Re: mail service with no mx (was - Re: Computer systems blamed for feeble hurricane response?)

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>]

In message <20050914232747.GD23815 () core center osis gov>, Joseph S D Yao writes
:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 11:09:54PM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:

> I think the mail gateways back when the various networks were being put
> together into an internet had as their functional purpose unifying
> disparate networks.  On the contrary, a firewall has as its purpose
> partitioning a network that otherwise would not have been.  I don't
> think one will hear from MIT, given that.
>
> But Steve and Ches and Dave Presotto at Bell, and Brian Reid and others
> at DEC, were doing the partitioning thing in the late 1980's and 1990.
> Right?
Right, but Seastrom is correct.  If you read the old TCP/IP Transition 
Handbook, you'll see that it talks about shutting off connectivity to 
MILNET and running mailbridges instead.  What's unclear to me is how 
much of that was every built, but the intent was quite clear.  I regard 
that as the first TCP/IP application firewall, vintage around 1981.

                --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb