IP: Re: another IEEE ward for Steve Crocker

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:56:40 -0500
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: Dave Crocker <dhc2 () dcrocker net>
> Subject: Re: IP: another IEEE ward for Steve Crocker
> Cc: ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
>
> At 04:21 AM 7/26/2001, David Farber wrote:
> > ... the IEEE Board of Directors has named you [ Steve Crocker]  the 
> > recipient of the 2002 IEEE Internet Award with the following citation:
> > "For leadership in creation of key elements in open evolution of Internet 
> > protocols: Network Working Group, Request for Comments process and 
> > layered protocol approaches."
>
> Dave,
>
> (Please ignore any last-name similarity with the awardee.  It has no 
> bearing on what follows...)
>
> The timing is pretty good.  30 years earlier, in the Fall of 1972, the 
> Arpanet team gave the first public demonstration, in Washington DC, 
> showing the underlying packet net, and the fully integrated application 
> services. [ I was there djf] As Steve noted in RFC 1000, his hearty band 
> of Western graduate students did their work assuming that eventually the 
> pros from the East would come in and deliver the ultimate solution.
>
> However, there were no pros.  The work of the grad students set the stage 
> for all of the end-to-end work on the Internet.  The underlying transport 
> service needed to be replaced because a) the packet-switching folks had 
> over-promised reliability, and b) the original transport system (NCP) had 
> extra knobs and switches for experimenting.  However essentially all of 
> the application work remains in use.  (It was 10 years before a separate 
> email protocol was created, and really it was only an upgrade to the 
> existing protocol that had been part of file transfer.)
>
> At the Arpanet "Coming Out Party" in 1972, the demonstration worked so 
> well that one could connect to a BBN computer in Boston, decide it was too 
> slow, and then connect to a similar machine at USC-ISI, in Marina del 
> Rey.  Such a change of venue worked so well that even knowledgeable 
> observers of the demonstration did not realize that they had just crossed 
> the country.
>
> d/
>
>
> ----------
> Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker () brandenburg com>
> Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
> tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.273.6464



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