[ih] Host-Host vs NCP (Was Re: Confusion in the RFCs)

[John Day]

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
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