Internet still reshaping history

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
Date: September 8, 2009 9:57:08 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Internet still reshaping history

I have to take issue with some of Vint's recollections, based on  
documented historical accounts and direct contact with other parties  
involved. First one correction to my previous comment: the IMP never  
was an IP router, as I erroneously claimed; it was used, at some  
point, as an "IP relay" that carried TCP/IP packets over the ARPA  
subnet. The IMP code wasn't modified for this application, it simply  
treated IP as payload, much as Ethernet and Sonet do today.

I didn't say that Vint copied CYCLADES, I said the *architecture* that  
Pouzin et. al. developed for CYCLADES was used by the datagram  
networks that followed him, including TCP/IP and DECnet; not just  
sliding windows, but the notion of a sliding window, serializing,  
virtual circuit transport protocol running over a datagram protocol at  
the network layer. Arguably, it actually might have been better for  
the Internet if they had simply used TS/Cigale verbatim instead of  
going with something of their own invention: We would have had a world- 
wide network with interoperable protocols much sooner, and we wouldn't  
have all these addressing-based anomalies on the Internet. CYCLADES,  
DECnet, XNS, and ISO all gave the host an address apart from the  
addresses of its subnetwork points of attachment; TCP/IP doesn't, and  
that causes a number of problems with multi-homing and mobility that  
are causing BGP table size to explode. CYCLADES, DECnet, and the  
others were also capable of handling congestion without going into  
meltdown. TCP/IP's unique solutions to the addressing and congestion  
problems are proof that it wasn't a copy of TS/Cigale.

The cooperation of BBN and IRIA took place pursuant to an actual  
contract. If Vint doesn't remember it, that's of no particular  
significance since he wasn't a party to it. People from both the IRIA  
and BBN teams have confirmed that they worked together on the CYCLADES  
architecture.

Regarding 1983, my point is simply that many sites were already  
running TCP long before NCP was finally shut down. And yes,  
implementing TCP and IP in a number of host operating systems was hard  
work; there was a panel discussion on it at Sigcomm in about 82 or so  
that I attended, with Bill Joy and some others talking about how hard  
it was to implement some of the features TCP and IP demanded, such as  
checksums and byte streams and MBUFs. My only issue is that by the  
time NCP was officially dead, it had already been dwindling for quite  
some time.

I notice that the "official" history credits Kleinrock with inventing  
packet-switching; I won't comment further on this claim except to say  
that people who care should read Davies' paper "An Historical Study of  
the Beginnings of Packet Switching" (The Computer Journal, Vol. 44,  
No. 3, British Computer Society, 2001). It's all there.

