerged a
> bit later in the 1980s.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>
>>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
>>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
>>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy"
>>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
>>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably
>>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
>>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.?? That
>>> made it my problem.
>>>
>>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
>>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.?? The new BSD
>>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
>>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
>>> Updated automatically of course.
>>>
>>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
>>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the new release
>>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
>>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
>>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
>>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>>
>> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>>
>> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
>> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
>> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who
>> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
>> but no memory of it.)
>>
>> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>>
>> Any example of the status report or display?
>    
>
>    

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From craig at tereschau.net  Wed Sep 17 14:39:01 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:39:01 -0600
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>

SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced primary by
HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but never launched) and a
little bit by the nascent CMIP.

Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network
> Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.
>
> IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
> Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in
> some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>
> All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be
> recognized today.
>
> Jack
>
> On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >   Jack,
> > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,  not SNMP.
> > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management
> startups.
> > barbara
> >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny
> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >    Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the fall
> of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my office
> when I arrived.
> > Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup offerings
> would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not
> all of them).  I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for
> a military testbed in South Korea.
> > barbara
> >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty
> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >   FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
> > because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
> > of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident involved
> > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.   It
> > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
> > when I switched jobs.
> >
> > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> > ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
> > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
> > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> > user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
> > OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
> > ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun emerged a
> > bit later in the 1980s.
> >
> > /Jack
> >
> > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>
> >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
> >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
> >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably
> >>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
> >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
> >>> made it my problem.
> >>>
> >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
> >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> >>> Updated automatically of course.
> >>>
> >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> >>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> >>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> >>
> >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> >>
> >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
> >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
> >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who
> >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
> >> but no memory of it.)
> >>
> >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >>
> >> Any example of the status report or display?
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> 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
>


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


From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Sep 17 14:41:25 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 14:41:25 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <e2da6c16-3efe-4835-a750-5f3f943d3c10@iwl.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <e2da6c16-3efe-4835-a750-5f3f943d3c10@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <b03cb8d3-d4a1-4631-8edb-6d3a2ba39c0b@3kitty.org>

Apologies if you already got this message.   I didn't receive it from the ISOC reflector, but I did get the error report below, which advises me that something went wrong and to send mail to postmaster for further help.  But postmaster at what site?

Seems ironic that my reply about the lack of operations focus triggered a connection timeout somewhere in the bowels of the Internet, highlighting the very issue of handling problems occurring during operations.

/Jack

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ForwardedMessage.eml

Subject:
Re: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
From:
Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>
Date:
9/17/25, 13:35

To:
internet-history at elists.isoc.org


On 9/17/25 12:52, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>
> It bothers me that the IETF does not have a formal effort to assure 
> that all Internet protocol designs are coupled to evaluations of 
> failure modes, designation of test points, and tools to exercise those 
> test points.? I really fear a Rub-Goldberg-ization of the Internet.

I share your concern.? Over the years I've learned that very few 
designers and implementers of protocols and algorithms are also ever 
actually involved in operating the things they built.? In development 
you have lots of tools to debug, and the ability to just stop a system 
and slowly run it with lots of breakpoints to see where it's flawed.

But in operations, the primary objective is to get the system running 
again as fast as possible.

So, there's very few tools built in to the designs, but intended for use 
in operations.? When I took over the gateway project with the charter to 
make it 24x7 operational, we adopted many of the tools and techniques 
that had been created over a decade of ARPANET operations.? The ARPANET 
as designed didn't have such tools either, but by then a decade of 
operational necessity had created them.

Some of those "Internet operations tools" were captured in ICMP. But 
ICMP was not included in the DoD Standards in the early 1980s, and we 
had to lobby hard to get it implemented.? People couldn't understand why 
it was necessary.? Over time since then, I think some of those tools 
have been deprecated and are now not implemented any more, because no 
one remembers why they were there and what good they were.

Designers tend to assume everything will work perfectly, as the system 
is designed to do.? Operators know it doesn't work that way.

/Jack

PS - in the 1970s, we kept a cheap AM radio by our PDP-10 system 
console.? By tuning it to an unused frequency, you could tell what the 
OS was doing by simply listening to the noise patterns in the static.??? 
Sound was also useful.? I'll never forget the blood-curdling screams of 
a cooling fan as it failed deep inside some computer cabinet.
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From craig at tereschau.net  Wed Sep 17 14:48:02 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:48:02 -0600
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>

I wrote too swiftly.  I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA project
that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed network management
service (the idea being the service talked to all devices on the network,
and then any monitoring app could simply connect to the service and learn
what was going on -- this meant managed devices weren't getting bombarded
with pings and such and could do their job).  Her team included Charlie
Lynn and Ross Callon and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.

I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.  I will say I got the
lesson half-right/half-wrong.  The right part, and this one of Jil's big
takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going to get some
management packets through, so make sure each has as much information/does
as much as possible.  The wrong part was my take was a sick network meant
use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data -- whereas others argued
it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable, often did a great job of getting
*a* packet through.

SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet (which I
continue to think was a mistake :-)).

Craig

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:

> SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced primary by
> HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but never launched) and a
> little bit by the nascent CMIP.
>
> Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network
>> Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.
>>
>> IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
>> Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in
>> some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>>
>> All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be
>> recognized today.
>>
>> Jack
>>
>> On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> >   Jack,
>> > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,  not SNMP.
>> > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management
>> startups.
>> > barbara
>> >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny
>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >    Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the
>> fall of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my
>> office when I arrived.
>> > Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup offerings
>> would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not
>> all of them).  I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for
>> a military testbed in South Korea.
>> > barbara
>> >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty
>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >   FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
>> > because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
>> > of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident involved
>> > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.   It
>> > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
>> > when I switched jobs.
>> >
>> > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
>> > ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
>> > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
>> > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
>> > user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
>> > OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
>> > ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun emerged a
>> > bit later in the 1980s.
>> >
>> > /Jack
>> >
>> > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
>> >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
>> >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>> >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
>> >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
>> >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably
>> >>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
>> >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
>> >>> made it my problem.
>> >>>
>> >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
>> >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>> >>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
>> >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
>> >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
>> >>> Updated automatically of course.
>> >>>
>> >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
>> >>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
>> >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
>> >>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
>> >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
>> >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>> >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>> >>
>> >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>> >>
>> >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
>> >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
>> >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who
>> >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
>> >> but no memory of it.)
>> >>
>> >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>> >>
>> >> Any example of the status report or display?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
>
>
> --
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
> mailing lists.
>


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


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 17 15:12:23 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:12:23 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@ma
 il.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2023122398.4308291.1758147143288@mail.yahoo.com>

 I think you are referring to the ANM (Automated Network Management) project in case people might want to look for more info.
barbara
    On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 02:48:22 PM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 I wrote too swiftly.? I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA project
that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed network management
service (the idea being the service talked to all devices on the network,
and then any monitoring app could simply connect to the service and learn
what was going on -- this meant managed devices weren't getting bombarded
with pings and such and could do their job).? Her team included Charlie
Lynn and Ross Callon and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.

I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.? I will say I got the
lesson half-right/half-wrong.? The right part, and this one of Jil's big
takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going to get some
management packets through, so make sure each has as much information/does
as much as possible.? The wrong part was my take was a sick network meant
use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data -- whereas others argued
it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable, often did a great job of getting
*a* packet through.

SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet (which I
continue to think was a mistake :-)).

Craig

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:

> SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced primary by
> HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but never launched) and a
> little bit by the nascent CMIP.
>
> Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network
>> Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.
>>
>> IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
>> Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in
>> some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>>
>> All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be
>> recognized today.
>>
>> Jack
>>
>> On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> >? Jack,
>> > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,? not SNMP.
>> > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management
>> startups.
>> > barbara
>> >? ? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny
>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >? ? Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the
>> fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my
>> office when I arrived.
>> > Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup offerings
>> would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not
>> all of them).? I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for
>> a military testbed in South Korea.
>> > barbara
>> >? ? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty
>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >? FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
>> > because I didn't use any of the computers involved.? I don't know much
>> > of the history of BSD.? ? My recollection is that the incident involved
>> > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.? It
>> > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
>> > when I switched jobs.
>> >
>> > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
>> > ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).? They had leverage over
>> > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.? The source of the
>> > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
>> > user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
>> > OS release.? ? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
>> > ARPA projects were significant customers.? But I thought Sun emerged a
>> > bit later in the 1980s.
>> >
>> > /Jack
>> >
>> > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
>> >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
>> >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>> >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.? I was the "Internet guy"
>> >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
>> >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It was probably
>> >>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
>> >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.? That
>> >>> made it my problem.
>> >>>
>> >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
>> >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>> >>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.? The new BSD
>> >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
>> >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
>> >>> Updated automatically of course.
>> >>>
>> >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
>> >>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.? So as the new release
>> >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
>> >>> gateway continuously.? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
>> >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.? A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
>> >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>> >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>> >>
>> >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>> >>
>> >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
>> >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
>> >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I cannot find who
>> >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
>> >> but no memory of it.)
>> >>
>> >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>> >>
>> >> Any example of the status report or display?

  

From jack at 3kitty.org  Wed Sep 17 15:27:17 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:27:17 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <a70acac5-fa22-414e-82eb-b2b487ef6a30@3kitty.org>

We didn't do a good job of documenting the various features of Internet 
technology that were put in to address operational issues during the 
major overhaul to evolve TCP2 into TCP4.?? Jil's work, and SNMP, came 
several years later.? The features needed to support operations included 
a nonitoring/control protocol such as SNMP, but also lots of other 
mechanisms.

One example I remember involved routing.? The experience with the 
ARPANET had revealed that the most difficult operational problems were 
associated with failures of routing, which could be caused by bugs or 
even hardware failures.?? When routing didn't work, it was difficult or 
impossible to communicate with IMPs from the NOC.

To provide some tools for such situations, several different kinds of 
"source routing" were added to IP.? Source routing enabled a host 
computer to dictate the route that a datagram would take.? It 
effectively bypassed the routing mechanisms of the gateways, so it could 
be used even while the routing mechanism was broken. Similarly, a 
TypeOfService value could be used to indicate that particular datagrams 
be placed at the head of a queue, to force them to be handled even when 
congestion was occurring.?? Source Routing could also be used for many 
everyday operations work, such as testing specific interfaces on a 
gateway somewhere out in the Internet, e.g., to figure out why it wasn't 
being used by Routing. That was the way to get management packets delivered.

There were also other uses of Source Routing as workarounds for Internet 
capabilities that hadn't been figured out yet.? For example, there was a 
perceived need for things like "Policy-Based Routing", "Lowest-Latency 
Routing", "Expressway Routing", and other such needs that the simple 
hop-count routing couldn't address. Source Routing provided a way to 
manually specify desired routes, while research continued into how to 
put the appropriate capabilities into the base protocols.

IIRC, none of that was explained in the specs of IPV4. Unfortunately it 
was defined as "Options", so it might not have even been implemented in 
some OSes, or tested if it was.? When IPV6 was being defined, I suspect 
the reasons for such features in IPV4 were forgotten, and not included 
in V6.

IMHO, people who design protocols should also at some point operate them.

Jack

On 9/17/25 14:48, Craig Partridge wrote:
> I wrote too swiftly.? I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA 
> project that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed 
> network management service (the idea being the service talked to all 
> devices on the network, and then any monitoring app could simply 
> connect to the service and learn what was going on -- this meant 
> managed devices weren't getting bombarded with pings and such and 
> could do their job).? Her team included Charlie Lynn and Ross Callon 
> and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.
>
> I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.? I will say I 
> got the lesson half-right/half-wrong.? The right part, and this one of 
> Jil's big takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going 
> to get some management packets through, so make sure each has as much 
> information/does as much as possible.? The wrong part was my take was 
> a sick network meant use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data 
> -- whereas others argued it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable, 
> often did a great job of getting *a* packet through.
>
> SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet 
> (which I continue to think was a mistake :-)).
>
> Craig
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> 
> wrote:
>
>     SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced
>     primary by HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but
>     never launched) and a little bit by the nascent CMIP.
>
>     Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
>
>     On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
>     <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>         Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP -
>         Network
>         Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email
>         discussions.
>
>         IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
>         Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and
>         documented in
>         some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>
>         All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely
>         to be
>         recognized today.
>
>         Jack
>
>         On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>         >? ?Jack,
>         > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,?
>         not SNMP.
>         > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network
>         management startups.
>         > barbara
>         >? ? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT,
>         Barbara Denny via
>         Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>         >
>         >? ? Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI
>         in the fall of 1983.? I remembered being surprised that I had
>         a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
>         > Then in the mid to late? 1980s? Network management startup
>         offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's
>         network (well maybe not all of them).? I briefly looked at
>         them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in
>         South Korea.
>         > barbara
>         >? ? ? On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT,
>         Jack Haverty via
>         Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>         >
>         >? ?FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report"
>         myself, probably
>         > because I didn't use any of the computers involved. I don't
>         know much
>         > of the history of BSD.??? My recollection is that the
>         incident involved
>         > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at
>         the time.?? It
>         > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before
>         July 1983
>         > when I switched jobs.
>         >
>         > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved
>         someone at
>         > ARPA (Vint Cerf?? Barry Leiner?? Bob Kahn?).?? They had
>         leverage over
>         > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.?? The source
>         of the
>         > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but
>         perhaps some
>         > user-level program that was either distributed with, or
>         updated, a new
>         > OS release.??? It's possible that Sun was involved too, if
>         only because
>         > ARPA projects were significant customers.?? But I thought
>         Sun emerged a
>         > bit later in the 1980s.
>         >
>         > /Jack
>         >
>         > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>         >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>         >>
>         >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar
>         experience with the
>         >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built
>         around it.
>         >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>         >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET. I was the
>         "Internet guy"
>         >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my
>         office and
>         >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"? It
>         was probably
>         >>> a bit more colorful than that.? The ARPANET was thrashing
>         again, and
>         >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from
>         gateways.?? That
>         >>> made it my problem.
>         >>>
>         >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley
>         had just
>         >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>         >>> community.? There were a lot of BSD systems out there.??
>         The new BSD
>         >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out
>         on the
>         >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the
>         Internet".
>         >>> Updated automatically of course.
>         >>>
>         >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the
>         new OS
>         >>> release.? And... it was "enabled" by default.?? So as the
>         new release
>         >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started
>         probing every
>         >>> gateway continuously.?? Like Marc's SURVEY program, this
>         caused the
>         >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.?? A quick call to ARPA,
>         and a quick
>         >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a
>         while IIRC.
>         >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate
>         a report?
>         >>
>         >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find
>         yet.)
>         >>
>         >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or
>         Berkeley had
>         >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every
>         gateway on the
>         >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.? (I
>         cannot find who
>         >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I
>         got it from
>         >> but no memory of it.)
>         >>
>         >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>         >>
>         >> Any example of the status report or display?
>         >
>         >
>         >
>
>         -- 
>         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
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     *****
>     Craig Partridge's email account for professional society
>     activities and mailing lists.
>
>
>
> -- 
> *****
> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities 
> and mailing lists.

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From karl at iwl.com  Wed Sep 17 15:56:06 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:56:06 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <0a6ec940-5590-4dc4-aa67-58902d1cc978@iwl.com>

I thought that HEMS was a really interesting design.? I liked it a lot.? 
(Glen Trewitt worked with me on the Interop show nets, so I was in 
proximity to a HEMS advocate.)

I got enthused about network management/control topics when I overheard 
(through an open window) you and Dan Lynch talking about it over lunch 
at one of the TCP/IP Interoperability events in Monterey, California.

After I had done the Epilogue SNMP stack I looked again at SNMP and said 
"we can do better".

So I set out to do it "better" (and implemented it as well.) Turned out 
that I improved SNMP reading performance by multiple orders of 
magnitude, was able to do write/set operations far more effectively and 
with better synchronization, preserved much of the semantics and naming 
structure of MIBs, and the implementation was far smaller.

One of the big realizations was that "network management" is a far 
different thing than "network troubleshooting".? SNMP was designed for 
the context of a failing, network, hence the choice of UDP.? KNMP was 
designed for managing a network that was running well enough to create 
and sustain TCP connections.? Over the years I have become increasingly 
convinced that we need to great network management and network 
diagnose/repair as separate things.

Some of the ideas for KNMP came from HEMS, some from ... hang on ... 
CMIP ... and some from a paper ("Towards Useful Management") written by 
my wife (Chris Wellens) and I in Marshall Rose's "Simple Times": 
https://www.cavebear.com/docs/simple-times-vol4-num3.pdf

I, lacking any sense of humility, called it "KNMP" - you get one guess, 
only one, what the 'K' stands for. ;-)

https://www.iwl.com/idocs/knmp-overview

I never submitted KNMP to the IETF because I did not want to swim 
against the Netconf current.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--


On 9/17/25 2:48 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> I wrote too swiftly.  I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA project
> that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed network management
> service (the idea being the service talked to all devices on the network,
> and then any monitoring app could simply connect to the service and learn
> what was going on -- this meant managed devices weren't getting bombarded
> with pings and such and could do their job).  Her team included Charlie
> Lynn and Ross Callon and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.
>
> I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.  I will say I got the
> lesson half-right/half-wrong.  The right part, and this one of Jil's big
> takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going to get some
> management packets through, so make sure each has as much information/does
> as much as possible.  The wrong part was my take was a sick network meant
> use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data -- whereas others argued
> it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable, often did a great job of getting
> *a* packet through.
>
> SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet (which I
> continue to think was a mistake :-)).
>
> Craig
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
>
>> SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced primary by
>> HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but never launched) and a
>> little bit by the nascent CMIP.
>>
>> Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network
>>> Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.
>>>
>>> IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
>>> Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in
>>> some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>>>
>>> All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be
>>> recognized today.
>>>
>>> Jack
>>>
>>> On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>    Jack,
>>>> I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,  not SNMP.
>>>> SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management
>>> startups.
>>>> barbara
>>>>       On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara Denny
>>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>     Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the
>>> fall of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in my
>>> office when I arrived.
>>>> Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup offerings
>>> would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well maybe not
>>> all of them).  I briefly looked at them to decide what we might install for
>>> a military testbed in South Korea.
>>>> barbara
>>>>       On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack Haverty
>>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>    FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
>>>> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
>>>> of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident involved
>>>> the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.   It
>>>> was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
>>>> when I switched jobs.
>>>>
>>>> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
>>>> ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
>>>> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
>>>> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
>>>> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
>>>> OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
>>>> ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun emerged a
>>>> bit later in the 1980s.
>>>>
>>>> /Jack
>>>>
>>>> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
>>>>>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
>>>>>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>>>>>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
>>>>>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
>>>>>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably
>>>>>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
>>>>>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
>>>>>> made it my problem.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
>>>>>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>>>>>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
>>>>>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
>>>>>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
>>>>>> Updated automatically of course.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
>>>>>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
>>>>>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
>>>>>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
>>>>>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
>>>>>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
>>>>> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
>>>>>
>>>>> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
>>>>>
>>>>> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
>>>>> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
>>>>> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who
>>>>> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
>>>>> but no memory of it.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>>>>>
>>>>> Any example of the status report or display?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
>>> 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
>>>
>>
>> --
>> *****
>> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
>> mailing lists.
>>
>


From craig at tereschau.net  Wed Sep 17 17:22:33 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:22:33 -0600
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <880958DE-4483-47A3-8D8E-62913993C6DE@transsys.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
 <0a6ec940-5590-4dc4-aa67-58902d1cc978@iwl.com>
 <880958DE-4483-47A3-8D8E-62913993C6DE@transsys.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CctZEmQt_XmFvR82Ksb5+JzBKhTtSnu4_xtGKbhPxwQRA@mail.gmail.com>

Recorded in ACM Communication Review after they were used for MIB 1.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/66093.66094

Craig

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 5:21?PM Louis Mamakos <louie at transsys.com> wrote:

> This thread reminds me of some very interesting work that was done in the
> IETF in the context of defining MIBs - the so-called "Case Diagrams" which
> related the MIB entities to each other.
>
> A couple of years ago I went on a hunt for an RFC or other artifact that
> captured the use of this technique as I wanted to share it with some
> co-workers of mine.  We had a complex application stack, with a very large
> number of metrics being collected.  Every so often when looking at these
> metrics out of a time-series database, usually in the context of fire
> shooting out and stuff malfunctioning, there would questions on how various
> counters of errors or failures related to each other.  Having Case Diagrams
> would have been the perfect tool to ensure everyone was on the same page
> when using all the management data.
>
> Is there an RFC or ID or other artifact on Case Diagrams?   This sort of
> tool is likely even more valuable today, with the explosion with
> network/application metrics as it was for us when various MIBS were being
> defined.
>
> Louis Mamakos
>
> On 17 Sep 2025, at 18:56, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>
> > I thought that HEMS was a really interesting design.  I liked it a lot.
> (Glen Trewitt worked with me on the Interop show nets, so I was in
> proximity to a HEMS advocate.)
> >
> > I got enthused about network management/control topics when I overheard
> (through an open window) you and Dan Lynch talking about it over lunch at
> one of the TCP/IP Interoperability events in Monterey, California.
> >
> > After I had done the Epilogue SNMP stack I looked again at SNMP and said
> "we can do better".
> >
> > So I set out to do it "better" (and implemented it as well.) Turned out
> that I improved SNMP reading performance by multiple orders of magnitude,
> was able to do write/set operations far more effectively and with better
> synchronization, preserved much of the semantics and naming structure of
> MIBs, and the implementation was far smaller.
> >
> > One of the big realizations was that "network management" is a far
> different thing than "network troubleshooting".  SNMP was designed for the
> context of a failing, network, hence the choice of UDP.  KNMP was designed
> for managing a network that was running well enough to create and sustain
> TCP connections.  Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that
> we need to great network management and network diagnose/repair as separate
> things.
> >
> > Some of the ideas for KNMP came from HEMS, some from ... hang on ...
> CMIP ... and some from a paper ("Towards Useful Management") written by my
> wife (Chris Wellens) and I in Marshall Rose's "Simple Times":
> https://www.cavebear.com/docs/simple-times-vol4-num3.pdf
> >
> > I, lacking any sense of humility, called it "KNMP" - you get one guess,
> only one, what the 'K' stands for. ;-)
> >
> > https://www.iwl.com/idocs/knmp-overview
> >
> > I never submitted KNMP to the IETF because I did not want to swim
> against the Netconf current.
> >
> >         --karl--
> >
> >
> > On 9/17/25 2:48 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> >> I wrote too swiftly.  I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA project
> >> that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed network
> management
> >> service (the idea being the service talked to all devices on the
> network,
> >> and then any monitoring app could simply connect to the service and
> learn
> >> what was going on -- this meant managed devices weren't getting
> bombarded
> >> with pings and such and could do their job).  Her team included Charlie
> >> Lynn and Ross Callon and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.
> >>
> >> I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.  I will say I got
> the
> >> lesson half-right/half-wrong.  The right part, and this one of Jil's big
> >> takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going to get some
> >> management packets through, so make sure each has as much
> information/does
> >> as much as possible.  The wrong part was my take was a sick network
> meant
> >> use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data -- whereas others
> argued
> >> it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable, often did a great job of
> getting
> >> *a* packet through.
> >>
> >> SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet (which
> I
> >> continue to think was a mistake :-)).
> >>
> >> Craig
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced primary by
> >>> HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but never launched)
> and a
> >>> little bit by the nascent CMIP.
> >>>
> >>> Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> >>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP - Network
> >>>> Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email discussions.
> >>>>
> >>>> IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
> >>>> Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and documented in
> >>>> some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
> >>>>
> >>>> All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely to be
> >>>> recognized today.
> >>>>
> >>>> Jack
> >>>>
> >>>> On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>>    Jack,
> >>>>> I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,  not SNMP.
> >>>>> SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network management
> >>>> startups.
> >>>>> barbara
> >>>>>       On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT, Barbara
> Denny
> >>>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>>>     Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI in the
> >>>> fall of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had a model 100 in
> my
> >>>> office when I arrived.
> >>>>> Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup offerings
> >>>> would just use ping to figure out their customer's network (well
> maybe not
> >>>> all of them).  I briefly looked at them to decide what we might
> install for
> >>>> a military testbed in South Korea.
> >>>>> barbara
> >>>>>       On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT, Jack
> Haverty
> >>>> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>>>    FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself,
> probably
> >>>>> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know
> much
> >>>>> of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident
> involved
> >>>>> the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.
>  It
> >>>>> was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
> >>>>> when I switched jobs.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> >>>>> ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
> >>>>> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
> >>>>> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> >>>>> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a
> new
> >>>>> OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only
> because
> >>>>> ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun
> emerged a
> >>>>> bit later in the 1980s.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> /Jack
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> >>>>>> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with
> the
> >>>>>>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> >>>>>>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >>>>>>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet
> guy"
> >>>>>>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
> >>>>>>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was
> probably
> >>>>>>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again,
> and
> >>>>>>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
> >>>>>>> made it my problem.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> >>>>>>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >>>>>>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new
> BSD
> >>>>>>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> >>>>>>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> >>>>>>> Updated automatically of course.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> >>>>>>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new
> release
> >>>>>>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing
> every
> >>>>>>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> >>>>>>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a
> quick
> >>>>>>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >>>>>> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley
> had
> >>>>>> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
> >>>>>> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find
> who
> >>>>>> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it
> from
> >>>>>> but no memory of it.)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Any example of the status report or display?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> 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
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> *****
> >>> 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
>


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


From vgcerf at gmail.com  Wed Sep 17 17:26:28 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 02:26:28 +0200
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_UF7JUrNNUgxmeqzd8crokKHuXaz4NSw3NU08OtwoTDrA@mail.gmail.com>

the Berkeley BSD project was managed by Duane Adams and perhaps initiated
by Bob Kahn.

v


On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 9:58?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report" myself, probably
> because I didn't use any of the computers involved.  I don't know much
> of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the incident involved
> the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at the time.   It
> was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before July 1983
> when I switched jobs.
>
> I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved someone at
> ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had leverage over
> the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source of the
> changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but perhaps some
> user-level program that was either distributed with, or updated, a new
> OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if only because
> ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought Sun emerged a
> bit later in the 1980s.
>
> /Jack
>
> On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the
> >> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.
> >> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy"
> >> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and
> >> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably
> >> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and
> >> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That
> >> made it my problem.
> >>
> >> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just
> >> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD
> >> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the
> >> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet".
> >> Updated automatically of course.
> >>
> >> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS
> >> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release
> >> propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every
> >> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the
> >> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick
> >> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> >
> > What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> >
> > (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> >
> > I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had
> > a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the
> > Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who
> > I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from
> > but no memory of it.)
> >
> > Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >
> > Any example of the status report or display?
>
> --
> 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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Wed Sep 17 18:28:03 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 01:28:03 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] ARPAnet - The First Decade
References: <337404888.4899067.1758158883856.ref@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <337404888.4899067.1758158883856@mail.yahoo.com>

Tripped on this BBN report covering the ARPAnet.? Don't remember seeing this posted to the list before.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA115440.pdf
barbara


From gregskinner0 at icloud.com  Wed Sep 17 23:03:09 2025
From: gregskinner0 at icloud.com (Greg Skinner)
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:03:09 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
Message-ID: <B9547F45-C4FA-4DED-AE70-4A15884B9C05@icloud.com>


On Sep 17, 2025, at 8:46?AM, Jeremy C. Reed via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> 
>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar experience with the ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built around it.  Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET.  I was the "Internet guy" at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my office and said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It was probably a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing again, and the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from gateways.   That made it my problem.
>> 
>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley had just released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.   The new BSD included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out on the ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the Internet". Updated automatically of course.
>> 
>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the new OS release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the new release propagated out into all those systems, they all started probing every gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this caused the ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA, and a quick order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a while IIRC.
> 
> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate a report?
> 
> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find yet.)
> 
> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or Berkeley had a new release with a tool to continuously probe every gateway on the Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I cannot find who I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I got it from but no memory of it.)
> 
> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> 
> Any example of the status report or display?
> -- 
> 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

There?s some discussion of routine pinging of gateways in several June 1983 issues of the tcp-ip digest.  However, it concerned TOPS-20 and TENEX TCP implementations.  Anyway, the problem was serious enough that an entire issue of the digest (volume 2, issue 11) was dedicated to it.

https://github.com/matthewgream/www-securitydigest-org/blob/master/tcp-ip/archive/1983/06.txt.gz





From reed at reedmedia.net  Thu Sep 18 07:27:51 2025
From: reed at reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:27:51 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <B9547F45-C4FA-4DED-AE70-4A15884B9C05@icloud.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <iskprtbqmafbq75ygj33zi4rumb7ttag2t37l46wvptwt7eqqs@q7ffifdliqmd>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <B9547F45-C4FA-4DED-AE70-4A15884B9C05@icloud.com>
Message-ID: <cc7de128-e2b4-d1f9-11eb-b658b4e612d@reedmedia.net>

On Wed, 17 Sep 2025, Greg Skinner wrote:

> There?s some discussion of routine pinging of gateways in several June 1983
> issues of the tcp-ip digest. ?However, it concerned TOPS-20 and TENEX TCP
> implementations. ?Anyway, the problem was serious enough that an entire
> issue of the digest (volume 2, issue 11) was dedicated to it.
> 
> https://github.com/matthewgream/www-securitydigest-org/blob/master/tcp-ip/a
> rchive/1983/06.txt.gz

Thank you. That is likely it. TOPS-20 and TENEX. Quick summary from 
scohn then:

   "TYMSHARE's TCP running on OFFICE-1 and OFFICE-2 had built into it a
   clumsy approach to maintaining a table on the status of internet
   gateways. ... both hosts were regularly "pinging", or exchanging
   single messages, with each of 23 gateways, at the interval of 37
   seconds. ...

   "... When the ping message is submitted the interface blocks until a
   message number is obtained. ... host would each be blocked 600 ms out
   of each 1.6 seconds or almost 40 % of the time. ..."

From agmalis at gmail.com  Thu Sep 18 13:35:46 2025
From: agmalis at gmail.com (Andrew G. Malis)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:35:46 -0400
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <a70acac5-fa22-414e-82eb-b2b487ef6a30@3kitty.org>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAM9VJk2BWb-_3YRKRSr+6RxC95vxpbz6_oBD-C9K2wKY9Q7Pzg@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
 <a70acac5-fa22-414e-82eb-b2b487ef6a30@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAA=duU0mC3qVRWSg_rda44k0HEJMBaAjD-c8u_Pqi5W=13T7rA@mail.gmail.com>

Jack,

Source routing for IPv4 and v6 is back in a huge way and is now in use
operationally for traffic engineering. See the work of the IETF's SPRING
working group:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/spring/about/ for the working group.

RFC 7855 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7855.html> for the intro and
use cases.

Cheers,
Andy


On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 6:27?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> We didn't do a good job of documenting the various features of Internet
> technology that were put in to address operational issues during the
> major overhaul to evolve TCP2 into TCP4.   Jil's work, and SNMP, came
> several years later.  The features needed to support operations included
> a nonitoring/control protocol such as SNMP, but also lots of other
> mechanisms.
>
> One example I remember involved routing.  The experience with the
> ARPANET had revealed that the most difficult operational problems were
> associated with failures of routing, which could be caused by bugs or
> even hardware failures.   When routing didn't work, it was difficult or
> impossible to communicate with IMPs from the NOC.
>
> To provide some tools for such situations, several different kinds of
> "source routing" were added to IP.  Source routing enabled a host
> computer to dictate the route that a datagram would take.  It
> effectively bypassed the routing mechanisms of the gateways, so it could
> be used even while the routing mechanism was broken. Similarly, a
> TypeOfService value could be used to indicate that particular datagrams
> be placed at the head of a queue, to force them to be handled even when
> congestion was occurring.   Source Routing could also be used for many
> everyday operations work, such as testing specific interfaces on a
> gateway somewhere out in the Internet, e.g., to figure out why it wasn't
> being used by Routing. That was the way to get management packets
> delivered.
>
> There were also other uses of Source Routing as workarounds for Internet
> capabilities that hadn't been figured out yet.  For example, there was a
> perceived need for things like "Policy-Based Routing", "Lowest-Latency
> Routing", "Expressway Routing", and other such needs that the simple
> hop-count routing couldn't address. Source Routing provided a way to
> manually specify desired routes, while research continued into how to
> put the appropriate capabilities into the base protocols.
>
> IIRC, none of that was explained in the specs of IPV4. Unfortunately it
> was defined as "Options", so it might not have even been implemented in
> some OSes, or tested if it was.  When IPV6 was being defined, I suspect
> the reasons for such features in IPV4 were forgotten, and not included
> in V6.
>
> IMHO, people who design protocols should also at some point operate them.
>
> Jack
>
> On 9/17/25 14:48, Craig Partridge wrote:
> > I wrote too swiftly.  I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA
> > project that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed
> > network management service (the idea being the service talked to all
> > devices on the network, and then any monitoring app could simply
> > connect to the service and learn what was going on -- this meant
> > managed devices weren't getting bombarded with pings and such and
> > could do their job).  Her team included Charlie Lynn and Ross Callon
> > and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.
> >
> > I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.  I will say I
> > got the lesson half-right/half-wrong.  The right part, and this one of
> > Jil's big takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going
> > to get some management packets through, so make sure each has as much
> > information/does as much as possible.  The wrong part was my take was
> > a sick network meant use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data
> > -- whereas others argued it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable,
> > often did a great job of getting *a* packet through.
> >
> > SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet
> > (which I continue to think was a mistake :-)).
> >
> > Craig
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> >     SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced
> >     primary by HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but
> >     never launched) and a little bit by the nascent CMIP.
> >
> >     Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
> >
> >     On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> >     <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >         Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP -
> >         Network
> >         Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email
> >         discussions.
> >
> >         IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
> >         Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and
> >         documented in
> >         some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
> >
> >         All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely
> >         to be
> >         recognized today.
> >
> >         Jack
> >
> >         On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >         >   Jack,
> >         > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,
> >         not SNMP.
> >         > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network
> >         management startups.
> >         > barbara
> >         >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT,
> >         Barbara Denny via
> >         Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >         >
> >         >    Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI
> >         in the fall of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had
> >         a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
> >         > Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup
> >         offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's
> >         network (well maybe not all of them).  I briefly looked at
> >         them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in
> >         South Korea.
> >         > barbara
> >         >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT,
> >         Jack Haverty via
> >         Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >         >
> >         >   FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report"
> >         myself, probably
> >         > because I didn't use any of the computers involved. I don't
> >         know much
> >         > of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the
> >         incident involved
> >         > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at
> >         the time.   It
> >         > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before
> >         July 1983
> >         > when I switched jobs.
> >         >
> >         > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved
> >         someone at
> >         > ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had
> >         leverage over
> >         > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source
> >         of the
> >         > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but
> >         perhaps some
> >         > user-level program that was either distributed with, or
> >         updated, a new
> >         > OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if
> >         only because
> >         > ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought
> >         Sun emerged a
> >         > bit later in the 1980s.
> >         >
> >         > /Jack
> >         >
> >         > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> >         >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >         >>
> >         >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar
> >         experience with the
> >         >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built
> >         around it.
> >         >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
> >         >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET. I was the
> >         "Internet guy"
> >         >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my
> >         office and
> >         >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It
> >         was probably
> >         >>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing
> >         again, and
> >         >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from
> >         gateways.   That
> >         >>> made it my problem.
> >         >>>
> >         >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley
> >         had just
> >         >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
> >         >>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.
> >         The new BSD
> >         >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out
> >         on the
> >         >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the
> >         Internet".
> >         >>> Updated automatically of course.
> >         >>>
> >         >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the
> >         new OS
> >         >>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the
> >         new release
> >         >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started
> >         probing every
> >         >>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this
> >         caused the
> >         >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA,
> >         and a quick
> >         >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a
> >         while IIRC.
> >         >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate
> >         a report?
> >         >>
> >         >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find
> >         yet.)
> >         >>
> >         >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or
> >         Berkeley had
> >         >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every
> >         gateway on the
> >         >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I
> >         cannot find who
> >         >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I
> >         got it from
> >         >> but no memory of it.)
> >         >>
> >         >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
> >         >>
> >         >> Any example of the status report or display?
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >
> >
> >         --
> >         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
> >
> >
> >
> >     --
> >     *****
> >     Craig Partridge's email account for professional society
> >     activities and mailing lists.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *****
> > 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  Thu Sep 18 15:46:47 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:46:47 -0700
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
In-Reply-To: <CAA=duU0mC3qVRWSg_rda44k0HEJMBaAjD-c8u_Pqi5W=13T7rA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAHxHggfrGxX-Nt_ueswFMo8FDxoRg2u7e1sPy0V=k7QnT-VdUQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <035101dc11d4$b30ec1e0$192c45a0$@aol.com>
 <051a01dc1d80$7504cae0$5f0e60a0$@aol.com>
 <CAHbKQ5DtJryXBE8Vka7OSv1HWp_+7cmf-QzbmsQsO4-KQsJmiA@mail.gmail.com>
 <7wv7ly2sa0.fsf@junk.nocrew.org>
 <4D90BDF8-62D4-49EF-A1AD-9993383FB864@comcast.net>
 <CAHxHggfMzp92huda0OKy6Ja5YK9So_FkPjK9SXAK9tLxrFWjnw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B0B20EB8-8A9D-45F0-9CAE-662862D2BB7D@comcast.net>
 <a7923973-1034-4880-ac69-01c2d55c234c@3kitty.org>
 <902fae4c-81fb-538b-2c9e-9e18e9d8604e@reedmedia.net>
 <7aa0be58-a1bb-4c29-a3c9-588e9f0e956f@3kitty.org>
 <50934986.4813270.1758140939441@mail.yahoo.com>
 <2106373073.4813807.1758141989487@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1681274c-9ce5-4a89-bff6-f137cf95eab4@3kitty.org>
 <CAHQj4CeL2s4MEwAh0wjMVaQTBnB0+sBxD7zjuXnyhHecsWEihA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHQj4CcEdz1O9Fr+wmRXdRNBi_AyVHefvcyVhiGtwZDoqBfMmw@mail.gmail.com>
 <a70acac5-fa22-414e-82eb-b2b487ef6a30@3kitty.org>
 <CAA=duU0mC3qVRWSg_rda44k0HEJMBaAjD-c8u_Pqi5W=13T7rA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <cf590d81-4625-4f78-a653-be125e0abd9c@iwl.com>

How does this new work dovetail, if at all with the Nimrod idea? (I 
think Noel C. is present on this list.? And it would certainly make Dave 
Bridgham happy.)

