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- APRANET History of Network Working Group and NCP.
-
- Comments and Criticisms Welcome. This paper will be in 3 or 4
- parts depending on if I decide to post parts of the appendices in
- a 4th part.
-
- Behind the Net: The untold history of the ARPANET
-
- By Michael Hauben
- hauben@columbia.edu
-
- The global Internet's progenitor was the Advanced Research
- Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) of the U.S. Department of
- Defense. This is important to remember, because the support and
- style of management by ARPA to its contractors was crucial to the
- success of the ARPANET. As the Internet develops and the struggle
- over the role it plays unfolds, it will be important to remember
- how the network developed and the culture with which it was
- connected. As a facilitator of communication, the culture of the
- Net is an important feature to acknowledge.
-
- The ARPANET Completion Report, as published jointly by Bolt,
- Beranek and Newman (BBN) of Cambridge, Mass., and ARPA concludes
- by stating:
-
- ...it is somewhat fitting to end on the note that the
- ARPANET program has had a strong and direct feedback into
- the support and strength of computer science, from which the
- network itself sprung. (Chapter III, pg.132, Section 2.3.4)
-
- In order to understand the wonder that the Internet, and various
- parts of the Net, represent, we need to understand why the
- ARPANET Completion report ends with the suggestion that the
- ARPANET is fundamentally connected to and born of computer
- science, rather than of the military.
-
- PART I: The history of ARPA leading up to the ARPANET
-
- A climate of pure research surrounded the entire history of
- the ARPANET. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was formed to
- fund research, and thus was not oriented to a military product.
- The formation of this agency was part of the U.S. reaction to the
- then Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957. (ARPA draft,
- III-6). ARPA was assigned to research how to utilize the mili-
- tary's investment in computers via Command and Control Research
- (CCR). Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head this effort.
- Licklider came to ARPA from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, (BBN) in
- Cambridge, MA in October 1962. (ARPA draft, III-6) He came to
- ARPA from a background of combining engineering studies and
- physiological psychology. This provided Licklider with an unusual
- prospective uncommon among engineers.
-
- From Licklider's arrival, the department's contracts were
- shifted from independent corporations towards "the best academic
- computer centers" (ARPA draft, III-7). The then current method of
- computing was via batch processing (i.e., input via stacks of
- punched cards, and output: the results, or lack of them, made
- known one or more days later.). Licklider saw improvements could
- be made in CCR only from work on advancing the current state of
- computing technology. He particularly wanted to move forward into
- the age of interactive computing, and the current contractors
- were not moving in that direction. In an Interview, Licklider
- told the interviewee that SDC (Systems Development Corporation)
- "was based on batch processing, and while I was interested in a
- new way of doing things, they [SDC] were studying how to make
- improvements in the ways things were done already." (An Interview
- with J.C.R. Licklider conducted by William Aspray and Arthur
- Norberg on October 28, 1988 Cambridge, Mass. CBI Univ of Minn.,
- Madison) The office "developed into a far-reaching basic research
- program in advanced technology." (ARPA draft III-7) Licklider's
- Office was renamed Information Processing Techniques Office (IPT
- or IPTO) to reflect that change.
-
- The Completion report states that "Prophetically, Licklider
- nicknamed the group of computer specialists he gathered the
- 'Intergalactic Network'." (ARPA draft, III-7) Before work on the
- ARPANET began, the very idea of the network was planted by the
- creation of the Information Processing Techniques Office of ARPA.
- Robert Taylor, Licklider's successor at the IPTO, remembers why
- this was true because of Lick's interest in interconnecting
- communities:
-
- Lick was among the first to perceive the spirit of community
- created among the users of the first time-sharing systems...
- In pointing out the community phenomena created, in part, by
- the sharing of resources in one timesharing system, Lick
- made it easy to think about interconnecting the communities,
- the interconnection of interactive, on-line communities of
- people, ..." (ARPA draft, III-21)
-
- The "spirit of community" was related to Lick's interest in
- having computers help people communicate with other people
- (Licklider and Robert Taylor, "The Computer as a Communication
- Device") Licklider's vision of an "intergalactic network" con-
- necting people represented an important conceptional shift in
- computer science. This vision was also an important beginning to
- the ARPANET. After the ARPANET was up and running, the computer
- scientists using it realized that assisting human communication
- was a major fundamental advance that the ARPANET made possible.
