Network visibility

Fri Oct 22 00:04:47 UTC 2021

Just to throw in another curve ball what got many of us excited about
the internet or Internet was that at the time there were several
networking protocols in wide usage like SNA (IBM), DECNET (DEC), XNS
(Xerox, ok not such wide usage), BITNET (mostly IBM systems,
organization was volunteer, public, hundreds of mostly university data
centers, or maybe several dozen I dunno but non-trivial), UUCP (ad hoc
as all get out), CHAOSnet (run by three people :-), BerkNeT (maybe 2
people :-), Netware (basically commercial NFS with apps), and no doubt
some others, plus several "time sharing" systems like Tymnet,
Compuserve, MCI, etc.

These were non-trivial in terms of $$$ and/or people using them, not
always both.

So one BIG PROMISE was that this [Ii]nternet would connect them all
together at least marginally (e.g., email, maybe specially designed
apps, but there'd be paths between them for bits.)

  One net to connect them all, one net to find them, one net to bring
  them all, and in the darkness bind them.

Not much of that happened.

Instead they all were TCP/IP roadkill which was probably a better
result.

I do remember the U. Wisconsin ARPAnet/BITNET gateway, big deal!

At BU I hooked up our ARPAnet systems to the big IBM mainframe
(probably a 3081 at the time) via that gateway.

Which got me a visit from the computing center director yelling "ARE
YOU REALLY SENDING BITS THROUGH WISCONSIN TO GET THEM 150 FEET DOWN
THE HALL?!?!"

To which I calmly replied: Never, ever, feel sorry for the wires.

On October 21, 2021 at 15:55 mel at beckman.org (Mel Beckman) wrote:
 > 
 >     On Oct 21, 2021, at 8:19 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
 > 
 >     No, but you are ignoring the point of my message…
 > 
 >     The TCP/IP internet existed _BEFORE_ the flag day you mentioned. The flag
 >     day was the end of NCP, not the beginning of TCP/IP. IIRC, at the time,
 > 
 > 
 > Owen,
 >  
 > But we’re not talking about the birth of TCP/IP. We’re talking about the birth
 > of the capital-I Internet, which by definition runs exclusively on TCP/IP, and
 > that didn’t start until Jan 1, 1983. Although there was experimentation using
 > IP during 1982, that was still ARPANET. It was the guaranteed exclusive 
 > availability of IP that made 1983 the Internet’s birth date. 
 > 
 > And no, it’s not analogous to the eventual IPv6 transition, because both IPv5
 > and IPv4 are Capital-I Internet standard protocols.
 > 
 >  -mel
 > 
 > 
 >     it was IP version 2, but IP versions 2, 3, and 4 came in relatively rapid
 >     succession of each other and 4 was the first version with (relatively)
 >     clean
 >     layer separation between 2, 3, and 4.
 > 
 >     According to https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2016/09/
 >     final-report-on-tcpip-migration-in-1983/ , TCP/IP was developed starting in
 >     1975 and
 >     declared the official future standard of the ARPANET in March, 1982, with a
 >     transition plan supporting both protocols (NCP and TCP/IP)
 >     until January 1, 1983.
 > 
 >     January 1, 1983 is more analogous to the future happy day we finally turn
 >     off IPv4 at the majority of peering points and PNIs than it is to the
 >     past days when IPv6 began being deployed.
 > 
 >     True, the initial deployment of TCP/IP and the flag day were much closer
 >     together for the implementation of IPv4 and deprecation of NCP
 >     than has been the case for IPv6 deployment and IPv4 deprecation, but
 >     nonetheless, it is still true that there were at least several months
 >     of TCP/IP deployment, testing, and use at multiple sites and on multiple
 >     systems prior to the deprecation of NCP on January 1, 1983.
 > 

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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