[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5
Tom Lyon
pugs78 at gmail.com
Thu Sep 4 19:31:38 PDT 2025
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 --------------
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> > Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
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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
> > ***********************************************
> >
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