-
- As early as 1963, a commonly asked question of the IPTO
- directors by the ARPA directors about IPTO projects was "Why
- don't we rely on the computer industry to do that?", or occasion-
- ally more strongly, "We should not support that effort because
- ABC (read, "computer industry") will do it - if it's worth
- doing!" (ARPA draft, III-23) This question leads to an important
- point - this ARPA research was different from what the computer
- industry had in mind to do - or was likely to undertake. Since
- Licklider's creation of the IPTO, the work supported by ARPA/IPTO
- continued his explicit emphasis on communications. The Completion
- Report explains,
-
- The ARPA theme is that the promise offered by the computer
- as a communication medium between people, dwarfs into rela-
- tive insignificance the historical beginnings of the comput-
- er as an arithmetic engine." (ARPA draft, III-24)
-
- The Completion Report goes on to differentiate ARPA from the
- computer industry:
-
- The computer industry, in the main, still thinks of the
- computer as an arithmetic engine. Their heritage is reflect-
- ed even in current designs of their communication systems.
- They have an economic and psychological commitment to the
- arithmetic engine model, and it can die only slowly..."
- (ARPA draft, III-24)
-
- The Completion Report further analyzes this problem by tracing it
- back to the nation's universities:
-
- ...furthermore, it is a view that is still reinforced by
- most of the nation's computer science programs. Even univer-
- sities, or at least parts of them, are held in the grasp of
- the arithmetic engine concept.... (ARPA draft, III-24)
-
- ARPA's IPTO was responsible for the research and development
- which led to the success of first the ARPANET, and later the
- Internet. Without the commitment that existed via this support,
- such a development might never have happened. One of ARPA's
- criterion for supporting research was that the research had to be
- of such a level as to offer an order of magnitude of advance over
- the current state of development. As most research and develop-
- ment is not immediately profitable, there is a need for organiza-
- tions which do not pursue profit as their goal, but rather work
- on furthering the state of the art. What is very telling is that
- computer networking spread widely without profit being involved.
-
- Others have understood the communications promise of comput-
- ers. For example, in RFC 1336, David Clark, senior research
- scientist at MIT's laboratory for computer science, is quoted,
-
- It is not proper to think of networks as connecting comput-
- ers. Rather, they connect people using computers to mediate.
- The great success of the internet is not technical, but in
- human impact. Electronic mail may not be a wonderful advance
- in Computer Science, but it is a whole new way for people to
- communicate. The continued growth of the Internet is a
- technical challenge to all of us, but we must never loose
- sight of where we came from, the great change we have worked
- on the larger computer community, and the great potential we
- have for future change.
-
- Various research predating the ARPANET had been done by Paul
- Baron, Thomas Marill and others. [End note 1] This led Lawrence
- Roberts and other IPTO staff to formally introduce the topic of
- networking computers of differing types (i.e.: incompatible
- hardware and software) together in order to share resources to
- the early 1967 meeting of ARPA's Principle Investigators (PI).
-
- In the spring of 1967 at the University of Michigan, ARPA
- held its yearly meeting of the Principle Investigators from each
- of its university and other contractors. (ARPA draft, III-25)
- Results from the previous year's research was summarized and
- future research was discussed, either introduced by ARPA or the
- various researchers present at the meeting. Networking was one of
- the topics brought up at this meeting. (ARPA draft, III-25) At
- that meeting, it was decided that there had to be agreement on
- conventions for character and block transmission, error checking
- and retransmission, and computer and user identification. These
- specifications became the contents of the inter-host
- communication's "protocol." Frank Westervelt was chosen to write
- about this protocol and a communication group was formed to study
- the questions. (ARPA draft, III-26)
-
- In order to develop a network of varied computers, two main
- problems had to be solved:
-
- 1. To construct a 'subnetwork' consisting of telephone
- circuits and switching nodes whose reliability, delay char-
- acteristics, capacity, and cost would facilitate resource
- sharing among computers on the network.
-
- 2. To understand, design, and implement the protocols and
- procedures within the operating systems of each connected
- computer, in order to allow the use of the new subnetwork by
- the computers in sharing resources. (ARPA, II-8)
-
- After one draft and additional work on this communications
- position paper was completed, a meeting was scheduled in early
- October 1967 by ARPA at which the protocol paper and specifica-
- tions for the Interface Message Processor (IMP) were discussed. A
- subnetwork of IMPs, dedicated mini-computers connected to each of
- the participant computers, was the method chosen to connect the
- participants's computers (hosts) to each other via phone lines.
- This standardized the subnet to which the hosts connected. Now,
- only the connection of the hosts to the network would depend on
- vendor type, etc. ARPA had picked 19 possible participants in
- what was now known as the "ARPA Network."
-
- From the time of the 1967 PI Meeting, various computer
- scientists who were ARPA contractors were busy thinking about
- various aspects which would be relevant to the planning and
- development of the ARPANET. Part of that work was a document
- outlining a beginning design for the IMP subnetwork. This speci-
- fication led to a competitive procurement for the design of the
- IMP subnetwork.
