[ih] Comments re the packet radio discussion
Jack Haverty
jack at 3kitty.org
Wed Apr 22 17:14:41 PDT 2026
Hi Len,
Yes, I started with the call K3FIV, switched to WA1WGI when I moved to
Massachusetts, and then retrieved K3FIV as my call after the FCC stopped
enforcing the geographic rules. Back in high school, there was also a
"surplus shop" in the 1960s down in the bowels of Philadelphia where I
used to find all sorts of gear that provided lots of components for use
in ham stations. Old WWII equipment was still easily available and
cheap. Like you, I've always been fascinated by the magic of action at
a distance.
Ham radio was where I first learned networking issues and concepts. But
a few years later, still in high school, I had a teacher who for some
reason was passionate about the history of the Roman Empire. I
accidentally learned even more about networking in his classes.
It turns out that the Roman Empire also depended on its own Internet to
communicate with, and especially to manage, its Empire which covered
much of Europe and reached into parts of Asia and Africa. Computers
didn't exist, so their Internet was implemented by human processors and
a web of interconnections composed of the Roman roads and ships (e.g.,
"triremes") for "circuits" across the Mediterranean. The standard
catchphrase to describe that era is "All roads lead to Rome", but a more
accurate one would be "Roman roads lead to everywhere in the Empire."
I learned a lot in those classes about how the Roman Internet worked.
It relied on Scribes, to create "papyrus datagrams" and couriers, who
provided the means to transmit the papyrus datagrams. The roads were
the "circuits" transporting "datagrams", on papyrus "packets" in the
runners packs. Some parts of their Internet were terrestrial, with
Couriers literally running on the roads. Others were shipboard and
mobile, perhaps with the Couriers as rowers. No radio networks though....
Over several centuries, the Romans developed and evolved algorithms and
protocols. Obviously they required routing mechanisms, but also used
other technology. For example, very important messages would be sent
using Scribes to make copies of datagrams, and send couriers with each
copy to the destination, using alternate routes. Particularly "lossy"
circuits (e.g., where pirates roamed) could motivate using similar
techniques to improve the probability of a successful transmission.
Latency was a problem, with transit times measured in days or weeks,
but sending multiple messages by "diversity routing" deemed to mitigate
the need for error control or retransmission protocols in such latency
conditions..
Security was an issue of course. But a papyrus scroll could easily be
ripped into strips, and each strip sent by a different courier, even
over different routes. They didn't call it "fragmentation" and
"reassembly" but that's pretty much what happened and it provided
security too. Encryption using code words might have been used too. Or
both if needed. Scribes and Couriers were slaves, easily available and
cheap.
Sometimes datagrams had to go to multiple destinations. When the Roman
Senate declared war on Carthage (in Africa) some Senator In Rome shouted
"Carthago delenda est!" (Carthage must be destroyed!) That message had
to get to all the scattered legions of the Roman Army to inform them of
a declaration of war. I can imagine that a few papyrus datagrams
travelled across the Mediterranean to ports in Africa, were then copied
by Scribes, and a copy sent directly by lots of couriers in parallel to
deliver it to each military unit in Africa. They didn't call it
"multicast" but it addressed the same need.
FYI to anyone interested, I also recommend the book "The Victorian
Internet" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet ).
I didn't read this until recently, but it is another example discussing
an older Internet of the pre-computer times. The book describes the
emergence of Morse Code and the whole system of Telegraphy that
developed in the 19th century. The description of the "social media"
that developed among the widely scattered population of operators was
interesting too. When traffic loads were light, operators could easily
talk to each other, not just exchanging "routing updates".
There's a lot of detail included about the impact that the "Victorian
Internet" had on society, business, and culture of that era. IMHO,
we're right now going through a similar historical transition with our
own Internet and global societies, but the book describing that
experience can't be written quite yet.
I suspect the Egyptians or Greeks might also have an Internet but I
didn't have a teacher who was into their history. The Romans must have
learned about Internets from someone. Maybe the Sumerians....