I know this is not a question or observation of Internet History but I 
am wondering about the collision - at least I consider it a collision - 
between classic Internet packet routing and traffic engineering (e.g. 
MPLS or source routing) and Software Defined (SD) networks?? (I consider 
SD to be rather a return to hard-nosed concepts of IBM's SNA LU6.2 where 
things are nailed down and under the management of a central system that 
computes and then distributes forwarding tables.)

Back around year 2000 I helped a bit on a DARPA project that was looking 
at coupling traffic modelling, service level agreements, and, when 
deviations occurred, troubleshooting (I am a repairman at heart).? We 
were computing end-to-end MPLS paths and deploying those, and 
pre-deploying fail-over paths, based on a rather dynamic input of 
service level demands.? Our fail-over requirement was 150 milliseconds 
in order to sustain usable conversational (two way) voice.

 ? ? --karl--


On 9/18/25 1:35 PM, Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history wrote:
> Jack,
>
> Source routing for IPv4 and v6 is back in a huge way and is now in use
> operationally for traffic engineering. See the work of the IETF's SPRING
> working group:
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/spring/about/ for the working group.
>
> RFC 7855 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7855.html> for the intro and
> use cases.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 6:27?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> We didn't do a good job of documenting the various features of Internet
>> technology that were put in to address operational issues during the
>> major overhaul to evolve TCP2 into TCP4.   Jil's work, and SNMP, came
>> several years later.  The features needed to support operations included
>> a nonitoring/control protocol such as SNMP, but also lots of other
>> mechanisms.
>>
>> One example I remember involved routing.  The experience with the
>> ARPANET had revealed that the most difficult operational problems were
>> associated with failures of routing, which could be caused by bugs or
>> even hardware failures.   When routing didn't work, it was difficult or
>> impossible to communicate with IMPs from the NOC.
>>
>> To provide some tools for such situations, several different kinds of
>> "source routing" were added to IP.  Source routing enabled a host
>> computer to dictate the route that a datagram would take.  It
>> effectively bypassed the routing mechanisms of the gateways, so it could
>> be used even while the routing mechanism was broken. Similarly, a
>> TypeOfService value could be used to indicate that particular datagrams
>> be placed at the head of a queue, to force them to be handled even when
>> congestion was occurring.   Source Routing could also be used for many
>> everyday operations work, such as testing specific interfaces on a
>> gateway somewhere out in the Internet, e.g., to figure out why it wasn't
>> being used by Routing. That was the way to get management packets
>> delivered.
>>
>> There were also other uses of Source Routing as workarounds for Internet
>> capabilities that hadn't been figured out yet.  For example, there was a
>> perceived need for things like "Policy-Based Routing", "Lowest-Latency
>> Routing", "Expressway Routing", and other such needs that the simple
>> hop-count routing couldn't address. Source Routing provided a way to
>> manually specify desired routes, while research continued into how to
>> put the appropriate capabilities into the base protocols.
>>
>> IIRC, none of that was explained in the specs of IPV4. Unfortunately it
>> was defined as "Options", so it might not have even been implemented in
>> some OSes, or tested if it was.  When IPV6 was being defined, I suspect
>> the reasons for such features in IPV4 were forgotten, and not included
>> in V6.
>>
>> IMHO, people who design protocols should also at some point operate them.
>>
>> Jack
>>
>> On 9/17/25 14:48, Craig Partridge wrote:
>>> I wrote too swiftly.  I suspect Jack may be remembering a DARPA
>>> project that Jil Wescott led that sought to build a distributed
>>> network management service (the idea being the service talked to all
>>> devices on the network, and then any monitoring app could simply
>>> connect to the service and learn what was going on -- this meant
>>> managed devices weren't getting bombarded with pings and such and
>>> could do their job).  Her team included Charlie Lynn and Ross Callon
>>> and Karen Seo, and in odd moments, me.
>>>
>>> I took some of the lessons from that project to HEMS.  I will say I
>>> got the lesson half-right/half-wrong.  The right part, and this one of
>>> Jil's big takeaways, was if the network is a mess, you are only going
>>> to get some management packets through, so make sure each has as much
>>> information/does as much as possible.  The wrong part was my take was
>>> a sick network meant use TCP, because TCP will fight to get your data
>>> -- whereas others argued it was UDP, because UDP, while unreliable,
>>> often did a great job of getting *a* packet through.
>>>
>>> SNMP chose UDP (rightly) and put the minimum info in each packet
>>> (which I continue to think was a mistake :-)).
>>>
>>> Craig
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:39?PM Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>      SNMP was a simplified network management protocol influenced
>>>      primary by HEMS (which got to the RFC stage and a prototype but
>>>      never launched) and a little bit by the nascent CMIP.
>>>
>>>      Craig (who co-created HEMS with Glen Trewitt)
>>>
>>>      On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:32?PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
>>>      <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>          Right, SNMP came later, as a "Simplified" version of NMP -
>>>          Network
>>>          Management Protocol, which may have only existed in email
>>>          discussions.
>>>
>>>          IIRC, the earliest work on Internet management was done by David
>>>          Floodpage as part of the "make Internet 24x7" work, and
>>>          documented in
>>>          some IENs, e.g., https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien132.txt
>>>
>>>          All that led eventually to SNMP, which is what is most likely
>>>          to be
>>>          recognized today.
>>>
>>>          Jack
>>>
>>>          On 9/17/25 13:46, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>          >   Jack,
>>>          > I think you may have meant to type SMTP or something else,
>>>          not SNMP.
>>>          > SNMP was more in the time frame of my looking at network
>>>          management startups.
>>>          > barbara
>>>          >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 01:29:11 PM PDT,
>>>          Barbara Denny via
>>>          Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>          >
>>>          >    Sun was definitely selling workstations when I got to SRI
>>>          in the fall of 1983.  I remembered being surprised that I had
>>>          a model 100 in my office when I arrived.
>>>          > Then in the mid to late? 1980s  Network management startup
>>>          offerings would just use ping to figure out their customer's
>>>          network (well maybe not all of them).  I briefly looked at
>>>          them to decide what we might install for a military testbed in
>>>          South Korea.
>>>          > barbara
>>>          >      On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 12:58:28 PM PDT,
>>>          Jack Haverty via
>>>          Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>          >
>>>          >   FYI, I don't recall ever seeing any "status report"
>>>          myself, probably
>>>          > because I didn't use any of the computers involved. I don't
>>>          know much
>>>          > of the history of BSD.    My recollection is that the
>>>          incident involved
>>>          > the DEC Vax machines which were becoming more prolific at
>>>          the time.   It
>>>          > was sometime around 1980 +- a few years, definitely before
>>>          July 1983
>>>          > when I switched jobs.
>>>          >
>>>          > I remember that the way the incident was stopped involved
>>>          someone at
>>>          > ARPA (Vint Cerf?  Barry Leiner?  Bob Kahn?).   They had
>>>          leverage over
>>>          > the OS since it was a project funded by ARPA.   The source
>>>          of the
>>>          > changes in traffic may not have been the OS itself, but
>>>          perhaps some
>>>          > user-level program that was either distributed with, or
>>>          updated, a new
>>>          > OS release.    It's possible that Sun was involved too, if
>>>          only because
>>>          > ARPA projects were significant customers.   But I thought
>>>          Sun emerged a
>>>          > bit later in the 1980s.
>>>          >
>>>          > /Jack
>>>          >
>>>          > On 9/17/25 08:46, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
>>>          >> On Thu, 4 Sep 2025, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>          >>
>>>          >>> Several years later, circa 1980, we had a similar
>>>          experience with the
>>>          >>> ARPANET and the emerging Internet which was being built
>>>          around it.
>>>          >>> Lots of now inexpensive minicomputer gear had appeared on the
>>>          >>> Internet, connected by LANs to the ARPANET. I was the
>>>          "Internet guy"
>>>          >>> at BBN, and one day a NOC operator stuck his head in my
>>>          office and
>>>          >>> said something like "What's your Internet doing!!?"  It
>>>          was probably
>>>          >>> a bit more colorful than that.  The ARPANET was thrashing
>>>          again, and
>>>          >>> the NOC had traced the problem to traffic to/from
>>>          gateways.   That
>>>          >>> made it my problem.
>>>          >>>
>>>          >>> Debug, XNET, SNMP, ... IIRC, it turned out that Berkeley
>>>          had just
>>>          >>> released a new version of BSD, and announced it to the user
>>>          >>> community.  There were a lot of BSD systems out there.
>>>          The new BSD
>>>          >>> included a new feature, that probed all the gateways out
>>>          on the
>>>          >>> ARPANET and generated a status report of "State of the
>>>          Internet".
>>>          >>> Updated automatically of course.
>>>          >>>
>>>          >>> The server that performed all that probing was part of the
>>>          new OS
>>>          >>> release.  And... it was "enabled" by default.   So as the
>>>          new release
>>>          >>> propagated out into all those systems, they all started
>>>          probing every
>>>          >>> gateway continuously.   Like Marc's SURVEY program, this
>>>          caused the
>>>          >>> ARPANET to internally hemorrhage.   A quick call to ARPA,
>>>          and a quick
>>>          >>> order to Berkeley, and the cyberattack stopped. Took a
>>>          while IIRC.
>>>          >> What is this automated probing of all gateways to generate
>>>          a report?
>>>          >>
>>>          >> (I tried looking at all known BSD releases but cannot find
>>>          yet.)
>>>          >>
>>>          >> I had also read a story about an overload and that Sun or
>>>          Berkeley had
>>>          >> a new release with a tool to continuously probe every
>>>          gateway on the
>>>          >> Arpanet to maintain a little display of the state.  (I
>>>          cannot find who
>>>          >> I got it from and I asked again this month who I thought I
>>>          got it from
>>>          >> but no memory of it.)
>>>          >>
>>>          >> Does anyone know what this tool was? Was it Sun or BSD?
>>>          >>
>>>          >> Any example of the status report or display?
>>>          >
>>>          >
>>>          >
>>>
>>>          --
>>>          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
>>>
>>>
>>>      --
>>>      *****
>>>      Craig Partridge's email account for professional society
>>>      activities and mailing lists.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****
>>> 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 jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Sep 19 06:22:35 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:22:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] state of the internet probes? (was Re: AOL in perspective)
Message-ID: <20250919132235.72D0018C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Karl Auerbach

    > I think Noel C. is present on this list.

You rang? :-)

    > How does this new work dovetail, if at all with the Nimrod idea?

It's interesting that source routing is being used significantly for
traffic engineering now. (I'll try and keep this short, but it needs to
have enough detail to convey a complex set of thinking.)


I should explain (I'll get to the 'source routing' below) that there were
two main foundation stones in Nimrod: i) the use of maps as the
fundamental data to be exchanged, and ii) the use of "unitary path
selection" (where a single entity selects the entire path - perhaps using
local agents, recusively, for sub-sections of the path), not 'hop by hop
path selection', as was until recently used almost everywhere in the
Internet.

That was all driven by a incredibly long list of needs/desires: some of
them from the users, e.g, policy-based routing (but which turned out to
be something that the users didn't _really_ need, at least in the
short run); some perational, e.g. avoiding routing loops. (Traffic
engineering would be in the first category, of course.)

We didn't think that _all_ those capabilities would really be desired,
eventually; but we didn't have a perfect crystal ball, so we couldn't
ignore the 'irrelevant' ones. (Which ones are they?) The charm of the
map/unitary approach was that it was so _incredibly flexible_ - so that
whatever needs sprang up eventually, we'd be able to deal with them.
(Important if you're trying to do the architecture of a communication
system with a very long lifetime.)

(For example, if people eventually build a quantum communication network,
where qubits are sent through the network - Nimrod can handle that!)


Anyway, source routing. When you do unitary path selection, how do you
get the traffic to take that path? One obvious option is source routing
(so source routing appeared in Nimrod not as a goal itself, but as a
consequence of deeper things - the unitary path selection). But source
routing has two downsides: i) you have to carry the source route in all
the packets; ii) forwarding source routed packets is more complicated.

So Nimrod eventually explored other approaches, such as installing paths
(which eventually led to MPLS) - which also had downsides, which we
looked for ways to mitigate. All leading to even more complexity. Maybe
source routing would have been the right choice after all.


It will be interesting to see how the struggle between goals and
complexity eventually settles out (alas, I won't get to see it).

	Noel


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Fri Sep 19 14:52:22 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 21:52:22 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <4d8012ad-b98a-4ceb-b203-c592a0ccbbfe@gmail.com>
References: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549.ref@mail.yahoo.com>
 <653784717.2383549.1757562061549@mail.yahoo.com>
 <4d8012ad-b98a-4ceb-b203-c592a0ccbbfe@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <485428118.5658844.1758318742550@mail.yahoo.com>

 

The name Rick Schantz popped up in my head.? He was doing some work in this area in the 70s and later?? Here are a couple links that might lead you to more info if you can get them. I don't have ready access to the IBM one. It mentions distributed file systems in the abstract.
https://research.ibm.com/publications/interprocess-communication-systems?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://eecs.wsu.edu/~cs565/Papers/Schantz-DistSysBBN1970-1995.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjZ-Z245uWPAxU3EEQIHYYiN2IQFnoECCEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1qfpTTB6K2dytZx3kBry29
The reference above is a chapter on distributed computing at BBN.
I am very sad to have to report that he also has passed away.? It is getting difficult to search for people .
https://schlossbergchapel.com/obituary/richard-schantz/
barbara

    On Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 09:27:23 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Hi Barbara,

That makes total sense, and I doubt if Brian Randell would be surprised. I've put him in Bcc in case he wants to comment.

The Named Data Networking project is still tackling this space:
https://named-data.net/project/execsummary/

Regards/Ng? mihi
? ? Brian Carpenter

On 11-Sep-25 15:41, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>? I was curious about the potential influence of the Unix United paper on work at CMU so I decided to just ask Satya. In my message to him, I included the part starting with? the sentence "AFS in particular *must* .."? and the 2 examples that follow from Brian's email.
> I did tell him I wanted to post his answer to this list and he hasn't said no so ...
> Excuse my trimming of the thread.? I seem to have problems posting to the list, especially when the body of the message is long.
> 
> barbara
> 
> ----- Forwarded Message -----From:?Mahadev Satyanarayanan <satya at cs.cmu.edu>To:?Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Sent:?Monday, September 8, 2025 at 01:45:16 PM PDTSubject:?Re: AFS question
> Hi Barbara,
> The Unix United paper (aka "Newcastle Connection") was published in
> 1982.? We were indeed aware of that work by mid-1983, when serious
> work on what eventually led to AFS began.? The name "Andrew" for the
> whole project did not emerge until late 1985.? In fact, the first
> published paper on AFS did not even use the name "AFS".? It referred
> to the system as "The ITC Distributed File System" and the server
> and client components as "Vice" and "Virtue" respectively.
> Here is that very first AFS paper, from 1985:
>? ? ??https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/323647.323633
> 
> Alas, the influence of Unix United on AFS was quite the opposite of
> what the person who spoke with you thinks.? We actively worked hard to
> AVOID an aspect of Unix United that we thought was totally wrong.
>? From the beginning we believed that AFS needed to have Location
> Transparency.? i.e. you could not tell where a file was located by
> just looking at its pathname.? You had to ask the system to tell you,
> and that location could change over time.? The 1985 paper explicitly
> contrasts AFS with the design of Unix United.? If you look at
> Section 6.1 in the above paper, it says this:
>>
>> Location transparency is a key issue in this context. In Locus,
>> Vice-Virtue, Apollo and Roe it is not possible to deduce the
>> location of a file by examing its name. In contrast, the Cedar File
>> System and the Newcastle Connection embed storage site information
>> in pathnames.
>>
> 
> Location transparency was identified as a non-negotiable requirement
> of AFS since the very earliest conception of its design.? See, for
> example, this September 1983 design document:
>? ??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/itc/CMU-ITC-008.pdf
> 
> BTW, there is a whole treasure trove of very early (1983-1985) design
> documents from the ITC (Andrew project) at
>? ??http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/itc85.html
> Many things evolved over time, of course, but these early documents
> capture the state of thinking at the time they were written.
> 
> So the answer to your colleague is "Yes, Unix United was a big
> influence on AFS, but in a totally negative way".? You may wish
> to soften the blow in how you present it to him/her :-)
> 
> Cheers
>? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? --- Satya
> 
> On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 06:55:51 PM PDT,
> 
>? ?Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> "MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area net."
> 
> Which reminded me of Scrapbook at NPL. It was an early hyperlinked system but was also a (small scale) distributed file system by the mid 1970s. It was not widely known and is badly documented.
> 
> I happened to meet and interview one of the Scrapbook team last year:
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/download.php?selected-id=884
> 
> The Andrew File System and its descendants, like NFS, only came along in the 1980s. AFS in particular *must* have been influenced by the Unix United paper, which had examples like:
> 
> cd /../unix2/user/brian
> quicksort a > /../unix1/user/brian/b
> 
> (where unix1 and unix2 were host names, and brian wasn't me, it was Brian Randell.)
> 
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>? ? ? Brian Carpenter

  

From craig at tereschau.net  Sat Sep 20 06:11:57 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2025 07:11:57 -0600
Subject: [ih] Distributed file systems [was: As Flag Day approaches at
 CMU]
In-Reply-To: <485428118.5658844.1758318742550@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <653784717.2383549.1757562061549.ref@mail.yahoo.com>
 <653784717.2383549.1757562061549@mail.yahoo.com>
 <4d8012ad-b98a-4ceb-b203-c592a0ccbbfe@gmail.com>
 <485428118.5658844.1758318742550@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CfVSeDp8-RpgRNn2SpX2PaLEVGdQx9tM1FV_0Cc+h-0hQ@mail.gmail.com>

I know bits of Rick's work as his team worked on the same hallway as my
office when I first got to BBN.  This is all from memory and may have gaps
errors.  I do see some documentation is online:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA199891.pdf

In the early 1980s Rick had a substantial team working to develop an
object-oriented distributed system called Cronus.  This is just a few years
after Smalltalk-80 came out and Cronus had a very
Smalltalk-over-the-network feel to it.

Initially, Cronus was peer-to-peer.  Each object needed to know where on
the network any object it wanted to talk to was.  Which was fine initially
and allowed the Cronus team to work out many many issues in generic
object-to-object communication and encapsulation (Cronus sought to sit over
all existing operating systems -- which meant you had nasty problems of
"what is a file object?" when there were different file systems).  But by
the time I arrived on the hallway in 1983, Cronus was bumping into problems
of scaling because locating objects was painful (which connects back to
Satya's note).

Then Mike Dean, fresh out of grad school, joined the Cronus project in (if
memory is right) 1984.  After a few months of learning Cronus, Mike
realized that a level of indirection that allowed objects to discover each
other was needed and, again if memory serves, over a weekend wrote an
object broker whose job was to match up objects that wanted to talk.  (If
he didn't do it over a weekend, he could have -- Mike, as a programmer, was
extraordinary).  And Cronus, as a research project took off, as it now had
the key components -- object communication and object broker -- to realize
Rick's vision.

Rick and Mike collaborated closely for the next few years and I think it
had a key role in both their careers.  Rick went on to do valuable work in
middleware and how to interconnect systems (by which I mean layer 6/7
things).  Mike went on to be a force in information discovery, especially
his work on ontologies in the world wide web.  Alas both have passed away
(far too early).

Craig

On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 3:52?PM Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>
> The name Rick Schantz popped up in my head.  He was doing some work in
> this area in the 70s and later?  Here are a couple links that might lead
> you to more info if you can get them. I don't have ready access to the IBM
> one. It mentions distributed file systems in the abstract.
> https://research.ibm.com/publications/interprocess-communication-systems
>
>
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://eecs.wsu.edu/~cs565/Papers/Schantz-DistSysBBN1970-1995.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjZ-Z245uWPAxU3EEQIHYYiN2IQFnoECCEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1qfpTTB6K2dytZx3kBry29
> The reference above is a chapter on distributed computing at BBN.
> I am very sad to have to report that he also has passed away.  It is
> getting difficult to search for people .
> https://schlossbergchapel.com/obituary/richard-schantz/
> barbara
>
>     On Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 09:27:23 PM PDT, Brian E Carpenter
> <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Hi Barbara,
>
> That makes total sense, and I doubt if Brian Randell would be surprised.
> I've put him in Bcc in case he wants to comment.
>
> The Named Data Networking project is still tackling this space:
> https://named-data.net/project/execsummary/
>
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 11-Sep-25 15:41, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >  I was curious about the potential influence of the Unix United paper on
> work at CMU so I decided to just ask Satya. In my message to him, I
> included the part starting with  the sentence "AFS in particular *must*
> .."  and the 2 examples that follow from Brian's email.
> > I did tell him I wanted to post his answer to this list and he hasn't
> said no so ...
> > Excuse my trimming of the thread.  I seem to have problems posting to
> the list, especially when the body of the message is long.
> >
> > barbara
> >
> > ----- Forwarded Message -----From: Mahadev Satyanarayanan <
> satya at cs.cmu.edu>To: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Sent: Monday,
> September 8, 2025 at 01:45:16 PM PDTSubject: Re: AFS question
> > Hi Barbara,
> > The Unix United paper (aka "Newcastle Connection") was published in
> > 1982.  We were indeed aware of that work by mid-1983, when serious
> > work on what eventually led to AFS began.  The name "Andrew" for the
> > whole project did not emerge until late 1985.  In fact, the first
> > published paper on AFS did not even use the name "AFS".  It referred
> > to the system as "The ITC Distributed File System" and the server
> > and client components as "Vice" and "Virtue" respectively.
> > Here is that very first AFS paper, from 1985:
> >      https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/323647.323633
> >
> > Alas, the influence of Unix United on AFS was quite the opposite of
> > what the person who spoke with you thinks.  We actively worked hard to
> > AVOID an aspect of Unix United that we thought was totally wrong.
> >  From the beginning we believed that AFS needed to have Location
> > Transparency.  i.e. you could not tell where a file was located by
> > just looking at its pathname.  You had to ask the system to tell you,
> > and that location could change over time.  The 1985 paper explicitly
> > contrasts AFS with the design of Unix United.  If you look at
> > Section 6.1 in the above paper, it says this:
> >>
> >> Location transparency is a key issue in this context. In Locus,
> >> Vice-Virtue, Apollo and Roe it is not possible to deduce the
> >> location of a file by examing its name. In contrast, the Cedar File
> >> System and the Newcastle Connection embed storage site information
> >> in pathnames.
> >>
> >
> > Location transparency was identified as a non-negotiable requirement
> > of AFS since the very earliest conception of its design.  See, for
> > example, this September 1983 design document:
> >    http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/itc/CMU-ITC-008.pdf
> >
> > BTW, there is a whole treasure trove of very early (1983-1985) design
> > documents from the ITC (Andrew project) at
> >    http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/itc85.html
> > Many things evolved over time, of course, but these early documents
> > capture the state of thinking at the time they were written.
> >
> > So the answer to your colleague is "Yes, Unix United was a big
> > influence on AFS, but in a totally negative way".  You may wish
> > to soften the blow in how you present it to him/her :-)
> >
> > Cheers
> >                --- Satya
> >
> > On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 06:55:51 PM PDT,
> >
> >   Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > "MIT wasn't the only place where the IMP became the de facto local area
> net."
> >
> > Which reminded me of Scrapbook at NPL. It was an early hyperlinked
> system but was also a (small scale) distributed file system by the mid
> 1970s. It was not widely known and is badly documented.
> >
> > I happened to meet and interview one of the Scrapbook team last year:
> >
> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/CDMTCS/researchreports/download.php?selected-id=884
> >
> > The Andrew File System and its descendants, like NFS, only came along in
> the 1980s. AFS in particular *must* have been influenced by the Unix United
> paper, which had examples like:
> >
> > cd /../unix2/user/brian
> > quicksort a > /../unix1/user/brian/b
> >
> > (where unix1 and unix2 were host names, and brian wasn't me, it was
> Brian Randell.)
> >
> > Regards/Ng? mihi
> >      Brian Carpenter
>
>
> --
> 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
>


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


From touch at strayalpha.com  Wed Sep 24 20:23:36 2025
From: touch at strayalpha.com (touch at strayalpha.com)
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:23:36 -0700
Subject: [ih] Reminder about this list
In-Reply-To: <629358f3-c96d-1421-f68e-6f9adaf145f2@atomicmail.io>
References: <629358f3-c96d-1421-f68e-6f9adaf145f2@atomicmail.io>
Message-ID: <B4E995E0-1317-468B-A721-0EDF375CF995@strayalpha.com>

Hi, all,

As a reminder, reviews of books are welcome, but postings *directly linking* to sales are considered advertising and are not allowed on this list.

Joe (list owner)

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



From nigel at channelisles.net  Fri Sep 26 10:34:36 2025
From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts)
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2025 18:34:36 +0100
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <b055154e-046c-4999-9382-93b82f61cfd6@channelisles.net>
References: <CAMusaY9zVyBKk2eZ4vqnb2M9KtSOHF4ZYcYwdULq3tj5JRbvsw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B4F11E51-0413-4EAF-B258-BD446F751033@comcast.net>
 <b055154e-046c-4999-9382-93b82f61cfd6@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <d57abd5c-4402-46dd-923e-abf6eee8bac0@channelisles.net>

Tickling an old thread, I was amused to come across this article.

(Apologies if I'm recycling electrons here.)

https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/games-on-the-net-before-the-web-part-2-mud/

I have a strong suspicion that I may have been the author of the 
'strange message to the Zork list' mentioned in this article.

I don't suppose there are any archives of that so I could tell for sure, 
are there??


On 20/04/2025 15:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history wrote:
> And I still remember some of the the host numbers
>
> MIT-AI 134
> MIT-DM 70? (Home of Dungeon/Zork, our inspiration for MUD)
>
> SU-AI was something in the twenties (23? anyone remember??)
>
>
> Nigel
>
>
> On 20/04/2025 00:41, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> A site with more than one host connected to the IMP would regularly 
>> have a hyphen between the organization name and the name of the 
>> specific lab or whatever it was, e.g. MIT-Multics, MIT-AI.
>>
>> Sounds like you don?t have enough to do.
>>
>>> On Apr 19, 2025, at 18:33, Alexander McKenzie via 
>>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ah, you are referring to Host names.? There wasm for example, a TIP 
>>> at BBN
>>> known officially as BBN-TIP. The dash was part of the Host name, not 
>>> part
>>> of the word "TIP".
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Alex McKenzie
>>>
>>> On Saturday, April 19, 2025 at 06:10:31 PM EDT, the keyboard of geoff
>>> goodfellow via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> so BOTH the TIPs and TAC's had the -TIP and -TAC name notation, e.g. 
>>> viz.:
>>>
>>> 243,ACCAT-TIP,TIP,USER,NEW
>>> in
>>> ;[SRI-CSL]<GEOFF2>HSTNAM.TXT? (Kept by Geoff at SRI-CSL)
>>> ;Last update: 4-Aug-82
>>> as EXCERPTED from:
>>> https://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-d868e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_dist_1of2/01/new-system/hstnam.txt.html 
>>>
>>> &
>>> https://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/BB-H137C-BM/06/new-system/hstnam.txt.html 
>>>
>>>
>>> HOST ACCAT-TAC, 2/35,USER,TAC,C30,[NELC-TIP]
>>> ; Last updated: MRC 2/1/83
>>> as EXCERPTED from:
>>> https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/blob/master/pub/hosts/19830201/HOSTS.TXT 
>>>
>>>
>>> and some even had both (which must have been during the -TIP to -TAC 
>>> naming
>>> transition), viz.:
>>> 10.2.0.35????? accat-tac nelc-tip
>>> 10.2.0.31????? cca-tac cca-tip
>>> as EXCERPTED from:
>>> https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD/usr/src/etc/htable/hosts 
>>>
>>>
>>> geoff
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 19, 2025 at 2:35?PM Alexander McKenzie via 
>>> Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> They became TACs when the management of ARPAnet switched from DARPA to
>>> DCA
>>>> and login control via user passwords was implemented.? The management
>>> shift
>>>> happened in mid-1976 and the login control somewhat later. I've 
>>>> never seen
>>>> the dash notation before and I don't think that is anything other 
>>>> than a
>>>> typo.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Alex McKenzie
>>>>
>>>> On Saturday, April 19, 2025 at 05:19:44 PM EDT, the keyboard of geoff
>>>> goodfellow via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> and WHY the dash -TIP to -TAC name change?
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>>>> living as The Truth is True
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>> -- 
>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>>> living as The Truth is True
>>> -- 
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> -- 
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>

From jmamodio at gmail.com  Fri Sep 26 14:15:40 2025
From: jmamodio at gmail.com (Jorge Amodio)
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2025 16:15:40 -0500
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <d57abd5c-4402-46dd-923e-abf6eee8bac0@channelisles.net>
References: <CAMusaY9zVyBKk2eZ4vqnb2M9KtSOHF4ZYcYwdULq3tj5JRbvsw@mail.gmail.com>
 <B4F11E51-0413-4EAF-B258-BD446F751033@comcast.net>
 <b055154e-046c-4999-9382-93b82f61cfd6@channelisles.net>
 <d57abd5c-4402-46dd-923e-abf6eee8bac0@channelisles.net>
Message-ID: <CAMzo+1bPfHLKspB5Lvt6ZoXo_W05h=TeoK1np0MVL57NgfXChg@mail.gmail.com>

TIP (Terminal Interface Processor) ~= TAC (Terminal Access Controller) ...

TAC were connected directly to DDN.

According to https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA164353.pdf (1985), TIP was
the "predecessor of TAC performing a similar function."

Cheers
Jorge


On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 12:34?PM Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Tickling an old thread, I was amused to come across this article.
>
> (Apologies if I'm recycling electrons here.)
>
> https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/games-on-the-net-before-the-web-part-2-mud/
>
> I have a strong suspicion that I may have been the author of the
> 'strange message to the Zork list' mentioned in this article.
>
> I don't suppose there are any archives of that so I could tell for sure,
> are there??
>
>
> On 20/04/2025 15:35, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history wrote:
> > And I still remember some of the the host numbers
> >
> > MIT-AI 134
> > MIT-DM 70  (Home of Dungeon/Zork, our inspiration for MUD)
> >
> > SU-AI was something in the twenties (23? anyone remember??)
> >
> >
> > Nigel
> >
> >
> > On 20/04/2025 00:41, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> >> A site with more than one host connected to the IMP would regularly
> >> have a hyphen between the organization name and the name of the
> >> specific lab or whatever it was, e.g. MIT-Multics, MIT-AI.
> >>
> >> Sounds like you don?t have enough to do.
> >>
> >>> On Apr 19, 2025, at 18:33, Alexander McKenzie via
> >>> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Ah, you are referring to Host names.  There wasm for example, a TIP
> >>> at BBN
> >>> known officially as BBN-TIP. The dash was part of the Host name, not
> >>> part
> >>> of the word "TIP".
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>> Alex McKenzie
> >>>
> >>> On Saturday, April 19, 2025 at 06:10:31 PM EDT, the keyboard of geoff
> >>> goodfellow via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> so BOTH the TIPs and TAC's had the -TIP and -TAC name notation, e.g.
> >>> viz.:
> >>>
> >>> 243,ACCAT-TIP,TIP,USER,NEW
> >>> in
> >>> ;[SRI-CSL]<GEOFF2>HSTNAM.TXT  (Kept by Geoff at SRI-CSL)
> >>> ;Last update: 4-Aug-82
> >>> as EXCERPTED from:
> >>>
> https://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/bb-d868e-bm_tops20_v41_2020_dist_1of2/01/new-system/hstnam.txt.html
> >>>
> >>> &
> >>>
> https://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/BB-H137C-BM/06/new-system/hstnam.txt.html
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> HOST ACCAT-TAC, 2/35,USER,TAC,C30,[NELC-TIP]
> >>> ; Last updated: MRC 2/1/83
> >>> as EXCERPTED from:
> >>>
> https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt/blob/master/pub/hosts/19830201/HOSTS.TXT
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> and some even had both (which must have been during the -TIP to -TAC
> >>> naming
> >>> transition), viz.:
> >>> 10.2.0.35      accat-tac nelc-tip
> >>> 10.2.0.31      cca-tac cca-tip
> >>> as EXCERPTED from:
> >>>
> https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD/usr/src/etc/htable/hosts
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> geoff
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Apr 19, 2025 at 2:35?PM Alexander McKenzie via
> >>> Internet-history <
> >>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> They became TACs when the management of ARPAnet switched from DARPA to
> >>> DCA
> >>>> and login control via user passwords was implemented.  The management
> >>> shift
> >>>> happened in mid-1976 and the login control somewhat later. I've
> >>>> never seen
> >>>> the dash notation before and I don't think that is anything other
> >>>> than a
> >>>> typo.
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>> Alex McKenzie
> >>>>
> >>>> On Saturday, April 19, 2025 at 05:19:44 PM EDT, the keyboard of geoff
> >>>> goodfellow via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> and WHY the dash -TIP to -TAC name change?
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> >>>> living as The Truth is True
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>>> --
> >>>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>>>
> >>> --
> >>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> >>> living as The Truth is True
> >>> --
> >>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >>> --
> >>> Internet-history mailing list
> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >
> --
> 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 jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Sep 26 17:00:31 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2025 20:00:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
Message-ID: <20250927000031.C2F7418C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jorge Amodio

    > TIP (Terminal Interface Processor) ~= TAC (Terminal Access Controller)

The biggest difference between the two was that the TIP used the older
Network Control Protocol protocol family, whereas the TAC was also able to
use the newer TCP/IP family. (I see from "Getting Started Computing at the AI
Lab":

  https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/41180/AI_WP_235.pdf

that a TAC user could switch back and forth - pg. 17 of the PDF.)

The TIP also included IMP functionality, and TIPs could be ARPANET nodes; the
'MIT-TIP' machine used to be one of the two IMPs at MIT: IMP #44, to be exact.
Not so for TACs.

Does anyone remember how TACs which used to be TIPs connected to the network,
though? (I mean using what hardware?) I see that the host 'MIT-TIP' used to
be 2/44; i.e. host 2 on IMP 44. That machine would have conncted to the rest
of the ARPANET via phone lines (so through a modem port). However in its
later 'MIT-TAC' incarnation, it was 10.2.0.77; i.e. it was connected to IMP
77 - I would assume via an 1822 port? Did ex-TIP machines use one of their
one-time 1822 'IMP' ports as a 'host' 1822 port?

I should know that, because I was the MIT 'IMP liaison', and I do remember a
bunch of events with them (e.g. the move of MIT-MC, which involved converting
an LH port on a C/30 IMP to a DH), but I have no memory of the switch to the
C/30 IMPs.

Also, were there any TACs which were not one-time TIPs? If so, what was the
hardware base? Maybe a C/30 with a multiple serial line controller?