-
- By late 1967 ARPA had given a contract to the Stanford
- Research Institute (SRI) to write the specifications for the
- communications network they were developing. In December of 1968,
- SRI issued a report "A Study of Computer Network Design Parame-
- ters." Elmer Shapiro played an important role in the research for
- this report. Based on this work, Roberts and Barry Wessler of
- ARPA wrote the final ARPA version of the IMP specification. (ARPA
- draft, III-32) This specification was ready to be discussed at
- the June 1968 PI meeting.
-
- The Program Plan "Resource Sharing Computer Networks" was
- submitted June 3, 1968 by the IPTO to the ARPA Director, who
- approved it on June 21, 1968. It outlined the objectives of the
- research, and the plan of how the objectives would be fulfilled.
- The purposed network was impressive as it would prove useful to
- both the computing research centers which connected to the
- network and the military. The proposed requirements for the
- research would provide immediate benefits to the computer centers
- the network would connect. (ARPA draft, III-35) ARPA's stated
- objectives were to experiment with varied interconnections of
- computers and sharing resources in an attempt to improve produc-
- tivity of computer research. (ARPA, II-2) Justification was drawn
- from technical needs in both the scientific and military environ-
- ments. The Program Plan developed into a set of specifications.
- These specifications were connected to a competitive Request for
- Quotation (RFQ) to find an organization which would design and
- build the IMP subnetwork.
-
- Following the approval of the Program Plan, 140 potential
- bidders were mailed the Request for Quotation. After a bidders
- conference, 12 proposals were received and from them ARPA nar-
- rowed the bidders down to four. BBN was the eventual recipient of
- the contract. (ARPA draft, III-35)
-
- The second technical problem, as defined by the ad hoc
- Communications Group, still remained to be solved. The set of
- agreed upon communications settings (known as a protocol), which
- would allow the hosts to communicate with each other over the
- subnetwork, had to be developed. This work was left "for host
- sites to work out among themselves." (ARPA draft, III-67) This
- meant that the software necessary to connect the hosts to the IMP
- subnetwork had to be developed. ARPA assigned this duty to the
- initially designated ARPANET sites. Each of the first sites had a
- different type of computer to connect. ARPA trusted/knew the
- programmers at each site would be capable of modifying their
- operating systems in order to connect their systems to the
- subnetwork. In addition the sites needed to develop the software
- necessary to utilize the other hosts on the network. (ARPA draft,
- III-39) ARPA's assigning of responsibilities made the academic
- computer science community an active part of the ARPANET develop-
- ment team. (Interview with Alex McKenize, Nov, 1 1993)
-
- Steve Crocker, one of graduate students involved with the
- development of the earliest ARPANET protocols, associates the
- placement of the initial ARPANET sites at research institutions
- to the fact that the ARPANET was ground-breaking research. He
- wrote in a message responding to my questions on the COM-PRIV
- mailing list:
-
- During the initial development of the Arpanet, there was
- simply a limit as to how far ahead anyone could see and
- manage. The IMPs were placed in cooperative ARPA R&D sites
- with the hope that these research sites would figure out how
- to exploit this new communication medium. (Crocker, 1993A)
-
- The first sites of the ARPANET were picked to provide either
- network support services or unique resources. The key services
- the first four sites provided were
-
- UCLA - Network Measurement Center
- SRI - Network Information Center
- UCSB - Culler-Fried interactive mathematics
- UTAH - graphics (hidden line removal)
- (Cerf, Vinton 1993)
-
- Steve Crocker also recounts that the reason for selecting these
- particular four sites was because they were "existing ARPA
- computer science research contractors." This was important
- because "the research community could be counted on to take some
- initiative." (RFC 1000, pg 1)
-
- The very first site to receive an IMP was UCLA. Professor
- Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA was involved with much of the early
- development of the ARPANET. His work in queuing theory gave him a
- basis to develop measurement techniques used to monitor the
- ARPANET's performance. This made it natural to make sure that
- UCLA received one of the first nodes as it would be important to
- measure the network's activity from early on. In order for the
- statistics to have correct data and analysis purposes - one of
- the first two or three sites had to be the measurement site. Sure
- enough UCLA was assigned to be the Network Measurement Center
- (NMC). [END NOTE 2]
-
-
- Part II. The Network Working Group
-
- Once the initial sites were picked, representatives from
- each site gathered together to start talking about solving the
- technical problem of getting the hosts to communicate with each
- other. The ARPA Completion report tells us about this beginning:
-
- To provide the hosts with a little impetus to work on the
- host-to-host problems. ARPA assigned Elmer Shapiro of SRI
- "to make something happen", a typically vague ARPA assign-
- ment. Shapiro called a meeting in the summer of 1968 which
- was attended by programmers from several of the first hosts
- to be connected to the network. Individuals who were present
- have said that it was clear from the meeting at that time,
- no one had even any clear notions of what the fundamental
- host-to-host issues might be. (AC Draft III-67 1.4.1.7)
-
- We see that this group, which came to be known as the
- Network Working Group (NWG), was exploring new territory. The
- first meeting took place several months before the first IMP was
- put together and they had to think from a blank slate. Throughout
- the existing recollections of the important developments the NWG
- produced, (especially RFC 1000) the reader is reminded that the
- thinking involved was groundbreaking and thus exciting. Steve
- Crocker remembers in the RFC Reference Guide (RFC 1000) that the
- first meeting was chaired by Elmer Shapiro, who initiated the
- conversation with a list of questions. (Crocker, 1993b) Also
- present were Steve Carr from University of Utah, Stephen Crocker
- from UCLA, Jeff Rulifson from SRI, and Ron Stoughton from UCSB.
