Re: ARPANET history

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Dan Doernberg [dan () fairness com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:56 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: ARPANET history

Dave,

Following up on the ARPA history discussion, I think the list might
be interested in Peter Salus' new collection of ARPANET primary
source documents "The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations
of the Internet" (disclosure--- published by my company a few weeks
ago).

An overview is given below; more information is at <http://
www.peerllc.com/content/view/15/43>.


Dan Doernberg
Publisher, Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC
dan () peerllc com
http://www.peerllc.com
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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"The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet"
reproduces the seminal papers, reports, and RFCs that led to the
birth of modern network computing. Most appear here in book form for
the first time.

Part A, "Imagining the ARPANET", covers the initial studies of
network feasibility and includes:

   * The introductory and concluding chapters of Paul Baran's seminal
RAND research report "On Distributed Communications" in which packet
switching was first conceptualized.

   * The classic 1968 paper "The Computer as a Communication Device"
by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, respectively the ARPANET's
earliest proponent and the ARPA administrator who pushed the
development project.


Part B, "Planning the ARPANET" includes:

      * Scans of the first 18 RFCs, some publicly available here for
the first time (the handwriting was too poor to be transcribed for
the online repository). Also included is RFC 51 which anticipated
Java by 20 years.

      * The 1968 ARPA-commissioned SRI study by Elmer Shapiro that
modeled a heterogeneous network and concluded that it was indeed
feasible.

      * Retrospective forewords by Steve Crocker (author of RFC #1)
and Leonard Kleinrock (noted author and head of the UCLA computing
lab that hosted the first ARPANET node).


Part C, "Building the ARPANET", reproduces the quarterly technical
reports from the government's contractor Bolt Beranek and Newman;
they contemporaneously describe the development group's progress,
difficulties encountered, and final success. Dave Walden, former BBN
VP and a key member of the ARPANET team, has contributed a
retrospective Foreword.

A historical overview by Peter Salus and some reprints from "Matrix
News" are also noteworthy. The book is dedicated to the memory of Jon
Postel.

----------------

Peter H. Salus (Editor) has served as Executive Director of USENIX
and The Sun User Group and Vice President of the Free Software
Foundation. He was Managing Editor of the journal "Computing Systems"
from 1987-98 and is the author of several histories, including
"Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond" (Addison-
Wesley, 1995).



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