	Noel


From vint at google.com  Fri Sep 26 17:26:15 2025
From: vint at google.com (Vint Cerf)
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2025 01:26:15 +0100
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <20250927000031.C2F7418C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250927000031.C2F7418C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <CAHxHggeKt4E07S7T9nyCLQ1drbWCz3VX6oCM207sMRZYO4TvQA@mail.gmail.com>

At some point, the BBN Cxx machines also offered an X.25 interface because
around 1983, I was using them to build MCI Mail and the network interfaces
were X.25 vs BBN 1822, for example.

v


On Sat, Sep 27, 2025 at 1:00?AM Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>     > From: Jorge Amodio
>
>     > TIP (Terminal Interface Processor) ~= TAC (Terminal Access
> Controller)
>
> The biggest difference between the two was that the TIP used the older
> Network Control Protocol protocol family, whereas the TAC was also able to
> use the newer TCP/IP family. (I see from "Getting Started Computing at the
> AI
> Lab":
>
>   https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/41180/AI_WP_235.pdf
>
> that a TAC user could switch back and forth - pg. 17 of the PDF.)
>
> The TIP also included IMP functionality, and TIPs could be ARPANET nodes;
> the
> 'MIT-TIP' machine used to be one of the two IMPs at MIT: IMP #44, to be
> exact.
> Not so for TACs.
>
> Does anyone remember how TACs which used to be TIPs connected to the
> network,
> though? (I mean using what hardware?) I see that the host 'MIT-TIP' used to
> be 2/44; i.e. host 2 on IMP 44. That machine would have conncted to the
> rest
> of the ARPANET via phone lines (so through a modem port). However in its
> later 'MIT-TAC' incarnation, it was 10.2.0.77; i.e. it was connected to IMP
> 77 - I would assume via an 1822 port? Did ex-TIP machines use one of their
> one-time 1822 'IMP' ports as a 'host' 1822 port?
>
> I should know that, because I was the MIT 'IMP liaison', and I do remember
> a
> bunch of events with them (e.g. the move of MIT-MC, which involved
> converting
> an LH port on a C/30 IMP to a DH), but I have no memory of the switch to
> the
> C/30 IMPs.
>
> Also, were there any TACs which were not one-time TIPs? If so, what was the
> hardware base? Maybe a C/30 with a multiple serial line controller?
>
>         Noel
> --
> 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 jack at 3kitty.org  Fri Sep 26 18:34:41 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2025 18:34:41 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <CAHxHggeKt4E07S7T9nyCLQ1drbWCz3VX6oCM207sMRZYO4TvQA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250927000031.C2F7418C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <CAHxHggeKt4E07S7T9nyCLQ1drbWCz3VX6oCM207sMRZYO4TvQA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <f889e0c6-4974-4f0e-aee9-27c9fb485829@3kitty.org>

On TIPs, TACs, IMPs, C/30s, ...? FYI, what I remember:

The original IMPS were standard Honeywell minicomputers with additional 
hardware for I/O and real-time clock functionality designed by BBN.? 
TIPs were IMPs, but with more memory installed and additional hardware 
to support I/O to terminals (or modems), and some more software of course.

So, IMPs and TIPs were essentially the same basic machine.? Hosts 
connected to both IMPs and TIPs through an "1822 interface" defined in 
BBN Report 1822.

X.25 was added to the IMPs.?? I suspect that occurred only with the C/30 
hardware but can't remember the timing.?? DDN desired X.25 since that 
was part of OSI, was encouraged by the DoD GOSIP efforts, and was more 
likely to be available on all sorts of computers than the obscure 1822 
interface.?? IIRC, the X.25 addition to the IMP code was funded by DCA.

X.25 was supported by gateways in the US and UK over the public X.25 
networks.?? So the public X.25 global network could be considered one of 
the networks underlying The Internet.? But I don't remember if TACs ever 
used X.25 to carry TCP/IP, or whether or not X.25 was ever used as DDN 
expanded inside DoD.

Of course BBN also took advantage of the availability of X.25 for sales 
into the commercial marketplace.?? There were lots of "ARPANET Clones" 
using X.25 in corporate networks through the 1980s.

Much of the work in the 1980+ timeframe was in preparation for the 
January 1, 1983 conversion of the ARPANET from NCP to TCP.? There was 
lots of planning for that transition.? At the time, I was on the ICCB 
and one of its tasks was to help figure out what needed to be done in 
order to effect that transition.? The planning and implementation 
literally took several years, with DCA, ARPA, and several other parts of 
the US government involved in putting all the pieces in place.

One task in that timeline was to get TCP implemented in the TIPs. Bob 
Hinden is probably the authority on that part of the evolution.?? IIRC, 
he wrote the code to put TCP into the TIPs, before moving to lead the 
project to make the "core gateways" into a 24x7 operational service.

In addition, there was another program called TACACS (TAC Access Control 
System) which implemented a password scheme for controlling access to 
the TACs.?? It was a follow-on to an earlier project called "TIP 
Login".?? TACACS was considered a necessary component for DDN to control 
who could use the 'net(s).

Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports 
submitted by BBN, as well as all sorts of other materials from the 
government or other contractors.? It may be available on 
discover.dtic.mil -- e.g., search for "ddn tac bbn"

/Jack Haverty


On 9/26/25 17:26, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> At some point, the BBN Cxx machines also offered an X.25 interface because
> around 1983, I was using them to build MCI Mail and the network interfaces
> were X.25 vs BBN 1822, for example.
>
> v
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2025 at 1:00?AM Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>>      > From: Jorge Amodio
>>
>>      > TIP (Terminal Interface Processor) ~= TAC (Terminal Access
>> Controller)
>>
>> The biggest difference between the two was that the TIP used the older
>> Network Control Protocol protocol family, whereas the TAC was also able to
>> use the newer TCP/IP family. (I see from "Getting Started Computing at the
>> AI
>> Lab":
>>
>>    https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/41180/AI_WP_235.pdf
>>
>> that a TAC user could switch back and forth - pg. 17 of the PDF.)
>>
>> The TIP also included IMP functionality, and TIPs could be ARPANET nodes;
>> the
>> 'MIT-TIP' machine used to be one of the two IMPs at MIT: IMP #44, to be
>> exact.
>> Not so for TACs.
>>
>> Does anyone remember how TACs which used to be TIPs connected to the
>> network,
>> though? (I mean using what hardware?) I see that the host 'MIT-TIP' used to
>> be 2/44; i.e. host 2 on IMP 44. That machine would have conncted to the
>> rest
>> of the ARPANET via phone lines (so through a modem port). However in its
>> later 'MIT-TAC' incarnation, it was 10.2.0.77; i.e. it was connected to IMP
>> 77 - I would assume via an 1822 port? Did ex-TIP machines use one of their
>> one-time 1822 'IMP' ports as a 'host' 1822 port?
>>
>> I should know that, because I was the MIT 'IMP liaison', and I do remember
>> a
>> bunch of events with them (e.g. the move of MIT-MC, which involved
>> converting
>> an LH port on a C/30 IMP to a DH), but I have no memory of the switch to
>> the
>> C/30 IMPs.
>>
>> Also, were there any TACs which were not one-time TIPs? If so, what was the
>> hardware base? Maybe a C/30 with a multiple serial line controller?
>>
>>          Noel
>> --
>> 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
>>
>

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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Sun Sep 28 06:31:39 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 09:31:39 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
Message-ID: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jack Haverty

    > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
    > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil

I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.

  Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
  https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
  Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
  https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
  The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
  https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf

I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
but I'll bet it was an 1822.

	Noel


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 28 10:08:14 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:08:14 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>

On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>      > From: Jack Haverty
>
>      > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>      > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>
> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>
>    Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>    https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>    Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>    https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>    The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>    https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>
> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>
> 	Noel

Hi Noel,

Yes, good detective work.? There's lots of information in contractor 
reports.? At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so 
the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.?? Much of the 
detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured 
in Jon's minutes.

There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably 
should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.? The reports went to 
various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had 
worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.? For 
example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar 
reports.?? But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA, 
Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the 
various Internet meetings.?? I still haven't seen more than a handful of 
non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.

At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related 
contracts in our part of BBN.?? That meant I became the "author" of the 
BBN reports.? Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all 
of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the 
quarter.?? Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than 
getting documentation out of an engineer.? For many of our contracts, 
the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.?? Until the 
Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.

BTW, re C/30 et al.? Internet History has probably never been told about 
that part of the history:

The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB - 
Microprogrammable Building Block.? As the name implies, the hardware was 
microprogrammable.? The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look 
exactly like a Honeywell 316.? So the same code that had been developed 
for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.?? 
Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software 
that ran on it.

Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with 
an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.? The MBB microcode 
used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which 
was the language used by the Unix OS.

BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix 
boxes to the world.?? Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea, 
so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to 
the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.?? 
Didn't even have to change the logo.

There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....

There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as 
reports from others.? For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB" 
and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30 
microcode: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf?? -- which 
even found bugs in the microcode.? Another timeline bit in that report - 
the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the 
Host/IMP interface.
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From steve at shinkuro.com  Sun Sep 28 10:41:57 2025
From: steve at shinkuro.com (Steve Crocker)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 13:41:57 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CABf5zvLbv851iTsjdMRK_kR2MX5L3p_GUVAD=3fXz5cu01dMRg@mail.gmail.com>

Jack,

You wrote:

The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed  for
> the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.   Effectively, a
> C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software that ran on it.


Well, almost.

I ran a program verification project for several years.  We used actual
code, i.e. code written by professionals without regard to formal methods,
for our case studies.  For our work on microcode verification, we wrote
formal descriptions of both the micromachine and the macromachine, and then
we attempted to show the microcode implemented the macromachine's
instructions set.

The microcode implementation of the 516 instruction set on the C/30 was one
of our cases.  We found a small set of relatively minor discrepancies.  My
favorite discrepancies for the C/30 were the implementations of the Reset
Overflow Bit and Set Overflow Bit instructions.  The implementations were
reversed.

When we shared our results with the BBN crew, they said they had discovered
the microcode was backwards.  But rather than changing the microcode, they
had changed the assembler.  Big smile.  That's ok if the code for that
machine is guaranteed to be created by the modified assembler.  In the
pantheon of practical solutions that occur in real life, I have no
criticism.

What I hadn't thought about until reading your note is the code for the
Honeywell machines and the C/30 would have been compatible at the assembly
language level but not at the object code level.  Alternatively, I have no
idea if those instructions were actually used in the IMP software.

Steve


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep 28 12:19:48 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 19:19:48 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>

 Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks??
I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).? It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers? but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
barbara
    On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>? ? ? > From: Jack Haverty
>
>? ? ? > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>? ? ? > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>
> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>
>? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>? ? The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>
> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>
> ??? Noel

Hi Noel,

Yes, good detective work.? There's lots of information in contractor 
reports.? At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so 
the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.?? Much of the 
detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured 
in Jon's minutes.

There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably 
should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.? The reports went to 
various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had 
worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.? For 
example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar 
reports.?? But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA, 
Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the 
various Internet meetings.?? I still haven't seen more than a handful of 
non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.

At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related 
contracts in our part of BBN.?? That meant I became the "author" of the 
BBN reports.? Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all 
of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the 
quarter.?? Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than 
getting documentation out of an engineer.? For many of our contracts, 
the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.?? Until the 
Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.

BTW, re C/30 et al.? Internet History has probably never been told about 
that part of the history:

The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB - 
Microprogrammable Building Block.? As the name implies, the hardware was 
microprogrammable.? The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look 
exactly like a Honeywell 316.? So the same code that had been developed 
for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.?? 
Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software 
that ran on it.

Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with 
an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.? The MBB microcode 
used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which 
was the language used by the Unix OS.

BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix 
boxes to the world.?? Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea, 
so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to 
the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.?? 
Didn't even have to change the logo.

There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....

There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as 
reports from others.? For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB" 
and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30 
microcode: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf?? -- which 
even found bugs in the microcode.? Another timeline bit in that report - 
the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the 
Host/IMP interface.
  

From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 28 12:34:31 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:34:31 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <CABf5zvLbv851iTsjdMRK_kR2MX5L3p_GUVAD=3fXz5cu01dMRg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <CABf5zvLbv851iTsjdMRK_kR2MX5L3p_GUVAD=3fXz5cu01dMRg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <c71b8f12-fab2-4a52-a0dd-15c398015187@3kitty.org>

Hi Steve,

Yes - that's why I said "designed".? The design intent was to look like 
a H316.?? The implementation of course had bugs.?? But bugs didn't 
matter if the IMP code didn't trigger them.

Our part of BBN tended to be very pragmatic.? In the ARPANET case, the 
focus was on keeping the network functioning, and using whatever 
pragmatic approach fit best.??? I don't recall but it's likely that 
changing the C/30 microcode was not as easy as changing the IMP code, 
which was typically done by putting a new release into an IMP at BBN and 
then letting it propagate from IMP to IMP until it had permeated the 
network.?? Changing microcode may have required a field service visit, 
but I can't remember if that was true.

Another issue which may have driven such decisions was the timing of 
conversion from Honeywell IMPs to C/30s.? That couldn't happen overnight 
and probably took months or more.?? So there was lots of attention paid 
to how to deploy new releases in a methodical way that kept the network 
functioning at all times.

When the assembler was changed to fix a microcode bug, one of the 
factors influencing that decision might have been whether or not all the 
316s had been replaced by C/30s yet.? I don't recall that incident, but 
it seems that lack of object-code compatibility would have been a 
problem if there were still H316s in the network.

Running and evolving the ARPANET was a complicated engineering task.? I 
recall that one of the "IMP guys" once told me that there were about 
1000 parameters then in the IMP code, each of which had been added to 
address some particular issue that had shown up during a decade of 
network operation.? Parameters could be set appropriately for specific 
IMPs by remote action from the NOC. Lots of that kind of detail is 
probably captured in the Quarterly Reports from the ARPANET Operations 
and Maintenance contract we had with DCA -- another source for 
interested historians.

Jack


On 9/28/25 10:41, Steve Crocker wrote:
> Jack,
>
> You wrote:
>
>         The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
>         exactly like a Honeywell 316.? So the same code that had been
>         developed for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a
>         C/30. Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316
>         to the software that ran on it.
>
>
> Well, almost.
>
> I ran a program?verification project for several years.? We used 
> actual code, i.e. code written by professionals without regard to 
> formal methods, for our case studies.? For our work on microcode 
> verification, we wrote formal descriptions of both the micromachine 
> and the macromachine, and then we?attempted to show the?microcode 
> implemented the?macromachine's instructions set.
>
> The microcode implementation of the 516 instruction?set on the C/30 
> was one of our cases.? We found?a small set of relatively minor 
> discrepancies.? My favorite discrepancies for the?C/30 were the 
> implementations of the Reset Overflow Bit and Set Overflow Bit 
> instructions.? The implementations were reversed.
>
> When we shared our results with the BBN crew, they said they had 
> discovered the microcode?was backwards.? But rather than changing the 
> microcode, they had changed the assembler.? Big smile.? That's ok if 
> the code for that machine is guaranteed?to be created by the modified 
> assembler.? In the pantheon of practical solutions that occur in real 
> life, I have no criticism.
>
> What I hadn't thought about?until reading?your?note is the code for 
> the Honeywell machines and the C/30 would have been compatible at the 
> assembly language level but not at the object?code level.? 
> Alternatively, I have no idea if those instructions?were actually used 
> in the IMP software.
>
> Steve
>
>

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From jjd at jjd.com  Sun Sep 28 12:36:20 2025
From: jjd at jjd.com (James J Dempsey)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 15:36:20 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did ARPANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
Message-ID: <2419782.1759088180@serenity.jjd.com>

I am not the authority on this, but I'm pretty sure that TIPs did NCP and
TACs did TCP/IP.  If I'm right about that, the TIPs would have been obsolete
after the Jan 1 1983 flag day.  It may very well be that all TACs were
MBB-based.  TIP commands specified hosts as something like 2/4 -- host 4 on
imp 2 (IIRC) while TACs used dotted quad we're familiar with today.  10.0.2.4.

On 9/28/25 10:08, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.? The MBB microcode
> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
> was the language used by the Unix OS.

The C/70 had a couple issues that made it less than ideal competition for
DEC.  First, the word size was 20-bits, two 10-bit bytes, something that
made network programming a bit challenging.

Second, the C/70 had up to 2MB of RAM.  We certainly had them supporting
perhaps half a dozen to maybe ten developers to each system.  The problem
was that while the C/70 might have been great competition to the PDP-11, DEC
introduced the VAX at about the same time with virtual memory which was a
game changer.  And the VAX had 32-bit words which were much more natural for
network programming.

> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....

My memory is that the C/60 was *exactly* the same as a C/70, with a slower
clock chip and a lower price.  There was even an "upgrade" customers could
buy to upgrade the machine to a C/70.  (The upgrade, of course, was a faster
clock crystal.)

One of my favorite C/70 stories was this:  The C/70 rack had two winchester
drives at the bottom which pulled out like drawers.  I believe they were
originally 80MB each.  The problem was that if you pulled both drawers out
at the same time, the rack would come tumbling down on top of you!  To fix
that, there was an ECO (I think called "ECO-PB") which was essentially two
lead bricks you would put in the rear of base of rack which would offset the
weight of the open disks and keep it from tipping!

One of the C/70s big advantages was that it came with UNIX installed and
that UNIX was actualy supported by BBN.  Back in those days, you got your
hands on a UNIX license and got some tapes from someone, but if you had
problems, there was no one to call to support your UNIX installation.  DEC
certainly wasn't going to do it, nor was Berkeley.  You can see a button
from a trade show in the upper left of this photo proudly proclaiming that
BBN-UNIX was supported by BBN:
https://serenity.jjd.com/Images/bbn-buttons.jpg

The BBN-UNIX was a pretty nice UNIX too.  It was mostly V7-based, if I
remember correctly, but with BBN's TCP network code and IPC mechanisms
(named pipes) and a bunch of BSD tools. csh was there as was tcsh -- with
cmd line editing -- and job control.

The 2MB address space was a big limitation.  I remember Gosling's Emacs took
a minute or two to start.  I would start it in the morning and leave it
running all day to avoid having to pay the start time penalty.

                       --Jim--


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 28 15:14:27 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 15:14:27 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>

Hi Barbara,

X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.?? ARPA had funded lots of 
computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 
interfaces.?? But there were lots of other computers used outside the 
research environment.? X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and 
computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface 
for their products than an 1822 interface.

I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly 
connecting routers with wires.? Part of an X.25 interface was the basic 
physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just 
interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface 
with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.

At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic 
"network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.? A wire was 
effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers 
- "this end" and "the other end".? We actually tried connecting two 
gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked 
fine.

At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN 
System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various 
meetings.?? One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN 
could use their products.? After the pitch, everyone turned to me and 
the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".?? I think they expected me to 
say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.? 
But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."?? They got a testbed 
running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and 
SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.? BTW, 
that startup was Cisco Systems.

I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched 
Node.? My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI 
vision which had become very popular.? IMP stood for Interface Message 
Processor but that name was always confusing.? I remember there was an 
IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had 
come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?? 
BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message 
Processor"? (read the last three words carefully).?? There's a writeup 
at 
https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/

It was an interesting time.

Jack

On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).? It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers? but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
> barbara
>      On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>  ? ? ? > From: Jack Haverty
>>
>>  ? ? ? > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>>  ? ? ? > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>>
>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>>
>>  ? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>>  ? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>>  ? ? The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>>
>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>>
>>  ??? Noel
> Hi Noel,
>
> Yes, good detective work.? There's lots of information in contractor
> reports.? At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.?? Much of the
> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
> in Jon's minutes.
>
> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.? The reports went to
> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.? For
> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
> reports.?? But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
> various Internet meetings.?? I still haven't seen more than a handful of
> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>
> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
> contracts in our part of BBN.?? That meant I became the "author" of the
> BBN reports.? Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
> quarter.?? Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
> getting documentation out of an engineer.? For many of our contracts,
> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.?? Until the
> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>
> BTW, re C/30 et al.? Internet History has probably never been told about
> that part of the history:
>
> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
> Microprogrammable Building Block.? As the name implies, the hardware was
> microprogrammable.? The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
> exactly like a Honeywell 316.? So the same code that had been developed
> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
> that ran on it.
>
> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.? The MBB microcode
> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>
> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
> boxes to the world.?? Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>
> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>
> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
> reports from others.? For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf?? -- which
> even found bugs in the microcode.? Another timeline bit in that report -
> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
> Host/IMP interface.
>    

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From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sun Sep 28 16:13:16 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 19:13:16 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>

I am sorry Jack, but X.25 was the bane of OSI forced on it by the PTTs. It was part of PTT vision, but everyone knew it was a dead-end and had been since 1976, when it first appeared. It epitomized what was wrong with PTT-think. They had no clue about networking and still don?t.

The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.

Take care,
John

> On Sep 28, 2025, at 18:14, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Barbara,
> 
> X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.   ARPA had funded lots of computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 interfaces.   But there were lots of other computers used outside the research environment.  X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface for their products than an 1822 interface.
> 
> I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly connecting routers with wires.  Part of an X.25 interface was the basic physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.
> 
> At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic "network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.  A wire was effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers - "this end" and "the other end".  We actually tried connecting two gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked fine.
> 
> At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various meetings.   One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN could use their products.  After the pitch, everyone turned to me and the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".   I think they expected me to say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.  But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."   They got a testbed running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.  BTW, that startup was Cisco Systems.
> 
> I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched Node.  My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI vision which had become very popular.  IMP stood for Interface Message Processor but that name was always confusing.  I remember there was an IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?  BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message Processor"  (read the last three words carefully).   There's a writeup at https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/
> 
> It was an interesting time.
> 
> Jack
> 
> On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>  Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
>> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).  It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers  but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
>> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
>> barbara
>>     On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>    On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>       > From: Jack Haverty
>>> 
>>>       > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>>>       > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>>> 
>>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>>> 
>>>     Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>>>     Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>>>     The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>>> 
>>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>>> 
>>>     Noel
>> Hi Noel,
>> 
>> Yes, good detective work.  There's lots of information in contractor
>> reports.  At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
>> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.   Much of the
>> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
>> in Jon's minutes.
>> 
>> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
>> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.  The reports went to
>> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
>> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.  For
>> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
>> reports.   But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
>> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
>> various Internet meetings.   I still haven't seen more than a handful of
>> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>> 
>> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
>> contracts in our part of BBN.   That meant I became the "author" of the
>> BBN reports.  Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
>> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
>> quarter.   Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
>> getting documentation out of an engineer.  For many of our contracts,
>> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.   Until the
>> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>> 
>> BTW, re C/30 et al.  Internet History has probably never been told about
>> that part of the history:
>> 
>> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
>> Microprogrammable Building Block.  As the name implies, the hardware was
>> microprogrammable.  The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
>> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed
>> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
>> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
>> that ran on it.
>> 
>> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
>> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.  The MBB microcode
>> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
>> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>> 
>> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
>> boxes to the world.   Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
>> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
>> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
>> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>> 
>> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>> 
>> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
>> reports from others.  For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
>> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
>> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf   -- which
>> even found bugs in the microcode.  Another timeline bit in that report -
>> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
>> Host/IMP interface.
>>   
> 
> -- 
> 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 dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Sep 28 16:21:57 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 23:21:57 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <953abd7f-5579-4a35-b06a-a7552d231038@dcrocker.net>

On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.

That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.

    OSI Model & TCP/IP. - ppt download

and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.

OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.? The Internet went for 
the intersection.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Sun Sep 28 16:26:19 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 19:26:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <953abd7f-5579-4a35-b06a-a7552d231038@dcrocker.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <953abd7f-5579-4a35-b06a-a7552d231038@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <179183EC-3DB3-4930-9535-5E5D0288E769@comcast.net>

No one took those seriously. 
TP0 was for CCITT SGVIII, TP1 was for CCITT SGVII, TP2 was for the Brits who had to use X.25, and TP3 was for the Germans.

No one paid them any mind. The real focus was on TP4 which was a major advance because it adopted Watson?s insight on synchronization which made it much simpler and more secure.

Take care,
John

> On Sep 28, 2025, at 19:21, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
> That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.
> 
> 
> 
> and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.
> 
> OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.  The Internet went for the intersection.
> 
> d/
> 
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> 
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From dhc at dcrocker.net  Sun Sep 28 16:29:06 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 23:29:06 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <bdd012a2-f47a-484f-b128-920da12544de@dcrocker.net>

(reposted, to the the table included.)

On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.


That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.

    Feature name? ? ?               TP0? ? ?TP1? ? ?TP2? ? ?TP3? ? ?TP4
    Connection-oriented network? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Connectionless network      ? ? ?No? ? ?No? ?   ?No? ?  ?No? ? ?Yes
    Concatenation and separation? ? ?No? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Segmentation and reassembly? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Error recovery? ?               ?No? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Reinitiate connectiona?       ? ?No? ? ?Yes? ?  ?No? ? ?Yes? ?  ?No
    Multiplexing / demultiplexing over single virtual circuit
                                      No? ?  ?No? ?  Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Explicit flow control? ?        ?No? ?  ?No? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes? ? ?Yes
    Retransmission on timeout?    ? ?No? ?  ?No? ? ?No? ?   ?No? ? ?Yes
    Reliable transport service?   ? ?No? ? ?Yes? ? ?No? ?  ?Yes? ? ?Yes

and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.

OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.? The Internet went for 
the intersection.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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


From karl at iwl.com  Sun Sep 28 17:28:05 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 17:28:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <179183EC-3DB3-4930-9535-5E5D0288E769@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <953abd7f-5579-4a35-b06a-a7552d231038@dcrocker.net>
 <179183EC-3DB3-4930-9535-5E5D0288E769@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <36764677-f0c9-4afc-80fc-abf8bca2680d@iwl.com>

It annoyed me that IPv6 did not adopt the Fletcher checksum that was 
used in ISO/OSI TP[1234] and CLNP.? (Or perhaps even a Hamming error 
correcting code.)

(At first glance the Fletcher checksum looks like a computational burden 
with expensive machine operations, such as integer multiplies, but there 
are both full and incremental algorithms for it that are quite 
efficient, avoid expensive machine instructions, and fast.? And the 
Fletcher checksum does catch byte big-endian/little-endian reversals, or 
what was called in the early days of Unix the "nUxi" [pairs of bytes 
reversed] problem.)

We now live in a world where jumbograms - and large path MTU values, on 
the order of 8K+, are rather common.? And those larger packets are more 
likely to get hit with a burst of line noise than were the shorter 
packets of days gone by.? But that revives the old debate whether to do 
error checks/correction on a per-link basis or end-to-end basis (in 
addition to per-link checks/correction.)? (Those of us who were burned 
by the old Sun S-bus has no parity check, coupled with Suns NFS using 
zero as null UDP checksum, kinda cling to the end-to-end check side of 
the argument.? [When I was at Sun a critical machine had an 
S-Bus/Ethernet path that became noisy and the effect caused the major 
source code repository used for all Sun code to become corrupted.? It 
was a mess to clean up.])

 ? ? --karl--


On 9/28/25 4:26 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> No one took those seriously.
> TP0 was for CCITT SGVIII, TP1 was for CCITT SGVII, TP2 was for the Brits who had to use X.25, and TP3 was for the Germans.
>
> No one paid them any mind. The real focus was on TP4 which was a major advance because it adopted Watson?s insight on synchronization which made it much simpler and more secure.
>
> Take care,
> John
>
>> On Sep 28, 2025, at 19:21, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
>>
>> On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
>> That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.
>>
>>
>>
>> and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.
>>
>> OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.  The Internet went for the intersection.
>>
>> d/
>>
>> -- 
>> Dave Crocker
>>
>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>> bbiw.net
>> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
>> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social


From jack at 3kitty.org  Sun Sep 28 17:58:27 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 17:58:27 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <36764677-f0c9-4afc-80fc-abf8bca2680d@iwl.com>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <953abd7f-5579-4a35-b06a-a7552d231038@dcrocker.net>
 <179183EC-3DB3-4930-9535-5E5D0288E769@comcast.net>
 <36764677-f0c9-4afc-80fc-abf8bca2680d@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <d59fbb9f-577d-480f-bd64-c1527d846208@3kitty.org>

IMHO, most of the people in the Internet community didn't know much 
about ISO/OSI.? The documentation was locked up behind paywalls; there 
was little code you could look at or even try out; the documents you 
could get were often confusing.

E.G., I remember trying once in some ISO/OSI protocol to figure out what 
the error code for "ship not in port" meant, to figure out when our code 
should return that error.?? I knew what ports were from ARPANET and 
Internet folklore, but couldn't figure out the "ship" part.? There was 
no explanation in whatever document I had somehow obtained.?? It just 
said error code XXX should be used to indicate the "ship not in port" error.

Later I found out that what the error code actually meant had nothing to 
do with the protocol interactions.? It was for use in maritime 
communications, and literally meant that the ship you were trying to 
connect to was not in a harbor - a port - at that time. Duhh...?? 
Perhaps there was some other protocol that enabled a ship, or a 
harbormaster, to somehow tell the network that a ship was leaving or 
arriving at a port, so the network could return the proper error code.

Jack


On 9/28/25 17:28, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> It annoyed me that IPv6 did not adopt the Fletcher checksum that was 
> used in ISO/OSI TP[1234] and CLNP.? (Or perhaps even a Hamming error 
> correcting code.)
>
> (At first glance the Fletcher checksum looks like a computational 
> burden with expensive machine operations, such as integer multiplies, 
> but there are both full and incremental algorithms for it that are 
> quite efficient, avoid expensive machine instructions, and fast.? And 
> the Fletcher checksum does catch byte big-endian/little-endian 
> reversals, or what was called in the early days of Unix the "nUxi" 
> [pairs of bytes reversed] problem.)
>
> We now live in a world where jumbograms - and large path MTU values, 
> on the order of 8K+, are rather common.? And those larger packets are 
> more likely to get hit with a burst of line noise than were the 
> shorter packets of days gone by.? But that revives the old debate 
> whether to do error checks/correction on a per-link basis or 
> end-to-end basis (in addition to per-link checks/correction.)? (Those 
> of us who were burned by the old Sun S-bus has no parity check, 
> coupled with Suns NFS using zero as null UDP checksum, kinda cling to 
> the end-to-end check side of the argument.? [When I was at Sun a 
> critical machine had an S-Bus/Ethernet path that became noisy and the 
> effect caused the major source code repository used for all Sun code 
> to become corrupted.? It was a mess to clean up.])
>
> ? ? --karl--
>
>
> On 9/28/25 4:26 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> No one took those seriously.
>> TP0 was for CCITT SGVIII, TP1 was for CCITT SGVII, TP2 was for the 
>> Brits who had to use X.25, and TP3 was for the Germans.
>>
>> No one paid them any mind. The real focus was on TP4 which was a 
>> major advance because it adopted Watson?s insight on synchronization 
>> which made it much simpler and more secure.
>>
>> Take care,
>> John
>>
>>> On Sep 28, 2025, at 19:21, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, 
>>>> TP4, and ACSE.
>>> That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.
>>>
>>> OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.? The Internet went 
>>> for the intersection.
>>>
>>> d/
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Dave Crocker
>>>
>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>>> bbiw.net
>>> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
>>> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social

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From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com  Sun Sep 28 18:00:19 2025
From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:00:19 +1300
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <15632839-1e8e-4ca6-9646-6b5beaf4e84d@gmail.com>

The PTT vision was based on a monopoly charging for connection time, distance and characters transmitted. X.25 plus X.75 fitted that vision well. Remember that there was a long period during which Judge Greene's ruling applied in the US, but the traditional monopolies were still in place in Europe (and Asia). That's why US GOSIP was so different from European GOSIP, so OSI was split into two visions. The main attraction of the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split.

Regards/Ng? mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 29-Sep-25 12:13, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> I am sorry Jack, but X.25 was the bane of OSI forced on it by the PTTs. It was part of PTT vision, but everyone knew it was a dead-end and had been since 1976, when it first appeared. It epitomized what was wrong with PTT-think. They had no clue about networking and still don?t.
> 
> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
> 
> Take care,
> John
> 
>> On Sep 28, 2025, at 18:14, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Barbara,
>>
>> X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.   ARPA had funded lots of computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 interfaces.   But there were lots of other computers used outside the research environment.  X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface for their products than an 1822 interface.
>>
>> I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly connecting routers with wires.  Part of an X.25 interface was the basic physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.
>>
>> At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic "network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.  A wire was effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers - "this end" and "the other end".  We actually tried connecting two gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked fine.
>>
>> At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various meetings.   One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN could use their products.  After the pitch, everyone turned to me and the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".   I think they expected me to say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.  But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."   They got a testbed running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.  BTW, that startup was Cisco Systems.
>>
>> I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched Node.  My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI vision which had become very popular.  IMP stood for Interface Message Processor but that name was always confusing.  I remember there was an IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?  BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message Processor"  (read the last three words carefully).   There's a writeup at https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/
>>
>> It was an interesting time.
>>
>> Jack
>>
>> On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>   Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
>>> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).  It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers  but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
>>> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
>>> barbara
>>>      On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>     On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>        > From: Jack Haverty
>>>>
>>>>        > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>>>>        > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>>>>
>>>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>>>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>>>>
>>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>>>>      The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>>>>
>>>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>>>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>>>>
>>>>      Noel
>>> Hi Noel,
>>>
>>> Yes, good detective work.  There's lots of information in contractor
>>> reports.  At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
>>> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.   Much of the
>>> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
>>> in Jon's minutes.
>>>
>>> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
>>> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.  The reports went to
>>> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
>>> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.  For
>>> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
>>> reports.   But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
>>> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
>>> various Internet meetings.   I still haven't seen more than a handful of
>>> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>>>
>>> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
>>> contracts in our part of BBN.   That meant I became the "author" of the
>>> BBN reports.  Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
>>> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
>>> quarter.   Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
>>> getting documentation out of an engineer.  For many of our contracts,
>>> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.   Until the
>>> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>>>
>>> BTW, re C/30 et al.  Internet History has probably never been told about
>>> that part of the history:
>>>
>>> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
>>> Microprogrammable Building Block.  As the name implies, the hardware was
>>> microprogrammable.  The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
>>> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed
>>> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
>>> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
>>> that ran on it.
>>>
>>> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
>>> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.  The MBB microcode
>>> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
>>> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>>>
>>> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
>>> boxes to the world.   Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
>>> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
>>> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
>>> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>>>
>>> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>>>
>>> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
>>> reports from others.  For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
>>> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
>>> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf   -- which
>>> even found bugs in the microcode.  Another timeline bit in that report -
>>> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
>>> Host/IMP interface.
>>>    
>>
>> -- 
>> 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 geoff at iconia.com  Sun Sep 28 22:30:32 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2025 22:30:32 -0700
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <15632839-1e8e-4ca6-9646-6b5beaf4e84d@gmail.com>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <15632839-1e8e-4ca6-9646-6b5beaf4e84d@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrg1nAj09oUi0hkqBhUAfiVWH2a3MG3-tyE2RG4mu4L3KA@mail.gmail.com>

another aspect of "The PTT vision" was that of different type/kind of
"split with respect to "settlements" for "the connection time, distance and
characters transmitted" where indeed "the TCP/IP suite was that it did not
include such a split" the X.25/X.75 networks divvied up/"shared" the "loot"
between them -- just like was done for long distance toll calls between
intra country carriers/regions as well as inter country/internationally...

it's worth additionally noting that there was an "attempt" to "import" (a
polite way of putting it :) and implement the PPT intercarrier revenue
"settlements" splitting into/into the Internet with/by ANS CO+RE..., viz.:


*Data Network Raises Monopoly Fear*
By JOHN MARKOFF
The New York Times
December 19, 1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/business/data-network-raises-monopoly-fear.html

g

On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 6:00?PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> The PTT vision was based on a monopoly charging for connection time,
> distance and characters transmitted. X.25 plus X.75 fitted that vision
> well. Remember that there was a long period during which Judge Greene's
> ruling applied in the US, but the traditional monopolies were still in
> place in Europe (and Asia). That's why US GOSIP was so different from
> European GOSIP, so OSI was split into two visions. The main attraction of
> the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split.
>
> Regards/Ng? mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 29-Sep-25 12:13, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> > I am sorry Jack, but X.25 was the bane of OSI forced on it by the PTTs.
> It was part of PTT vision, but everyone knew it was a dead-end and had been
> since 1976, when it first appeared. It epitomized what was wrong with
> PTT-think. They had no clue about networking and still don?t.
> >
> > The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4,
> and ACSE.
> >
> > Take care,
> > John
> >
> >> On Sep 28, 2025, at 18:14, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Barbara,
> >>
> >> X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.   ARPA had funded lots of
> computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822
> interfaces.   But there were lots of other computers used outside the
> research environment.  X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and computer
> manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface for their
> products than an 1822 interface.
> >>
> >> I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly
> connecting routers with wires.  Part of an X.25 interface was the basic
> physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just
> interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface with
> no X.25 connection management sofware needed.
> >>
> >> At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic
> "network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.  A wire was
> effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers -
> "this end" and "the other end".  We actually tried connecting two gateways
> together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked fine.
> >>
> >> At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN
> System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various
> meetings.   One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN could
> use their products.  After the pitch, everyone turned to me and the guy in
> charge asked "Will this work?".   I think they expected me to say it was a
> silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.  But, as a DDN
> consultant, I said "Yes, it should."   They got a testbed running, and the
> startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and SRI later) did - you
> didn't really need the IMP in the picture.  BTW, that startup was Cisco
> Systems.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched
> Node.  My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI vision
> which had become very popular.  IMP stood for Interface Message Processor
> but that name was always confusing.  I remember there was an IMP somewhere
> with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had come in from a
> US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?  BBN?) on their
> successful creation of the "Interfaith Message Processor"  (read the last
> three words carefully).   There's a writeup at
> https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/
> >>
> >> It was an interesting time.
> >>
> >> Jack
> >>
> >> On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>   Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it
> easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
> >>> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the
> original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but
> leaning towards C30s).  It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally
> had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers  but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just
> used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
> >>> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet
> Switching Node) and when was this done?
> >>> barbara
> >>>      On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty
> via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>     On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>>        > From: Jack Haverty
> >>>>
> >>>>        > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the
> reports
> >>>>        > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on
> discover.dtic.mil
> >>>>
> >>>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
> >>>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
> >>>>
> >>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
> >>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
> >>>>      The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
> >>>>
> >>>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used,
> though,
> >>>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
> >>>>
> >>>>      Noel
> >>> Hi Noel,
> >>>
> >>> Yes, good detective work.  There's lots of information in contractor
> >>> reports.  At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
> >>> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.   Much of the
> >>> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not
> captured
> >>> in Jon's minutes.
> >>>
> >>> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
> >>> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.  The reports went to
> >>> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
> >>> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.  For
> >>> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
> >>> reports.   But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
> >>> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
> >>> various Internet meetings.   I still haven't seen more than a handful
> of
> >>> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
> >>>
> >>> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and
> related
> >>> contracts in our part of BBN.   That meant I became the "author" of the
> >>> BBN reports.  Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
> >>> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
> >>> quarter.   Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
> >>> getting documentation out of an engineer.  For many of our contracts,
> >>> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.   Until the
> >>> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
> >>>
> >>> BTW, re C/30 et al.  Internet History has probably never been told
> about
> >>> that part of the history:
> >>>
> >>> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
> >>> Microprogrammable Building Block.  As the name implies, the hardware
> was
> >>> microprogrammable.  The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
> >>> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed
> >>> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
> >>> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
> >>> that ran on it.
> >>>
> >>> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but
> with
> >>> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.  The MBB microcode
> >>> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
> >>> was the language used by the Unix OS.
> >>>
> >>> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell
> Unix
> >>> boxes to the world.   Competing with DEC was probably always a bad
> idea,
> >>> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
> >>> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
> >>> Didn't even have to change the logo.
> >>>
> >>> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
> >>>
> >>> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
> >>> reports from others.  For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN
> MBB"
> >>> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
> >>> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf   -- which
> >>> even found bugs in the microcode.  Another timeline bit in that report
> -
> >>> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for
> the
> >>> Host/IMP interface.
> >>>
> >>
> >> --
> >> 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
> >
> --
> 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
>
>

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


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Sun Sep 28 23:10:03 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 06:10:03 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <995475114.1714869.1759126203485@mail.yahoo.com>

 ?I am not sure in Germany you had an option.? I think you had to use x.25 to get the physical connection between sites. I could be very wrong about this though. (The US army may have also already selected to use x.25 to connect sites.) . As a reminder I was helping Cisco debug their AGS router with x.25? when I was in Germany. BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
In my memory I only associate PSN as an IMP.,? sorta like a router was originally called a gateway.?
Ppbarbara

    On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 03:14:41 PM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Hi Barbara,

X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.?? ARPA had funded lots of 
computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 
interfaces.?? But there were lots of other computers used outside the 
research environment.? X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and 
computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface 
for their products than an 1822 interface.