- These attendees are the programmers referred to in the ARPANET
- Completion Report.
-
- According to Steve Crocker, this was a seminal meeting. The
- attendees could only be but theoretical, as none of the lowest
- levels of communication had been developed yet. They needed a
- transport layer or low-level communications platform to be able
- to build upon. BBN would not deliver the first IMP until August
- 30, 1969. It was important to meet before this date, as the NWG
- "imagined all sorts of possibilities." (Rfc1000) Only once their
- thought processes started could this working group actually
- develop anything. These fresh thoughts from fresh minds helped to
- incubate new ideas. The ARPANET Completion Report properly
- acknowledges what this early group helped accomplished: "Their
- early thinking was at a very high level." (ARPA draft, III-67) A
- concrete decision of the first meeting was to continue holding
- meetings similar to the first one. This wound up setting the
- precedent of holding exchange meetings at each of the sites.
-
- Steve Crocker, describing the problems facing these network-
- ing pioneers, writes:
-
- With no specific service definition in place for what the
- IMPs were providing to the hosts, there wasn't any clear
- idea of what work the hosts had to do. Only later did we
- articulate the notion of building a layered set of protocols
- with general transport services on the bottom and multiple
- application-specific protocols on the top. More precisely,
- we understood quite early that we wanted quite a bit of
- generality, but we didn't have a clear idea how to achieve
- it. We struggled between a grand design and getting some-
- thing working quickly. (Crocker,1993c)
-
- The initial protocol development lead to DEL (Decode-
- Encode-Language) and NIL (Network Interchange Language). These
- languages were more advanced than what was needed or possible at
- the time. The basic purpose was to form an on-the-fly description
- that would tell the receiving end how to understand the informa-
- tion that would be sent. These first set of meetings were ex-
- tremely abstract as neither ARPA nor the universities had deemed
- any official charter. However, the lack of a charter allowed the
- group to think broadly and openly.
-
- BBN did submit details about the host-IMP interface specifi-
- cations from the IMP side. This information provided the group
- some definite starting points to build from. Soon after BBN
- provided more information, on Valentine's Day, 1969, members of
- the NWG, members of BBN and members of the Network Analysis
- Corporation (NAC) met for the first time. [Endnote 3]
- As all the parties had different priorities on mind, the meeting
- was a difficult one. BBN was interested in the lowest level of
- making a reliable connection. The programmers from the host sites
- were interested in getting the hosts to communicate with each
- either via various higher level programs. And BBN also did not
- turn out to be the "experts from the East" that Steve Crocker
- wrote the members of the NWG expected. He continues by writing in
- RFC 1000 that they constantly thought that "a professional crew
- would show up eventually to take over the problems we were
- dealing with."
-
- A step of incredible importance and openness occurred as a
- result from a "particularly delightful" meeting that took place a
- month later in Utah. (RFC1000) The participants decided it was
- time to start recording their meetings in a consistent fashion.
- What resulted was a set of informal notes titled "Request for
- Comments." Steve Crocker writes about their formation:
-
- I remember having great fear that we would offend whomever
- the official protocol designers were, and I spent a sleep-
- less night composing humble words for our notes. The basic
- ground rules were that anyone could say anything and that
- nothing was official. And to emphasize the point, I labeled
- the notes "Request for Comments." I never dreamed these
- notes would distributed through the very medium we were
- discussing in these notes. Talk about Sorcerer's Apprentice!
- (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg 3, 1987)
-
- Crocker replaced Shapiro as the Chairman of the NWG soon
- after the initial meeting. He describes how they wrestled with
- the creation of the host-host protocols:
-
- Over the spring and summer of 1969 we grappled with the
- detailed problems of protocol design. Although we had a
- vision of the vast potential for intercomputer communica-
- tion, designing usable protocols was another matter. A
- custom hardware interface and custom intrusion into the
- operating system was going to be required for anything we
- designed, and we anticipated serious difficulty at each of
- the sites. We looked for existing abstractions to use. It
- would have been convenient if we could have made the network
- simply look like a tape drive to each host, but we knew that
- wouldn't do. (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg. 3)
-
- The first IMP was delivered to UCLA in late August, 1969.