Humans have been using Internets, and developing appropriate algorithms
and protocols to implement them using the technology of the day, for
quite a long time.....
/Jack Haverty
On 4/21/26 20:09, Leonard Kleinrock wrote:
> Jack, your experiment in high school with Ham Radio and Morse code and its eventual use to help ARPA out is delicious. Do you still have your ham radio call sign? I had a less interesting but somewhat related experience as a child when I built operating radios out of cannibalized broken radios that were thrown out by folks in my New York tenement apartment building. But, son of a gun, in spite of the fact that I learned Morse Code, I couldn’t afford to become a Ham operator since the “rig” itself was far too expensive. But the excitement of action at a distance that radio provides was fascinating magic and seduced me for life.
> Len
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Apr 21, 2026, at 7:41 PM, Steve Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>> Great story!
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Apr 21, 2026, at 10:14 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Glad to see that AI is on the problem!
>>>
>>> My first encounter with network technology involved AI. I had a lot to learn about networking. Somewhat long story...sorry, just hit delete now if you aren't interested.
>>>
>>> It started in 1963. In high school, I was interested in STEM (acronym not yet in existence though), had joined the school's Radio Club, gotten a amateur radio ("ham") license, and somehow gotten involved in something (in the US) called the National Traffic System (NTS - that acronym did exist).
>>>
>>> NTS was a network. Actually an Internet. Actually a multi-technology Internet of interconnected networks. It had been evolving since shortly after World War II. Packets (think telegrams or emails) were transported around the world. There were LANs covering cities, Regional nets over the US, and gateways to nets covering other parts of the world. Even a TransContinentalCorps (TCC) that acted as a WAN.
>>>
>>> I learned about all sorts of the technical mechanisms that operated inside the network: routing, flow control, addresses, error control, protocols for retransmissions, compression techniques, etc.
>>>
>>> NTS typically carried messages such as Birthday Greetings, e.g., from a soldier stationed in Guantanamo Bay (address: "GITMO") to a family member back home somewhere in the US. Although most of the distance was covered by radio, using Morse Code, the final link might use a different "LAN", e.g., a telephone call or even simply driving to the house and delivering a piece of paper. NTS still operates today. More details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Traffic_System if you're curious.
>>>
>>> When I was in Lick's orbit at MIT, that experience made it easy for me to understand the ARPANET. Later also the Internet. Techniques were different but the problems remained the same.
>>>
>>> At one point circa 1975, ARPA asked for our help with a critical DoD need. They wanted computers to be able decode hand-sent Morse code. No one ever explained exactly why to us tech grunts, but we knew Morse was being used by both the good and bad guys. The AI technology of the day was "Expert Systems". We were tasked to use whatever we thought would help solve the problem.
>>>
>>> That started a project which lasted several years, and produced a system which did about as well, possibly even better, than a human operator. From my high school experience, I acted as the "Expert", and we had a series of staff and student projects to make the PDP-10 do the same things I had learned to do while participating in the radio network. ARPA was happy. DoD was happy. No ham operator could afford the millions of dollars to have their own PDP-10 system, but the government didn't have that constraint.
>>>
>>> The project even appeared in a 1990 Mitre report I think of as a compendium of "ARPA's Greatest Hits". See Chapter 22 of https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA239925.pdf (FYI, ARPANET is Chapter 20 of same report).
>>>
>>> The reason I mention this is because Gemini's interpretation reminded me of the behavior we noted in that AI system -- in 1975. The radio environment was pretty nasty, with conditions such as interference or lightning strikes randomly causing "dropped packets", which the network had to mitigate. The software we built had parameters which we could change to modify how confident it had to be before issuing a translation of the "Morse" it was hearing. It was in effect a "knob" that you could use to tell the system how hard to work to do its job.
>>>
>>> One day, just for the hell of it, we set the confidence knob as low as it could go. Then we tuned the radio to a frequency with no one transmitting at all, just atmospheric noise.