I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly 
connecting routers with wires.? Part of an X.25 interface was the basic 
physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just 
interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface 
with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.

At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic 
"network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.? A wire was 
effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers 
- "this end" and "the other end".? We actually tried connecting two 
gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked 
fine.

At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN 
System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various 
meetings.?? One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN 
could use their products.? After the pitch, everyone turned to me and 
the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".?? I think they expected me to 
say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.? 
But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."?? They got a testbed 
running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and 
SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.? BTW, 
that startup was Cisco Systems.

I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched 
Node.? My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI 
vision which had become very popular.? IMP stood for Interface Message 
Processor but that name was always confusing.? I remember there was an 
IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had 
come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?? 
BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message 
Processor"? (read the last three words carefully).?? There's a writeup 
at 
https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/

It was an interesting time.

Jack

On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>? Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).? It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers? but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
> barbara
>? ? ? On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>? 
>? On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>? ? ? ? > From: Jack Haverty
>>
>>? ? ? ? > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>>? ? ? ? > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil
>>
>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>>
>>? ? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>>? ? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>>? ? ? Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>>? ? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>>? ? ? The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>>? ? ? https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>>
>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>>
>>? ??? Noel
> Hi Noel,
>
> Yes, good detective work.? There's lots of information in contractor
> reports.? At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.?? Much of the
> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
> in Jon's minutes.
>
> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.? The reports went to
> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.? For
> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
> reports.?? But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
> various Internet meetings.?? I still haven't seen more than a handful of
> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>
> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
> contracts in our part of BBN.?? That meant I became the "author" of the
> BBN reports.? Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
> quarter.?? Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
> getting documentation out of an engineer.? For many of our contracts,
> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.?? Until the
> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>
> BTW, re C/30 et al.? Internet History has probably never been told about
> that part of the history:
>
> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
> Microprogrammable Building Block.? As the name implies, the hardware was
> microprogrammable.? The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
> exactly like a Honeywell 316.? So the same code that had been developed
> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
> that ran on it.
>
> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.? The MBB microcode
> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>
> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
> boxes to the world.?? Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>
> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>
> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
> reports from others.? For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf?? -- which
> even found bugs in the microcode.? Another timeline bit in that report -
> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
> Host/IMP interface.

  

From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Sep 29 01:28:52 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 04:28:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] when did ARPANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
Message-ID: <20250929082852.E5F2018C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: James J Dempsey

    > I'm pretty sure that TIPs did NCP and TACs did TCP/IP.

Another example of why historians are catious about relying preferentially on
human memory: that's wrong. From the "TAC Functional Specification":

  https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/tr/ADA085459/index.html

 5.2 PROTOCOL Command
 The PROTOCOL command is used to select which host-to-host
 protocol the TAC should use ... Its syntax is as follows: 
 PROTOCOL TCP
 or
 PROTOCOL NCP

You are correct that TIPs would have been obsolete after the flag day - which
is why... 

    > It may very well be that all TACs were MBB-based.

I already discussed this; it appears that all the H516-based TIPs were
converted to TACS. One of the QTRs (previously-cited) talked about initially
demonstrating the TAC code on a TIP; and the MIT-TIP was definitely converted
to MIT-TAC. I'm pretty sure MIT _never_ had an MBB-based TAC; just the three
MBB-based IMPs.

	Noel


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Sep 29 02:15:39 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 05:15:39 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
Message-ID: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Barbara Denny

    > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have
    > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.

This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested in
researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these events...

My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
_and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)


Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used _inside_
Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C Gateway),
and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing system
(a TOPS-20, IIRC).

We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of PC's/routers;
common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.) A
year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)

I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for it
had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that ever
got moved to Stanford.)

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...

	Noel


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Sep 29 04:20:27 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 07:20:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] when did ARPANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
Message-ID: <20250929112027.DF40718C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > I already discussed this; it appears that all the H516-based TIPs

Duhh. The TIPs used H316's, not H516's. I keep getting confused by the fact
that the 516 came out _before_ the 316.

	Noel


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Sep 29 05:35:37 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:35:37 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <bdd012a2-f47a-484f-b128-920da12544de@dcrocker.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <bdd012a2-f47a-484f-b128-920da12544de@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <40629BE5-1A41-435F-9DF2-BB9696C80727@comcast.net>

The difference between a democratic standards committee and an authoritarian standards committee.

> On Sep 28, 2025, at 19:29, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> (reposted, to the the table included.)
> 
> On 9/28/2025 4:13 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
> 
> That sounds reasonable, except for TP0, TP1, TP2, and TP3.
> 
> Feature name                    TP0     TP1     TP2     TP3     TP4
> Connection-oriented network     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Connectionless network           No     No       No      No     Yes
> Concatenation and separation     No     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Segmentation and reassembly     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Error recovery                   No     Yes     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Reinitiate connectiona           No     Yes      No     Yes      No
> Multiplexing / demultiplexing over single virtual circuit     
>                                  No      No     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Explicit flow control            No      No     Yes     Yes     Yes
> Retransmission on timeout        No      No     No       No     Yes
> Reliable transport service       No     Yes     No      Yes     Yes
> and the various CONS alternatives to CLNP.
> 
> OSI went for the union of everybody's wish lista.  The Internet went for the intersection.
> 
> d/
> 
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> 
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Sep 29 05:40:21 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:40:21 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <CAEf-zrg1nAj09oUi0hkqBhUAfiVWH2a3MG3-tyE2RG4mu4L3KA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <15632839-1e8e-4ca6-9646-6b5beaf4e84d@gmail.com>
 <CAEf-zrg1nAj09oUi0hkqBhUAfiVWH2a3MG3-tyE2RG4mu4L3KA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <47A166E6-04B1-4001-8893-FF88092C56F1@comcast.net>

Yes, the PTTs went for protocol translation which is what the did traditionally, which everyone knew could be a really messy ugly n^2 problem.  Whereas, in 1972 when INWG was formed, Pouzin pointed out that by changing the name of the Transport Layer to Internet Transport Layer and treating it as an overlay, the problem disappeared. All the individual networks had to do was support the minimal service assumed by the Internet Transport Layer.

John

> On Sep 29, 2025, at 01:30, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff at iconia.com> wrote:
> 
> another aspect of "The PTT vision" was that of different type/kind of "split with respect to "settlements" for "the connection time, distance and characters transmitted" where indeed "the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split" the X.25/X.75 networks divvied up/"shared" the "loot" between them -- just like was done for long distance toll calls between intra country carriers/regions as well as inter country/internationally...  
> 
> it's worth additionally noting that there was an "attempt" to "import" (a polite way of putting it :) and implement the PPT intercarrier revenue "settlements" splitting into/into the Internet with/by ANS CO+RE..., viz.:
> 
> Data Network Raises Monopoly Fear
> By JOHN MARKOFF
> The New York Times
> December 19, 1991
> http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/business/data-network-raises-monopoly-fear.html
> 
> g
> 
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 6:00?PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> The PTT vision was based on a monopoly charging for connection time, distance and characters transmitted. X.25 plus X.75 fitted that vision well. Remember that there was a long period during which Judge Greene's ruling applied in the US, but the traditional monopolies were still in place in Europe (and Asia). That's why US GOSIP was so different from European GOSIP, so OSI was split into two visions. The main attraction of the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split.
>> 
>> Regards/Ng? mihi
>>     Brian Carpenter
>> 
>> On 29-Sep-25 12:13, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>> > I am sorry Jack, but X.25 was the bane of OSI forced on it by the PTTs. It was part of PTT vision, but everyone knew it was a dead-end and had been since 1976, when it first appeared. It epitomized what was wrong with PTT-think. They had no clue about networking and still don?t.
>> > 
>> > The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
>> > 
>> > Take care,
>> > John
>> > 
>> >> On Sep 28, 2025, at 18:14, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi Barbara,
>> >>
>> >> X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.   ARPA had funded lots of computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 interfaces.   But there were lots of other computers used outside the research environment.  X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface for their products than an 1822 interface.
>> >>
>> >> I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly connecting routers with wires.  Part of an X.25 interface was the basic physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.
>> >>
>> >> At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic "network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.  A wire was effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers - "this end" and "the other end".  We actually tried connecting two gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked fine.
>> >>
>> >> At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various meetings.   One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN could use their products.  After the pitch, everyone turned to me and the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".   I think they expected me to say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.  But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."   They got a testbed running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.  BTW, that startup was Cisco Systems.
>> >>
>> >> I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched Node.  My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI vision which had become very popular.  IMP stood for Interface Message Processor but that name was always confusing.  I remember there was an IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?  BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message Processor"  (read the last three words carefully).   There's a writeup at https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/
>> >>
>> >> It was an interesting time.
>> >>
>> >> Jack
>> >>
>> >> On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> >>>   Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
>> >>> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).  It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers  but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
>> >>> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
>> >>> barbara
>> >>>      On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>> >>>     On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>> >>>>        > From: Jack Haverty
>> >>>>
>> >>>>        > Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>> >>>>        > submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil <http://discover.dtic.mil/>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>> >>>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>> >>>>      Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>> >>>>      The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>> >>>>      https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>> >>>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>      Noel
>> >>> Hi Noel,
>> >>>
>> >>> Yes, good detective work.  There's lots of information in contractor
>> >>> reports.  At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
>> >>> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.   Much of the
>> >>> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
>> >>> in Jon's minutes.
>> >>>
>> >>> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
>> >>> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.  The reports went to
>> >>> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
>> >>> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.  For
>> >>> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
>> >>> reports.   But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
>> >>> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
>> >>> various Internet meetings.   I still haven't seen more than a handful of
>> >>> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>> >>>
>> >>> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
>> >>> contracts in our part of BBN.   That meant I became the "author" of the
>> >>> BBN reports.  Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
>> >>> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
>> >>> quarter.   Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
>> >>> getting documentation out of an engineer.  For many of our contracts,
>> >>> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.   Until the
>> >>> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>> >>>
>> >>> BTW, re C/30 et al.  Internet History has probably never been told about
>> >>> that part of the history:
>> >>>
>> >>> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
>> >>> Microprogrammable Building Block.  As the name implies, the hardware was
>> >>> microprogrammable.  The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
>> >>> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed
>> >>> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
>> >>> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
>> >>> that ran on it.
>> >>>
>> >>> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
>> >>> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.  The MBB microcode
>> >>> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
>> >>> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>> >>>
>> >>> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
>> >>> boxes to the world.   Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
>> >>> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
>> >>> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
>> >>> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>> >>>
>> >>> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>> >>>
>> >>> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
>> >>> reports from others.  For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
>> >>> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
>> >>> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf   -- which
>> >>> even found bugs in the microcode.  Another timeline bit in that report -
>> >>> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
>> >>> Host/IMP interface.
>> >>>    
>> >>
>> >> -- 
>> >> Internet-history mailing list
>> >> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> >> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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>> > 
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
> living as The Truth is True
> 



From galmes at tamu.edu  Mon Sep 29 05:50:19 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:50:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>

Noel,
   There are many on this list that were in/about Stanford during the 
mid/late 1980s, so I'll try to be cautious.
   It should first be noted that cisco (originally with no capital C) 
was just Len and Sandy doing whatever consulting/whatever they were 
doing while also working at Stanford.  I believe they had a PDP-10ish 
(TOPS-20?) system at home to use in that consulting work.
   You allude to Len's work supporting systems at Stanford.
   I believe that he (at least eventually) also worked on the routers 
(then usually called gateways) being built as part of the Stanford 
University Network (i.e., SUN) project.  As hardware, the SUN gateway 
was basically identical to the original SUN workstation (both built as 
part of that SUN project).
   The story of how the workstations were "spun off" into Sun 
Microsystems and the gateways were "spun off" into Cisco is complicated 
and worth understanding.
   My first in-person visit to cisco was in early 1987, by which time 
cisco was a handful of people working out of rented space on the 2nd 
floor of an office building in Menlo Park.
   It was so small.  Their "board room" had a table, a few chairs, and a 
map of the world.
   Len had evidently thoroughly received your message about the router 
business being important and he was all in.

   I believe that the original cisco gateway/router was essentially the 
SUN gateway with some additional cisco code.  I suspect that the 
multiprotocol part and the terminal concentrator part came for free with 
the SUN gateway code base.
   While it is true that cisco benefited from that SUN gateway code 
base, it's also true that the cisco folks worked very hard.  Even within 
the IP router functionality, they quickly supported their proprietary 
IGRP along with RIP and the Hello Protocol (from Dave Mills' Fuzzball 
gateway project which was used in the 56-kbps prototype NSFnet backbone).

   Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described 
here took place?
   For all its messiness, the history of how cisco was in a position to 
produce its routers by 1987 was important to how several of the the 
NSFnet regional networks and other late-1980s Internet components grew.

   Regards,
	-- Guy

On 9/29/25 5:15 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>  
>      > From: Barbara Denny
> 
>      > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have
>      > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
> 
> This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested in
> researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these events...
> 
> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
> 
> 
> Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used _inside_
> Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
> gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
> terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C Gateway),
> and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing system
> (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
> 
> We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
> going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of PC's/routers;
> common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.) A
> year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
> 
> I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for it
> had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that ever
> got moved to Stanford.)
> 
> A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
> 
> 	Noel
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
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> 



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Sep 29 05:53:13 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:53:13 -0400
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <47A166E6-04B1-4001-8893-FF88092C56F1@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <15632839-1e8e-4ca6-9646-6b5beaf4e84d@gmail.com>
 <CAEf-zrg1nAj09oUi0hkqBhUAfiVWH2a3MG3-tyE2RG4mu4L3KA@mail.gmail.com>
 <47A166E6-04B1-4001-8893-FF88092C56F1@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <8697078C-4ABB-4D28-8A25-9CD567872F0F@comcast.net>

I should have added. Along the lines of Geoff?s comment. The PTTs didn?t want the simple solution, because they had great plans for value-added services ?in the network.? Videotex, minitel, were examples. Today we would say ?in the cloud.? ?in the network? became a dog whistle for no Transport Layer.

This is why they were so adamantly against a Transport Layer of any kind. It would seal them off to just delivering bits. Of course, they could still do their ?value-added services,? but it wouldn?t be within their monopoly and they didn?t see any reason to have to compete with anyone.

> On Sep 29, 2025, at 08:40, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Yes, the PTTs went for protocol translation which is what the did traditionally, which everyone knew could be a really messy ugly n^2 problem.  Whereas, in 1972 when INWG was formed, Pouzin pointed out that by changing the name of the Transport Layer to Internet Transport Layer and treating it as an overlay, the problem disappeared. All the individual networks had to do was support the minimal service assumed by the Internet Transport Layer.
> 
> John
> 
>> On Sep 29, 2025, at 01:30, the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff at iconia.com> wrote:
>> 
>> another aspect of "The PTT vision" was that of different type/kind of "split with respect to "settlements" for "the connection time, distance and characters transmitted" where indeed "the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split" the X.25/X.75 networks divvied up/"shared" the "loot" between them -- just like was done for long distance toll calls between intra country carriers/regions as well as inter country/internationally...  
>> 
>> it's worth additionally noting that there was an "attempt" to "import" (a polite way of putting it :) and implement the PPT intercarrier revenue "settlements" splitting into/into the Internet with/by ANS CO+RE..., viz.:
>> 
>> Data Network Raises Monopoly Fear
>> By JOHN MARKOFF
>> The New York Times
>> December 19, 1991
>> http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/business/data-network-raises-monopoly-fear.html
>> 
>> g
>> 
>> On Sun, Sep 28, 2025 at 6:00?PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>> The PTT vision was based on a monopoly charging for connection time, distance and characters transmitted. X.25 plus X.75 fitted that vision well. Remember that there was a long period during which Judge Greene's ruling applied in the US, but the traditional monopolies were still in place in Europe (and Asia). That's why US GOSIP was so different from European GOSIP, so OSI was split into two visions. The main attraction of the TCP/IP suite was that it did not include such a split.
>>> 
>>> Regards/Ng? mihi
>>>    Brian Carpenter
>>> 
>>> On 29-Sep-25 12:13, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> I am sorry Jack, but X.25 was the bane of OSI forced on it by the PTTs. It was part of PTT vision, but everyone knew it was a dead-end and had been since 1976, when it first appeared. It epitomized what was wrong with PTT-think. They had no clue about networking and still don?t.
>>>> 
>>>> The OSI vision was, if anything, Ethernet (an ISO standard), CLNP, TP4, and ACSE.
>>>> 
>>>> Take care,
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sep 28, 2025, at 18:14, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Barbara,
>>>>> 
>>>>> X.25 made it easier to connect hosts to IMPs.   ARPA had funded lots of computers used in the research community to have someone build 1822 interfaces.   But there were lots of other computers used outside the research environment.  X.25 was a key part of the OSI vision, and computer manufacturers were much more likely to create an X.25 interface for their products than an 1822 interface.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I don't think this really affected the choice of IMPs versus directly connecting routers with wires.  Part of an X.25 interface was the basic physical connection for a wire, and it was straightforward to just interconnect routers with a wire by using that same physical interface with no X.25 connection management sofware needed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> At one point at BBN we noticed that a wire was really just a very basic "network" that could be used to interconnect gateways.  A wire was effectively a "class F" network with just 2 possible attached computers - "this end" and "the other end".  We actually tried connecting two gateways together with a wire instead of using the ARPANET and it worked fine.
>>>>> 
>>>>> At one point (can't remember exactly when) I was responsible for "DDN System Engineering", and frequently got called to Washington for various meetings.   One of them was to hear some startup's pitch for how DDN could use their products.  After the pitch, everyone turned to me and the guy in charge asked "Will this work?".   I think they expected me to say it was a silly idea and they really needed to use BBN's solutions.  But, as a DDN consultant, I said "Yes, it should."   They got a testbed running, and the startup no doubt realized the same thing that we (and SRI later) did - you didn't really need the IMP in the picture.  BTW, that startup was Cisco Systems.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm not sure when I first heard PSN as the acronym for Packet Switched Node.  My recollection is that the terminology came out of the OSI vision which had become very popular.  IMP stood for Interface Message Processor but that name was always confusing.  I remember there was an IMP somewhere with a clipping pasted on its front panel -- a message had come in from a US government Senator, congratulating someone (ARPA?  BBN?) on their successful creation of the "Interfaith Message Processor"  (read the last three words carefully).   There's a writeup at https://foxmancommunications.com/the-interfaith-message-processor-and-the-tower-of-babel/
>>>>> 
>>>>> It was an interesting time.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jack
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 9/28/25 12:19, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>>  Do you think the obsolescence of 1822 in favor of X.25 just made it easier to get rid of IMPs in the networks?
>>>>>> I am thinking about the military testbed for USAREUR where I think the original deployment had CXXs (don't remember if it had C30s or C70s but leaning towards C30s).  It was deployed in that timeframe. It originally had IMPs and Cisco AGS routers  but I think SRI pulled the IMPs and just used the routers very soon after it was originally installed.
>>>>>> BTW, what is the story for replacing the IMP term for PSN (Packet Switching Node) and when was this done?
>>>>>> barbara
>>>>>>     On Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 10:08:29 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>    On 9/28/25 06:31, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>>>> From: Jack Haverty
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Much of this history was probably well-documented in the reports
>>>>>>>> submitted by BBN ... It may be available on discover.dtic.mil <http://discover.dtic.mil/>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I took your suggeation, and turned up an answer to one question: there
>>>>>>> were C/30-based TACs, as well as one-time-TIP-based TACs.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>     Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 22
>>>>>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA104931.pdf
>>>>>>>     Combined Quarterly Technical Report No. 23
>>>>>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA108783.pdf
>>>>>>>     The DDN (Defense Data Network) Course
>>>>>>>     https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA173472.pdf
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I found nothing about what physical interface any of them used, though,
>>>>>>> but I'll bet it was an 1822.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>     Noel
>>>>>> Hi Noel,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yes, good detective work.  There's lots of information in contractor
>>>>>> reports.  At every Internet Meeting there were a lot of contractors, so
>>>>>> the reports from each were limited to 15 minutes or so.   Much of the
>>>>>> detail wasn't even presented in the meetings, and of course not captured
>>>>>> in Jon's minutes.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There's lots of technical detail in those old reports that probably
>>>>>> should have been issued also as RFCs or IENs.  The reports went to
>>>>>> various parts of the government, and to the people inside BBN who had
>>>>>> worked on the projects, but probably not much beyond those groups.  For
>>>>>> example, I assume all the other ARPA contractors had to submit similar
>>>>>> reports.   But I don't recall ever seeing a report from SRI, MIT, UCLA,
>>>>>> Linkabit, Collins, or any of the other contractors who attended the
>>>>>> various Internet meetings.   I still haven't seen more than a handful of
>>>>>> non-BBN reports, but I suspect some might be in DTIC.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> At some point I was given responsibility for all of the ARPA and related
>>>>>> contracts in our part of BBN.   That meant I became the "author" of the
>>>>>> BBN reports.  Pragmatically what it meant was that I had to badger all
>>>>>> of the project leaders to write down what their teams did during the
>>>>>> quarter.   Getting blood out of a stone would have been easier than
>>>>>> getting documentation out of an engineer.  For many of our contracts,
>>>>>> the only required deliverables were the Quarterly Reports.   Until the
>>>>>> Report was submitted, the government wouldn't pay the bill.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> BTW, re C/30 et al.  Internet History has probably never been told about
>>>>>> that part of the history:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The C/30 hardware was based on a BBN project called the MBB -
>>>>>> Microprogrammable Building Block.  As the name implies, the hardware was
>>>>>> microprogrammable.  The C/30 microcode was designed to make an MBB look
>>>>>> exactly like a Honeywell 316.  So the same code that had been developed
>>>>>> for the 316-based IMPs (or TIPs) would also run on a C/30.
>>>>>> Effectively, a C/30 looked exactly like a Honeywell 316 to the software
>>>>>> that ran on it.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Similarly, a C/70 was a Unix minicomputer also built on an MBB, but with
>>>>>> an interface to disk storage and probably more RAM.  The MBB microcode
>>>>>> used for a C/70 was optimized for code written in the C language, which
>>>>>> was the language used by the Unix OS.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> BBNCC started life as BBN Computer Corporation, with a plan to sell Unix
>>>>>> boxes to the world.   Competing with DEC was probably always a bad idea,
>>>>>> so later BBNCC became BBN Communications Corporation, selling IMPs to
>>>>>> the marketplace as ARPANET clones, and a few C/70s operating as NOCs.
>>>>>> Didn't even have to change the logo.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There was also a C/60, but I can't remember what it did.....
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There's probably lots of detail in other old BBN reports, as well as
>>>>>> reports from others.  For example, I just searched in DTIC for "BBN MBB"
>>>>>> and found this discussion about formal verification of the C/30
>>>>>> microcode:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA510573.pdf   -- which
>>>>>> even found bugs in the microcode.  Another timeline bit in that report -
>>>>>> the 1822 interface was obsolete on DDN by 1986, in favor of X.25 for the
>>>>>> Host/IMP interface.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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>>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com <mailto:Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com>
>> living as The Truth is True
>> 
> 
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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Sep 29 08:04:35 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:04:35 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs
In-Reply-To: <40629BE5-1A41-435F-9DF2-BB9696C80727@comcast.net>
References: <20250928133139.5584B18C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <e6f6048c-aae0-4171-a6f0-820962e9b75a@3kitty.org>
 <707932137.1614965.1759087188435@mail.yahoo.com>
 <69591a41-cec7-4924-af07-f578258d4298@3kitty.org>
 <12EAF17B-EDEF-4B01-8244-F0A8305C9A70@comcast.net>
 <bdd012a2-f47a-484f-b128-920da12544de@dcrocker.net>
 <40629BE5-1A41-435F-9DF2-BB9696C80727@comcast.net>
Message-ID: <a9fd852e-bfb0-4ea9-bf11-5dd2358aef80@dcrocker.net>

On 9/29/2025 5:35 AM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> The difference between a democratic standards committee and an authoritarian standards committee.


Not sure what the manifestation of 'authoritarian' is, in that 
environment.? Perhaps the selection differences between being able to 
participate in one, versus the other? But while ITU-based participation 
rules are especially strict, I've understood ISO's to be more open.? Not 
as open as the IETF's of course, but still...

Also, there are decision-making differences within their processes.? 
Requiring unanimity vs. 'rough' consensus.

d/


-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From craig at tereschau.net  Mon Sep 29 09:24:31 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:24:31 -0600
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4Cenms9BXGQZse04Y5TFszCgNiwMy0xUTZGZBR6p4S6K0w@mail.gmail.com>

Like Guy and Noel, I'll try to be careful here.  Like Guy, I spent time in
the first cisco office (2nd floor of a building though my recollection is
that it was actually in East Palo Alto by a few feet).

The "SUN" machine on which the first cisco routers were based was a
Motorola 68000 CPU on a Multibus chassis.  A notable aspect of cisco's
early days was their willingness to (1) support any link that you could get
a Multibus card for (I think Greg Satz spent his first two years just
writing new drivers :-)); and (2) a willingness to deal with repackaging
what was a fairly common architecture in any way a paying customer wanted
-- I remember Len, c. 1988, proudly showing off a router in a hard-sided
briefcase they'd built for a customer.  In short, aggressively "connect
anything, any way you want".

Another note, based on a conversation I had with Dan Lynch at the time.
Many 1980s Silicon Valley startups that grew swiftly had CEO challenges as
they hit various logistical/organization challenges that come with scaling
to larger cash flows and employee bases.  Cisco was one of the first
companies to decide to address that problem by having CEOs for stages: I
don't know who picked Bill Graves as the first CEO, but Dan told me c. 1991
that Morgridge  (CEO as of 1988) was brought in to take cisco to a certain
size and that Chamber's hiring in 1990 was to put in place the person to
take over once that size was reached and, indeed, Chambers became CEO in
1995.

Craig

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:50?AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Noel,
>    There are many on this list that were in/about Stanford during the
> mid/late 1980s, so I'll try to be cautious.
>    It should first be noted that cisco (originally with no capital C)
> was just Len and Sandy doing whatever consulting/whatever they were
> doing while also working at Stanford.  I believe they had a PDP-10ish
> (TOPS-20?) system at home to use in that consulting work.
>    You allude to Len's work supporting systems at Stanford.
>    I believe that he (at least eventually) also worked on the routers
> (then usually called gateways) being built as part of the Stanford
> University Network (i.e., SUN) project.  As hardware, the SUN gateway
> was basically identical to the original SUN workstation (both built as
> part of that SUN project).
>    The story of how the workstations were "spun off" into Sun
> Microsystems and the gateways were "spun off" into Cisco is complicated
> and worth understanding.
>    My first in-person visit to cisco was in early 1987, by which time
> cisco was a handful of people working out of rented space on the 2nd
> floor of an office building in Menlo Park.
>    It was so small.  Their "board room" had a table, a few chairs, and a
> map of the world.
>    Len had evidently thoroughly received your message about the router
> business being important and he was all in.
>
>    I believe that the original cisco gateway/router was essentially the
> SUN gateway with some additional cisco code.  I suspect that the
> multiprotocol part and the terminal concentrator part came for free with
> the SUN gateway code base.
>    While it is true that cisco benefited from that SUN gateway code
> base, it's also true that the cisco folks worked very hard.  Even within
> the IP router functionality, they quickly supported their proprietary
> IGRP along with RIP and the Hello Protocol (from Dave Mills' Fuzzball
> gateway project which was used in the 56-kbps prototype NSFnet backbone).
>
>    Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
> here took place?
>    For all its messiness, the history of how cisco was in a position to
> produce its routers by 1987 was important to how several of the the
> NSFnet regional networks and other late-1980s Internet components grew.
>
>    Regards,
>         -- Guy
>
> On 9/29/25 5:15 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >      > From: Barbara Denny
> >
> >      > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I
> have
> >      > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
> >
> > This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested
> in
> > researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these
> events...
> >
> > My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol
> router
> > _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> > terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior
> work
> > at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> > concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> > prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> > concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
> >
> >
> > Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used
> _inside_
> > Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
> > gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
> > terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C
> Gateway),
> > and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing
> system
> > (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
> >
> > We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
> > going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of
> PC's/routers;
> > common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.)
> A
> > year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
> >
> > I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for
> it
> > had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that
> ever
> > got moved to Stanford.)
> >
> > A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
> >
> >       Noel
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/
> > internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!
> >
> FOq7ARmh3R5FLKhc2eyCuJYLxR8lK2MnMYlxksTy0TpE61eZrCwUo1PuzzGsIPac9GIXtKFSr-1Gb5CSz0SWkfGKl5sYOw$
> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!FOq7ARmh3R5FLKhc2eyCuJYLxR8lK2MnMYlxksTy0TpE61eZrCwUo1PuzzGsIPac9GIXtKFSr-1Gb5CSz0SWkfGKl5sYOw$
> >
> > -
> > Unsubscribe:https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/
> > form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?
> > The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!
> > KwNVnqRv!
> >
> FOq7ARmh3R5FLKhc2eyCuJYLxR8lK2MnMYlxksTy0TpE61eZrCwUo1PuzzGsIPac9GIXtKFSr-1Gb5CSz0SWkfE9NItsuw$
> <
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The*20list*20to*20be*20unsubscribed*20from=Internet-history__;JSUlJSU!!KwNVnqRv!FOq7ARmh3R5FLKhc2eyCuJYLxR8lK2MnMYlxksTy0TpE61eZrCwUo1PuzzGsIPac9GIXtKFSr-1Gb5CSz0SWkfE9NItsuw$
> >
> >
>
> --
> 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
>


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


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 11:07:22 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:07:22 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <707744092.1955089.1759169242949@mail.yahoo.com>

 I think the terminal work was slightly later when Bill Westfield arrived at Cisco (Bill had also worked at SRI).? I think the first product was something more like a board but that part of my memory is very foggy and what I am recalling certainly might not be right.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 02:15:47 AM PDT, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 ? ? > From: Barbara Denny

? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have
? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.

This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested in
researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these events...

My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
_and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)


Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used _inside_
Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C Gateway),
and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing system
(a TOPS-20, IIRC).

We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of PC's/routers;
common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.) A
year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)

I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for it
had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that ever
got moved to Stanford.)

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...

??? Noel
-- 
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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 11:18:17 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:18:17 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <55CC8103-3E7D-47B9-AF7B-58A87E1F0CAA@tony.li>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <707744092.1955089.1759169242949@mail.yahoo.com>
 <55CC8103-3E7D-47B9-AF7B-58A87E1F0CAA@tony.li>
Message-ID: <313964639.1970326.1759169897466@mail.yahoo.com>

 Thanks Toni.? That sounds right.??
I know len was/is very much into the DEC-10.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 11:12:12 AM PDT, Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li> wrote:  
 
 
Hi,

I?m unable to write to the I-H mailing list.? Please forward this if you like:

I believe that the first product was an Ethernet card for the DEC-10.

T


> On Sep 29, 2025, at 11:07?AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I think the terminal work was slightly later when Bill Westfield arrived at Cisco (Bill had also worked at SRI).? I think the first product was something more like a board but that part of my memory is very foggy and what I am recalling certainly might not be right.
> barbara
>? ? On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 02:15:47 AM PDT, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
> 
>? ? > From: Barbara Denny
> 
>? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have
>? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
> 
> This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested in
> researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these events...
> 
> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
> 
> 
> Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used _inside_
> Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
> gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
> terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C Gateway),
> and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing system
> (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
> 
> We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
> going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of PC's/routers;
> common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.) A
> year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
> 
> I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for it
> had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that ever
> got moved to Stanford.)
> 
> A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
> 
>? ? Noel
> -- 
> 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
> 
> -- 
> 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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 11:20:07 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:20:07 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Fw: Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <55CC8103-3E7D-47B9-AF7B-58A87E1F0CAA@tony.li>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <707744092.1955089.1759169242949@mail.yahoo.com>
 <55CC8103-3E7D-47B9-AF7B-58A87E1F0CAA@tony.li>
Message-ID: <1024170184.1958029.1759170007993@mail.yahoo.com>

 

   ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li>To: barbara denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Cc: Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>Sent: Monday, September 29, 2025 at 11:12:12 AM PDTSubject: Re: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs)
 
Hi,

I?m unable to write to the I-H mailing list.? Please forward this if you like:

I believe that the first product was an Ethernet card for the DEC-10.

T


> On Sep 29, 2025, at 11:07?AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I think the terminal work was slightly later when Bill Westfield arrived at Cisco (Bill had also worked at SRI).? I think the first product was something more like a board but that part of my memory is very foggy and what I am recalling certainly might not be right.
> barbara
>? ? On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 02:15:47 AM PDT, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
> 
>? ? > From: Barbara Denny
> 
>? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I have
>? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
> 
> This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested in
> researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these events...
> 
> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
> 
> 
> Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used _inside_
> Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
> gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
> terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C Gateway),
> and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing system
> (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
> 
> We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
> going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of PC's/routers;
> common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.) A
> year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
> 
> I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for it
> had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that ever
> got moved to Stanford.)
> 
> A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
> 
>? ? Noel

> 
> -- 
> 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 jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Sep 29 11:28:01 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 11:28:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <71c2fde8-d826-479f-a289-5c5400594ea9@3kitty.org>

Perhaps a cisco terminal concentrator was descended from the TIU 
(Terminal Interface Unit) which I recall was created by Stanford/SRI?

The TIU was in common use in ARPA projects in the early 1980s, along 
with the SRI PE (Port Expander) which allowed a site to put additional 
TCP-only computers on the ARPANET but use only a single IMP port.? I've 
always wondered if any of SRI's work somehow migrated into commercial 
products.

Lots of TIU artifacts are online (at your MIT site!), including the code.

/Jack

On 9/29/25 02:15, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
>

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From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 11:44:50 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:44:50 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <71c2fde8-d826-479f-a289-5c5400594ea9@3kitty.org>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <71c2fde8-d826-479f-a289-5c5400594ea9@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <6874392.1989382.1759171490328@mail.yahoo.com>

 The TIU and port expander were developed in the Telecommunications Science Center(TSC) under Don Nielson at SRI.? ?Greg Satz and I were in TSC.? Bill Westfield was always in a different group at SRI as far as I know.? I am pretty sure Greg and Bill knew each other during the time they worked at SRI.? I have no recollection of the TIU being any part of the Cisco story.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 11:28:13 AM PDT, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Perhaps a cisco terminal concentrator was descended from the TIU 
(Terminal Interface Unit) which I recall was created by Stanford/SRI?

The TIU was in common use in ARPA projects in the early 1980s, along 
with the SRI PE (Port Expander) which allowed a site to put additional 
TCP-only computers on the ARPANET but use only a single IMP port.? I've 
always wondered if any of SRI's work somehow migrated into commercial 
products.

Lots of TIU artifacts are online (at your MIT site!), including the code.

/Jack

On 9/29/25 02:15, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol router
> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior work
> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
  

From mgrant at grant.org  Mon Sep 29 12:07:02 2025
From: mgrant at grant.org (Michael Grant)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:07:02 +0000
Subject: [ih] X.25
Message-ID: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>

X.25 has been mentioned a few times on this list in the context some 
IMPs could talk to other IMPs over X.25 and somehow parts of the net 
(arpanet?) were connected over X.25.

