[ih] capacity v bandwidth

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

vint, any chance you would be willing to recount to the list what happened
at the Pentagon on your first day at ARPA in 1976.. in how you mistakingly
got mistook for someone else in the reception area.. and ended up being
walked thru multiple levels of guarded "security" checkpoints and ended up
in the "War Room" (or whatever it was) instead of the HR office (recalling
that ARPA didn't have an HR office)?

over the years yours truly has retold that story of yours -- that iirc you
to related to us at a meeting or conference or something -- when people
have said such-and-such a "security" breach thing was "fake"/"made up" and
couldn't ever possibly have happened in real life (such as say the security
breach incident in the 1997 movie "Contact" that resulted in deliberate
sabotage) where someone "got/slipped through security"

g

On Sun, May 31, 2026 at 9:07 AM vinton cerf via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Yes, I left Stanford in July or August and started at ARPA in Sept 1976.
>
> V
>
> On Sun, May 31, 2026, 11:39 Lawrence Stewart via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > … Rummages around for information theory hat.
> >
> > I don’t think I am alone in holding that things with digital interfaces
> > should say “bandwidth” and things with analog interfaces should say
> > “capacity”.
> >
> > The Shannon-Hartley theorem is about the analog part of this.
> >
> > In the digital domain, I think almost everyone uses “bandwidth” to talk
> > about peak available bits-per-second and “capacity” to talk about usable
> > bits-per-second under certain loads, queuing policies, and the like.
> >
> > In the above, bandwidth is absolutely misused for digital circuits as
> > compared to its analog meaning.  Capacity, unfortunately, has two
> meanings
> > and they get muddled all the time.
> >
> > Language evolves and non of this offends me.
> >
> > Regarding Vint at Stanford I arrived there in September 1976, and by the
> > time I was corresponding with Vint about using Ron Crane’s VDH line
> driver
> > to get SU-ISL connected to the SUMEX IMP, he was back in Washington I
> think.
> >
> > -L
> >
> >
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-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True