[ih] How long did it take?

[John Levine]

It appears that Jack Haverty via Internet-history <jack at 3kitty.org> said:
> ... The 
>measurements didn't make sense to the IMP algorithm. IIRC, the measured 
>delay was something like 90 msec.  That was far too low to be a 
>satellite circuit, but also far too high for a traditional terrestrial 
>circuit.
>
>Someone at BBN investigated with the circuit provider (ATT IIRC). 
>Apparently there was some kind of internal mechanism involving a 
>microwave tower on top of a mountain, with a "beam" that would rotate 
>around to send data to several other towers.    The data for "our" 
>circuit was queued somewhere until the beam got to the appropriate 
>position.  That explained the longer than usual delays for the 
>traditional terrestrial circuit.  I don't know exactly how that scheme 
>worked but it seemed that it had to involved splitting data streams up 
>into short segments and queuing them until the right time to send.  
>  Sounds like packet switching to me.

Sounds more like TDM, but an interesting story nonetheless.

R's,
John