X.25 addresses were sort of like phone numbers, they don't map on to IP 
addresses (or IMP/HOST).  And data was charged per packet, per byte, and 
iirc, per connection time.  And it was connection oriented though there 
was a sort of datagram mode called "fast connect".

How was it used in the early Internet?  Was there some static file 
passed around with how to route to something and which X.25 address to 
connect to?  Or was each "link" to other IMPs treated as a point to 
point connection with some configured X.25 address?

When I was working with the OSI protocols, X.25 was somehow supposed to 
be used as a network layer but I never could imagine how that was 
supposed to work in any practical way.  CLNP has a really long address 
that you could embed an X.25 address in but it seemed senseless (if you 
used CLNP). Who would be paying for that if something got routed over 
your link!  It would cost you a fortune!

So I'm curious, how did X.25 fit into things in the early internet?  Was 
it used much?  I just never could understand how X.25 was anything like 
the Internet in the OSI world if you had an X.25 connection.

Michael Grant

From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 12:39:31 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:39:31 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4Cenms9BXGQZse04Y5TFszCgNiwMy0xUTZGZBR6p4S6K0w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <CAHQj4Cenms9BXGQZse04Y5TFszCgNiwMy0xUTZGZBR6p4S6K0w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <627273142.2004015.1759174771649@mail.yahoo.com>

 The original Cisco office was in a building in East Palo Alto.? For those who don't know about the Bay Area, East Palo Alto was not a very great neighborhood when the company started.? ?I remember mentioning to Greg once that I thought I saw bullet casings in the parking lot.? I don't think he was surprised.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 09:24:56 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Like Guy and Noel, I'll try to be careful here.? Like Guy, I spent time in
the first cisco office (2nd floor of a building though my recollection is
that it was actually in East Palo Alto by a few feet).

The "SUN" machine on which the first cisco routers were based was a
Motorola 68000 CPU on a Multibus chassis.? A notable aspect of cisco's
early days was their willingness to (1) support any link that you could get
a Multibus card for (I think Greg Satz spent his first two years just
writing new drivers :-)); and (2) a willingness to deal with repackaging
what was a fairly common architecture in any way a paying customer wanted
-- I remember Len, c. 1988, proudly showing off a router in a hard-sided
briefcase they'd built for a customer.? In short, aggressively "connect
anything, any way you want".

Another note, based on a conversation I had with Dan Lynch at the time.
Many 1980s Silicon Valley startups that grew swiftly had CEO challenges as
they hit various logistical/organization challenges that come with scaling
to larger cash flows and employee bases.? Cisco was one of the first
companies to decide to address that problem by having CEOs for stages: I
don't know who picked Bill Graves as the first CEO, but Dan told me c. 1991
that Morgridge? (CEO as of 1988) was brought in to take cisco to a certain
size and that Chamber's hiring in 1990 was to put in place the person to
take over once that size was reached and, indeed, Chambers became CEO in
1995.

Craig

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:50?AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Noel,
>? ? There are many on this list that were in/about Stanford during the
> mid/late 1980s, so I'll try to be cautious.
>? ? It should first be noted that cisco (originally with no capital C)
> was just Len and Sandy doing whatever consulting/whatever they were
> doing while also working at Stanford.? I believe they had a PDP-10ish
> (TOPS-20?) system at home to use in that consulting work.
>? ? You allude to Len's work supporting systems at Stanford.
>? ? I believe that he (at least eventually) also worked on the routers
> (then usually called gateways) being built as part of the Stanford
> University Network (i.e., SUN) project.? As hardware, the SUN gateway
> was basically identical to the original SUN workstation (both built as
> part of that SUN project).
>? ? The story of how the workstations were "spun off" into Sun
> Microsystems and the gateways were "spun off" into Cisco is complicated
> and worth understanding.
>? ? My first in-person visit to cisco was in early 1987, by which time
> cisco was a handful of people working out of rented space on the 2nd
> floor of an office building in Menlo Park.
>? ? It was so small.? Their "board room" had a table, a few chairs, and a
> map of the world.
>? ? Len had evidently thoroughly received your message about the router
> business being important and he was all in.
>
>? ? I believe that the original cisco gateway/router was essentially the
> SUN gateway with some additional cisco code.? I suspect that the
> multiprotocol part and the terminal concentrator part came for free with
> the SUN gateway code base.
>? ? While it is true that cisco benefited from that SUN gateway code
> base, it's also true that the cisco folks worked very hard.? Even within
> the IP router functionality, they quickly supported their proprietary
> IGRP along with RIP and the Hello Protocol (from Dave Mills' Fuzzball
> gateway project which was used in the 56-kbps prototype NSFnet backbone).
>
>? ? Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
> here took place?
>? ? For all its messiness, the history of how cisco was in a position to
> produce its routers by 1987 was important to how several of the the
> NSFnet regional networks and other late-1980s Internet components grew.
>
>? ? Regards,
>? ? ? ? -- Guy
>
> On 9/29/25 5:15 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >? ? ? > From: Barbara Denny
> >
> >? ? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I
> have
> >? ? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
> >
> > This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested
> in
> > researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these
> events...
> >
> > My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol
> router
> > _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
> > terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior
> work
> > at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
> > concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
> > prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
> > concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
> >
> >
> > Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used
> _inside_
> > Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
> > gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
> > terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C
> Gateway),
> > and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing
> system
> > (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
> >
> > We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
> > going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of
> PC's/routers;
> > common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.)
> A
> > year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
> >
> > I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for
> it
> > had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that
> ever
> > got moved to Stanford.)
> >
> > A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
> >
> >? ? ? Noel
> > -
  

From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Sep 29 12:48:04 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:48:04 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] X.25
In-Reply-To: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
References: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
Message-ID: <de3d4d1c-8723-4772-9390-700eb82a77bb@dcrocker.net>

On 9/29/2025 12:07 PM, Michael Grant via Internet-history wrote:
> How was it used in the early Internet?


One (Arpanet and then Internet) example was for the early stages of 
CSNet, as a dial-up path!

X.25 service, in the early 1980s, was for client/server, rather than 
peer-to-peer.? Early CSNet was strictly dial-up email exchange, as a 
gateway to Arpanet mail.? We configured use of dial-up to X.28/X.29/X.25 
services, as cheaper than regular dial-up.

CSNet had its own link layer reliable packet mechanism.? I did not 
initially worry about the size of packet the phonenet layer was using, 
compared to the X.25 packet size it ran on top of. And, of course, the 
phonenet packet was a bit larger than the X.25 packet, which effectively 
doubled our packet count.? The result was /not/ cheaper than dial-up.

I adjusted the phonenet packet size and charges got more reasonable...

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Sep 29 12:48:35 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:48:35 -0700
Subject: [ih] X.25
In-Reply-To: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
References: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
Message-ID: <8a7a2ca3-88dc-4c6f-9c05-f07f124b4c8e@3kitty.org>

Lots of info here:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA137427.pdf?? (See especially section 
1.1.2)

and here:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA206354.pdf

I don't recall if X.25 was ever used in the ARPANET, or in the public 
Internet as a way to interface to host computers.

Sometime prior to 1983 we had added an X.25 interface to the core 
gateway at BBN, which enabled it to use the public X.25/X.75 network as 
an alternate path across the Atlantic to provide connectivity between 
the US and Europe.? There was also a gateway at UCL with an X.25 
interface.? As far as I remember there were never any host computers 
using X.25 to access those gateways, but the two gateways could interact 
over the X.25 world just as they did over other networks.

The motivation for that so-called "VAN Gateway" was to allow projects in 
EU that were not ARPA-related to have connectivity to US sites on the 
ARPANET.? ARPA didn't want the SATNET resources (primarily the Intelsat 
IV-A satellite channel) to be used for non-ARPA projects.

More info here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA122596.pdf (see page 35)

At the time, the routing mechanisms of the Internet were unable to 
handle such "policy routing", but could only choose a route based on hop 
count.? IIRC, we had to use a few IP tricks to make the different types 
of traffic take the desired routes.? I think that was accomplished by 
giving some LANs in Europe two different network numbers. ? To connect 
to a host on that LAN using the SATNET route, you would use an IP 
address on the "non-ARPA" network.? To connect to a host using the X.25 
route, you would use an IP address on the ARPA network.

It was a kludge, but it worked.? It also put "policy routing" on the 
ICCB's to-do list for the next generation of routing protocols, and 
validated that X.25 could be used within the TCP/IP universe.

Jack Haverty




On 9/29/25 12:07, Michael Grant via Internet-history wrote:
> X.25 has been mentioned a few times on this list in the context some 
> IMPs could talk to other IMPs over X.25 and somehow parts of the net 
> (arpanet?) were connected over X.25.
>
> X.25 addresses were sort of like phone numbers, they don't map on to 
> IP addresses (or IMP/HOST).? And data was charged per packet, per 
> byte, and iirc, per connection time.? And it was connection oriented 
> though there was a sort of datagram mode called "fast connect".
>
> How was it used in the early Internet?? Was there some static file 
> passed around with how to route to something and which X.25 address to 
> connect to?? Or was each "link" to other IMPs treated as a point to 
> point connection with some configured X.25 address?
>
> When I was working with the OSI protocols, X.25 was somehow supposed 
> to be used as a network layer but I never could imagine how that was 
> supposed to work in any practical way.? CLNP has a really long address 
> that you could embed an X.25 address in but it seemed senseless (if 
> you used CLNP). Who would be paying for that if something got routed 
> over your link!? It would cost you a fortune!
>
> So I'm curious, how did X.25 fit into things in the early internet?? 
> Was it used much?? I just never could understand how X.25 was anything 
> like the Internet in the OSI world if you had an X.25 connection.
>
> Michael Grant

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From vgcerf at gmail.com  Mon Sep 29 13:00:50 2025
From: vgcerf at gmail.com (vinton cerf)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:00:50 -0400
Subject: [ih] X.25
In-Reply-To: <8a7a2ca3-88dc-4c6f-9c05-f07f124b4c8e@3kitty.org>
References: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
 <8a7a2ca3-88dc-4c6f-9c05-f07f124b4c8e@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <CAAFtm_VO-wEj9WLFN7trRim-j+rML_8Z60=YRfnVbkGhuH8CYQ@mail.gmail.com>

We used Internet to connect to x.25 networks. Univ Wisconsin was involved.
Larry Landerber had a lead role I believe

V

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 15:57 Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Lots of info here:
>
> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA137427.pdf   (See especially section
> 1.1.2)
>
> and here:
>
> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA206354.pdf
>
> I don't recall if X.25 was ever used in the ARPANET, or in the public
> Internet as a way to interface to host computers.
>
> Sometime prior to 1983 we had added an X.25 interface to the core
> gateway at BBN, which enabled it to use the public X.25/X.75 network as
> an alternate path across the Atlantic to provide connectivity between
> the US and Europe.  There was also a gateway at UCL with an X.25
> interface.  As far as I remember there were never any host computers
> using X.25 to access those gateways, but the two gateways could interact
> over the X.25 world just as they did over other networks.
>
> The motivation for that so-called "VAN Gateway" was to allow projects in
> EU that were not ARPA-related to have connectivity to US sites on the
> ARPANET.  ARPA didn't want the SATNET resources (primarily the Intelsat
> IV-A satellite channel) to be used for non-ARPA projects.
>
> More info here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA122596.pdf (see page
> 35)
>
> At the time, the routing mechanisms of the Internet were unable to
> handle such "policy routing", but could only choose a route based on hop
> count.  IIRC, we had to use a few IP tricks to make the different types
> of traffic take the desired routes.  I think that was accomplished by
> giving some LANs in Europe two different network numbers.   To connect
> to a host on that LAN using the SATNET route, you would use an IP
> address on the "non-ARPA" network.  To connect to a host using the X.25
> route, you would use an IP address on the ARPA network.
>
> It was a kludge, but it worked.  It also put "policy routing" on the
> ICCB's to-do list for the next generation of routing protocols, and
> validated that X.25 could be used within the TCP/IP universe.
>
> Jack Haverty
>
>
>
>
> On 9/29/25 12:07, Michael Grant via Internet-history wrote:
> > X.25 has been mentioned a few times on this list in the context some
> > IMPs could talk to other IMPs over X.25 and somehow parts of the net
> > (arpanet?) were connected over X.25.
> >
> > X.25 addresses were sort of like phone numbers, they don't map on to
> > IP addresses (or IMP/HOST).  And data was charged per packet, per
> > byte, and iirc, per connection time.  And it was connection oriented
> > though there was a sort of datagram mode called "fast connect".
> >
> > How was it used in the early Internet?  Was there some static file
> > passed around with how to route to something and which X.25 address to
> > connect to?  Or was each "link" to other IMPs treated as a point to
> > point connection with some configured X.25 address?
> >
> > When I was working with the OSI protocols, X.25 was somehow supposed
> > to be used as a network layer but I never could imagine how that was
> > supposed to work in any practical way.  CLNP has a really long address
> > that you could embed an X.25 address in but it seemed senseless (if
> > you used CLNP). Who would be paying for that if something got routed
> > over your link!  It would cost you a fortune!
> >
> > So I'm curious, how did X.25 fit into things in the early internet?
> > Was it used much?  I just never could understand how X.25 was anything
> > like the Internet in the OSI world if you had an X.25 connection.
> >
> > Michael Grant
>
> --
> 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 b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 13:03:41 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 20:03:41 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Fw: Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <703DA0D9-EC25-40CA-A24B-62A6BA91E0AA@tony.li>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <CAHQj4Cenms9BXGQZse04Y5TFszCgNiwMy0xUTZGZBR6p4S6K0w@mail.gmail.com>
 <627273142.2004015.1759174771649@mail.yahoo.com>
 <703DA0D9-EC25-40CA-A24B-62A6BA91E0AA@tony.li>
Message-ID: <1775269558.2017188.1759176221494@mail.yahoo.com>

 Tony is great to correct me (I certainly wasn't considering any time at a house).? I think the parking lot episode was the O'Brien location.? I thought it was in East Palo Alto. I never know where the borders are when I am driving around.
barbara
   ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li>To: barbara denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Cc: Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>Sent: Monday, September 29, 2025 at 12:51:19 PM PDTSubject: Re: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs)
 
Hi Barbara,

Again, I can?t post to I-H, so plesae feel free to forward.

The original cisco office was Len and Sandy?s house in Menlo Park.

The first real office building was at 1360 WIllow Rd., also in Menlo Park and strictly speaking not in EPA.? From there, the company moved to O?Brian Dr. in Menlo Park, even closer to EPA.? Gunfire was common in the neighborhood and at the time EPA was the per-capita murder capital of the US.

One January, we came back from the New Year?s holiday to find a hole in a skylight and a slug on the carpet.

We were very glad to leave that neighborhood.

T


> On Sep 29, 2025, at 12:39?PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> The original Cisco office was in a building in East Palo Alto.? For those who don't know about the Bay Area, East Palo Alto was not a very great neighborhood when the company started.? I remember mentioning to Greg once that I thought I saw bullet casings in the parking lot.? I don't think he was surprised.
> barbara
>? ? On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 09:24:56 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
> 
> Like Guy and Noel, I'll try to be careful here.? Like Guy, I spent time in
> the first cisco office (2nd floor of a building though my recollection is
> that it was actually in East Palo Alto by a few feet).
> 
> The "SUN" machine on which the first cisco routers were based was a
> Motorola 68000 CPU on a Multibus chassis.? A notable aspect of cisco's
> early days was their willingness to (1) support any link that you could get
> a Multibus card for (I think Greg Satz spent his first two years just
> writing new drivers :-)); and (2) a willingness to deal with repackaging
> what was a fairly common architecture in any way a paying customer wanted
> -- I remember Len, c. 1988, proudly showing off a router in a hard-sided
> briefcase they'd built for a customer.? In short, aggressively "connect
> anything, any way you want".
> 
> Another note, based on a conversation I had with Dan Lynch at the time.
> Many 1980s Silicon Valley startups that grew swiftly had CEO challenges as
> they hit various logistical/organization challenges that come with scaling
> to larger cash flows and employee bases.? Cisco was one of the first
> companies to decide to address that problem by having CEOs for stages: I
> don't know who picked Bill Graves as the first CEO, but Dan told me c. 1991
> that Morgridge? (CEO as of 1988) was brought in to take cisco to a certain
> size and that Chamber's hiring in 1990 was to put in place the person to
> take over once that size was reached and, indeed, Chambers became CEO in
> 1995.
> 
> Craig
> 
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:50?AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> Noel,
>>? ? There are many on this list that were in/about Stanford during the
>> mid/late 1980s, so I'll try to be cautious.
>>? ? It should first be noted that cisco (originally with no capital C)
>> was just Len and Sandy doing whatever consulting/whatever they were
>> doing while also working at Stanford.? I believe they had a PDP-10ish
>> (TOPS-20?) system at home to use in that consulting work.
>>? ? You allude to Len's work supporting systems at Stanford.
>>? ? I believe that he (at least eventually) also worked on the routers
>> (then usually called gateways) being built as part of the Stanford
>> University Network (i.e., SUN) project.? As hardware, the SUN gateway
>> was basically identical to the original SUN workstation (both built as
>> part of that SUN project).
>>? ? The story of how the workstations were "spun off" into Sun
>> Microsystems and the gateways were "spun off" into Cisco is complicated
>> and worth understanding.
>>? ? My first in-person visit to cisco was in early 1987, by which time
>> cisco was a handful of people working out of rented space on the 2nd
>> floor of an office building in Menlo Park.
>>? ? It was so small.? Their "board room" had a table, a few chairs, and a
>> map of the world.
>>? ? Len had evidently thoroughly received your message about the router
>> business being important and he was all in.
>> 
>>? ? I believe that the original cisco gateway/router was essentially the
>> SUN gateway with some additional cisco code.? I suspect that the
>> multiprotocol part and the terminal concentrator part came for free with
>> the SUN gateway code base.
>>? ? While it is true that cisco benefited from that SUN gateway code
>> base, it's also true that the cisco folks worked very hard.? Even within
>> the IP router functionality, they quickly supported their proprietary
>> IGRP along with RIP and the Hello Protocol (from Dave Mills' Fuzzball
>> gateway project which was used in the 56-kbps prototype NSFnet backbone).
>> 
>>? ? Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>> here took place?
>>? ? For all its messiness, the history of how cisco was in a position to
>> produce its routers by 1987 was important to how several of the the
>> NSFnet regional networks and other late-1980s Internet components grew.
>> 
>>? ? Regards,
>>? ? ? ? -- Guy
>> 
>> On 9/29/25 5:15 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>> 
>>>? ? ? > From: Barbara Denny
>>> 
>>>? ? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I
>> have
>>>? ? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
>>> 
>>> This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested
>> in
>>> researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these
>> events...
>>> 
>>> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol
>> router
>>> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
>>> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior
>> work
>>> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
>>> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
>>> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
>>> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used
>> _inside_
>>> Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
>>> gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
>>> terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C
>> Gateway),
>>> and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing
>> system
>>> (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
>>> 
>>> We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
>>> going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of
>> PC's/routers;
>>> common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.)
>> A
>>> year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
>>> 
>>> I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for
>> it
>>> had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that
>> ever
>>> got moved to Stanford.)
>>> 
>>> A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
>>> 
>>>? ? ? Noel


  

From jeanjour at comcast.net  Mon Sep 29 13:07:46 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:07:46 -0400
Subject: [ih] X.25
In-Reply-To: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
References: <eme908b281-787e-4088-8fc7-8d1ed3674948@b5f4bc52.com>
Message-ID: <6DAC9128-E6FE-4BAF-9270-BD21BC7370F2@comcast.net>

X.25 was never used between IMPs.

The X.25 spec was very specific: It was a DCE to DTE protocol. ;-) IOW, Host to Router, or in this case Host to IMP.  X.25 could be used to replace BBN 1822.
(DCE = Data Communicating Equipment; DTE = Data Terminating Equipment.) Don?t you love CCITT terminology!!  ;-)



> On Sep 29, 2025, at 15:07, Michael Grant via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> X.25 has been mentioned a few times on this list in the context some IMPs could talk to other IMPs over X.25 and somehow parts of the net (arpanet?) were connected over X.25.
> 
> X.25 addresses were sort of like phone numbers, they don't map on to IP addresses (or IMP/HOST).  And data was charged per packet, per byte, and iirc, per connection time.  And it was connection oriented though there was a sort of datagram mode called "fast connect".
> 
> How was it used in the early Internet?  Was there some static file passed around with how to route to something and which X.25 address to connect to?  Or was each "link" to other IMPs treated as a point to point connection with some configured X.25 address?
> 
> When I was working with the OSI protocols, X.25 was somehow supposed to be used as a network layer but I never could imagine how that was supposed to work in any practical way.  CLNP has a really long address that you could embed an X.25 address in but it seemed senseless (if you used CLNP). Who would be paying for that if something got routed over your link!  It would cost you a fortune!
> 
> So I'm curious, how did X.25 fit into things in the early internet?  Was it used much?  I just never could understand how X.25 was anything like the Internet in the OSI world if you had an X.25 connection.
> 
> Michael Grant
> -- 
> 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  Mon Sep 29 13:13:36 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:13:36 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
Message-ID: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>

One of the aspects of Internet history that is not much discussed is the 
evolution of the net to carry audio and video.

It is sad that Steve Casner died far too soon - he was a major force in 
so much of the transformation of the net into what it is today, an 
alternative to broadcast radio and TV.

(It's kinda natural that I fell into network audio/video - my 
grandfather was a fake radio maker.? He made "Pilco", not "Philco" 
radios that he sold out of the trunk of his car between NY and Boston 
during the 1930's.? And my father was involved with the development and 
deployment of color TV in the early 1950s.? And my extended family has 
always been deep into the performing arts.)

Of course there were the early experiments by SRI with the packet radio 
van driving up and down US 101. But there's not much talk about how we 
experimented with IP multicast, early implementations of audio/video and 
shared whiteboard (vic, vat, sd?? Van Jacobson and others did some 
seriously good work!)? And how Real Audio (was that the correct name?) 
kinda dominated by doing non-muliticast streaming.

Steve Casner, Chia-Chee Kuan, Scott Firestone, and I at Precept Software 
(under the direction of Judy Estrin) wrestled mightily with the 
difficulties of IP multicast, poor media clocks in sending and receiving 
devices, codecs, mpeg streams, imperfect flows of UDP packets, network 
path resource reservation [RSVP, "integrated services"].? We actually 
created something pretty good - although my retinas would leap out of 
eyes and strangle me if I ever were to watch our two test videos - Lion 
King or Blade Runner - again.

Netflix was started very close to my former office in Scotts Valley - 
and although it was not in a garage, it's space wasn't too many steps 
better than a garage.? The post office we use in Scotts Valley is rather 
large for that small city - which is probably because that post office 
handled many, perhaps all, of those red envelopes.

My wife and I did an interview with the surviving members of the first 
Internet Band, Severe Tire Damage and created a quite poor video about 
it (my wife and I are live theatre people; we knew little about cameras, 
lights, and microphones.)? It was interesting how that band and that 
interview touched matters that have become fairly major issues, such as 
copyright, permission to transmit, bandwidth consumption, and, of 
course, the Palo Alto internet party scene (which paled only to the 
Interop shownet party scene which extended from Tokyo to Santa Cruz to 
the Youghiogheny River to DC [we rented the Air and Space museum] to 
Paris.? The role of Single Malt Scotch in the history of the net is a 
topic that deserves exploration.)

Here's a link to a page with the video and commentary about Severe Tire 
Damage.? Please forgive the poor video and sound quality, we were 
neophytes at this stuff.

https://www.history-of-the-internet.org/videos/std/

For the last 30 years I've been chatting up people in the artistic 
(mostly theatre) and technical communities on ways we can transform 
Internet media to break the fourth wall and create the kind of emotional 
relationship between performance and audience that we can get with live 
theatre.? I should not have been, but I was, surprised when people began 
to realize that the biggest customer for that kind of thing would 
probably be industries that deal in rude content.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--



From karl at iwl.com  Mon Sep 29 13:20:01 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:20:01 -0700
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>

When I was at Cisco there was a topic which seemed to be off limits - 
the legal disputes between Stanford and Cisco over the transfer of 
technology from Stanford to Cisco during those formative stages.? We 
were kinda nudged to not ask Kirk L. about these things.

I never knew the details of these disputes, other than I got the 
impression that they were kinda ugly.

My wife worked with Andy Bechtelsheim (sp) a few years later at SUN and 
I got the impression that he has lots of interesting tale about the 
formative periods of Sun and Cisco.

Getting back to Cisco:

When Geoff Baehr, Dave Kaufman, Frank Heinrich, and I were putting 
together the TRW response to the ULANA procurement from the Air Force 
Dave K. spent time with the Cisco folks.? David described Cisco as 
working out of a garage (but he could have meant rather sparse rented 
space that kinda had all the [dis-]comforts of a garage.)

 ? ? ? ? ? ? --karl--



From karl at iwl.com  Mon Sep 29 13:38:12 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:38:12 -0700
Subject: [ih] Fw: Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become
 known as -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1775269558.2017188.1759176221494@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <CAHQj4Cenms9BXGQZse04Y5TFszCgNiwMy0xUTZGZBR6p4S6K0w@mail.gmail.com>
 <627273142.2004015.1759174771649@mail.yahoo.com>
 <703DA0D9-EC25-40CA-A24B-62A6BA91E0AA@tony.li>
 <1775269558.2017188.1759176221494@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <6bd29102-022c-480b-871b-aaf6700f3fa6@iwl.com>

Having been to Cisco at the (near) East Palo Alto site, I can attest 
that it was, as they say in Minnesota, an "interesting" location.? (My 
friend Heidi I. tried to induce me to join Cisco in that era so I did 
visit that Cisco site several times.)

When I was doing urban planning at UC Berkeley (I was much enthralled 
with the ideas of Paolo Soleri - just before he died I had the luck to 
be at Arcosante and was able to ask him how the Internet affected his 
ideas for city design) we would do field studies of various SF Bay area 
cities.? East Palo was then informally known as Nairobi and it had a law 
that blocked the removal of trees - hence there were trees in the middle 
of some streets.? Right across US 101 was a part of East Palo Alto known 
as "Whiskey Gulch" - which was bulldozed and covered with a Four Seasons 
hotel.? It is quite near Mark Z's growing Palo Alto compound.)

Sun's new campus - called "Sun Quentin" was constructed nearby.? It is 
now the Facebook/Meta campus.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

On 9/29/25 1:03 PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Tony is great to correct me (I certainly wasn't considering any time at a house).? I think the parking lot episode was the O'Brien location.? I thought it was in East Palo Alto. I never know where the borders are when I am driving around.
> barbara
>     ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Tony Li <tony.li at tony.li>To: barbara denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>Cc: Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>Sent: Monday, September 29, 2025 at 12:51:19 PM PDTSubject: Re: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs)
>   
> Hi Barbara,
>
> Again, I can?t post to I-H, so plesae feel free to forward.
>
> The original cisco office was Len and Sandy?s house in Menlo Park.
>
> The first real office building was at 1360 WIllow Rd., also in Menlo Park and strictly speaking not in EPA.? From there, the company moved to O?Brian Dr. in Menlo Park, even closer to EPA.? Gunfire was common in the neighborhood and at the time EPA was the per-capita murder capital of the US.
>
> One January, we came back from the New Year?s holiday to find a hole in a skylight and a slug on the carpet.
>
> We were very glad to leave that neighborhood.
>
> T
>
>
>> On Sep 29, 2025, at 12:39?PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> The original Cisco office was in a building in East Palo Alto.? For those who don't know about the Bay Area, East Palo Alto was not a very great neighborhood when the company started.? I remember mentioning to Greg once that I thought I saw bullet casings in the parking lot.? I don't think he was surprised.
>> barbara
>>  ? ? On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 09:24:56 AM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> Like Guy and Noel, I'll try to be careful here.? Like Guy, I spent time in
>> the first cisco office (2nd floor of a building though my recollection is
>> that it was actually in East Palo Alto by a few feet).
>>
>> The "SUN" machine on which the first cisco routers were based was a
>> Motorola 68000 CPU on a Multibus chassis.? A notable aspect of cisco's
>> early days was their willingness to (1) support any link that you could get
>> a Multibus card for (I think Greg Satz spent his first two years just
>> writing new drivers :-)); and (2) a willingness to deal with repackaging
>> what was a fairly common architecture in any way a paying customer wanted
>> -- I remember Len, c. 1988, proudly showing off a router in a hard-sided
>> briefcase they'd built for a customer.? In short, aggressively "connect
>> anything, any way you want".
>>
>> Another note, based on a conversation I had with Dan Lynch at the time.
>> Many 1980s Silicon Valley startups that grew swiftly had CEO challenges as
>> they hit various logistical/organization challenges that come with scaling
>> to larger cash flows and employee bases.? Cisco was one of the first
>> companies to decide to address that problem by having CEOs for stages: I
>> don't know who picked Bill Graves as the first CEO, but Dan told me c. 1991
>> that Morgridge? (CEO as of 1988) was brought in to take cisco to a certain
>> size and that Chamber's hiring in 1990 was to put in place the person to
>> take over once that size was reached and, indeed, Chambers became CEO in
>> 1995.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:50?AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Noel,
>>>  ? ? There are many on this list that were in/about Stanford during the
>>> mid/late 1980s, so I'll try to be cautious.
>>>  ? ? It should first be noted that cisco (originally with no capital C)
>>> was just Len and Sandy doing whatever consulting/whatever they were
>>> doing while also working at Stanford.? I believe they had a PDP-10ish
>>> (TOPS-20?) system at home to use in that consulting work.
>>>  ? ? You allude to Len's work supporting systems at Stanford.
>>>  ? ? I believe that he (at least eventually) also worked on the routers
>>> (then usually called gateways) being built as part of the Stanford
>>> University Network (i.e., SUN) project.? As hardware, the SUN gateway
>>> was basically identical to the original SUN workstation (both built as
>>> part of that SUN project).
>>>  ? ? The story of how the workstations were "spun off" into Sun
>>> Microsystems and the gateways were "spun off" into Cisco is complicated
>>> and worth understanding.
>>>  ? ? My first in-person visit to cisco was in early 1987, by which time
>>> cisco was a handful of people working out of rented space on the 2nd
>>> floor of an office building in Menlo Park.
>>>  ? ? It was so small.? Their "board room" had a table, a few chairs, and a
>>> map of the world.
>>>  ? ? Len had evidently thoroughly received your message about the router
>>> business being important and he was all in.
>>>
>>>  ? ? I believe that the original cisco gateway/router was essentially the
>>> SUN gateway with some additional cisco code.? I suspect that the
>>> multiprotocol part and the terminal concentrator part came for free with
>>> the SUN gateway code base.
>>>  ? ? While it is true that cisco benefited from that SUN gateway code
>>> base, it's also true that the cisco folks worked very hard.? Even within
>>> the IP router functionality, they quickly supported their proprietary
>>> IGRP along with RIP and the Hello Protocol (from Dave Mills' Fuzzball
>>> gateway project which was used in the 56-kbps prototype NSFnet backbone).
>>>
>>>  ? ? Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>>> here took place?
>>>  ? ? For all its messiness, the history of how cisco was in a position to
>>> produce its routers by 1987 was important to how several of the the
>>> NSFnet regional networks and other late-1980s Internet components grew.
>>>
>>>  ? ? Regards,
>>>  ? ? ? ? -- Guy
>>>
>>> On 9/29/25 5:15 AM, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>  ? ? ? > From: Barbara Denny
>>>>
>>>>  ? ? ? > BTW I am pretty sure Cisco's first product was not a router. I
>>> have
>>>>  ? ? ? > seen websites only talk about routers in the history of Cisco.
>>>>
>>>> This is from memory, so take it with a big grain of salt. (Not iterested
>>> in
>>>> researching the point.) But I was very closely associated with these
>>> events...
>>>> My memory is that they did, roughly simultaneously, a multi-protocol
>>> router
>>>> _and_ a terminal concentrator - in fact, they were more focused on the
>>>> terminal concentrator at the very start. The router was based on prior
>>> work
>>>> at Stanford - Bill Yeager's work. I don't know about the Cisco terminal
>>>> concentrator - although I retain a vague memory that it had its roots in
>>>> prior Stanford work too. (I did a Web search for "Cisco terminal
>>>> concentrator origins", but nothing turned up.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Amusing (in retrospect) story about this: Yeager's boxes were used
>>> _inside_
>>>> Stanford - but they never had ARPANET support. Stanford's first ARPANET
>>>> gateway was - a 'C Gateway' from MIT! So I was out there, sitting in the
>>>> terminal room in Margaret Jacks hall, working on 'Golden' (their C
>>> Gateway),
>>>> and in walks Len Bosack - who was then running Stanford's timesharing
>>> system
>>>> (a TOPS-20, IIRC).
>>>>
>>>> We fell to chatting, and I explained to him my insight into why there was
>>>> going to be a _huge_ market for routers (roughly fixed ratio of
>>> PC's/routers;
>>>> common projections of how large the PC market was going to be; A+B=$$$.)
>>> A
>>>> year or so later, this compny called Cisco appeared.. :-)
>>>>
>>>> I still have the configuration files for 'Golden'! (The binary loads for
>>> it
>>>> had to be created at MIT - at least at the start. I don't know if that
>>> ever
>>>> got moved to Stanford.)
>>>>
>>>> A long time ago, in a universe far, far away...
>>>>
>>>>  ? ? ? Noel
>
>    


From galmes at tamu.edu  Mon Sep 29 13:43:45 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:43:45 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <7107742d-84fd-40a3-acff-d0c836aa056d@tamu.edu>

Karl,
   Very interesting.
   The "transfer of technology" was (to be charitable) shockingly 
informal.  The story of the disputes (I think in 1987) are eyebrow-raising.
   But, from an Internet History point of view, one problem with the 
disputes is that it created a kind of "off limits" cloud that has 
limited our understanding of the technical contributions of that era.

   Frankly, I would love to know more about the pre-cisco Stanford 
University Network technology developments.
   The hardware design built around the Motorola 68000 / Multibus that 
gave us the original SUN (and cisco) routers and also the original SUN 
workstation are clearly of interest.
   Similarly, the leadership of Stanford in understanding that they 
needed both workstations and the networking to connect them was 
historically important *if only* to allow us to understand the pre- and 
early history of SUN Microsystems and Cisco, two companies that 
contributed heavily to the emergence of the modern Internet.

   In addition, many at Stanford were clearly aware of the work at Xerox 
PARC, including its workstation and networking innovations.
   I *think* that, at least for a period of time, PARC's PUP protocols 
were supported in Cisco's multiprotocol routers.  Is this true?  If so, 
was this PUP support also present in the SUN routers?

   It would be interesting to understand and recognize the contributions 
of the SUN and early cisco people, totally apart from disputes about 
"the other IP".
	-- Guy

On 9/29/25 4:20 PM, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> When I was at Cisco there was a topic which seemed to be off limits -
> the legal disputes between Stanford and Cisco over the transfer of
> technology from Stanford to Cisco during those formative stages.? We
> were kinda nudged to not ask Kirk L. about these things.
> 
> I never knew the details of these disputes, other than I got the
> impression that they were kinda ugly.
> 
> My wife worked with Andy Bechtelsheim (sp) a few years later at SUN and
> I got the impression that he has lots of interesting tale about the
> formative periods of Sun and Cisco.
> 
> Getting back to Cisco:
> 
> When Geoff Baehr, Dave Kaufman, Frank Heinrich, and I were putting
> together the TRW response to the ULANA procurement from the Air Force
> Dave K. spent time with the Cisco folks.? David described Cisco as
> working out of a garage (but he could have meant rather sparse rented
> space that kinda had all the [dis-]comforts of a garage.)
> 
>   ? ? ? ? ? ? --karl--
> 



From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 14:08:00 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:08:00 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <502575512.1923531.1759180080212@mail.yahoo.com>

 There might be some information in dtic on this topic.? I think a lot of early experimentation was done on DARTnet (DARPA T1 testbed), including multicast (DVMRP). I know I tried sending video using the Sun videopix card across to BBN on DARTnet to see how well it might work? when the card was released (Charlie Lynn was always great in helping me do stuff) and then a little more testing later with Ron Fredrick? at PARC when he heard what I had done. He was developing his own video capture card. My experiment was probably only mentioned in a monthly report. Following the contracting thread to get relevant reports might be difficult. For example , SRI's work was done under a contract that had little obvious relationship to DARTnet from the title.? Besides SRI, DARTnet folks included people? from ISI east and west,? Xerox PARC, LBL, BBN, USC, MIT and UDel.? Hope I didn't forget anyone. Mike St. Johns and Paul Mockapetris were the project managers if that helps you narrow down the possibilities.? I am not sure if there was an earlier PM as I took over for SRI when Paul McKenney left.
Of course, Henning Schulzrinne did some early work too but he was not part of DARTnet. He might still have some more records from that earlier time period.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 01:13:46 PM PDT, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 One of the aspects of Internet history that is not much discussed is the 
evolution of the net to carry audio and video.

It is sad that Steve Casner died far too soon - he was a major force in 
so much of the transformation of the net into what it is today, an 
alternative to broadcast radio and TV.

