[ih] History from 1960s to 2025 (ARPANET to TCP)

[William Westfield]

> 
> Some TCP implementers in the 1980s chose to use a "front end" approach, placing all of the TCP mechanisms in a separate processor somehow attached to their main computer.   AFAIK, such implementations have mostly disappeared.

This sort of implementation is still widely used in the “deeply embedded” market, with chips and modules from the likes of WizNet and Espressif allowing small microcontrollers (eg 32k of memory) to talk to the Internet.  (One could debate the logic of a “network processor” with significantly greater resources and performance than the “host”, but… still happening.)

It can be “interesting” how the “bottlenecks” move, in such implementations.  (presumably that was what killed the “large computer” networking front ends as well - it’s awkward to have your connection to the front end be slower (and perhaps more complex) than the network connection itself.)

BillW