[ih] IPv8...

[Greg Skinner]

On Apr 18, 2026, at 1:38 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> That kind of situation was a major reason behind the use of "military scenarios" that I mentioned in another thread on this list.   Such scenarios were used during the circa 1980 redesign to evolve TCP 2 into TCP/IP 4.  We wanted to make sure that new features were likely approaches to solving problems surfaced in the scenarios, to be subsequently verified by experimental use as part of the ongoing research needed to achieve "rough consensus and running code".  There were lots of ideas tossed around, but if no one could see how some idea might be used, it was discarded, to avoid implementing solutions in search of a problem.
> 
> Somewhere in the timeline of Internet History, the notion of scenarios as drivers of technical choices must have disappeared.  I'm not sure when that happened -- perhaps when Vint left ARPA and NSF became involved so that the military focus faded away.  Still, there could have been non-military scenarios to reflect the broader scope of ongoing Internet development.  I don't remember any other than the problem of "not enough address bits".   Were there others...?
> 
> /Jack Haverty
> 

With regards to anycast, I was able to find a bit of historical information via Wikipedia.  It cites a tutorial by Bill Woodcock documenting best practices in anycast routing. [1]  The tutorial notes the use of anycast for topological load balancing services dating back to 1989.  Also, in 1993, Craig started a discussion on the ietf list with some examples (taken from people who supported services such as archie) of how anycast could be used. [2]  Unfortunately, I don’t know of any other sources from that time period, or earlier, that might indicate any other scenarios where anycast (if implemented) would solve their problems.  Bill Woodcock (copied) is on this list, so perhaps he knows of some.

--gregbo

[1] https://www.pch.net/resources/Tutorials/anycast/Anycast-v06.pdf
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/G3MpiGE77Frdjs5icVBCqEqGAYw/