(It's kinda natural that I fell into network audio/video - my 
grandfather was a fake radio maker.? He made "Pilco", not "Philco" 
radios that he sold out of the trunk of his car between NY and Boston 
during the 1930's.? And my father was involved with the development and 
deployment of color TV in the early 1950s.? And my extended family has 
always been deep into the performing arts.)

Of course there were the early experiments by SRI with the packet radio 
van driving up and down US 101. But there's not much talk about how we 
experimented with IP multicast, early implementations of audio/video and 
shared whiteboard (vic, vat, sd?? Van Jacobson and others did some 
seriously good work!)? And how Real Audio (was that the correct name?) 
kinda dominated by doing non-muliticast streaming.

Steve Casner, Chia-Chee Kuan, Scott Firestone, and I at Precept Software 
(under the direction of Judy Estrin) wrestled mightily with the 
difficulties of IP multicast, poor media clocks in sending and receiving 
devices, codecs, mpeg streams, imperfect flows of UDP packets, network 
path resource reservation [RSVP, "integrated services"].? We actually 
created something pretty good - although my retinas would leap out of 
eyes and strangle me if I ever were to watch our two test videos - Lion 
King or Blade Runner - again.

Netflix was started very close to my former office in Scotts Valley - 
and although it was not in a garage, it's space wasn't too many steps 
better than a garage.? The post office we use in Scotts Valley is rather 
large for that small city - which is probably because that post office 
handled many, perhaps all, of those red envelopes.

My wife and I did an interview with the surviving members of the first 
Internet Band, Severe Tire Damage and created a quite poor video about 
it (my wife and I are live theatre people; we knew little about cameras, 
lights, and microphones.)? It was interesting how that band and that 
interview touched matters that have become fairly major issues, such as 
copyright, permission to transmit, bandwidth consumption, and, of 
course, the Palo Alto internet party scene (which paled only to the 
Interop shownet party scene which extended from Tokyo to Santa Cruz to 
the Youghiogheny River to DC [we rented the Air and Space museum] to 
Paris.? The role of Single Malt Scotch in the history of the net is a 
topic that deserves exploration.)

Here's a link to a page with the video and commentary about Severe Tire 
Damage.? Please forgive the poor video and sound quality, we were 
neophytes at this stuff.

https://www.history-of-the-internet.org/videos/std/

For the last 30 years I've been chatting up people in the artistic 
(mostly theatre) and technical communities on ways we can transform 
Internet media to break the fourth wall and create the kind of emotional 
relationship between performance and audience that we can get with live 
theatre.? I should not have been, but I was, surprised when people began 
to realize that the biggest customer for that kind of thing would 
probably be industries that deal in rude content.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--



  

From craig at tereschau.net  Mon Sep 29 14:13:19 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:13:19 -0600
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 2:13?PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> One of the aspects of Internet history that is not much discussed is the
> evolution of the net to carry audio and video.
>

I worked on the edge of some of that evolution and here are some
complementary thoughts (and yes, Steve Casner did lots of the heavy
lifting).

>From where I sat (at BBN, worrying about high speed networks), there were
three arcs:

   -  Building networks that could conceivably carry reasonable audio and
   video -- here, the Wideband Satellite Network placed a critical role in the
   1980s(?).  It offered a multimegabit service to a selected number of
   locations in the Continental US and was used by Internet researchers to
   hold video conferences.  It was, I think, a successor/influenced by work by
   Steve Casner and Danny Cohen at ISI, but I could be wrong.  Then the
   Gigabit networking effort led by Bob Kahn blew the bandwidth barrier away
   and brought the other questions to the fore.
   - What protocol support audio and video needed - ST2 came out of the
   Wideband network -- there was work by Ferrari's lab in Berkeley -- several
   of the Gigabit networking projects  ran experimental conferencing
   protocols.  There was an app called "See You See Me" (but spelled with
   Cs).  Much fussing about how to deal with queuing delays, which led to
   IntServ and DiffServ working groups in IETF.  And since trying to send only
   one stream of video (for many parties) was clearly a win at the time,
   multicast was part of the party.
   - How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss.  Dave Clark did
   early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the question
   "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped" were told "Don't.
   We're good at compression and if the data could be dropped, we'd have
   removed it."  As I recall, it was Facebook that led to codecs that could
   deal with loss?

Van J's tools of Vic and Vat were developed in the early/mid 1990s on
DARTNET, a DARPA testbed to try to push experimentation forward on
multimedia transmission and multicast.

It was a complex evolution.  I remember talking with a VC person in Palo
Alto c. 1994 about the fact that at some point in the next decade we'd be
able to deliver movies over the Internet.  We spent about 20 minutes
running the numbers on storage, distribution points, licensing, etc.  It
all worked, but the number of problems (codes, protocols) that were not yet
solved was too high to consider creating a startup to run at it and hope to
catch the wave -- instead it was a fun conversation over a cocktail.

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


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 14:27:13 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:27:13 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <1994401548.2065745.1759181233837@mail.yahoo.com>

 
Oh yes the app See you See me was out of Cornell I believe.? Scott Brim might be able to fill in that part.
I think RSVP,? Intserv, DiffServ, etc? were post? outgrowths of DARTnet .
BTW, I used ST-2 (Charlie Lynn's implementation) for? part of my queuing work on DARTnet.
barbara
    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 02:13:40 PM PDT, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 2:13?PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> One of the aspects of Internet history that is not much discussed is the
> evolution of the net to carry audio and video.
>

I worked on the edge of some of that evolution and here are some
complementary thoughts (and yes, Steve Casner did lots of the heavy
lifting).

>From where I sat (at BBN, worrying about high speed networks), there were
three arcs:

? -? Building networks that could conceivably carry reasonable audio and
? video -- here, the Wideband Satellite Network placed a critical role in the
? 1980s(?).? It offered a multimegabit service to a selected number of
? locations in the Continental US and was used by Internet researchers to
? hold video conferences.? It was, I think, a successor/influenced by work by
? Steve Casner and Danny Cohen at ISI, but I could be wrong.? Then the
? Gigabit networking effort led by Bob Kahn blew the bandwidth barrier away
? and brought the other questions to the fore.
? - What protocol support audio and video needed - ST2 came out of the
? Wideband network -- there was work by Ferrari's lab in Berkeley -- several
? of the Gigabit networking projects? ran experimental conferencing
? protocols.? There was an app called "See You See Me" (but spelled with
? Cs).? Much fussing about how to deal with queuing delays, which led to
? IntServ and DiffServ working groups in IETF.? And since trying to send only
? one stream of video (for many parties) was clearly a win at the time,
? multicast was part of the party.
? - How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss.? Dave Clark did
? early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the question
? "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped" were told "Don't.
? We're good at compression and if the data could be dropped, we'd have
? removed it."? As I recall, it was Facebook that led to codecs that could
? deal with loss?

Van J's tools of Vic and Vat were developed in the early/mid 1990s on
DARTNET, a DARPA testbed to try to push experimentation forward on
multimedia transmission and multicast.

It was a complex evolution.? I remember talking with a VC person in Palo
Alto c. 1994 about the fact that at some point in the next decade we'd be
able to deliver movies over the Internet.? We spent about 20 minutes
running the numbers on storage, distribution points, licensing, etc.? It
all worked, but the number of problems (codes, protocols) that were not yet
solved was too high to consider creating a startup to run at it and hope to
catch the wave -- instead it was a fun conversation over a cocktail.

Craig
-- 
*****
Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities and
mailing lists.
-- 
Internet-history mailing list
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From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Sep 29 14:34:03 2025
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 29 Sep 2025 17:34:03 -0400
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20250929213403.CB357DED0DBC@ary.qy>

It appears that Craig Partridge via Internet-history <craig at tereschau.net> said:
w>   protocols.  There was an app called "See You See Me" (but spelled with

CUSeeMe was written at Cornell in 1992-95. The quality wasn't great but you
could run it on the desktop Mac and Windows machines of the time. Dick Cogger
who managed the project died earlier this year but some of the other people
might still be around.

R's,
John


From sauer at technologists.com  Mon Sep 29 14:44:33 2025
From: sauer at technologists.com (Charles H Sauer (he/him))
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:44:33 -0500
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <b3e1dd62-ac71-4dc9-b775-37b8fa018625@technologists.com>

I have many citations on this topic, and preceding circuit-based 
distance multimedia technology at https://vidconf.net/. I would welcome 
corrections and suggestions for improvement. Charlie
-- 
voice: +1.512.784.7526       e-mail: sauer at technologists.com
fax: +1.512.346.5240         Web: https://technologists.com/sauer/
Facebook/Google/LinkedIn/mas.to: CharlesHSauer



From karl at iwl.com  Mon Sep 29 14:59:43 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 14:59:43 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>

On 9/29/25 2:13 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:

>   * How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss. Dave Clark did
>     early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the
>     question "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped"
>     were told "Don't.? We're good at compression and if the data could
>     be dropped, we'd have removed it."? As I recall, it was Facebook
>     that led to codecs that could deal with loss?
>
Steve Casner and I worked really hard on these issues.? And because we 
often moved audio and video via different packet streams there was an 
impact from loss/delay/duplication/re-sequencing on one of the streams? 
on the other stream.

Many codecs are not friendly to loss or underrunning their input 
buffers.? And with cipher chained (aka block-chained) streams it can get 
harder to pick up the sticks when a packet is lost.

We were working with UDP so we did not have TCP trying to do reliability 
and sequencing.

Some of the issues we faced were "what do we do when we don't have a 
video or audio packet at the time we need to feed it to the rendering 
hardware?"? For audio there was "redundant audio transport", aka "RAT" 
in which the data in packet N was carried in lower quality in packet N+1 
(or N+2).

For video we had to deal with 30 per second freight trains of closely 
spaced large packets.

There were demarcations in the streams about where sound spurts began 
and where video frames ended.? Loss of those packets forced us to 
develop heuristics about how to imply where those packets were and what 
to do about it.

Out of order packets were a bane.

Patching voice/video data is hard because it can create artifacts, 
sometimes unexpected ones, such as synthetic tones when audio was being 
patched (and patched with what - we experimented with silence [doesn't 
work well] or averaging the prior/next [worked better], etc.)

Things are worse these days because of the games that "smart" Ethernet 
NICs play with Ethernet frames - such as combining several small 
Ethernet frames and delivering to the receiving operating system as one 
large (up to 64Kbyte!) ethernet frame. One's software has to approach a 
modern Ethernet NIC with a software sledge hammer to turn off all of the 
"offloads".

All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering 
content.? But that affected conversational uses where, according to the 
ITU we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds before 
people go into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.? I really wanted to get 
my physicist friends to consider increasing the speed of light, but they 
were resistant to the idea.

I began work on a meta stream to carry information about objects in the 
video stream (in order to do fast, set top product placements and such) 
and with scripted morphing in to react to events in the viewer's space.? 
(E.g. morph Alan Arkin's eyes onto the source of a viewer gasp, such as 
when he sneaks up on Audrie Hepburn in the film Wait Until Dark.)? This 
was part of my notion about breaking down the 4th wall.? I hypothesized 
a video conferencing system in which each person posted a series of 
photos in a set of patterned poses - then the conference would proceed 
by sending small morphing instructions rather than full images.? One 
could turn a knob to change from "staid English" to "hand waving 
Italian" modes of presentation. (This came out of my work with 
communications with submarines in which voice was converted into 
tokenized words rather than conveyed as voice itself - that saved a lot 
of bandwidth on our 300 bits/second path and the resulting voice was 
much clearer and comprehensible, even if the speaker was synthetic - and 
it was something we suggested to the FCC for air traffic control.? I had 
pieces of these things running, but only small pieces.? it is an area 
that is waiting for further work.)

Tools to test and exercise this stuff were hard to come by.? Jon had 
proposed his "flakeway" and a few years later I built one (operating as 
a malicious Ethernet switch rather than as a router.)? I now sell that, 
or a distant successor, as a product.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--



From winowicki at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 15:42:11 2025
From: winowicki at yahoo.com (Bill Nowicki)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:42:11 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <7107742d-84fd-40a3-acff-d0c836aa056d@tamu.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>
 <7107742d-84fd-40a3-acff-d0c836aa056d@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <1751422478.1730802.1759185731962@mail.yahoo.com>

 Hello Noel et al. Yes indeed, I was in the midst of the Stanford v. Sun v. Cisco mix.? From the start of the Stanford University Network (SUN, the acronym not the star) project, the justification for Andy Bechtolsheim's hardware was to use off-the-shelf parts for a modular design as much as possible. I drew some of the diagrams for the ARPA proposal in 1979. We could take his CPU, frame buffer, and Ethernet cards to make a workstation, but that was thought to be only for the elite users. For normal people, we would get a CPU board and a couple serial line cards to connect terminals. I wrote a very quick and simple program (stand alone on raw hardware) some wag called an "Ether-TIP" because it would perform a similar function as the TCP TIPs (erstwhile TACs when they used ArpaNet only protocols, maybe). Another function was putting two or more Ethernet cards into a bus with a CPU and calling it a gateway (or "rooter" if you from Canada, eh?). Indeed, both my simple multi-user Telnet program (which I called MUT as apropos) and the original routing code done by Bill Yeager in the medical center used PUP initially. Ironically, the Stanford University Medical Experiments on Artificial Intelligence for Medicine (SUMEX-AIM) funding Bill Yeager's work sounds like the hype cycle exploding right now. Since Yeager added Telnet to his code, it made mine obsolete. His could do PUP as well as IP routing, and at Stanford we used PUP networks to be IP subnets.
However, 1822 IMP interfaces were not so much commodity items. Luckily, Jeff Mogul had been an undergrad at MIT, and Vaugh Pratt (now faculty emeritus) had been teaching at MIT. MIT had a PDP-11 router developed already, and we were tracking Dave Clark's work. So Noel kindly did a custom build for us (called the "Golden" gate which became the IP gateway to campus for other than the AI like KL10 and the TOPS-20 systems which had their own direct host connections. It was in the basement of Margare Jacks Hall, the first time that the actual Computer Science Department, in the school of Humanities and Science in 1979, had equipment in the same building as professors.
My wife worked at one of those AI companies that was going to set the world on fire in 1980. She thought it was funny that her terminal connection said "Welcome to SU-Net" which was the exact same prompt with capitalization and punctuation that Bill Yeager used in his code, but the box was labeled "Cisco Systems". Supposedly Len Bosack re-layed-out a board but the hardware was effectively Andy's, since it had been designed when Len was Director of Computer Facilities for SU CSD. Very soon after the AI startup ran through its money and went out of business. I did hear that fairly quickly Kirk Lougheed and others at Cisco rewrote the code and made it even more of a Swiss army knife, doing all sorts of function on all sorts of network stacks.
Also probably while collecting Stanford salary, Len designed his own first real hardware, which was a MASSBUS adapter to connect KL10 and TOPS-20 machines to Ethernet, as I recall. It worked out for Stanford since the MASSBUS Ethernet was really needed, but a niche market. Then Stanford got a nice discount too. Yeager just recorded an oral history at the computer history museum, and I had lunch with him a couple weeks ago, still the same with fun stories.
Would be happy to give more details if someone cares.
Bill N.

    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 01:43:55 PM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Karl,
? Very interesting.
? The "transfer of technology" was (to be charitable) shockingly 
informal.? The story of the disputes (I think in 1987) are eyebrow-raising.
? But, from an Internet History point of view, one problem with the 
disputes is that it created a kind of "off limits" cloud that has 
limited our understanding of the technical contributions of that era.

? Frankly, I would love to know more about the pre-cisco Stanford 
University Network technology developments.
? The hardware design built around the Motorola 68000 / Multibus that 
gave us the original SUN (and cisco) routers and also the original SUN 
workstation are clearly of interest.
? Similarly, the leadership of Stanford in understanding that they 
needed both workstations and the networking to connect them was 
historically important *if only* to allow us to understand the pre- and 
early history of SUN Microsystems and Cisco, two companies that 
contributed heavily to the emergence of the modern Internet.

? In addition, many at Stanford were clearly aware of the work at Xerox 
PARC, including its workstation and networking innovations.
? I *think* that, at least for a period of time, PARC's PUP protocols 
were supported in Cisco's multiprotocol routers.? Is this true?? If so, 
was this PUP support also present in the SUN routers?

? It would be interesting to understand and recognize the contributions 
of the SUN and early cisco people, totally apart from disputes about 
"the other IP".
??? -- Guy

On 9/29/25 4:20 PM, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> When I was at Cisco there was a topic which seemed to be off limits -
> the legal disputes between Stanford and Cisco over the transfer of
> technology from Stanford to Cisco during those formative stages.? We
> were kinda nudged to not ask Kirk L. about these things.
> 
> I never knew the details of these disputes, other than I got the
> impression that they were kinda ugly.
> 
> My wife worked with Andy Bechtelsheim (sp) a few years later at SUN and
> I got the impression that he has lots of interesting tale about the
> formative periods of Sun and Cisco.
> 
> Getting back to Cisco:
> 
> When Geoff Baehr, Dave Kaufman, Frank Heinrich, and I were putting
> together the TRW response to the ULANA procurement from the Air Force
> Dave K. spent time with the Cisco folks.? David described Cisco as
> working out of a garage (but he could have meant rather sparse rented
> space that kinda had all the [dis-]comforts of a garage.)
> 
>? ? ? ? ? ? ? --karl--
> 

-- 
Internet-history mailing list
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From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Sep 29 18:21:36 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:21:36 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>

FYI, multimedia was on the Internet radar very early.? It was probably 
the most important driving force for the evolution of TCP2 to become 
TCP/IP4 in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Shortly after I got the assignment to implement the first TCP for Unix 
in 1977, I started attending Internet meetings.? At one of the early 
ones, I remember Vint describing a bunch of "scenarios" that the 
Internet was expected to handle.? One was especially memorable. It 
involved a teleconference with a group of military officers, located 
over a broad geographic area including some perhaps in the Pentagon or 
regional command centers, and others far away in jeeps or tanks, or even 
helicopters, in action on a battlefield.

The gist of the teleconference was to collect information about what was 
happening, make decisions, and issue orders to the field units. At the 
time, video was not even a dream, but it was deemed feasible even in the 
near term to use the multimedia then available.? For example, everyone 
might have some kind of display device, enabling them all to see the 
same map or graphic.? A pointer device would allow anyone while speaking 
to point to the graphic and everyone else would see the same motions on 
their displays.? The teleconference would be conducted by voice, which 
of course had to be interactive.? It also had to be synchronized with 
the graphics, so that orders like "Move your battalion here; we're going 
to bomb over here." didn't cause serious problems if transmission delays 
were happening in the Internet and the voice and graphics became 
unsynchronized.

Such scenarios drove the thinking about what the Internet technology had 
to be able to do.? It led to a consensus that the virtual connection 
service of TCP2 was insufficient, due to its likelihood of delays that 
would disrupt interactive voice.? In addition, the consensus was that 
multiple types of service should be provided by the Internet.? One type 
might be appropriate for interactive voice, where getting as much data 
delivered as possible was more important than getting all the data 
delivered eventually.? Similarly, large data transfers, such as 
high-resolution graphics, could be delivered intact, but it was less 
important that they arrive within milliseconds.

That led to the split of TCP into TCP and IP, and the introduction of 
UDP as a possible vehicle for carrying interactive content with a need 
for low latency.? In addition, it might be useful for different types of 
traffic to follow different routes through the Internet. Interactive 
traffic might use a terrestrial route, where bulk traffic such as 
graphics might travel through long-delay, but high bandwidth, 
geosynchronous satellite networks.? The TOS field was added to the IP 
header so that a teleconferencing program could tell the Internet how to 
handle its traffic.

TCP/IP4 created an experimental environment where such approaches could 
be tried.? Various researchers used to come to the Internet meetings to 
report on their experiments and lobby for new mechanisms.? (I recall 
Steve Casner and Jim Forgie as being frequent attendees with those 
interests).?? Experimentation later produced the MBONE, with multicast 
which helped reduce the traffic loads through the Internet.?? MBONE 
seems to have faded away over the years, and various "silos" of 
proprietary teleconferencing mechanisms have popped up to provide such 
functionality, but unfortunately seem to have done so in a 
non-interoperable way.

Today, I use teleconferencing with Zoom, Facetime, and several others.?? 
There seems to be a lot of choices.?? It seems to work pretty well, at 
least for my personal scenarios.? But a few years ago I was asked to 
give a presentation over the Internet to a conference halfway around the 
planet, and we decided that it was too risky to count on that Internet 
path being good enough at the scheduled time.? So we prerecorded the 
presentation and transferred it via FTP well ahead of time.?? Perhaps it 
would have worked, but we couldn't be confident.

Recently I heard anecdotal reports that the Internet on cruise ships 
works well - but is reliable only when the ship is far out to sea. When 
it's in port, or even just approaching port, teleconferencing is 
unreliable.?? My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port 
include all the land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.? 
But that's just speculation, I have no data.

So I wonder - is the multimedia on the Internet problem now solved???? 
As near as I can tell, the Internet today only provides one type of 
service, with all datagrams following the same route. Did the 
introduction of fiber make the concerns of the 1980s moot? Does 
teleconferencing now work well throughout the Internet?? Do users simply 
abandon the idea of using the Internet for teleconferencing when they 
discover it doesn't work for them (as I did for my presentation)??? Does 
the military now do what the 1970s scenarios envisioned over the Internet?

How did multimedia on the Internet evolve over the last 45+ years?

Jack Haverty


On 9/29/25 14:59, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> On 9/29/25 2:13 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:
>
>> ? * How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss. Dave Clark did
>> ??? early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the
>> ??? question "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped"
>> ??? were told "Don't.? We're good at compression and if the data could
>> ??? be dropped, we'd have removed it."? As I recall, it was Facebook
>> ??? that led to codecs that could deal with loss?
>>
> Steve Casner and I worked really hard on these issues.? And because we 
> often moved audio and video via different packet streams there was an 
> impact from loss/delay/duplication/re-sequencing on one of the 
> streams? on the other stream.
>
> Many codecs are not friendly to loss or underrunning their input 
> buffers.? And with cipher chained (aka block-chained) streams it can 
> get harder to pick up the sticks when a packet is lost.
>
> We were working with UDP so we did not have TCP trying to do 
> reliability and sequencing.
>
> Some of the issues we faced were "what do we do when we don't have a 
> video or audio packet at the time we need to feed it to the rendering 
> hardware?"? For audio there was "redundant audio transport", aka "RAT" 
> in which the data in packet N was carried in lower quality in packet 
> N+1 (or N+2).
>
> For video we had to deal with 30 per second freight trains of closely 
> spaced large packets.
>
> There were demarcations in the streams about where sound spurts began 
> and where video frames ended.? Loss of those packets forced us to 
> develop heuristics about how to imply where those packets were and 
> what to do about it.
>
> Out of order packets were a bane.
>
> Patching voice/video data is hard because it can create artifacts, 
> sometimes unexpected ones, such as synthetic tones when audio was 
> being patched (and patched with what - we experimented with silence 
> [doesn't work well] or averaging the prior/next [worked better], etc.)
>
> Things are worse these days because of the games that "smart" Ethernet 
> NICs play with Ethernet frames - such as combining several small 
> Ethernet frames and delivering to the receiving operating system as 
> one large (up to 64Kbyte!) ethernet frame. One's software has to 
> approach a modern Ethernet NIC with a software sledge hammer to turn 
> off all of the "offloads".
>
> All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering 
> content.? But that affected conversational uses where, according to 
> the ITU we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds 
> before people go into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.? I really wanted 
> to get my physicist friends to consider increasing the speed of light, 
> but they were resistant to the idea.
>
> I began work on a meta stream to carry information about objects in 
> the video stream (in order to do fast, set top product placements and 
> such) and with scripted morphing in to react to events in the viewer's 
> space.? (E.g. morph Alan Arkin's eyes onto the source of a viewer 
> gasp, such as when he sneaks up on Audrie Hepburn in the film Wait 
> Until Dark.)? This was part of my notion about breaking down the 4th 
> wall.? I hypothesized a video conferencing system in which each person 
> posted a series of photos in a set of patterned poses - then the 
> conference would proceed by sending small morphing instructions rather 
> than full images.? One could turn a knob to change from "staid 
> English" to "hand waving Italian" modes of presentation. (This came 
> out of my work with communications with submarines in which voice was 
> converted into tokenized words rather than conveyed as voice itself - 
> that saved a lot of bandwidth on our 300 bits/second path and the 
> resulting voice was much clearer and comprehensible, even if the 
> speaker was synthetic - and it was something we suggested to the FCC 
> for air traffic control.? I had pieces of these things running, but 
> only small pieces.? it is an area that is waiting for further work.)
>
> Tools to test and exercise this stuff were hard to come by.? Jon had 
> proposed his "flakeway" and a few years later I built one (operating 
> as a malicious Ethernet switch rather than as a router.)? I now sell 
> that, or a distant successor, as a product.
>
> ? ? ? ? --karl--
>

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From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Mon Sep 29 18:21:12 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 01:21:12 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <502575512.1923531.1759180080212@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <502575512.1923531.1759180080212@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <466646081.2136114.1759195272810@mail.yahoo.com>

 Looks like i misunderstood what Ron was doing. He wasn't developing a card, just software for the same card.
See
https://webrtcforthecurious.com/docs/10-history-of-webrtc/
BTW,? he had an interesting bug when we ran first tried to test. The image looked like you were in a fun house (mirror maze).? IIRC it was something like the image would just stack up on the previous image.
barbara

    On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 02:08:20 PM PDT, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
  There might be some information in dtic on this topic.? I think a lot of early experimentation was done on DARTnet (DARPA T1 testbed), including multicast (DVMRP). I know I tried sending video using the Sun videopix card across to BBN on DARTnet to see how well it might work? when the card was released (Charlie Lynn was always great in helping me do stuff) and then a little more testing later with Ron Fredrick? at PARC when he heard what I had done. He was developing his own video capture card. My experiment was probably only mentioned in a monthly report. Following the contracting thread to get relevant reports might be difficult. For example , SRI's work was done under a contract that had little obvious relationship to DARTnet from the title.? Besides SRI, DARTnet folks included people? from ISI east and west,? Xerox PARC, LBL, BBN, USC, MIT and UDel.? Hope I didn't forget anyone. Mike St. Johns and Paul Mockapetris were the project managers if that helps you narrow down the possibilities.? I am not sure if there was an earlier PM as I took over for SRI when Paul McKenney left.
Of course, Henning Schulzrinne did some early work too but he was not part of DARTnet. He might still have some more records from that earlier time period.
barbara
? ? On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 01:13:46 PM PDT, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:? 
 
 One of the aspects of Internet history that is not much discussed is the 
evolution of the net to carry audio and video.

It is sad that Steve Casner died far too soon - he was a major force in 
so much of the transformation of the net into what it is today, an 
alternative to broadcast radio and TV.

(It's kinda natural that I fell into network audio/video - my 
grandfather was a fake radio maker.? He made "Pilco", not "Philco" 
radios that he sold out of the trunk of his car between NY and Boston 
during the 1930's.? And my father was involved with the development and 
deployment of color TV in the early 1950s.? And my extended family has 
always been deep into the performing arts.)

Of course there were the early experiments by SRI with the packet radio 
van driving up and down US 101. But there's not much talk about how we 
experimented with IP multicast, early implementations of audio/video and 
shared whiteboard (vic, vat, sd?? Van Jacobson and others did some 
seriously good work!)? And how Real Audio (was that the correct name?) 
kinda dominated by doing non-muliticast streaming.

Steve Casner, Chia-Chee Kuan, Scott Firestone, and I at Precept Software 
(under the direction of Judy Estrin) wrestled mightily with the 
difficulties of IP multicast, poor media clocks in sending and receiving 
devices, codecs, mpeg streams, imperfect flows of UDP packets, network 
path resource reservation [RSVP, "integrated services"].? We actually 
created something pretty good - although my retinas would leap out of 
eyes and strangle me if I ever were to watch our two test videos - Lion 
King or Blade Runner - again.

Netflix was started very close to my former office in Scotts Valley - 
and although it was not in a garage, it's space wasn't too many steps 
better than a garage.? The post office we use in Scotts Valley is rather 
large for that small city - which is probably because that post office 
handled many, perhaps all, of those red envelopes.

My wife and I did an interview with the surviving members of the first 
Internet Band, Severe Tire Damage and created a quite poor video about 
it (my wife and I are live theatre people; we knew little about cameras, 
lights, and microphones.)? It was interesting how that band and that 
interview touched matters that have become fairly major issues, such as 
copyright, permission to transmit, bandwidth consumption, and, of 
course, the Palo Alto internet party scene (which paled only to the 
Interop shownet party scene which extended from Tokyo to Santa Cruz to 
the Youghiogheny River to DC [we rented the Air and Space museum] to 
Paris.? The role of Single Malt Scotch in the history of the net is a 
topic that deserves exploration.)

Here's a link to a page with the video and commentary about Severe Tire 
Damage.? Please forgive the poor video and sound quality, we were 
neophytes at this stuff.

https://www.history-of-the-internet.org/videos/std/

For the last 30 years I've been chatting up people in the artistic 
(mostly theatre) and technical communities on ways we can transform 
Internet media to break the fourth wall and create the kind of emotional 
relationship between performance and audience that we can get with live 
theatre.? I should not have been, but I was, surprised when people began 
to realize that the biggest customer for that kind of thing would 
probably be industries that deal in rude content.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

  

From galmes at tamu.edu  Mon Sep 29 18:31:50 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:31:50 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1751422478.1730802.1759185731962@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>
 <7107742d-84fd-40a3-acff-d0c836aa056d@tamu.edu>
 <1751422478.1730802.1759185731962@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <434da208-946e-4f9b-824a-d6feeec5aa68@tamu.edu>

Bill,
   This is very useful.
   So you've confirmed that the hardware base for workstation and 
'gateway' was a set of consistent 68000 / Multibus - based modules.
   Also that the multiprotocol (e.g., both PUP and IP) aspect was 
present in the SUN software.
   And that the SUMEX-AIM ARPA funding helped the broader effort. 
(Without those several episodes of AI hype, where would we all be?)
   And that the Golden router was PDP-11-based and provided by the MIT 
folks.

   You've also sort of confirmed that cisco was not defined in terms of 
products that we associate with the eventual router giant.  Len and 
Sandy were evidently indeed fond of the PDP-10 family of machines.  That 
the original cisco hardware product was an Ethernet interface for 
MASSBUS makes me smile.

   I don't dismiss the importance of respecting Intellectual Property 
etc.  But understanding how cisco quickly came up with a good quality 
set of routers is easier if you squint at things a certain way and think 
of the SUN plus cisco (plus SUMEX-AIM) efforts as combining "informally".
   After all, the transcontinental railroad was a tremendous 
achievement, despite the horrible robber baron skullduggery.

   Thanks again,
	-- Guy

On 9/29/25 6:42 PM, Bill Nowicki wrote:
> Hello Noel et al. Yes indeed, I was in the midst of the Stanford v. Sun 
> v. Cisco mix.? From the start of the Stanford University Network (SUN, 
> the acronym not the star) project, the justification for Andy 
> Bechtolsheim's hardware was to use off-the-shelf parts for a modular 
> design as much as possible. I drew some of the diagrams for the ARPA 
> proposal in 1979. We could take his CPU, frame buffer, and Ethernet 
> cards to make a workstation, but that was thought to be only for the 
> elite users. For normal people, we would get a CPU board and a couple 
> serial line cards to connect terminals. I wrote a very quick and simple 
> program (stand alone on raw hardware) some wag called an "Ether-TIP" 
> because it would perform a similar function as the TCP TIPs (erstwhile 
> TACs when they used ArpaNet only protocols, maybe). Another function was 
> putting two or more Ethernet cards into a bus with a CPU and calling it 
> a gateway (or "rooter" if you from Canada, eh?). Indeed, both my simple 
> multi-user Telnet program (which I called MUT as apropos) and the 
> original routing code done by Bill Yeager in the medical center used PUP 
> initially. Ironically, the Stanford University Medical Experiments on 
> Artificial Intelligence for Medicine (SUMEX-AIM) funding Bill Yeager's 
> work sounds like the hype cycle exploding right now. Since Yeager added 
> Telnet to his code, it made mine obsolete. His could do PUP as well as 
> IP routing, and at Stanford we used PUP networks to be IP subnets.
> 
> However, 1822 IMP interfaces were not so much commodity items. Luckily, 
> Jeff Mogul had been an undergrad at MIT, and Vaugh Pratt (now faculty 
> emeritus) had been teaching at MIT. MIT had a PDP-11 router developed 
> already, and we were tracking Dave Clark's work. So Noel kindly did a 
> custom build for us (called the "Golden" gate which became the IP 
> gateway to campus for other than the AI like KL10 and the TOPS-20 
> systems which had their own direct host connections. It was in the 
> basement of Margare Jacks Hall, the first time that the actual Computer 
> Science Department, in the school of Humanities and Science in 1979, had 
> equipment in the same building as professors.
> 
> My wife worked at one of those AI companies that was going to set the 
> world on fire in 1980. She thought it was funny that her terminal 
> connection said "Welcome to SU-Net" which was the exact same prompt with 
> capitalization and punctuation that Bill Yeager used in his code, but 
> the box was labeled "Cisco Systems". Supposedly Len Bosack re-layed-out 
> a board but the hardware was effectively Andy's, since it had been 
> designed when Len was Director of Computer Facilities for SU CSD. Very 
> soon after the AI startup ran through its money and went out of 
> business. I did hear that fairly quickly Kirk Lougheed and others at 
> Cisco rewrote the code and made it even more of a Swiss army knife, 
> doing all sorts of function on all sorts of network stacks.
> 
> Also probably while collecting Stanford salary, Len designed his own 
> first real hardware, which was a MASSBUS adapter to connect KL10 and 
> TOPS-20 machines to Ethernet, as I recall. It worked out for Stanford 
> since the MASSBUS Ethernet was really needed, but a niche market. Then 
> Stanford got a nice discount too. Yeager just recorded an oral history 
> at the computer history museum, and I had lunch with him a couple weeks 
> ago, still the same with fun stories.
> 
> Would be happy to give more details if someone cares.
> 
> Bill N.
> 
> 
> On Monday, September 29, 2025 at 01:43:55 PM PDT, Guy Almes via 
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Karl,
>  ? Very interesting.
>  ? The "transfer of technology" was (to be charitable) shockingly
> informal.? The story of the disputes (I think in 1987) are eyebrow-raising.
>  ? But, from an Internet History point of view, one problem with the
> disputes is that it created a kind of "off limits" cloud that has
> limited our understanding of the technical contributions of that era.
> 
>  ? Frankly, I would love to know more about the pre-cisco Stanford
> University Network technology developments.
>  ? The hardware design built around the Motorola 68000 / Multibus that
> gave us the original SUN (and cisco) routers and also the original SUN
> workstation are clearly of interest.
>  ? Similarly, the leadership of Stanford in understanding that they
> needed both workstations and the networking to connect them was
> historically important *if only* to allow us to understand the pre- and
> early history of SUN Microsystems and Cisco, two companies that
> contributed heavily to the emergence of the modern Internet.
> 
>  ? In addition, many at Stanford were clearly aware of the work at Xerox
> PARC, including its workstation and networking innovations.
>  ? I *think* that, at least for a period of time, PARC's PUP protocols
> were supported in Cisco's multiprotocol routers.? Is this true?? If so,
> was this PUP support also present in the SUN routers?
> 
>  ? It would be interesting to understand and recognize the contributions
> of the SUN and early cisco people, totally apart from disputes about
> "the other IP".
>  ??? -- Guy
> 
> On 9/29/25 4:20 PM, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>  > When I was at Cisco there was a topic which seemed to be off limits -
>  > the legal disputes between Stanford and Cisco over the transfer of
>  > technology from Stanford to Cisco during those formative stages.? We
>  > were kinda nudged to not ask Kirk L. about these things.
>  >
>  > I never knew the details of these disputes, other than I got the
>  > impression that they were kinda ugly.
>  >
>  > My wife worked with Andy Bechtelsheim (sp) a few years later at SUN and
>  > I got the impression that he has lots of interesting tale about the
>  > formative periods of Sun and Cisco.
>  >
>  > Getting back to Cisco:
>  >
>  > When Geoff Baehr, Dave Kaufman, Frank Heinrich, and I were putting
>  > together the TRW response to the ULANA procurement from the Air Force
>  > Dave K. spent time with the Cisco folks.? David described Cisco as
>  > working out of a garage (but he could have meant rather sparse rented
>  > space that kinda had all the [dis-]comforts of a garage.)
>  >
>  >? ? ? ? ? ? ? --karl--
>  >
> 
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:Internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history <https:// 
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> history__;!!KwNVnqRv! 
> AehBBvUnyPYBp1xr1xTdScWmVFSlGc-0UZGWfMWhw4ccMIocsENPTOYKugKGf7v_WXjbEWLjI87NKW30$>
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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Sep 29 18:33:23 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 01:33:23 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <3807a533-a614-4bc2-b138-f57a497fc04f@dcrocker.net>

On 9/29/2025 6:21 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port include all the 
> land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.? But that's just 
> speculation, I have no data

My immediate guess was good satellite bandwidth at sea but poor total 
cell capacity near shore.