RB

Dave Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> > Date: September 8, 2009 18:26:51 EDT
> > To: dave () farber net
> > Subject: [IP] Re:  Internet still reshaping history
> >
> >
> > Dave,
> >
> > I passed along some of the ongoing Internet History discussion to  
> > Vint,
> > who sent me back some notes for forwarding back to you and IP.
> >
> > First, he noted that:
> >
> >   The MOST ATM system did trademark the term "Internet" and it took  
> > about
> >   10 years of negotiation (by CNRI - Bob Kahn's company) to undo this
> >   action. The trademark filing took place well after the Internet  
> > was in
> >   operation.
> >
> >   vint
> >
> >
> > And:
> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from Vint Cerf <vint () google com> -----
> >
> > Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 17:45:03 -0400
> > From: Vint Cerf <vint () google com>
> > Subject: Re: [dave () farber net: [IP] Re:   Internet still reshaping  
> > history]
> > To: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> >
> > Richard Bennett makes several inferences that I consider to be  
> > incorrect.
> >
> > Kindly see http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml
> > for as concise a history as any I have seen by the people who  
> > actually
> > developed both the ARPANET and the Internet.
> >
> > I used some of Louis Pouzin's ideas (especially the sliding window)
> > for TCP flow control. One of Louis' colleagues, Gerard LeLann spent a
> > year at my Stanford Lab in 1974 while the TCP was being developed.
> > But I can categorically say that TCP was not TS and that we adopted
> > different solutions to some problems while adopting similar ones such
> > as a datagram substrate. I don't think it accurate to suggest that we
> > simply copied either Cigale, Cyclades or TS.  We certainly wanted to
> > acknowledge Louis' influence on our thinking and we have regularly
> > cited his, Gerard LeLann's and Hubert Zimmermann's contributions.
> >
> > We separated TCP and IP in 1977 to support real-time applications.
> >
> > I do not recall a close interaction between BBN and IRIA.
> >
> > The ARPANET/ALOHA net link was terminal level: ALOHA net connected
> > terminals to the Univ Hawaii  host via the MENEHUNE (essentially a
> > terminal
> > controller). Terminals then went, via the University of Hawaii host  
> > into
> > the
> > Internet. The "terminal to host" ALOHANET was not carrying IP packets
> > at all. I would not characterize this as a gateway of the IP form.
> >
> > Craig Partridge has already pointed out that TCP/IP was never in  
> > the IMPS,
> > only in hosts and gateways. The ARPANET was untouched as it became a
> > part of the Internet.
> >
> > Kleinrock's work established the mathematical basis for analyzing  
> > packet
> > and message switched networks. Paul Baran's work was speculative but
> > he never got to implement it. Donald Davies coined the term  
> > "packet" and
> > implemented a one-node system at the National Physical Laboratory in
> > Teddington, UK.
> >
> > The detailed IMP function was designed by BBN, notably including
> > Bob Kahn, Dave Walden and others. Larry Roberts established the  
> > overall
> > objectives and much of the conceptual basis for the system.
> >
> > I strongly disagree with Bennett's characterization of Jan 1, 1983.
> > A huge effort was put into developing TCP/IP for many operating  
> > systems
> > and for implementing and testing these in the live ARPANET leading up
> > to shutting down NCP. That date also coincided with the splitting  
> > of the
> > ARPANET into ARPANET (research) and MILNET as well as formally
> > including the mobile packer radio net in the SF Bay are, the Atlantic
> > Packet
> > Satellite network, networks in Europe, and ethernets at PARC and  
> > elsewhere
> > into the Internet environment. Until January 1, 1983, NCP and the
> > applications
> > running over it were always a backup but TCP/IP become the sole  
> > mode of
> > operation after that date.
> >
> > Vint Cerf
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sep 8, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
> >
> > > ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave () farber net> -----
> > >
> > > Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 07:40:00 -0400
> > > From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> > > Subject: [IP] Re:   Internet still reshaping history
> > > Reply-To: dave () farber net
> > > To: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Begin forwarded message:
> > >
> > > From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
> > > Date: September 7, 2009 8:05:25 PM EDT
> > > To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> > > Subject: Re: [IP] Internet still reshaping history
> > >
> > > Dave - for IP if you wish.
> > >
> > > The establishment view on the origin of the Internet is not  
> > > correct. If
> > > we
> > > understand the Internet as a network with a virtual circuit  
> > > transport
> > > protocol layered on top of a datagram protocol at the network  
> > > layer, it
> > > was
> > > reduced to practice in France in the CYCLADES network in 1973  
> > > (see: The
> > > CYCLADES Computer Network, L. Pouzin co-author and ed., North  
> > > Holland
> > > 1982,
> > > ISBN: 0 444 86482 2.) The transport protocol was called TS and the
> > > datagram
> > > protocol was called CIGALE. CYCLADES covered all the research  
> > > centers in
> > > France and was ultimately connected to the UK and other points in
> > > Europe.
> > >
> > > Wisely, Cerf appropriated the architecture of CYCLADES, as did the
> > > designers of DECnet. And Cerf makes no bones about it, as you'll  
> > > see in
> > > the
> > > references to Louis Pouzin, the inventor of CYCLADES, other  
> > > members of
> > > his
> > > team, and common advisers at BBN in Cerf and Kahn's first paper on  
> > > TCP
> > > in
> > > 1974 and the first TCP RFC, co-authored by Cerf, Sunshine, and  
> > > Dalal,
> > > also
> > > in 1974. By the 1980s, Internet people mysteriously stopped giving
> > > credit
> > > to CYCLADES. For the timeline, TCP and IP weren't even separate
> > > entities on
> > > paper until what, 1975-6? And in code somewhat later...
> > >
> > > So it was actually the team at IRIA in France, headed by Louis  
> > > Pouzin
> > > and
> > > working closely with BBN, who first reduced internetworking to
> > > practice.
> > >
> > > That is, unless you don't count the gateway between ARPANET and  
> > > ALOHA as
> > > an
> > > example of internetworking. Xerox also did some interesting things  
> > > with
> > > datagram protocols in this era, PUP, but their lawyers didn't want  
> > > too
> > > many
> > > people knowing what they were doing.
> > >
> > > I think the idea that the ARPANET was an early-stage Internet comes
> > > about
> > > because the hardware and comms infrastructure that made ARPANET work
