[ih] when did ARPANET -TIPs become known as -TACs

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Mon Sep 29 01:28:52 PDT 2025


    > 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


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