>>>
>>> The system tried real hard. The processor was no doubt overheating. The memory cores were melting. But it produced words. It created sentences. It created paragraphs. It described things and the content actually made sense. All of it was nonsense of course, pure gibberish.
>>>
>>> Unless... perhaps we were actually listening to some extraterrestrial communications? We should have informed SETI. Klingonese or Cardassian -- didn't matter, it is still proof - "they do exist!"
>>>
>>> Today's AI is apparently even more creative in interpreting gibberish. It even explains how it's reaching its conclusions!
>>>
>>> /Jack
>>>
>>>>> On 4/21/26 13:39, vinton cerf wrote:
>>>> gemini:
>>>>
>>>> It looks like you’ve found the "right-side up" version of the text you shared earlier! Seeing it this way makes the patterns much clearer, though it’s still definitely dancing on the edge of "uncanny valley" English.
>>>>
>>>> This isn't a standard language; it’s a form of *pseudo-English* or *Asemic writing*. It’s designed to /look/ like a coherent paragraph to your brain at a distance, but when you zoom in, the words dissolve.
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The Linguistic Breakdown
>>>>
>>>> While it’s mostly gibberish, we can "reverse engineer" the intended words based on the letter structures. It feels like a corrupted digital file or a transcript from an AI that’s having a minor stroke.
>>>>
>>>> *Key "Deciphered" Fragments:*
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> *"medete ont to emoe ‘entmaxe o bear ed outs"*
>>>>
>>>> o
>>>>
>>>> /Translation:/ "Meditate on to come, examine to bear the outs."
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> *"eae onkwsxs oF beats nood nat Iebow"*
>>>>
>>>> o
>>>>
>>>> /Translation:/ "Are knows of beats down that I bow."
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> *"edt of paatectire ant Moold"*
>>>>
>>>> o
>>>>
>>>> /Translation:/ "The architecture and mold" (or "world").
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> *"guivkscer his note a buat cence?"*
>>>>
>>>> o
>>>>
>>>> /Translation:/ "Receiver his note a [about?] sense?"
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What is this, exactly?
>>>>
>>>> Since you aren't sure where it came from, here are the three most likely suspects:
>>>>
>>>> 1.
>>>>
>>>> *A "Markov Chain" Generator:* This is a classic result of an
>>>> algorithm being fed a lot of old literature (like Poe or
>>>> Lovecraft) and trying to predict the next letter. It gets the
>>>> "rhythm" of the words right, but the spelling fails.
>>>>
>>>> 2.
>>>>
>>>> *Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Gore:* If someone scanned a
>>>> very old, physically damaged book using cheap software, the
>>>> computer might have guessed the letters incorrectly, resulting in
>>>> this "alphabet soup."
>>>>
>>>> 3.
>>>>
>>>> *Weirdcore / Digital Art:* There is a massive online subculture
>>>> that creates "cryptic artifacts"—text that looks haunted or
>>>> forbidden—just to spark curiosity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My "Best Guess" at the Meaning
>>>>
>>>> If I had to summarize the "vibe," it reads like a *distorted manual for a ritual or a meditation guide.* It uses words like /meditate, examine, architecture, slumberous,/ and /note./ It’s trying to tell you to look at something ("examine to bear the outs"), but the "signal" is breaking up.
>>>>
>>>> *Technical Note:* Notice how it uses "u" and "n" or "p" and "b"
>>>> interchangeably? That’s a hallmark of text that was meant to be
>>>> read upside down (the "Flip Text" from before). It was likely
>>>> written specifically to be readable—albeit weirdly—from both
>>>> directions.
>>>>
>>>> *Where did you encounter this?* Was it in a text file, a hidden comment in code, or maybe a strange social media "bot" account? Knowing the medium might help me figure out if there's a hidden key to the gibberish.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 4:29 PM Carsten Bormann via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> Hmm, I really wanted to get-bunter-ebay already, and I could
>>>> definitely use a few Denknuxe (*).