- The next was delivered to SRI a month later in October. [Endnote
- 4] Once more than one IMP existed, the NWG had to implement a
- working communications protocol. This first set of pairwise host
- protocols included remote login for interactive use (telnet), and
- a way to copy files between remote hosts (FTP). Crocker writes:
-
- In particular, only asymmetric, user-server relationships
- were supported. In December 1969, we met with Larry Roberts
- in Utah, [and he] made it abundantly clear that our first
- step was not big enough, and we went back to the drawing
- board. Over the next few months we designed a symmetric
- host-host protocol, and we defined an abstract implementa-
- tion of the protocol known as the Network Control Program.
- ("NCP" later came to be used as the name for the protocol,
- but it originally meant the program within the operating
- system that managed connections. The protocol itself was
- known blandly only as the host-host protocol.) Along with
- the basic host-host protocol, we also envisioned a hierarchy
- of protocols, with Telnet, FTP and some splinter protocols
- as the first examples. If we had only consulted the ancient
- mystics, we would have seen immediately that seven layers
- were required. (RFC 1000, pg 4)
-
- After Robert's guidance, the Network Working Group went
- forward in developing the protocols necessary to make the network
- viable. The group swelled in attendance as more and more sites
- connected to the ARPANET. The group became large enough (around
- 100 people) that one meeting was held in conjunction with the
- 1971 Spring Joint Computer Conference in Atlantic City. A major
- test of the NWG's work came in October 1971, when a meeting was
- held at MIT. Crocker continues the story,
-
- [A] major protocol "fly-off" - Representatives from each
- site were on hand, and everyone tried to log in to everyone
- else's site. With the exception of one site that was com-
- pletely down, the matrix was almost completely filled in,
- and we had reached a major milestone in connectivity.
- (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg. 4)
-
- The NCP was created as what was called the "host to host
- protocol." Explaining why this was important, the authors of the
- ARPA draft write:
-
- The problem is to design a host protocol which is suffi-
- ciently powerful for the kinds of communication that will
- occur and yet can be implemented in all of the various
- different host computer systems. The initial approach taken
- involved an entity called a "Network Control Program" which
- would typically reside in the executive of a host, such that
- processes within a host would communicate with the network
- through this Network Control Program. The primary function
- of the NCP is to establish connections, break connections,
- switch connections, and control flow. A layered approach was
- taken such that more complex procedures (such as File Trans-
- fer Procedures) were built on top of similar procedures in
- the host Network Control Program. (Arpa draft, II-24)
-
- As the ARPANET grew, the number of users bypassed the number
- of developers. This signaled the success of these networking
- pioneers. Steve Crocker appointed Alex McKenize and Jon Postel to
- replace him as Chairmen of the Network Working Group. The Comple-
- tion Report details how this role changed:
-
- McKenzie and Postel interpreted their task to be one of
- codification and coordination primarily, and after a few
- more spurts of activity the protocol definition process
- settled for the most part into a status of a maintenance
- effort.(ARPA draft,III-69)
-
- ARPA was a management body which funded academic computer
- scientists. ARPA's funding paved the way for these scientists to
- create the ARPANET. BBN helped via developing the packet switch-
- ing techniques which served as the bottom level of transmitting
- information between sites. The NWG provided an important develop-
- ment in its "Request for Comments" documentation which made
- possible the developing the new protocols.
-
-
- PART III. About RFC's as "Open" Documentation
-
- The openness initiated from the very first meeting of the
- Network Working Group continued on in a more informal formalized
- manner in the Request For Comments. As meeting notes, the RFCs
- were meant to keep members updated on the status of various
- developments and ideas by the development community. They were
- also meant to gather responses from people. The Documentation
- Conventions RFC (RFC 3) documents the "rules" governing the
- production of these notes. Heading the page were the open distri-
- bution rules:
-
- Documentation of the NWG's effort is through notes such as
- this. Notes may be produced at any site by anybody and
- included in this series.
-
- These opening sentences invite anyone willing to be helpful in
- the protocol definition process. This is important because all
- restrictions are denied by these words, allowing for the best
- possible developments. The guide goes on to describe the rules
- concerning the contents of the RFCs:
-
- The content of a NWG note may be any thought, suggestion,
- etc. related to the HOST software or other aspect of the
- network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than
- polished. Philosophical positions without examples or other
- specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques
- without introductory or background explication, and explicit
- questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable.
- The minimum length for a NWG note is one sentence.
