re A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
> Date: December 2, 2009 2:27:16 PM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] re  A Ridiculous Failure of Critical Infrastructure
> Reply-To: karl () cavebear com

> Steve G. and others have give us a very nice view of the net from a  
> large scale perspective.  Here is a perspective from the other end  
> of the size scale:
>
> Back in the latter 1980's there were several of us on the San  
> Francisco Penninsula who were using both usenet and the IP based  
> net, whatever name it might have had.  The "we" consisted both of  
> individuals such as John Romkey and Dave Bridgham (both from FTP  
> Software) and small companies, such as my own Epilogue Technology.
>
> It was a frustrating mess.  We had lashups of Telebit modems, SLIP  
> links, KA9Q engines (I hope that Phil Karn has been awarded Internet  
> Angel wings for that), and Doug Karl (another oft overlooked  
> contributor to the net) routers.
>
> So one nice afternoon several of us met - several meaning enough  
> people to sit around the largest table in The Little Garden, a  
> Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto - to talk about buying some circuits  
> and bolting together our own private net between San Francisco and  
> San Jose.  The net took its name from the restaurant.
>
> The details are faint and I was only indirectly involved, but I  
> vaguely remember tossing some money into a pot and I think it was  
> D.V. Henkel-Wallace who took the lead in actually getting something  
> set up.
>
> The period from the latter '80's through the early '90's was a  
> period of massive small ad hoc networks, such as the Little Garden.
>
> I am sure that similar stories exist around the myriad of people and  
> companies that arose during that era - Intercon, Internode, TGV,  
> Beame and Whiteside, FTP Software, Epilogue Technology, Empirical  
> Tools and Toys (Technologies), Bunyip, etc.  Simon Hackett's  
> (Internode) story of fibering and radioing Adelaide are worth a good  
> chapter.  (Simon also did the first VOIP phone of which I am aware,  
> back around 1990.)
>
> And we should not underestimate the driving effect of the Interop  
> trade show which by the late 1980's was providing a twice-yearly  
> drumbeat to which the entire industry had to synchronize and prove  
> that it could deploy interoperating gear that we hooked to the  
> larger net (whatever it was called).
>
> I think that Carl Malamud may have documented parts of this self- 
> driven localized growth of the net in one of his books.
>
>        --karl--



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