> > > was
> > > later appropriated by the TCP/IP Internet. In some places, it was  
> > > just a
> > > software upgrade that turned an ARPANET IMP into an IP router, and
> > > people
> > > continued to use the name "ARPANET" for many years after TCP came
> > > along.
> > >
> > > These anniversary stories (several are circulating now, based on  
> > > an AP
> > > story) are pretty aggressive in promoting the claim that Len  
> > > Kleinrock
> > > invented packet-switching, the ARPANET, and the Internet. Old-timers
> > > are
> > > aware that there's a lot of controversy around these claims, some  
> > > of it
> > > captured in the Donald Davies paper
> > > He's pretty persuasive that the honors for
> > > packet-switching belong to Paul Baran and himself. Kleinrock did  
> > > very
> > > interesting work on queuing theory, but that's not packet-switching.
> > >
> > > There's also a suggestion that the folks at UCLA (or the NWG in
> > > general)
> > > built the ARPANET, but we know that the code in the IMP was all  
> > > written
> > > by
> > > the BBN folks, Dave Walden and colleagues, and the NWG  
> > > contribution was
> > > limited to the Host-Host protocol. The plan for the ARPANET,  
> > > functions
> > > of
> > > the IMP, deployment, pricing, etc, was done by Larry Roberts, who
> > > presented
> > > it at a very interesting ACM conference in Gatlinburg, TN, in 1967;
> > > See:
> > > Lawrence G. Roberts, “Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer
> > > Communication,” ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles,
> > > Proceedings
> > > of the first ACM symposium on Operating System Principles, New York:
> > > ACM,
> > > 1967. Pg 3.1-3.6.
> > >
> > > The thing that showed up in the UCLA lab in 1969 is what Roberts  
> > > calls
> > > "ARPA II;" ARPA I was a packet-based timesharing system construct  
> > > - a
> > > paper network - devised by J. C. R. Licklider in 1962-64. See:  
> > > Lawrence
> > > G.
> > > Roberts, "The evolution of packet switching," Proceedings of the  
> > > IEEE ,
> > > vol.66, no.11, pp. 1307-1313, Nov. 1978. Licklider's theoretical  
> > > work
> > > inspired Roberts to build ARPA II and Davies to build the packet
> > > network at
> > > NPL in the UK.
> > >
> > > The Jan 1, 1983 event wasn't all that significant since much of the
> > > ARPANET had already converted to TCP/IP; this was simply the date  
> > > when
> > > NCP
> > > was turned off (although it wasn't; like all schedules, it slipped.)
> > >
> > > Just  a few random thoughts I had handy on this fine holiday.
> > >
> > > RB
> > >
> > > David Farber wrote:
> > > > Begin forwarded message:
> > > >
> > > > From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> > > > Date: September 6, 2009 9:18:35 PM EDT
> > > > To: dave () farber net
> > > > Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> > > > Subject: Re: [IP] Internet still reshaping history
> > > >
> > > > The Internet, which was the idea that there could be one single
> > > > interoperable network that transcended all others, was invented by
> > > > Bob
> > > > Kahn and Vint Cerf.   Others were involved - the idea of
> > > > "internetworking" was flowering, but the timing was very clear - it
> > > > happened in the middle of the decade of the '70's.  That was when  
> > > > the
> > > > idea was reduced to practice.
> > > >
> > > > It is true that in 1967-68, Taylor and Licklider wrote about a
> > > > "network
> > > > of networks" - this was a brilliant concept, but it was not yet
> > > > reduced
> > > > to practice.  Taylor and Licklider based their vision on the  
> > > > "mother
> > > > of
> > > > all demos" done by Doug Englebart at SRI.
> > > >
> > > > Indeed, the idea of information sharing goes back farther.    
> > > > Project
> > > > MAC and the idea of a time-sharing system that allowed informatino
> > > > sharing in a utility goes back to John McCarthy.
> > > >
> > > > However, the idea that the ARPANET was an "Internet" is pretty  
> > > > wrong.
> > > > It was one of the threads creating the opportunity for the  
> > > > Internet.
> > > > But, if you want to find the beginning of packet-based
> > > > communications,
> > > > why not look at Sussenguth's commercialization of IBM's SNA.
> > > > Packets,
> > > > of course, are not "internetworking".
> > > >
> > > > The real problem with these "anniversaries" is that the idea of a  
> > > > big
> > > > "ah-ha" by one lone inventor is the kind of stupid history that  
> > > > gets
> > > > promoted by people who are too invested in their egos.   Almost  
> > > > every
> > > > good idea is the evolutionary result of many, ,many progenitors.
> > > >
> > > > On 09/06/2009 04:42 PM, David Farber wrote:
> > > > > Why do people say the internet is 40 years old. Is the Arpanet the
> > > > > Internet -- I think not. djf
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Begin forwarded message:
> > > > >
> > > > > From: Suzanne Johnson <fuhn () pobox com>
> > > > > Date: September 6, 2009 4:38:05 PM EDT
> > > > > To: Dave () farber net
> > > > > Subject: Internet still reshaping history
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > At 40, the Internet still reshaping history
> > > > > by Stephen Shankland
> > > > >
> > > > > At the time, it would have been hard to predict which of these
> > > > > events
> > > > > 40 years ago would prove to be most momentous:
> > > > >
> > > > > * Humans step out of a spaceship and walk on the moon.
> > > > > * The Woodstock concert becomes a seminal cultural moment for the
> > > > > baby-boomer generation.
> > > > > * A New York City police raid leads to the Stonewall riots and
> > > > > modern
> > > > > gay-rights movement.
> > > > > * A handful of engineers at UCLA send some data from one  
> > > > > computer to
> > > > > another.
> > > > >
> > > > > You may disagree, but in my opinion, it's the last of the list:  
> > > > > four
> > > > > decades ago today, the Internet was born.
> > > > > ....clip......
> > > > >
> > > > > http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10323175-264.html?tag=rtcol;inTheNewsNow
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > -------------------------------------------
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> > > > Archives
> > >
> > > --
> > > Richard Bennett
> > > Research Fellow
> > > Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
> > > Washington, DC
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -------------------------------------------
> > > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
> > > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
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> > >
> > > ----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
> > ----- End forwarded message -----
> Archives        

--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC




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