-
- The RFC continues to explain the philosophy behind the perhaps
- unprecedented amount of openness represented:
-
- These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for
- two reasons. First, there is a tendency to view a written
- statement as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to pro-
- mote the exchange and discussion of considerably less than
- authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural hesitancy to
- publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this
- inhibition." (Crocker, RFC 3 - 1969) [The entire RFC is
- reproduced in Appendix B.]
-
- This openness led to the exchange of information. Technical
- development is only successful when information is allowed to
- flow freely and easily between the parties involved. These open
- principles are what made the development of the Net possible.
-
- Statements like the ones contained in RFC 3 are very pro-
- gressive in their openness. The late 1960's was a time alive in
- popular protest for freedom of speech and people demanding more
- of a say in how their country was run. The openness applied in
- trying to develop new technologies fits well with the cry for
- more democracy which students demanded throughout the country and
- the world. What is amazing is that the collaboration of the NWG
- (mostly graduate students) and ARPA (a component of the mili-
- tary), seems to be contrary to the normal atmosphere of the
- times. Robert Braden of the Internet Activities Board reflects on
- this collaboration:
-
- For me, participation in the development of the ARPAnet and
- the Internet protocols has been very exciting. One important
- reason it worked, I believe, is that there were a lot of
- very bright people all working more or less in the same
- direction, led by some very wise people in the funding
- agency. The result was to create a community of network
- researchers who believed strongly that collaboration is more
- powerful than competition among researchers. I don't think
- any other model would have gotten us where we are today.
- (RFC 1336)
-
- These ideas point to a reason why the work of these computer
- scientists founded what has led to be one of the most amazing and
- democratic bodies (i.e.: The Net and the culture attached to it)
- to emerge in a long time. The community that has developed and
- the tools which accompany it form an important democratic force.
- [See endnote 5.]
-
- The idea of calling these notes a "Request for Comment" set
- a fascinating tradition. It predates the Usenet Post, which in a
- fashion could be called a "request for comment" as it is the
- presentation of a particular person's ideas, questions or com-
- ments, to the general public (of those who read that newsgroup)
- for comments, criticism or suggestion, or just plain to further
- the readers' knowledge. Other Early RFCs echo this reality. There
- are plenty of RFCs which are in response to a previous RFC.
- Following are some examples, more are contained in the appendix.
-
- 1 Crocker, S. Host software 1969 April 7
- 65 Walden, D. Comments on Host/Host Protocol document #1
-
- 36 Crocker, S. Protocol notes 1970 March 16
- 38 Wolfe, S. Comments on network protocol from NWG/RFC #36
- 39 Harslem, E.; Heafner, J. Comments on protocol re: NWG/RFC#36
-
- 33 Crocker, S. New Host-Host Protocol 1970 February 12
- 47 Crowther, W. BBN's comments on NWG/RFC #33 1970 April 20
-
-
- Part IV: Conclusion
-
- How were the developments of the ARPANET made possible? This
- question appears from the very problems that the various contri-
- butors to the ARPA project faced themselves. None of the partici-
- pants had the solutions to any of the tasks they approached
- before putting much thought and work into their research. As the
- resulting ARPANET was tremendously successful and fulfilled the
- project ARPA presented, it is important to see what can be
- learned from the research out of which it emerged. Bernie Cosell,
- who worked at BBN during this early period, describes the impor-
- tance of openness in a developmental situation:
-
- *no*one* had the necessary expertise [and vision] to figure
- any of this out on their own. The cultures among the early
- groups were VERY different multics, sigma-7, IBM ... at
- Rand, ... PDP-10s at BBN and SRI... [and possibly] UCSB and
- Utah had pdp-10's, too. The pie-in-the-sky applications
- ranged over a WIDE landscape, with no one knowing quite
- where it would lead. Some kind of free, cross-cultural
- info/idea exchange *had* to happen. (Cosell 1993)
-
- The computer scientists and others involved were encouraged
- in their work by ARPA's philosophy of gathering the best computer
- scientists working in the field and supporting them:
-
- IPT usually does little day-to-day management of its con-
- tractors. Especially with its research contracts, IPT would
- not be producing faster results with such management as
- research must progress at its own pace. IPT has generally
- adopted a mode of management which entails finding highly
- motivated, highly skilled contractors, giving them a task,
- and allowing them to proceed by themselves. (ARPA draft,
- III-47)
-
- The work of the Network Working Group was vital to the
- development of the ARPANET. Vint Cerf, another of the graduate
- students involved with the early protocol development and still
- closely connected to the Internet, echoed this sentiment when he
- opened his paper "An Assessment of ARPANET Protocols," by writ-
- ing:
-
- The history of the Advanced Research Project Agency resource
- sharing computer network (ARPANET) is in many ways a history
- of the study, development, and implementation of protocols."