Doing hotspots to cell service is fine for a small number of users, 
doing modest work, via a very good cell.? But cell service is highly 
variable and the link usually can't handle large numbers of users or 
sustained high bandwidth demands.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From jack at 3kitty.org  Mon Sep 29 18:40:42 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:40:42 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <3807a533-a614-4bc2-b138-f57a497fc04f@dcrocker.net>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <3807a533-a614-4bc2-b138-f57a497fc04f@dcrocker.net>
Message-ID: <9d7c04c6-ab12-4f84-9b51-3fa8c2d6593a@3kitty.org>

Yes, that's another possibility.? The reports I mentioned were using the 
wifi service on the ship.?? It's possible that the ship switches its 
onboard wifi from the satellite network to cell network for some reason 
when it gets close enough to shore.? /Jack

On 9/29/25 18:33, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 9/29/2025 6:21 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port include all the 
>> land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.? But that's just 
>> speculation, I have no data
>
> My immediate guess was good satellite bandwidth at sea but poor total 
> cell capacity near shore.
>
> Doing hotspots to cell service is fine for a small number of users, 
> doing modest work, via a very good cell.? But cell service is highly 
> variable and the link usually can't handle large numbers of users or 
> sustained high bandwidth demands.
>
> d/
>

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From dhc at dcrocker.net  Mon Sep 29 18:49:24 2025
From: dhc at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 01:49:24 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <9d7c04c6-ab12-4f84-9b51-3fa8c2d6593a@3kitty.org>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <3807a533-a614-4bc2-b138-f57a497fc04f@dcrocker.net>
 <9d7c04c6-ab12-4f84-9b51-3fa8c2d6593a@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <32dbe3d9-fe78-40d8-a991-fcbf64f1c560@dcrocker.net>

On 9/29/2025 6:40 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Yes, that's another possibility.? The reports I mentioned were using 
> the wifi service on the ship. 

well sure.? hotspot. it's what they do.

But stuffing thousands of users onto a single cell tower seems problematic.

But now that I've said that, I seem to recall seeing wifi services based 
around ports, too.


> ?It's possible that the ship switches its onboard wifi from the 
> satellite network to cell network for some reason when it gets close 
> enough to shore. 

It is common for personal phones to do cell vs. wifi and even to give 
you a configuration option about preference.? Not for hotspot, just 
basic cell and Internet service.? T-mobiel has had that for maybe 20 years.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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



From karl at iwl.com  Mon Sep 29 18:51:14 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:51:14 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>

Today's Internet multimedia (which mostly means videos and Zoom-like 
conferences) does not work all that well.

Original IP multicast did not work well in a multi-administrative 
environment.? There was a lot of problems when the distribution tree 
cross administrative boundaries, and there was pressure for carriers to 
hot-potato the traffic onto another provider.

(One day at Precept I was installing a new Cisco router - a small one, a 
2514 - and it was not yet configured with its addresses. But the MBone 
DVMRP routing found it and started to send the entire MBONE traffic over 
our T-1 link while our poor router tried to scream "prune", "prune!", 
"PRUNE!!!" but could not be heard because those prune messages could not 
be sent because the unicast routing had not yet been configured.? It was 
like when one of Dave Mills PDP-11/03 boxes became the destination for 
all destinations on the net.)

That problem was significantly reduced when one of Dave Cheriton's 
students came up with the idea to do single-source multicast.? This 
changed the original multiple-source IP multicast into something far 
more manageable and stable.? But I have not seen it used much in 
commercial products, nor do I know how well supported it is in routers 
and edge devices.

Single source works well for presentation-style audio/video or for 
systems in which every participant feeds into a mixing engine that 
resolves things like data formats (Zoom does this, but it uses direct 
TCP connections to deliver the mixed content to the users.)

One of the difficulties is when there is a mix of well provisioned 
user/clients and some poorly provisioned ones.? The question becomes 
"who waits?"? (And there is that problem of one stream, e.g. voice, 
being out of sync with visual pointers such as someone pointing to a map 
and saying "we meet here at dawn".)

Present day conferencing works because most conferences have relatively 
few users.? When Steve Casner and I did the Precept RTP stack we went 
full bore and did the support for large client populations - that 
required a lot of code to back down on the client feedback in order to 
avoid packet implosions crushing the sources.? (That was hard code to test!)

And things like Netflix and other streaming work basically because we 
are willing to dedicate a lot of bandwidth to those streams and to 
distribute the origination of the traffic across many, often widely 
dispersed, servers.

(I notice that the net on this very day seems to be having stuttering 
problems - I've observed it from many points of view, including 
point-of-sale devices.? So it does seem that our assumption of plenty of 
bandwidth may at times be optimistic.)

One of the interesting variations on IP multicast, variations that never 
took off, were things like multicast file transfers or multicast, 
reliable open-ended streams.? Multicast allowed expanding ring (TTL 
based) searches of "nearby" other recipients in order to obtain copies 
of lost data.? It was kinda cool (but did create security issues 
regarding malicious introduction of modified data.)

Given that broadcast TV and radio are slowly dying (and their RF bands 
snapped up for other purposes) we may need to revisit how we do Internet 
multimedia.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--


On 9/29/25 6:21 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> FYI, multimedia was on the Internet radar very early.? It was probably 
> the most important driving force for the evolution of TCP2 to become 
> TCP/IP4 in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
>
> Shortly after I got the assignment to implement the first TCP for Unix 
> in 1977, I started attending Internet meetings.? At one of the early 
> ones, I remember Vint describing a bunch of "scenarios" that the 
> Internet was expected to handle.? One was especially memorable. It 
> involved a teleconference with a group of military officers, located 
> over a broad geographic area including some perhaps in the Pentagon or 
> regional command centers, and others far away in jeeps or tanks, or 
> even helicopters, in action on a battlefield.
>
> The gist of the teleconference was to collect information about what 
> was happening, make decisions, and issue orders to the field units. At 
> the time, video was not even a dream, but it was deemed feasible even 
> in the near term to use the multimedia then available.? For example, 
> everyone might have some kind of display device, enabling them all to 
> see the same map or graphic.? A pointer device would allow anyone 
> while speaking to point to the graphic and everyone else would see the 
> same motions on their displays.? The teleconference would be conducted 
> by voice, which of course had to be interactive.? It also had to be 
> synchronized with the graphics, so that orders like "Move your 
> battalion here; we're going to bomb over here." didn't cause serious 
> problems if transmission delays were happening in the Internet and the 
> voice and graphics became unsynchronized.
>
> Such scenarios drove the thinking about what the Internet technology 
> had to be able to do.? It led to a consensus that the virtual 
> connection service of TCP2 was insufficient, due to its likelihood of 
> delays that would disrupt interactive voice.? In addition, the 
> consensus was that multiple types of service should be provided by the 
> Internet.? One type might be appropriate for interactive voice, where 
> getting as much data delivered as possible was more important than 
> getting all the data delivered eventually.? Similarly, large data 
> transfers, such as high-resolution graphics, could be delivered 
> intact, but it was less important that they arrive within milliseconds.
>
> That led to the split of TCP into TCP and IP, and the introduction of 
> UDP as a possible vehicle for carrying interactive content with a need 
> for low latency.? In addition, it might be useful for different types 
> of traffic to follow different routes through the Internet. 
> Interactive traffic might use a terrestrial route, where bulk traffic 
> such as graphics might travel through long-delay, but high bandwidth, 
> geosynchronous satellite networks.? The TOS field was added to the IP 
> header so that a teleconferencing program could tell the Internet how 
> to handle its traffic.
>
> TCP/IP4 created an experimental environment where such approaches 
> could be tried.? Various researchers used to come to the Internet 
> meetings to report on their experiments and lobby for new mechanisms.? 
> (I recall Steve Casner and Jim Forgie as being frequent attendees with 
> those interests).?? Experimentation later produced the MBONE, with 
> multicast which helped reduce the traffic loads through the 
> Internet.?? MBONE seems to have faded away over the years, and various 
> "silos" of proprietary teleconferencing mechanisms have popped up to 
> provide such functionality, but unfortunately seem to have done so in 
> a non-interoperable way.
>
> Today, I use teleconferencing with Zoom, Facetime, and several 
> others.?? There seems to be a lot of choices.?? It seems to work 
> pretty well, at least for my personal scenarios.? But a few years ago 
> I was asked to give a presentation over the Internet to a conference 
> halfway around the planet, and we decided that it was too risky to 
> count on that Internet path being good enough at the scheduled time.? 
> So we prerecorded the presentation and transferred it via FTP well 
> ahead of time.?? Perhaps it would have worked, but we couldn't be 
> confident.
>
> Recently I heard anecdotal reports that the Internet on cruise ships 
> works well - but is reliable only when the ship is far out to sea. 
> When it's in port, or even just approaching port, teleconferencing is 
> unreliable.?? My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port 
> include all the land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.? 
> But that's just speculation, I have no data.
>
> So I wonder - is the multimedia on the Internet problem now solved???? 
> As near as I can tell, the Internet today only provides one type of 
> service, with all datagrams following the same route. Did the 
> introduction of fiber make the concerns of the 1980s moot? Does 
> teleconferencing now work well throughout the Internet?? Do users 
> simply abandon the idea of using the Internet for teleconferencing 
> when they discover it doesn't work for them (as I did for my 
> presentation)??? Does the military now do what the 1970s scenarios 
> envisioned over the Internet?
>
> How did multimedia on the Internet evolve over the last 45+ years?
>
> Jack Haverty
>
>
> On 9/29/25 14:59, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>> On 9/29/25 2:13 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:
>>
>>> ? * How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss. Dave Clark did
>>> ??? early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the
>>> ??? question "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped"
>>> ??? were told "Don't.? We're good at compression and if the data could
>>> ??? be dropped, we'd have removed it."? As I recall, it was Facebook
>>> ??? that led to codecs that could deal with loss?
>>>
>> Steve Casner and I worked really hard on these issues.? And because 
>> we often moved audio and video via different packet streams there was 
>> an impact from loss/delay/duplication/re-sequencing on one of the 
>> streams? on the other stream.
>>
>> Many codecs are not friendly to loss or underrunning their input 
>> buffers.? And with cipher chained (aka block-chained) streams it can 
>> get harder to pick up the sticks when a packet is lost.
>>
>> We were working with UDP so we did not have TCP trying to do 
>> reliability and sequencing.
>>
>> Some of the issues we faced were "what do we do when we don't have a 
>> video or audio packet at the time we need to feed it to the rendering 
>> hardware?"? For audio there was "redundant audio transport", aka 
>> "RAT" in which the data in packet N was carried in lower quality in 
>> packet N+1 (or N+2).
>>
>> For video we had to deal with 30 per second freight trains of closely 
>> spaced large packets.
>>
>> There were demarcations in the streams about where sound spurts began 
>> and where video frames ended.? Loss of those packets forced us to 
>> develop heuristics about how to imply where those packets were and 
>> what to do about it.
>>
>> Out of order packets were a bane.
>>
>> Patching voice/video data is hard because it can create artifacts, 
>> sometimes unexpected ones, such as synthetic tones when audio was 
>> being patched (and patched with what - we experimented with silence 
>> [doesn't work well] or averaging the prior/next [worked better], etc.)
>>
>> Things are worse these days because of the games that "smart" 
>> Ethernet NICs play with Ethernet frames - such as combining several 
>> small Ethernet frames and delivering to the receiving operating 
>> system as one large (up to 64Kbyte!) ethernet frame. One's software 
>> has to approach a modern Ethernet NIC with a software sledge hammer 
>> to turn off all of the "offloads".
>>
>> All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering 
>> content.? But that affected conversational uses where, according to 
>> the ITU we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds 
>> before people go into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.? I really 
>> wanted to get my physicist friends to consider increasing the speed 
>> of light, but they were resistant to the idea.
>>
>> I began work on a meta stream to carry information about objects in 
>> the video stream (in order to do fast, set top product placements and 
>> such) and with scripted morphing in to react to events in the 
>> viewer's space.? (E.g. morph Alan Arkin's eyes onto the source of a 
>> viewer gasp, such as when he sneaks up on Audrie Hepburn in the film 
>> Wait Until Dark.)? This was part of my notion about breaking down the 
>> 4th wall.? I hypothesized a video conferencing system in which each 
>> person posted a series of photos in a set of patterned poses - then 
>> the conference would proceed by sending small morphing instructions 
>> rather than full images.? One could turn a knob to change from "staid 
>> English" to "hand waving Italian" modes of presentation. (This came 
>> out of my work with communications with submarines in which voice was 
>> converted into tokenized words rather than conveyed as voice itself - 
>> that saved a lot of bandwidth on our 300 bits/second path and the 
>> resulting voice was much clearer and comprehensible, even if the 
>> speaker was synthetic - and it was something we suggested to the FCC 
>> for air traffic control.? I had pieces of these things running, but 
>> only small pieces.? it is an area that is waiting for further work.)
>>
>> Tools to test and exercise this stuff were hard to come by.? Jon had 
>> proposed his "flakeway" and a few years later I built one (operating 
>> as a malicious Ethernet switch rather than as a router.)? I now sell 
>> that, or a distant successor, as a product.
>>
>> ? ? ? ? --karl--
>>
>
>


From geoff at iconia.com  Mon Sep 29 18:54:05 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:54:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <434da208-946e-4f9b-824a-d6feeec5aa68@tamu.edu>
References: <20250929091539.14D2118C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <7923f932-7118-4a09-a1c0-751d73322706@tamu.edu>
 <2669b427-7e32-4add-92bb-d7446ab5b7f2@iwl.com>
 <7107742d-84fd-40a3-acff-d0c836aa056d@tamu.edu>
 <1751422478.1730802.1759185731962@mail.yahoo.com>
 <434da208-946e-4f9b-824a-d6feeec5aa68@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrj1eDaFXqSb32FS5weKbnE4H9jNidD8uZRhCenbRnVEdw@mail.gmail.com>

vis-a-vis:
On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:32?PM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> ... understanding how cisco quickly came up with a good quality
> set of routers is...


greg satz once explained to yours truly that the cs at cisco.com (customer
support) email included the entire engineering team (as well as the
customer support staff) and that in so doing it was not unusual for the
engineering staff to have *fixed* or addressed a bug or "issue" before the
customer support team would get back to the customer... apparently this was
most prevalent after normal business hours and on weekends... which goes to
another way "how cisco quickly" got around/back to customers in that their
800 # support line phone after hours rang on a phone on a nightstand next
to len & sandy's bed at their house and that they had been woken up at all
hours of the night to support their customers (who by then could not afford
to have their network be inoperative).

geoff

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


From craig at tereschau.net  Mon Sep 29 19:06:49 2025
From: craig at tereschau.net (Craig Partridge)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 20:06:49 -0600
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <CAHQj4CfKgg0QQX4iDviWDab4tRKbfj82rFKwp=aijxdCad112A@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 3:59?PM Karl Auerbach <karl at iwl.com> wrote:

>
> All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering
> content.  But that affected conversational uses where, according to the ITU
> we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds before people go
> into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.  I really wanted to get my physicist
> friends to consider increasing the speed of light, but they were resistant
> to the idea.
>
Fun story -- I had reason to go through the literature that led to the
140ms standard.  Turns out to have been lousy test equipment (I don't
recall anymore and my published versions of this discovery sanitized the
stupidity, but I think they turned out to be testing the quality of the
echo cancellers).  Riesz and Klemmer did the good quality tests in the
mid-1960s (Bell System Technical Journal) and they determined 600ms
round-trip was just fine.

Craig

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


From michaelgreenwald58 at gmail.com  Mon Sep 29 19:12:30 2025
From: michaelgreenwald58 at gmail.com (Michael Greenwald)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:12:30 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <2044c83f-a457-44bf-b62b-0f8d9da18e00@cis.upenn.edu>

I am pretty sure that student of David Cheriton you are referring to was 
Hugh Holbrook.

On 9/29/25 6:51 PM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> That problem was significantly reduced when one of Dave Cheriton's 
> students came up with the idea to do single-source multicast. This 
> changed the original multiple-source IP multicast into something far 
> more manageable and stable.? But I have not seen it used much in 
> commercial products, nor do I know how well supported it is in routers 
> and edge devices.
>


From geoff at iconia.com  Mon Sep 29 19:37:48 2025
From: geoff at iconia.com (the keyboard of geoff goodfellow)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:37:48 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>
Message-ID: <CAEf-zrjmYCgDGGBy_aKzNa2YZANFMcCgZmK6iJ03eQ5ccz7S=A@mail.gmail.com>

after returning to sf the bay area in '04 -- from living in prague -- paul
vixie -- then the head of ISC.ORG -- brought yours truly on for a project
that was known as the Multicasting Deployment Effort (MDE) to, well, get
multicasting widely deployed and used on the internet.

four things stymied that effort:

#1.) level 2 switching "imbalances" when you have a fire hose of feed going
into a garden hose of a spigot at routing junctions/distribution points

#2.) the effect multicasting would have on "peering arrangements" traffic
flowing accords

the next two came out of a conversation yours truly had with the CEO of
LIVE365.COM at the time that touts itself as "The world's audio. Every
station is made by a real human."

#3.) the cost of the streaming bandwidth for each listener was not their
highest expense/hassle, but rather the music royalties of the
RIAA/SoundExchange/ASCAP/BMI/SECAM/et al + the "onerous" reporting and
accounting requirements that necessitated keeping track of how many
listeners each song was streamed to/heard by (unlike with radio
broadcasting and multicasting).

#4.) by serving listeners with individual "monocasting" streams LIVE365 was
able to collect some demographic information about each listener knowing
who they are and thusly being able to tailor and individually target/direct
better and specific kinds of ads to them.

when all of the above was all taken together in consideration and
"realized" -- the MDE effort was summarily abandoned/closed (and yours
truly subsequently became a music director + system and network janitor
burping and diapring the streaming infrastructure as well as an on-air DJ
at KZSU 90.1 FM).

geoff

On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 6:51?PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Today's Internet multimedia (which mostly means videos and Zoom-like
> conferences) does not work all that well.
>
> Original IP multicast did not work well in a multi-administrative
> environment.  There was a lot of problems when the distribution tree
> cross administrative boundaries, and there was pressure for carriers to
> hot-potato the traffic onto another provider.
>
> (One day at Precept I was installing a new Cisco router - a small one, a
> 2514 - and it was not yet configured with its addresses. But the MBone
> DVMRP routing found it and started to send the entire MBONE traffic over
> our T-1 link while our poor router tried to scream "prune", "prune!",
> "PRUNE!!!" but could not be heard because those prune messages could not
> be sent because the unicast routing had not yet been configured.  It was
> like when one of Dave Mills PDP-11/03 boxes became the destination for
> all destinations on the net.)
>
> That problem was significantly reduced when one of Dave Cheriton's
> students came up with the idea to do single-source multicast.  This
> changed the original multiple-source IP multicast into something far
> more manageable and stable.  But I have not seen it used much in
> commercial products, nor do I know how well supported it is in routers
> and edge devices.
>
> Single source works well for presentation-style audio/video or for
> systems in which every participant feeds into a mixing engine that
> resolves things like data formats (Zoom does this, but it uses direct
> TCP connections to deliver the mixed content to the users.)
>
> One of the difficulties is when there is a mix of well provisioned
> user/clients and some poorly provisioned ones.  The question becomes
> "who waits?"  (And there is that problem of one stream, e.g. voice,
> being out of sync with visual pointers such as someone pointing to a map
> and saying "we meet here at dawn".)
>
> Present day conferencing works because most conferences have relatively
> few users.  When Steve Casner and I did the Precept RTP stack we went
> full bore and did the support for large client populations - that
> required a lot of code to back down on the client feedback in order to
> avoid packet implosions crushing the sources.  (That was hard code to
> test!)
>
> And things like Netflix and other streaming work basically because we
> are willing to dedicate a lot of bandwidth to those streams and to
> distribute the origination of the traffic across many, often widely
> dispersed, servers.
>
> (I notice that the net on this very day seems to be having stuttering
> problems - I've observed it from many points of view, including
> point-of-sale devices.  So it does seem that our assumption of plenty of
> bandwidth may at times be optimistic.)
>
> One of the interesting variations on IP multicast, variations that never
> took off, were things like multicast file transfers or multicast,
> reliable open-ended streams.  Multicast allowed expanding ring (TTL
> based) searches of "nearby" other recipients in order to obtain copies
> of lost data.  It was kinda cool (but did create security issues
> regarding malicious introduction of modified data.)
>
> Given that broadcast TV and radio are slowly dying (and their RF bands
> snapped up for other purposes) we may need to revisit how we do Internet
> multimedia.
>
>          --karl--
>
>
> On 9/29/25 6:21 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> > FYI, multimedia was on the Internet radar very early.  It was probably
> > the most important driving force for the evolution of TCP2 to become
> > TCP/IP4 in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
> >
> > Shortly after I got the assignment to implement the first TCP for Unix
> > in 1977, I started attending Internet meetings.  At one of the early
> > ones, I remember Vint describing a bunch of "scenarios" that the
> > Internet was expected to handle.  One was especially memorable. It
> > involved a teleconference with a group of military officers, located
> > over a broad geographic area including some perhaps in the Pentagon or
> > regional command centers, and others far away in jeeps or tanks, or
> > even helicopters, in action on a battlefield.
> >
> > The gist of the teleconference was to collect information about what
> > was happening, make decisions, and issue orders to the field units. At
> > the time, video was not even a dream, but it was deemed feasible even
> > in the near term to use the multimedia then available.  For example,
> > everyone might have some kind of display device, enabling them all to
> > see the same map or graphic.  A pointer device would allow anyone
> > while speaking to point to the graphic and everyone else would see the
> > same motions on their displays.  The teleconference would be conducted
> > by voice, which of course had to be interactive.  It also had to be
> > synchronized with the graphics, so that orders like "Move your
> > battalion here; we're going to bomb over here." didn't cause serious
> > problems if transmission delays were happening in the Internet and the
> > voice and graphics became unsynchronized.
> >
> > Such scenarios drove the thinking about what the Internet technology
> > had to be able to do.  It led to a consensus that the virtual
> > connection service of TCP2 was insufficient, due to its likelihood of
> > delays that would disrupt interactive voice.  In addition, the
> > consensus was that multiple types of service should be provided by the
> > Internet.  One type might be appropriate for interactive voice, where
> > getting as much data delivered as possible was more important than
> > getting all the data delivered eventually.  Similarly, large data
> > transfers, such as high-resolution graphics, could be delivered
> > intact, but it was less important that they arrive within milliseconds.
> >
> > That led to the split of TCP into TCP and IP, and the introduction of
> > UDP as a possible vehicle for carrying interactive content with a need
> > for low latency.  In addition, it might be useful for different types
> > of traffic to follow different routes through the Internet.
> > Interactive traffic might use a terrestrial route, where bulk traffic
> > such as graphics might travel through long-delay, but high bandwidth,
> > geosynchronous satellite networks.  The TOS field was added to the IP
> > header so that a teleconferencing program could tell the Internet how
> > to handle its traffic.
> >
> > TCP/IP4 created an experimental environment where such approaches
> > could be tried.  Various researchers used to come to the Internet
> > meetings to report on their experiments and lobby for new mechanisms.
> > (I recall Steve Casner and Jim Forgie as being frequent attendees with
> > those interests).   Experimentation later produced the MBONE, with
> > multicast which helped reduce the traffic loads through the
> > Internet.   MBONE seems to have faded away over the years, and various
> > "silos" of proprietary teleconferencing mechanisms have popped up to
> > provide such functionality, but unfortunately seem to have done so in
> > a non-interoperable way.
> >
> > Today, I use teleconferencing with Zoom, Facetime, and several
> > others.   There seems to be a lot of choices.   It seems to work
> > pretty well, at least for my personal scenarios.  But a few years ago
> > I was asked to give a presentation over the Internet to a conference
> > halfway around the planet, and we decided that it was too risky to
> > count on that Internet path being good enough at the scheduled time.
> > So we prerecorded the presentation and transferred it via FTP well
> > ahead of time.   Perhaps it would have worked, but we couldn't be
> > confident.
> >
> > Recently I heard anecdotal reports that the Internet on cruise ships
> > works well - but is reliable only when the ship is far out to sea.
> > When it's in port, or even just approaching port, teleconferencing is
> > unreliable.   My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port
> > include all the land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.
> > But that's just speculation, I have no data.
> >
> > So I wonder - is the multimedia on the Internet problem now solved?
> > As near as I can tell, the Internet today only provides one type of
> > service, with all datagrams following the same route. Did the
> > introduction of fiber make the concerns of the 1980s moot? Does
> > teleconferencing now work well throughout the Internet?  Do users
> > simply abandon the idea of using the Internet for teleconferencing
> > when they discover it doesn't work for them (as I did for my
> > presentation)?   Does the military now do what the 1970s scenarios
> > envisioned over the Internet?
> >
> > How did multimedia on the Internet evolve over the last 45+ years?
> >
> > Jack Haverty
> >
> >
> > On 9/29/25 14:59, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
> >> On 9/29/25 2:13 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:
> >>
> >>>   * How to persuade video to deal with occasional loss. Dave Clark did
> >>>     early outreach to codec experts and said that in response to the
> >>>     question "What do we do if some of your data has to be dropped"
> >>>     were told "Don't.  We're good at compression and if the data could
> >>>     be dropped, we'd have removed it."  As I recall, it was Facebook
> >>>     that led to codecs that could deal with loss?
> >>>
> >> Steve Casner and I worked really hard on these issues.  And because
> >> we often moved audio and video via different packet streams there was
> >> an impact from loss/delay/duplication/re-sequencing on one of the
> >> streams  on the other stream.
> >>
> >> Many codecs are not friendly to loss or underrunning their input
> >> buffers.  And with cipher chained (aka block-chained) streams it can
> >> get harder to pick up the sticks when a packet is lost.
> >>
> >> We were working with UDP so we did not have TCP trying to do
> >> reliability and sequencing.
> >>
> >> Some of the issues we faced were "what do we do when we don't have a
> >> video or audio packet at the time we need to feed it to the rendering
> >> hardware?"  For audio there was "redundant audio transport", aka
> >> "RAT" in which the data in packet N was carried in lower quality in
> >> packet N+1 (or N+2).
> >>
> >> For video we had to deal with 30 per second freight trains of closely
> >> spaced large packets.
> >>
> >> There were demarcations in the streams about where sound spurts began
> >> and where video frames ended.  Loss of those packets forced us to
> >> develop heuristics about how to imply where those packets were and
> >> what to do about it.
> >>
> >> Out of order packets were a bane.
> >>
> >> Patching voice/video data is hard because it can create artifacts,
> >> sometimes unexpected ones, such as synthetic tones when audio was
> >> being patched (and patched with what - we experimented with silence
> >> [doesn't work well] or averaging the prior/next [worked better], etc.)
> >>
> >> Things are worse these days because of the games that "smart"
> >> Ethernet NICs play with Ethernet frames - such as combining several
> >> small Ethernet frames and delivering to the receiving operating
> >> system as one large (up to 64Kbyte!) ethernet frame. One's software
> >> has to approach a modern Ethernet NIC with a software sledge hammer
> >> to turn off all of the "offloads".
> >>
> >> All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering
> >> content.  But that affected conversational uses where, according to
> >> the ITU we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds
> >> before people go into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.  I really
> >> wanted to get my physicist friends to consider increasing the speed
> >> of light, but they were resistant to the idea.
> >>
> >> I began work on a meta stream to carry information about objects in
> >> the video stream (in order to do fast, set top product placements and
> >> such) and with scripted morphing in to react to events in the
> >> viewer's space.  (E.g. morph Alan Arkin's eyes onto the source of a
> >> viewer gasp, such as when he sneaks up on Audrie Hepburn in the film
> >> Wait Until Dark.)  This was part of my notion about breaking down the
> >> 4th wall.  I hypothesized a video conferencing system in which each
> >> person posted a series of photos in a set of patterned poses - then
> >> the conference would proceed by sending small morphing instructions
> >> rather than full images.  One could turn a knob to change from "staid
> >> English" to "hand waving Italian" modes of presentation. (This came
> >> out of my work with communications with submarines in which voice was
> >> converted into tokenized words rather than conveyed as voice itself -
> >> that saved a lot of bandwidth on our 300 bits/second path and the
> >> resulting voice was much clearer and comprehensible, even if the
> >> speaker was synthetic - and it was something we suggested to the FCC
> >> for air traffic control.  I had pieces of these things running, but
> >> only small pieces.  it is an area that is waiting for further work.)
> >>
> >> Tools to test and exercise this stuff were hard to come by.  Jon had
> >> proposed his "flakeway" and a few years later I built one (operating
> >> as a malicious Ethernet switch rather than as a router.)  I now sell
> >> that, or a distant successor, as a product.
> >>
> >>         --karl--
> >>
> >
> >
> --
> 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
>
>

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


From karl at iwl.com  Mon Sep 29 20:10:47 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 20:10:47 -0700
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <2044c83f-a457-44bf-b62b-0f8d9da18e00@cis.upenn.edu>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <4fbdc8c7-8a13-40e7-8c58-2bd975af1363@iwl.com>
 <2044c83f-a457-44bf-b62b-0f8d9da18e00@cis.upenn.edu>
Message-ID: <17a88d71-ea39-4e1b-b97e-561665f4d87c@iwl.com>

Yes, it was Hugh Holbrook.? I had forgotten the name but I did remember 
the 'H's.? Thanks for the clarification (and the giving of credit where 
credit is due.)

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

On 9/29/25 7:12 PM, Michael Greenwald via Internet-history wrote:
> I am pretty sure that student of David Cheriton you are referring to 
> was Hugh Holbrook.
>
> On 9/29/25 6:51 PM, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>> That problem was significantly reduced when one of Dave Cheriton's 
>> students came up with the idea to do single-source multicast. This 
>> changed the original multiple-source IP multicast into something far 
>> more manageable and stable.? But I have not seen it used much in 
>> commercial products, nor do I know how well supported it is in 
>> routers and edge devices.
>>


From johnl at iecc.com  Mon Sep 29 20:11:47 2025
From: johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)
Date: 29 Sep 2025 23:11:47 -0400
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <9d7c04c6-ab12-4f84-9b51-3fa8c2d6593a@3kitty.org>
References: <2551d373-b594-4607-8fa2-b0423ce31cba@3kitty.org>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <3807a533-a614-4bc2-b138-f57a497fc04f@dcrocker.net>
 <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <9d7c04c6-ab12-4f84-9b51-3fa8c2d6593a@3kitty.org>
Message-ID: <20250930031147.E2410DEE76AD@ary.qy>

It appears that Jack Haverty via Internet-history <jack at 3kitty.org> said:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>Yes, that's another possibility.? The reports I mentioned were using the 
>wifi service on the ship.?? It's possible that the ship switches its 
>onboard wifi from the satellite network to cell network for some reason 
>when it gets close enough to shore.? /Jack

Ship wifi used to be expensive geosync satellite service, which worked
well because it was so expensive hardly anyone used it.  I recall something
like $40/day on the Queen Mary 2 a decade ago.  When you get into port
you can use your phone so it depends where you are -- in New York a
few thousand roaming users is a rounding error, in a tiny island it's
problem.

These days ship wifi is more likely to be Starlink which is cheaper and faster.

R's,
John


From julf at Julf.com  Tue Sep 30 04:25:05 2025
From: julf at Julf.com (Johan Helsingius)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:25:05 +0200
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <dbd0522d-f478-4c40-b5f3-2aca5d17db39@Julf.com>

On 29/09/2025 23:13, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> It was a complex evolution.  I remember talking with a VC person in Palo
> Alto c. 1994 about the fact that at some point in the next decade we'd be
> able to deliver movies over the Internet.

I still fondly remember the 1988 Qwest David Lynch-style commercial with
the run-down motel on in the middle of nowhere that still has "every 
movie ever made in every language, any time, day or night". After all
these years, we still don't have that - because the movies sit behind
various non-compatible walled gardens and subscription services.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ

	Julf



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Sep 30 04:29:03 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 07:29:03 -0400
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <CAHQj4CfKgg0QQX4iDviWDab4tRKbfj82rFKwp=aijxdCad112A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bb3b9c10-7b9e-4569-899a-289589a436b0@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CdR2WD_z4tak0kaYW0V-s5oeATa3OXTFu=6_+_SFWLJyw@mail.gmail.com>
 <b9ade4f6-c929-4110-83e7-845ae9cbf79a@iwl.com>
 <CAHQj4CfKgg0QQX4iDviWDab4tRKbfj82rFKwp=aijxdCad112A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C765C587-B8DD-48A0-9519-698DBD778562@comcast.net>

Bell Labs just ain?t what it use to be.

Remember when they discovered that network traffic was self-similar and they were just measuring the artifact of TCP congestion control?

> On Sep 29, 2025, at 22:06, Craig Partridge via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 3:59?PM Karl Auerbach <karl at iwl.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> All in all the cure for many things was to add delay before rendering
>> content.  But that affected conversational uses where, according to the ITU
>> we have a round trip budget of only about 140 milliseconds before people go
>> into half-duplex/walkie-talkie mode.  I really wanted to get my physicist
>> friends to consider increasing the speed of light, but they were resistant
>> to the idea.
>> 
> Fun story -- I had reason to go through the literature that led to the
> 140ms standard.  Turns out to have been lousy test equipment (I don't
> recall anymore and my published versions of this discovery sanitized the
> stupidity, but I think they turned out to be testing the quality of the
> echo cancellers).  Riesz and Klemmer did the good quality tests in the
> mid-1960s (Bell System Technical Journal) and they determined 600ms
> round-trip was just fine.
> 
> Craig
> 
> -- 
> *****
> 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 stewart at serissa.com  Tue Sep 30 07:24:31 2025
From: stewart at serissa.com (Lawrence Stewart)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:24:31 -0400
Subject: [ih] Evolution of Internet audio and video
In-Reply-To: <mailman.139.1759181648.34628.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
References: <mailman.139.1759181648.34628.internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
Message-ID: <413AC90B-7384-4696-AFF6-93F14E3CB66D@serissa.com>

Regarding Internet audio, Steve Casner and Danny Cohen gave a talk about this in 2010 at Google.

The video is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4KF1j-wp4

I got a set of the powerpoints from Scott Bradner in 2022, which I can provide if anyone would like them.

Also, IEEE gave a Milestone award for the First Real-Time Speech Communication on Packet Networks back in 2011

See 

https://ethw.org/Milestones:First_Real-Time_Speech_Communication_on_Packet_Networks,_1974_-_1982?

Somehow I got an invitation to the event, and talked to

John Makhoul (BBN)
Earl Craighill (SRI)
Cliff Weinstein (LL)
Steve Casner (ISI)
Bob Kahn (CNRI)

Cliff Weinstein gave my PhD advisor Bob Gray credit for writing down the history.  A presentation about this was given at Stanford in 2006 at

https://ee.stanford.edu/~gray/sydneylpcip.pdf?
sydneylpcip
PDF Document ? 1.9 MB

The first part of this is LPC math and the second part is a wonderful history of how things got going in the 70?s

The book version of this is https://ee.stanford.edu/~gray/LPCIP-sig-029-ebook.pdf

-Larry




From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Sep 30 09:59:10 2025
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:59:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
Message-ID: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Guy Almes

    > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
    > here took place?

No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)


First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
(supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
work on it again after I came back.

I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
for some testing, prior to that.

I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)


Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
for Barbara :-):

  /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */

  Who     When    What
  Bob     8/17    Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
		  in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
		  than BBN.
  Bob     8/19    Rebuilt to use inga.h.
  jnc     9/14    Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
		  working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
		  made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
		  redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
		  yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
		  error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
		  hangup
  jnc     9/16    Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
		  changed build files to be able to build versions with
		  and without DDT
  Bob     10/25   Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
		  out the same interface they arrived on.
		  Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
		  be removed after testing.
  Bob     11/29   Added Interland interface.  Installed infwd.c, removed
		  makgat files.
  Bob     1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
		  hardware timer.  Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
  jnc     2/3/84  Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
		  Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
  jnc     14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
  jnc     25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.

Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
added in November, 1983.

Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
machine, which is long gone, alas.)


So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.

It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.

	Noel


From galmes at tamu.edu  Tue Sep 30 11:53:42 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:53:42 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>

Noel,
   Thanks.  So early 1984.

All,
   The timeline seems roughly as follows:
<> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
<> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer 
facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but 
plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue 
Box.  William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software. 
This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least 
both IP and PUP supported.
<> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box 
becoming a serious product
<> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
<> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".  With a 
mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take 
over the software from Yeager.
<> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue 
Boxes.  Stanford says 'no'.
<> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus 
and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
<> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.  As 
Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day 
and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night. 
Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it 
and confronts Len.  There may be multiple versions of what happens next, 
but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
<> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement. 
This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to 
universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.

   This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco 
routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal 
cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the 
Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.

   The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the 
campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the 
availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a 
smaller number (initially) from cisco.

   In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a 
variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford 
played a very key role.
   None of this is new.
   But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of 
the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.

