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Re: ucla on internet conference
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:18:08 -0700
Begin forwarded message: From: Christian Huitema <huitema () microsoft com> Date: October 16, 2009 10:07:36 AM PDT To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net> Subject: RE: [IP] ucla on internet conference David Reed wrote:The Internet work was begun as a way to unify and interconnect networks that were not part of the Internet. In particular, the Packet Radio project, Satellite networking projects, a variety of Local Area Networking projects (including the one at MIT called LCSNET, where I was based) each were part of the Internet development activity, and had operational systems that had nothing to do with the Internet, well before the Internet was the primary mode of using the ARPANET. The Internet began with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) designed by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.
The more I hear this discussion, the more I compare it to finding the source of the river. There are cases where the source is a big lake somewhere, and the matter can be resolved un ambiguously. But there are many more cases where the river starts as a tiny brook on the hill of a mountain, that is then joined by many other tiny brooks, becomes a small stream, etc. The Internet grew very much like this river. There was accretion over time of many streams, Arpanet and Cyclades, NSFNet and CSNET, the many research networks that were growing up around the world, UUCP and Usenet, Bitnet, and many more. Some streams contributed some technology, other contributed user communities, yet other contributed applications.
There were indeed key inventions and refinement, such as packet switching, understanding of queues, datagrams, layered transport stacks, distributed routing protocols, address formats, separation between IGP and BGP, domain names, e-mail standards, http, VoIP, SIP, etc. Each of those brought the technology to a next level, and allowed the Internet river to grow. The researchers and engineers who developed these technology certainly need to be recognized.
But looking for a single source and a single stream ? This would be way too simple!
-- Christian Huitema ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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