- (Cerf, _An Assessment of ARPANET Protocols_)
-
- Cerf supports Cosell's opinion about the uncertainty and newness
- of the entire project when he continues in his paper by writing:
-
- The tasks facing the ARPANET design teams were often un-
- clear, and frequently required agreements which had never
- been contemplated before (e.g., common protocols to permit
- different operating systems and hardware to communicate).
- The success of the effort, seen in retrospect, is astonish-
- ing, and much credit is due to those who were willing to
- commit themselves to the job of putting the ARPANET togeth-
- er. (Cerf, IBID.)
-
- The NWG's work blazed the trail which the developers of the
- TCP/IP suite of protocols (Transport Control Protocol/ Internet
- Protocol) followed to success when the need to expand and include
- other networks based on other technologies than NCP arose. The
- principles embodied by RFC 3 and open RFC documentation provided
- a strong foundation which began with NCP and was continued by the
- work on TCP/IP. NCP was developed in the field and versions of it
- were released early in its development so various programmers
- could work on implementing and improving the protocol. In addi-
- tion all specifications were available for free and easily
- available for people to examine and comment on. Through this
- principle of early release the problems and kinks were found and
- worked out in a timely manner. The future developers of TCP/IP
- learned from the developers of NCP a practice of developing from
- the bottom up. The bottom-up model allows for a wide-range of
- people and experiences to join in and perfect the protocol and
- make it the best possible.
-
- The public funding of the ARPANET project allowed its
- documentation to be open and available. This documentation was
- neither restricted nor classified. The possibility of communi-
- cation represented by openness was necessary for these pioneers.
- Research of new fields of study require that researchers cooper-
- ate and communicate in order to share their expertise with the
- larger body of people conducting research. This openness is
- especially critical when no one person has the answers in ad-
- vance. Larry Roberts of ARPA explained in an article:
-
- "Since the ARPANET was a public project connecting many
- major universities and research institutions, the implemen-
- tation and performance details were widely published." ("The
- Evolution of Packet Switching", 267)
-
- The people at the forefront of development of these proto-
- cols were the members of the Network Working Group, many of whom
- came from academic institutions, and who therefore had the
- support and time needed for the research. In summing up the
- achievements of the process that developed the ARPANET, the
- ARPANET Completion Report draft explains:
-
- The ARPANET development was an extremely intense activity in
- which contributions were made by many of the best computer
- scientists in the United States. Thus, almost all of the
- "major technical problems" already mentioned received con-
- tinuing attention and the detailed approach to those prob-
- lems changed several times during the early years of the
- ARPANET effort. [II-24]
-
- Fundamental to the ARPANET, as explained by the Completion
- Report, was the discovery of a new way of looking at computers.
- The developers of the ARPANET viewed the computer as a communica-
- tions device rather than only as an arithmetic device. (draft,
- III-24) This new view made the building of the ARPANET possible.
- This view came from the research conducted by those in academic
- computer science. The shift in the understanding of the role of
- the computer is fundamental to advancing computer science. The
- ARPANET research has provided a rich legacy for the further
- advancement of computer science and it is important that the
- significant lessons learned be studied and used to further
- advance the study of computer science.
-
-
- END - NOTES
-
-
- 1. This history is covered well in the article "From ARPANET to
- USENET" by Ronda Hauben. Also in Chapter III, section 1.1.2
- starting on page III-9 in the published ARPANET Completion
- Report.
-
- 2. These quotes show some of the perspective chosen to pick the
- initial ARPANET sites.
-
- III - 689 "CCN's [The Campus Computing Network of UCLA] chance to
- obtain a connection to the ARPANET was a result of the presence
- at UCLA of Professor L. Kleinrock and his students, including S.
- Crocker, J. Postel, and V. Cerf. This group was not only involved
- in the original design of the network and the Host protocols, but
- also was to operate the Network Measurement Center (NMC). For
- these reasons the first delivered IMP was installed at UCLA, and
- ARPA was thus able to easily offer CCN the opportunity for
- connection."