   I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline 
above.
	-- Guy

On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: Guy Almes
> 
>      > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>      > here took place?
> 
> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
> 
> 
> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
> work on it again after I came back.
> 
> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
> for some testing, prior to that.
> 
> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
> 
> 
> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
> for Barbara :-):
> 
>    /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
> 
>    Who     When    What
>    Bob     8/17    Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
> 		  in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
> 		  than BBN.
>    Bob     8/19    Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>    jnc     9/14    Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
> 		  working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
> 		  made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
> 		  redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
> 		  yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
> 		  error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
> 		  hangup
>    jnc     9/16    Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
> 		  changed build files to be able to build versions with
> 		  and without DDT
>    Bob     10/25   Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
> 		  out the same interface they arrived on.
> 		  Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
> 		  be removed after testing.
>    Bob     11/29   Added Interland interface.  Installed infwd.c, removed
> 		  makgat files.
>    Bob     1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
> 		  hardware timer.  Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>    jnc     2/3/84  Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
> 		  Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>    jnc     14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>    jnc     25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
> 
> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
> added in November, 1983.
> 
> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
> 
> 
> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
> 
> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
> 
> 	Noel
> 



From galmes at tamu.edu  Tue Sep 30 12:22:25 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:22:25 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <74C377D4-ACF4-44AB-AD1A-4B6828C4BA4F@tony.li>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <74C377D4-ACF4-44AB-AD1A-4B6828C4BA4F@tony.li>
Message-ID: <45a4e765-e2b6-41ee-897e-accafda27b0d@tamu.edu>

Tony,
   ;-)

   Thoroughly believable.
   Not that the Stanford endowment has ever really suffered, but one 
wonders how they'd be doing if, back in spring 1987, Stanford had just 
asked for, say, 10% of cisco's equity.
	-- Guy

On 9/30/25 3:05 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Again, I?m not able to post to I-H, so please feel free to forward.
> 
> 
>>  But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
>> 
>>  I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline above.
> 
> 
> One perhaps relevant additional rumor:
> 
> After cisco IPO?ed, there was allegedly also the threat of a subequent lawsuit from Stanford. However, the Stanford endowment folks pointed out that they had invested heavily in Wall Street darling cisco and that suing would have had the net effect of damaging Stanford.  Instead, talks ensued and cisco made a major contribution to Stanford. So everyone kissed and made up.  No further embarassment.
> 
> T
> 



From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Tue Sep 30 13:07:39 2025
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:07:39 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>

 Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part of this story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 3com also had a router product at this point in time.? Then I think there was also Wellfleet.? Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had planned to do with it.? It may have been just for use in the lab (and maybe had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes sense). It is cool you found the request.
barbara
    On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
 
 Noel,
? Thanks.? So early 1984.

All,?
? The timeline seems roughly as follows:
<> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
<> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer 
facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but 
plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue 
Box.? William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software. 
This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least 
both IP and PUP supported.
<> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box 
becoming a serious product
<> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
<> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".? With a 
mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take 
over the software from Yeager.
<> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue 
Boxes.? Stanford says 'no'.
<> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus 
and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
<> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.? As 
Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day 
and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night. 
Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it 
and confronts Len.? There may be multiple versions of what happens next, 
but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
<> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement. 
This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to 
universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.

? This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco 
routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal 
cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the 
Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.

? The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the 
campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the 
availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a 
smaller number (initially) from cisco.

? In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a 
variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford 
played a very key role.
? None of this is new.
? But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of 
the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.

? I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline 
above.
??? -- Guy

On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: Guy Almes
> 
>? ? ? > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>? ? ? > here took place?
> 
> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
> 
> 
> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
> work on it again after I came back.
> 
> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
> for some testing, prior to that.
> 
> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
> 
> 
> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
> for Barbara :-):
> 
>? ? /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
> 
>? ? Who? ? When? ? What
>? ? Bob? ? 8/17? ? Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
> ??? ??? ? in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
> ??? ??? ? than BBN.
>? ? Bob? ? 8/19? ? Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>? ? jnc? ? 9/14? ? Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
> ??? ??? ? working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
> ??? ??? ? made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
> ??? ??? ? redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
> ??? ??? ? yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
> ??? ??? ? error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
> ??? ??? ? hangup
>? ? jnc? ? 9/16? ? Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
> ??? ??? ? changed build files to be able to build versions with
> ??? ??? ? and without DDT
>? ? Bob? ? 10/25? Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
> ??? ??? ? out the same interface they arrived on.
> ??? ??? ? Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
> ??? ??? ? be removed after testing.
>? ? Bob? ? 11/29? Added Interland interface.? Installed infwd.c, removed
> ??? ??? ? makgat files.
>? ? Bob? ? 1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
> ??? ??? ? hardware timer.? Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>? ? jnc? ? 2/3/84? Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
> ??? ??? ? Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>? ? jnc? ? 14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>? ? jnc? ? 25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
> 
> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
> added in November, 1983.
> 
> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
> 
> 
> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
> 
> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
> 
> ??? Noel


  

From aam3sendonly at gmail.com  Tue Sep 30 13:28:19 2025
From: aam3sendonly at gmail.com (Alexander McKenzie)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:28:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] Fw: Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become
 known as -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1877697740.2060193.1759263340414@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
 <1877697740.2060193.1759263340414@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <CAMusaY9PcLA01oenrij-L5TXB0+8HmcWBe-Tdp+Wy0fo709e7w@mail.gmail.com>

Barbara,

The routers BBN built were built under government contract and would have
been relatively expensive to replicate, and hard to support. BBN
management was not interested in productizing them because they thought
they would be low profit compared to PSNs, and that there would be a small
market.  Some BBNers including Steve Blumenthal, Bob Hinden, and myself
tried to convince them the market for PSN's would dry up and the market for
routers would be very large, but we were unsuccessful. By the time the
writing was on the wall clearly enough for the management to read it Cisco
was well established and no one building a system wanted to take a chance
on a BBN competitor.  We even tried giving them away to an NSF regional but
were turned down.

Cheers,
Alex

On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 4:15?PM Alex McKenzie <amckenzie3 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> *From:* Barbara Denny via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> *To:* internet-history at elists.isoc.org <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 04:08:32 PM EDT
> *Subject:* Re: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become
> known as -TACs)
>
> Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part of this
> story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 3com also had a
> router product at this point in time.  Then I think there was also
> Wellfleet.  Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
> I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had
> planned to do with it.  It may have been just for use in the lab (and maybe
> had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes sense). It is
> cool you found the request.
> barbara
>     On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>
> Noel,
>   Thanks.  So early 1984.
>
> All,
>   The timeline seems roughly as follows:
> <> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
> <> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer
> facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but
> plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue
> Box.  William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software.
> This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least
> both IP and PUP supported.
> <> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box
> becoming a serious product
> <> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
> <> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".  With a
> mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take
> over the software from Yeager.
> <> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue
> Boxes.  Stanford says 'no'.
> <> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus
> and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
> <> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.  As
> Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day
> and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night.
> Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it
> and confronts Len.  There may be multiple versions of what happens next,
> but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
> <> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement.
> This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to
> universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.
>
>   This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco
> routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal
> cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the
> Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.
>
>   The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the
> campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the
> availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a
> smaller number (initially) from cisco.
>
>   In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a
> variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford
> played a very key role.
>   None of this is new.
>   But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of
> the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
>
>   I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline
> above.
>     -- Guy
>
> On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > > From: Guy Almes
> >
> >      > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you
> described
> >      > here took place?
> >
> > No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us
> take a
> > guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in
> and
> > out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
> > some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford
> visit
> > it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't
> interested
> > in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
> >
> >
> > First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a
> good
> > chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda)
> waiting
> > for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
> > (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is
> that
> > the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started
> to
> > work on it again after I came back.
> >
> > I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after
> I
> > got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
> > distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no
> Internet
> > connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a
> Bridge
> > box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after
> which
> > the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks.
> It
> > definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my
> own
> > for some testing, prior to that.
> >
> > I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have),
> but an
> > old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February,
> 1984. (I
> > was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
> >
> >
> > Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I
> was
> > clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary
> notes
> > about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C
> Gateway
> > for Barbara :-):
> >
> >    /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
> >
> >    Who    When    What
> >    Bob    8/17    Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module
> start
> >           in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
> >           than BBN.
> >    Bob    8/19    Rebuilt to use inga.h.
> >    jnc    9/14    Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger
> (not
> >           working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
> >           made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
> >           redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
> >           yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
> >           error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
> >           hangup
> >    jnc    9/16    Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger
> buffers,
> >           changed build files to be able to build versions with
> >           and without DDT
> >    Bob    10/25  Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
> >           out the same interface they arrived on.
> >           Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
> >           be removed after testing.
> >    Bob    11/29  Added Interland interface.  Installed infwd.c, removed
> >           makgat files.
> >    Bob    1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets
> using
> >           hardware timer.  Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
> >    jnc    2/3/84  Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
> >           Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
> >    jnc    14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
> >    jnc    25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
> >
> > Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
> > Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the
> first
> > few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added
> Interlan[]
> > interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally
> had
> > only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
> > board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
> > added in November, 1983.
> >
> > Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers."
> Early
> > versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later
> modified
> > the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep
> the
> > buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
> > memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am
> not
> > certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon
> time-sharing
> > machine, which is long gone, alas.)
> >
> >
> > So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
> > routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think
> I
> > told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
> > Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
> >
> > It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's
> quite
> > possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_
> remember it,
> > I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
> > happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
> >
> >     Noel
>
>
>
> --
> 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 galmes at tamu.edu  Tue Sep 30 13:30:59 2025
From: galmes at tamu.edu (Guy Almes)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:30:59 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <9fd3ebc4-093c-4a0b-be48-275a005fac1b@tamu.edu>

Hi Barbara,
   My memory of conversations at meetings of the NSFnet regionals was 
that Wellfleet was discussed, but I don't recall any specific of those 
regionals using them.
   As for BBN, I don't recall their routers even being discussed. 
(Although, years later, BBN actually acquired several of the regionals.)
	-- Guy

On 9/30/25 4:07 PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part of this story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 3com also had a router product at this point in time.? Then I think there was also Wellfleet.? Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
> I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had planned to do with it.? It may have been just for use in the lab (and maybe had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes sense). It is cool you found the request.
> barbara
>      On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   Noel,
>  ? Thanks.? So early 1984.
> 
> All,
>  ? The timeline seems roughly as follows:
> <> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
> <> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer
> facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but
> plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue
> Box.? William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software.
> This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least
> both IP and PUP supported.
> <> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box
> becoming a serious product
> <> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
> <> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".? With a
> mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take
> over the software from Yeager.
> <> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue
> Boxes.? Stanford says 'no'.
> <> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus
> and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
> <> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.? As
> Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day
> and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night.
> Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it
> and confronts Len.? There may be multiple versions of what happens next,
> but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
> <> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement.
> This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to
> universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.
> 
>  ? This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco
> routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal
> cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the
> Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.
> 
>  ? The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the
> campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the
> availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a
> smaller number (initially) from cisco.
> 
>  ? In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a
> variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford
> played a very key role.
>  ? None of this is new.
>  ? But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of
> the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
> 
>  ? I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline
> above.
>  ??? -- Guy
> 
> On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> > From: Guy Almes
>> 
>>? ? ? > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>>? ? ? > here took place?
>> 
>> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
>> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
>> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
>> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
>> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
>> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
>> 
>> 
>> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
>> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
>> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
>> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
>> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
>> work on it again after I came back.
>> 
>> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
>> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
>> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
>> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
>> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
>> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
>> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
>> for some testing, prior to that.
>> 
>> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
>> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
>> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
>> 
>> 
>> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
>> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
>> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
>> for Barbara :-):
>> 
>>? ? /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
>> 
>>? ? Who? ? When? ? What
>>? ? Bob? ? 8/17? ? Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
>> ??? ??? ? in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
>> ??? ??? ? than BBN.
>>? ? Bob? ? 8/19? ? Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>>? ? jnc? ? 9/14? ? Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
>> ??? ??? ? working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
>> ??? ??? ? made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
>> ??? ??? ? redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
>> ??? ??? ? yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
>> ??? ??? ? error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
>> ??? ??? ? hangup
>>? ? jnc? ? 9/16? ? Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
>> ??? ??? ? changed build files to be able to build versions with
>> ??? ??? ? and without DDT
>>? ? Bob? ? 10/25? Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
>> ??? ??? ? out the same interface they arrived on.
>> ??? ??? ? Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
>> ??? ??? ? be removed after testing.
>>? ? Bob? ? 11/29? Added Interland interface.? Installed infwd.c, removed
>> ??? ??? ? makgat files.
>>? ? Bob? ? 1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
>> ??? ??? ? hardware timer.? Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>>? ? jnc? ? 2/3/84? Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
>> ??? ??? ? Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>>? ? jnc? ? 14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>>? ? jnc? ? 25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
>> 
>> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
>> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
>> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
>> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
>> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
>> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
>> added in November, 1983.
>> 
>> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
>> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
>> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
>> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
>> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
>> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
>> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
>> 
>> 
>> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
>> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
>> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
>> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
>> 
>> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
>> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
>> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
>> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
>> 
>> ??? Noel
> 
> 
>    
> -- 
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!FJFwSyWB- 
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> 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Tue Sep 30 15:29:00 2025
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:29:00 -0700
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <9fd3ebc4-093c-4a0b-be48-275a005fac1b@tamu.edu>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
 <9fd3ebc4-093c-4a0b-be48-275a005fac1b@tamu.edu>
Message-ID: <b91e9a03-4579-43b8-8e38-9aea3b6eaf3e@3kitty.org>

It's good to see a discussion like this.? The list has traditionally 
been focussed on the evolution of technology, algorithms, protocols, and 
such.? But the non-technical parts of history may actually have as 
great, or greater, role in what happened over the years?? I never had 
heard the cisco/Stanford story for example until now.

I can add a bit about the BBN router history.? Note that this is my 
personal recollections, others may have different perspectives.

Several of us at BBN had migrated to BBN from Licklider's group at MIT.? 
Lick was a strong proponent of networking, and especially his vision of 
an "intergalactic network" in which humans would have their own machines 
somehow all able to talk to each other, and would help people do 
whatever they needed to do in life - all the time, even when the human 
wasn't "logged in".?? Lick spent time also at ARPA, where he promoted 
the same vision for militaryuse and was a key player in getting the 
ARPANET going.

At the time, computers were big and expensive, but workstations had 
started to appear.? Our group received a bunch of machines from a 
startup in a Boston suburb called the Imlac Corporation.? We had a bunch 
of Imlac PDS-1D machines, which were personal workstations - a desk with 
computer in the base, a keyboard, and a console with lots of lights and 
switches.?? The computer was a multiprocessor, pretty rare for that era, 
containing both a CPU as was common and a Graphics Processor with its 
own set of drawing instructions, both sharing the same memory space.? 
Mice weren't common yet circa early 1970s, although we did have a 
"mouse" with 5-finger keyboard, aka Engelbart's "chord keyboard" (which 
I never managed to master).

Our PDP-10 was always overloaded, so we figured out ways to use the 
Imlacs to offload the PDP-10.? Today we'd call it "client/server" with 
the PDP-10 as a server and the Imlacs as clients.? But I don't think 
that term had been created yet.?? Or perhaps I had just never heard it yet.

Bob Metcalfe was in an office down the hall.? He had built the 1822 
interface for our PDP-10 and was finishing up his thesis on "Thin Wire 
Interprocess Communications".? He was on his way West to Silicon Valley, 
first at PARC and later 3COM.? Ethernet did not yet exist.

Still, to use the benefits of the Imlacs' power, we needed some kind of 
LAN (also a term probably not yet created).? An undergraduate showed up, 
and brought some Imlac programs with him -- in particular Maze Wars.? 
Maze ran on an Imlac.? But we had a bunch of Imlacs, so the obvious next 
step was a multi-player game.? No LANs, no Ethernet, not enough IMP 
ports or any 1822 Imlac interfaces, but we had RS232 lines,? So we 
created a "LAN" using the RS232 connections and the server code on the 
PDP-10.?? I recall figuring out ways to boost the speed of RS-232 as 
high as I could, well beyond the specs, achieving almost 100 kb/second.? 
Low latency was crucial for gameplay.

At BBN circa 1980, we expats from MIT remembered the experience at MIT 
and Lick's vision.? LANs had started to proliferate, but competition 
raged for the best approach.? Ethernet had not yet won, and Token Ring 
was a strong competitor.? Still it was clear that workstations (and 
eventually PCs) as well as? LANs were coming, and IMP ports weren't a 
viable way to connect all those personal machines to a network.?? Lick's 
vision was congealing.

So, we tried to convince management that adding LAN ports to IMPs was a 
good idea.?? The proposal was called "IMP Local Nets".? BBN management's 
reaction was basically "Great idea!? Get the government to pay for it." 
The government similarly said "Great idea!? You guys should just do that 
as a product and we'll buy a lot of them."? This was sometime in the 
very early 1980s IIRC.

At the time, the gateways we were operating were based on PDP-11 or 
LSI-11 hardware.? So a first step to offering "IMP Local Net" capability 
could have been just putting an LSI-11 into some free space in the IMP 
cabinet.? But that never happened.

A decade later, BBN had finally created a router product, based on its 
homegrown Butterfly hardware.? It was shown at Interop somewhere around 
1989.? But the cisco Systems router was smaller, much less expensive 
(IIRC about 1/5th of the price), and pretty much provided the same 
capablility.

Ever since, I've been wondering if part of the historical story involves 
cultural differences.? East Coast and West Coast (specifically Silicon 
Valley) operated very differently.? Maybe that had something to do with 
the influence of the Venture Capitalist crowd on Sand Hill Road.?? 
Whatever the case, it seems that a lot of Internet-era startups came out 
of Silicon Valley - Sun, 3COM, etc. In contrast, the East Coast 
networking companies have mostly vanished rather quickly.? Imlac, 
Proteon, Wellfleet, BBN -- not names you heard as the Internet 
exploded.? PARC was a Silicon Valley operation with good technology, but 
perhaps the East Coast corporate headquarters was an obstacle.

Earlier I described the meeting I attended at DDN to help them as a 
consultant in evaluating a proposal for adding LANs to DDN.?? I think 
the presenters were probably Len and Sandy from cisco.?? I never got 
called to any other such meeting, although there were other product 
offering they might have used - e.g., from Proteon, or Wellfleet.?? 
Perhaps those proposals were also considered.? Or perhaps the East Coast 
culture wasn't as aggressive as Silicon Valley in creating startups and 
promoting their products?

Maybe someone else knows that part of the history....

Jack Haverty


On 9/30/25 13:30, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi Barbara,
> ? My memory of conversations at meetings of the NSFnet regionals was 
> that Wellfleet was discussed, but I don't recall any specific of those 
> regionals using them.
> ? As for BBN, I don't recall their routers even being discussed. 
> (Although, years later, BBN actually acquired several of the regionals.)
> ????-- Guy
>
> On 9/30/25 4:07 PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>> ? Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part 
>> of this story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 
>> 3com also had a router product at this point in time.? Then I think 
>> there was also Wellfleet. Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
>> I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had 
>> planned to do with it.? It may have been just for use in the lab (and 
>> maybe had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes 
>> sense). It is cool you found the request.
>> barbara
>> ???? On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via 
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> ? ? Noel,
>> ?? Thanks.? So early 1984.
>>
>> All,
>> ?? The timeline seems roughly as follows:
>> <> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based 
>> workstation
>> <> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer
>> facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but
>> plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue
>> Box.? William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software.
>> This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least
>> both IP and PUP supported.
>> <> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box
>> becoming a serious product
>> <> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
>> <> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".? With a
>> mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take
>> over the software from Yeager.
>> <> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue
>> Boxes.? Stanford says 'no'.
>> <> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus
>> and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
>> <> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.? As
>> Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day
>> and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night.
>> Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it
>> and confronts Len.? There may be multiple versions of what happens next,
>> but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
>> <> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement.
>> This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to
>> universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.
>>
>> ?? This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco
>> routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal
>> cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the
>> Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.
>>
>> ?? The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the
>> campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the
>> availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a
>> smaller number (initially) from cisco.
>>
>> ?? In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a
>> variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford
>> played a very key role.
>> ?? None of this is new.
>> ?? But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of
>> the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
>>
>> ?? I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline
>> above.
>> ???? -- Guy
>>
>> On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> > From: Guy Almes
>>>
>>> ? ? ? > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you 
>>> described
>>> ? ? ? > here took place?
>>>
>>> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let 
>>> us take a
>>> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was 
>>> in and
>>> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along 
>>> with
>>> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ 
>>> Sanford visit
>>> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't 
>>> interested
>>> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
>>>
>>>
>>> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and 
>>> spent a good
>>> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) 
>>> waiting
>>> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
>>> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) 
>>> is that
>>> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I 
>>> started to
>>> work on it again after I came back.
>>>
>>> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just 
>>> after I
>>> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
>>> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no 
>>> Internet
>>> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a 
>>> Bridge
>>> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, 
>>> after which
>>> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory 
>>> leaks. It
>>> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on 
>>> my own
>>> for some testing, prior to that.
>>>
>>> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still 
>>> have), but an
>>> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 
>>> 1984. (I
>>> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
>>>
>>>
>>> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which 
>>> I was
>>> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary 
>>> notes
>>> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C 
>>> Gateway
>>> for Barbara :-):
>>>
>>> ? ? /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
>>>
>>> ? ? Who? ? When? ? What
>>> ? ? Bob? ? 8/17? ? Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load 
>>> module start
>>> ??? ??? ? in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
>>> ??? ??? ? than BBN.
>>> ? ? Bob? ? 8/19? ? Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>>> ? ? jnc? ? 9/14? ? Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed 
>>> logger (not
>>> ??? ??? ? working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
>>> ??? ??? ? made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
>>> ??? ??? ? redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
>>> ??? ??? ? yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
>>> ??? ??? ? error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
>>> ??? ??? ? hangup
>>> ? ? jnc? ? 9/16? ? Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger 
>>> buffers,
>>> ??? ??? ? changed build files to be able to build versions with
>>> ??? ??? ? and without DDT
>>> ? ? Bob? ? 10/25? Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to 
>>> broadcast
>>> ??? ??? ? out the same interface they arrived on.
>>> ??? ??? ? Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
>>> ??? ??? ? be removed after testing.
>>> ? ? Bob? ? 11/29? Added Interland interface.? Installed infwd.c, 
>>> removed
>>> ??? ??? ? makgat files.
>>> ? ? Bob? ? 1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back 
>>> packets using
>>> ??? ??? ? hardware timer.? Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>>> ? ? jnc? ? 2/3/84? Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
>>> ??? ??? ? Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>>> ? ? jnc? ? 14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>>> ? ? jnc? ? 25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
>>>
>>> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
>>> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that 
>>> the first
>>> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added 
>>> Interlan[]
>>> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden 
>>> originally had
>>> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 
>>> 10Mbit
>>> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was 
>>> only
>>> added in November, 1983.
>>>
>>> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more 
>>> buffers." Early
>>> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later 
>>> modified
>>> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to 
>>> keep the
>>> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
>>> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but 
>>> I am not
>>> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon 
>>> time-sharing
>>> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
>>>
>>>
>>> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
>>> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I 
>>> think I
>>> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I 
>>> was at
>>> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on 
>>> that.
>>>
>>> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. 
>>> It's quite
>>> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ 
>>> remember it,
>>> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
>>> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
>>>
>>> ??? Noel
>>
>>
>> ?? --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>> internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!FJFwSyWB- 
>> Yun2_oBq3OEOMkJ13dbfvHbObRllvaEsJuPvXlseKdyBdQeeuBEQ72WHQ18mIWtXOnP9vnnL1buZEqP8lAZgw$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history__;!!KwNVnqRv!FJFwSyWB-Yun2_oBq3OEOMkJ13dbfvHbObRllvaEsJuPvXlseKdyBdQeeuBEQ72WHQ18mIWtXOnP9vnnL1buZEqP8lAZgw$> 
>>
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>>
>>
>

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From karl at iwl.com  Tue Sep 30 16:32:08 2025
From: karl at iwl.com (Karl Auerbach)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:32:08 -0700
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <134f65cb-7ff5-4a4d-a7b3-a1d0524a0ac9@iwl.com>

We used 3COM and Wellfleet routers (and perhaps Proteon - did I spell 
that correctly?) in addition to Cisco on the early Interop show networks.

Cindi Jung managed the 3COM ones and Robin Littlefield the Wellfleets.? 
We ran not only IP routing but also DECnet, Netware-IPX, and ISO/OSI 
whatever.? We typically had 40+ of each brand in the show network.? (The 
crew who ran the internal show routing were known, quite accurately, as 
"Router Goddesses", the crew that ran our external routing was known as 
"Alex Latzko and Jim Martin".? You couldn't ask for a better crew to 
deal with the chaos that was the Interop show networks of the late 1980s 
and early 1990's where we installed and set up a working multi-protocol 
network for thousands of hosts within an 8-hour time span.)

(At one of the DC shows - 1993? - we also had our "Plan-B router" which 
was a honkin' big (for that era) Cisco with well over 30+ interfaces.? 
Years later, once we reached the prodigious Las Vegas convention center, 
the venue electricians would not believe that we had devices that could 
draw so much power, so they kinda gave lip service to the electrical 
codes - and we ended up setting the convention center carpet on fire.)

We generally did not have trouble with 3COM or Wellfleet - although the 
latter at times caused us to reflect on the giant red reset button on 
the front of each and why it needed to be so prominent.? Sometimes we 
got so frustrated that we asked "Would a Wellfleet router float well if 
it were to be dropped off the end of the Santa Cruz wharf?"

And who could forget this famed (or infamous) t-shirt: "If Cisco Had 
Invented The Wheel":

 ?https://www.cavebear.com/old_cbblog/pictures/juniperwheel.jpg

By-the-way, Wellfleet gave out much better swag than the other router 
companies.

 ? ? ? ? --karl--

On 9/30/25 1:07 PM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
>   Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part of this story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 3com also had a router product at this point in time.? Then I think there was also Wellfleet.? Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
> I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had planned to do with it.? It may have been just for use in the lab (and maybe had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes sense). It is cool you found the request.
> barbara
>      On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>   
>   Noel,
>  ? Thanks.? So early 1984.
>
> All,
>  ? The timeline seems roughly as follows:
> <> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
> <> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer
> facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but
> plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue
> Box.? William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software.
> This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least
> both IP and PUP supported.
> <> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box
> becoming a serious product
> <> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
> <> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".? With a
> mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take
> over the software from Yeager.
> <> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue
> Boxes.? Stanford says 'no'.
> <> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus
> and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
> <> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.? As
> Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day
> and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night.
> Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it
> and confronts Len.? There may be multiple versions of what happens next,
> but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
> <> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement.
> This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to
> universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.
>
>  ? This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco
> routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal
> cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the
> Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.
>
>  ? The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the
> campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the
> availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a
> smaller number (initially) from cisco.
>
>  ? In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a
> variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford
> played a very key role.
>  ? None of this is new.
>  ? But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of
> the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
>
>  ? I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline
> above.
>  ??? -- Guy
>
> On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> From: Guy Almes
>>  ? ? ? > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>>  ? ? ? > here took place?
>>
>> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
>> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
>> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
>> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
>> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
>> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
>>
>>
>> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
>> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
>> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
>> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
>> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
>> work on it again after I came back.
>>
>> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
>> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
>> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
>> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
>> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
>> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
>> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
>> for some testing, prior to that.
>>
>> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
>> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
>> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
>>
>>
>> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
>> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
>> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
>> for Barbara :-):
>>
>>  ? ? /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
>>
>>  ? ? Who? ? When? ? What
>>  ? ? Bob? ? 8/17? ? Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
>>  ??? ??? ? in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
>>  ??? ??? ? than BBN.
>>  ? ? Bob? ? 8/19? ? Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>>  ? ? jnc? ? 9/14? ? Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
>>  ??? ??? ? working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
>>  ??? ??? ? made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
>>  ??? ??? ? redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
>>  ??? ??? ? yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
>>  ??? ??? ? error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
>>  ??? ??? ? hangup
>>  ? ? jnc? ? 9/16? ? Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
>>  ??? ??? ? changed build files to be able to build versions with
>>  ??? ??? ? and without DDT
>>  ? ? Bob? ? 10/25? Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
>>  ??? ??? ? out the same interface they arrived on.
>>  ??? ??? ? Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
>>  ??? ??? ? be removed after testing.
>>  ? ? Bob? ? 11/29? Added Interland interface.? Installed infwd.c, removed
>>  ??? ??? ? makgat files.
>>  ? ? Bob? ? 1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
>>  ??? ??? ? hardware timer.? Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>>  ? ? jnc? ? 2/3/84? Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
>>  ??? ??? ? Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>>  ? ? jnc? ? 14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>>  ? ? jnc? ? 25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
>>
>> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
>> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
>> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
>> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
>> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
>> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
>> added in November, 1983.
>>
>> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
>> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
>> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
>> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
>> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
>> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
>> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
>>
>>
>> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
>> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
>> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
>> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
>>
>> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
>> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
>> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
>> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
>>
>>  ??? Noel
>
>    


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Tue Sep 30 16:37:17 2025
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2025 19:37:17 -0400
Subject: [ih] Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as
 -TACs)
In-Reply-To: <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20250930165910.1880218C073@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
 <c1ebea73-fa66-4293-93a2-960e66dcf807@tamu.edu>
 <1421674565.2470650.1759262859161@mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <D51C65D1-FB9E-4865-B724-69BC53D22025@comcast.net>

I have heard and I know it was the case at least once. In 83 or so, we built a 68000 based router for Project Athena, but couldn?t convince marketing there was a market for such a thing. I heard many other groups had the same problem with their marketing groups having 20/20 hindsight.

John

> On Sep 30, 2025, at 16:07, Barbara Denny via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Any comments about why the BBN router didn't seem to become a part of this story? I have heard but haven't been able to confirm that 3com also had a router product at this point in time.  Then I think there was also Wellfleet.  Did you find these routers weren't suitable?
> I remember asking for a router build but I don't remember what I had planned to do with it.  It may have been just for use in the lab (and maybe had something to do with Ethernet interfaces if that makes sense). It is cool you found the request.
> barbara
>    On Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at 11:53:52 AM PDT, Guy Almes via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:  
> 
> Noel,
>   Thanks.  So early 1984.
> 
> All, 
>   The timeline seems roughly as follows:
> <> very early 1980s: Andy Bechtolsheim designs the 68000-based workstation
> <> 1983-84: challenged by Ralph Gorin, director of Stanford's computer 
> facilities, a team adapts the workstation, minus bit-mapped display but 
> plus 3Mbps Ethernet cards, to become a router referred to as the Blue 
> Box.  William Yeager is generally credited as providing the software. 
> This router software, interestingly, is multi-protocol with at least 
> both IP and PUP supported.
> <> spring 1984: Noel infects Len Bosack with routers like the Blue Box 
> becoming a serious product
> <> December 1984: cisco is incorporated by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner
> <> 1985: Stanford formalizes the "Stanford University Network".  With a 
> mandate for the network to be IP-only, Len Bosack and Kirk Lougheed take 
> over the software from Yeager.
> <> 1985: Len asks Stanford for permission to commercialize the Blue 
> Boxes.  Stanford says 'no'.
> <> So by late 1985, Blue Boxes are proliferating on the Stanford campus 
> and cisco is building a few despite Stanford's 'no'.
> <> 1986: more Blue Boxes on campus and also cisco productizing them.  As 
> Stanford staff, Len and Kirk are improving the Blue Box software by day 
> and, as cisco, are continuing to improve that same software by night. 
> Les Earnest, Len's boss at Stanford Computer Science, finds out about it 
> and confronts Len.  There may be multiple versions of what happens next, 
> but before long Len and Kirk only work for cisco.
> <> spring 1987: cisco and Stanford come to an amicable arrangement. 
> This arrangement removed what would otherwise have been an obstacle to 
> universities and others buying the resulting cisco AGS router.
> 
>   This timing is interesting to me, partly because, it meant that cisco 
> routers were available, with pretty good maturity and with no legal 
> cloud, in time for several NSFnet-related regional networks, such the 
> Sesquinet effort at Rice University where I was at the time.
> 
>   The NSFnet networks (not the backbone, but the regionals and the 
> campuses) were able to grow explosively, in part, due to the 
> availability of two good routers, the majority from Proteon and a 
> smaller number (initially) from cisco.
> 
>   In this cast of characters, several contributed to the Internet in a 
> variety of ways, but the little drama and solid innovation at Stanford 
> played a very key role.
>   None of this is new.
>   But for reasons that relate largely to the legal dispute, tellings of 
> the story often suppressed to avoid embarrassing a major corporation.
> 
>   I'd be interested in any corrections or improvements to the outline 
> above.
>     -- Guy
> 
> On 9/30/25 12:59 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> From: Guy Almes
>> 
>>       > Also, do you remember when the visit to Stanford that you described
>>       > here took place?
>> 
>> No, but there are some original contemporary clues that _might_ let us take a
>> guess at about when it might have been. I say 'might' because I was in and
>> out of Stanford back then a fair amount, tweaking on 'Golden', along with
>> some other stuff going on (below) - and I have no idea _which_ Sanford visit
>> it occurred on, although I can rule one out. (Readers who aren't interested
>> in the gory details should skip to the bottom paragraphs.)
>> 
>> 
>> First, I got caught in INS paperwork in (I think) late 1982, and spent a good
>> chunk of time out of the US (first in Antigua, and later in Bermuda) waiting
>> for my permanent residency paperwork to come through. My vague memory
>> (supplemented by the log below - my initial memory had some errors) is that
>> the Stanford-MIT connection was starting while I was gone, and I started to
>> work on it again after I came back.
>> 
>> I also did some consulting for Bridge (later bought by 3Com), just after I
>> got back, and my meeting with Len may have happened during that. (I
>> distinctly recall that to test the Bridge work, since they had no Internet
>> connection - indeed, no TCP/IP _anything_ - we physically dragged a Bridge
>> box up to Stanford, and ran a whole bunch of traffic through it, after which
>> the Bridge people were able to verify that my code had no memory leaks. It
>> definitely wasn't that visit, though.) I did also go to Stanford on my own
>> for some testing, prior to that.
>> 
>> I'm too lazy to go find the Bridge paperwork (which I do still have), but an
>> old passport reveals that I got my permanent residency in February, 1984. (I
>> was back in the US for a short priod in the summer of 1983, too.)
>> 
>> 
>> Second, looking through the filesystem of the MIT-CSR machine (which I was
>> clever enough to save), I find a file with the following fragmentary notes
>> about Golden (I also see that in March, 1984 Liza Martin built a C Gateway
>> for Barbara :-):
>> 
>>     /* History of changes to Golden Gate config. */
>> 
>>     Who    When    What
>>     Bob    8/17    Added fix for Apranet deafness bug, made load module start
>>           in CGW rather than DDT, made ISI the default gateway rather
>>           than BBN.
>>     Bob    8/19    Rebuilt to use inga.h.
>>     jnc    9/14    Removed ETHWCH (claimed not needed), removed logger (not
>>           working), added MOSDDT, made MILSRI the default gateway,
>>           made MONTR output to console automatically on startup,
>>           redid inga organization, put in version II KPALV (not
>>           yet tested, though), minor cosmetic changes to some
>>           error messages, real fix to ARPANet DMA board output
>>           hangup
>>     jnc    9/16    Adjusted static buffer allocations, made larger buffers,
>>           changed build files to be able to build versions with
>>           and without DDT
>>     Bob    10/25  Modified infwd.c to drop packets that try to broadcast
>>           out the same interface they arrived on.
>>           Modified amakgat files to include local infwd.o, this should
>>           be removed after testing.
>>     Bob    11/29  Added Interland interface.  Installed infwd.c, removed
>>           makgat files.
>>     Bob    1/28/84 Included Mogul's moseth-1 to fix back-to-back packets using
>>           hardware timer.  Also installed a new inga.t and su-inga.h.
>>     jnc    2/3/84  Diked MOSDDT and symbol table tro give more buffers.
>>           Use the 'nost' option to makgg, which calls samakgat.
>>     jnc    14/4/84 Fixed to load with IN cataclysym.
>>     jnc    25/4/84 Added default subnet gateway in IN.
>> 
>> Another file (a copy of the 3Mbit Ethernet interface driver, which Jeff
>> Mogul, before this from MIT, at this time of Stanford) reveals that the first
>> few entries here, which have no year, are 1983. Note the "Added Interlan[]
>> interface"; looking at the early configuration files, Golden originally had
>> only a 3Mbit Ethernet interface (the Xerox board). So the Interlan 10Mbit
>> board (the first 10Mbit Ethernet board available for the PDP-11) was only
>> added in November, 1983.
>> 
>> Note also the "Diked MOSDDT and symbol table t[]o give more buffers." Early
>> versions of the C Gateway kept everything in the low 56KB; I later modified
>> the code to use the PDP-11 memory mapping, in a primitive way, to keep the
>> buffers themselves in high memory - after which there was plenty of low
>> memory -> no need to skimp on it. I _think_ Stanford got that - but I am not
>> certain. (I'm pretty sure that work was all done on the Proteon time-sharing
>> machine, which is long gone, alas.)
>> 
>> 
>> So, which Stanford visit was it? I'm quite sure I had my 'mucho $$$ in
>> routers' brainwave on the beach in Antigua - i.e. early in 1983. I think I
>> told Len about it fairly early - so probably in early 1984, when I was at
>> Stanford, as part of the Bridge project. But don't rely too hard on that.
>> 
>> It would be interesting if someone asked Len if he remembers that. It's quite
>> possible that he genuinely doesn't; memory is odd, that way. _I_ remember it,
>> I think, because I have often thought of it - especially soon after it
>> happened, because Cisco was such tough competition for Proteon.
>> 
>>     Noel
> 
> 
> 
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