>>>>
>>>> So I asked deepseek, and it suggested this might have been scanned
>>>> upside down (or maybe as ink leaked through the page?).
>>>> It couldn’t really help any further though except suggesting a
>>>> service like https://www.upsidedowntext.com/, which gets me (not
>>>> quite what I was looking for):
>>>>
>>>> ɯǝpǝʇǝ ouʇ ʇo ǝɯoǝ ‘ǝuʇɯɐxǝ o qǝɐɹ ǝp onʇs
>>>> ǝɐǝ ouʞʍsxs oℲ qǝɐʇs uoop uɐʇ Iǝqoʍ
>>>> ┴p ‘ ǝpʇ qǝǝ ɐɯǝ ʇɐʌǝ uǝɹuɐbǝʇ Ԁ∀ƃɥ¿ ˥ᴉǝs
>>>> | ɐlqɐɥǝɹǝs ɐɐpʇo >ɐǝʞ ┴onɐɹs slǝɐᴉuᴉɐs ǝnɹos˙ poʇᴉʇʎ uq(
>>>> ǝǝʇ ʇo ʇooʇʇǝ ǝp¿ ‘s)ɐoʇzɐzɐ ǝpʇ oɟ dɐɐʇǝɔʇᴉɹǝ ɐuʇ Woolp «
>>>> ʍɥǝ oʇ pǝuʞunxǝ פǝsp ouᴉx ɐǝp ǝɟouʇǝɹɹs¿ opʎ sǝ ǝʌoʇʇǝp |
>>>> ǝɐǝ ʍǝǝ ɥǝuʇɐƃ( ƃǝʇqnuʇǝɹǝqɐʎ ǝps ┴Hɹǝɯǝlƃbns' oʇ qoʍ ƃɐʇǝp oʇɐ ƃᴉɐo
>>>> ‾ ʇoɐʇoʍƃ ɟǝsɔoɯʇsǝƃzǝ ǝpʇ ʇopʎ˙ o8˙ ǝɯoɹǝxǝ oʇɥɐ ʇǝxᴉɐb ʇǝ )ǝp
>>>> Iʍɐs’: ɟǝuʇᴉʎ ɾ
>>>> op Sᴉʞʍ ʇɐls sonɹʇɐsʇ ǝqɐɹobɹoǝɐʇ ɯǝu ɯsʇoʎǝ ƃnᴉʌʞsɔǝɹ ɥᴉs uoʇǝ ɐ
>>>> qnɐʇ ɔǝuɔǝ¿
>>>>
>>>> Maybe some other AI can help here…
>>>> Need to find a student.
>>>>
>>>> Grüße, Carsten
>>>>
>>>> (*) The first sentence of my message is easier to understand if
>>>> you speak German.
>>>>
>>>>> On 2026-04-21, at 22:10, Jack Haverty via Internet-history
>>>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>>> medete ont to emoe ‘entmaxe o bear ed outs
>>>>>> eae onkwsxs oF beats nood nat Iebow
>>>>>> TD ‘ edt bee ame tave nernaqet PAgh? Lies
>>>>>> | albaheres aadto <aek TouaRs sleainias euros. dotity nb)
>>>>>> eet to tootte ed? ‘s(aotzaza edt of paatectire ant Moold «
>>>>>> whe ot Denknuxe Gesd onix aed efonterrs? ody se evotted |
>>>>>> eae wee hentag) getbunterebay eds THremelgqus, ot bow gated
>>>> ota giao
>>>>>> _ toatowg fescomtsegze edt tody. o8. emorexe otha texiaq te
>>>> (ed Iwas’: fentiy j
>>>>>> od Sikw tals sourtast ebaroqroeat men mstoye guivkscer his
>>>> note a buat cence?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I guess I'm still not allowed to read this PRTN....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Medete ont to you too!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> /Jack
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