IP: Before the DNS: How I upstaged The NIC's Official

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff () radiomail net>
To: "Dave Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>


(Internet history lession for IP)


=A0=A0=A0=A0Before the DNS: How I upstaged The NIC's Official HOSTS.TXT.
=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0Geoff Goodfellow
=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 (geoff () radiomail net)
=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 November '97


Back in the early '70s of the ARPANET, the Network Information Center (NIC)
based at SRI International distributed The Official Host Table called
HOSTS.TXT.=A0 The NIC would update this table through "official channels"=
 and
host administrators would periodicly transfer over a new version of the=
 table
to their systems and then run a conversion program to translate it into=
 their
operating systems format.=A0 There was one problem: The Official Channels=
 took
forever to update HOSTS.TXT and therefore hostables were frequently out of=
=20
date with the reality of what was actually up and operating on The Net.


What I did was look at a 'netstat' for hosts that did not have names and=
 just
showed up as numbers.=A0 This was easy because in those early days the=
 Network
Control Program known as NCP (this was before TCP/IP) would broadcast=
 messages
called RSTs to every possible host address on the network when they booted=
 up.
What RSTs did was say to a host: "Hi there, please mark me as UP in your
netstat listing and if you have any left over connections from the time I=
 went
down, please reset them".=A0 The effect of these RST messages was to make=
 hosts
show up in the netstat listing as numbers without host names assigned to=
 them.


I would notice these nameless hosts and telnet or ftp to them to see what=
 host
name the operating system login prompt gave me or what the ftp server=20
announced in its greeting.=A0 I would then plug this information into my
system's
host table.=20


These were the heady days of the Net when PDP-10's and an operating system
called Tenex pretty much ruled the Net and what Tenex did, much to the=
 chagrin
of others, sometimes, er, often was called The Standard.


Word started to spread to other Tenex system administrators that my system's
host table was the most up to date.=A0 You can imagine what happened next:=
 many
system administrators started to reference my host table instead of the
NIC's.=20
Someone suggested I create a mailing list so that everytime my hostable was
updated they could know to FTP over a new one.=A0 Some even installed=
 automatic
batch jobs that would transfer over my table without human intervention.


The word spread further, administrators at other net sites running different
operating systems such as ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) and
Multics
wrote conversion program to take my Tenex style table and put it into a=
 format
for their network programs to digest.


Then UNIX came along with several flavors of NCP's from The Rand=
 Corporation,
The University of Illinois, and BBN.=A0 Each of these UNIX NCP sites wrote=
=20
programs for their particular internal host name format to handle my table.
I believe that even VMS got into the act as well.=A0=20


By now as you might imagine the NIC had gotten wind of this
guerilla/underground host table information gathering and distribution
system.=20
They were mightly unhappy about being upstaged and their authority=
 challenged
but the system administrators of all those sites had each made an individual
choice: Geoff
Goodfellow's hostable was more up to date and well managed than the Official
HOSTS.TXT table.


There was nothing the NIC could do to stop these site admins from each=
 making=20
their own choice about who they wanted to trust and where to get their most=
 up
to date host information from.=A0 As far as I know my host table was the
prefered
host table used by the majority of sites on The Net until the DNS came along
and=20
host tables became moot.


Please note that I did not develop my host table for the net.=A0 I just
needed one for my site that was more up-to-date, so I figured out how
to create it. Then my friends copied it, and word spread, and the
market made its free choice.=A0 Of course, I did not mind this
happening, since they were just copying what I needed to make for
myself.


The End.=20








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"Photons have neither morals nor visas"  --  Dave Farber 1994
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