[ih] Fw: Cisco origins (Was: when did APRANET -TIPs become known as -TACs)

[Barbara Denny]

   ----- 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

> 
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