[ih] TCP adoption in 1984

[Craig Partridge]

On Sat, May 2, 2026 at 4:26 PM Bob Purvy via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Grok's estimate is that about 900 hosts could be reached via TCP, at the
> end of 1984. RFC 984 for TCP over Ethernet was in April of that year.
>
> Were these *entirely* university and research machines? Were any of them
> actually running TCP on Ethernet? Does anyone know"
>

I joined BBN in fall 1983 and a few months later was given a SUN
workstation (needed it for the project I was on) and attached to an
Ethernet  (10Mbps coax - net 128.89) that ran on the 4th or 5th (or both?)
floors of 10 Moulton St.  We had, as I recall, a few dozen machines of
various types, all running TCP/IP on that Ethernet.  (My first project
involved writing a device driver for an 80-mbps token ring network so we
could experiment with TCP/IP on that).

So, short answer, TCP on Ethernet was routine in fall 1983, and there were
other wonderful LANs too.

Craig

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