-
- pg II-16
- " In a somewhat less structured way, the research groups
- receiving ARPA IPTO support were then encouraged to begin consid-
- ering the design and implementation of protocols and procedures
- and, in turn, computer program modifications, in the various host
- computers in order to use the subnetwork. Several specific
- responsibilities were arranged: UCLA was specifically asked to
- take on the task of a "Network Measurement Center" with the
- objective of studying the performance of the network as it was
- built, grown, and modified; SRI was specifically asked to take on
- the task of a "Network Information Center" with the objective of
- collecting information about the network, about host resources,
- and at the same time generating computer based tools for storing
- and accessing that collected information. Beyond these two
- specific contracts, some rather ad hoc mechanisms were pursued to
- reach agreement between the various research contractors about
- the appropriate "host protocols" for intercommunicating over the
- subnetwork. The "Network Working Group" of interested individuals
- from the various host sites was rather informally encouraged by
- ARPA. After a time, this Network Working Group became the forum
- for, and eventually a semi-official approval authority for, the
- discussion of and "
-
- III - 60 1.4.1.5 The Network Information Center
-
- The accessibility of distributed resources carries with it the
- need for an information service (either centralized or distribut-
- ed) that enables users to learn about those resources. This was
- recognized at the PI [ed. Primary Instigators] meeting in Michi-
- gan in the spring of 1967. At the time, Doug Engelbart and his
- group at the Stanford Research Institute were already involved in
- research and development to provide a computer-based facility to
- augment human interaction. Thus, it was decided that Stanford
- Research Institute would be a suitable place for a "Network
- Information Center" (NIC) to be established for the ARPANET. With
- the beginning of implementation of the network in 1969, construc-
- tion also began on the NIC at SRI."
-
- 3. The NAC was contracted by ARPA to "specify the topological
- design of the ARPANET and to analyze its cost, performance, and
- reliability characteristics. (ARPA, III-30)
-
- 4. RFC 1000 reports on the process of the installation of the
- first IMP.
- "[T]ime was pressing: The first IMP was due to be delivered to
- UCLA September 1, 1969, and the rest were scheduled at monthly
- intervals.
-
- At UCLA we scrambled to build a host-IMP interface. SDS,
- the builder of the Sigma 7, wanted many months and many dollars
- to do the job.
- Mike Wingfield, another grad student at UCLA, stepped in and
- offered to get interface built in six weeks for a few thousand
- dollars. He had a gorgeous, fully instrumented interface working
- in five and one half weeks. I was in charge of the software, and
- we were naturally running a bit late. September 1 was Labor Day,
- so I knew I had a couple of extra days to debug the software.
- Moreover, I had heard BBN was having some timing troubles with
- the software, so I had some hope they'd miss the ship date. And
- I figured that first some Honeywell people would install the
- hardware -- IMPs were built out of Honeywell 516s in those days
- -- and then BBN people would come in a few days later to shake
- down the software. An easy couple of weeks of grace.
-
- BBN fixed their timing trouble, air shipped the IMP, and it
- arrived on our loading dock on Saturday, August 30. They arrived
- with the IMP, wheeled it into our computer room, plugged it in
- and the software restarted from where it had been when the plug
- was pulled in Cambridge. Still Saturday, August 30. Panic time
- at UCLA.
-
- The second IMP was delivered to SRI at the beginning of
- October, and ARPA's interest was intense. Larry Roberts and
- Barry Wessler came by for a visit on November 21, and we actually
- managed to demonstrate a Telnet-like connection to SRI."
-
- 5. This democratic community is in danger of being fundamentally
- altered. This study of the history of the development of the
- ARPANET in conjunction with my paper, "The Social Forces Behind
- the Development of Usenet News" are meant to help people under-
- stand where the Net has come from, in order to defend it, and try
- to fight to keep it open and democratic - the seventh wonder of
- the world as a recent ad called the Internet, misdirected as it
- was - but correct any way. I hope to make this analysis available
- in RFC form as a comment on RFC 1000.
-
-
- Bibliography
-
- Special Thanks to Alexander McKenizie of BBN, Stephen Crocker of
- TIS, and Vinton Cerf of CNRI for making research materials available.
-
- ARPANET COMPLETION REPORT DRAFT , September 9, 1977, unpublished.
-
- Cerf, Vinton G., private corespondence, dated Nov 27, 1993.
- Subject: "Re: Early Days of the ARPANET and the NWG"
-
- Cerf, Vinton G., "An Assessment of ARPANET Protocols." Infotech
- Education Ltd. Stanford University, California, 21 pages
-
- Cosell, Bernie "Re: RFC1000 - Questions about the origins of
- ARPANET Protocols 2/2" Article: 54310 of
- alt.folklore.computers, Nov. 23, 193.
-
- Crocker, Stephen D., 1993A email message to Com-Priv mailing list
- (com-priv@psi.com) Subject "Re: RFC1000 (Partial response to
- part 1)" Date: Nov 27, 1993.
-
- Crocker, Stephen D., 1993B email message to Com-Priv mailing list
- Subject: "Re: RFC1000 (End of response to part 1)"
- Date: Nov 27, 1993.
-
- Crocker, Stephen D., 1993C email message to Com-Priv mailing list
- Subject "Subject: Re: RFC1000 (Response to part 2)"
- Date: Nov 27, 1993.
-
- Crocker, Stephen D., RFC 3, DOCUMENTATION CONVENTIONS.
-
- Crocker, Stephen D., RFC 1000, RFC Reference Guide.
-
- Heart, F, McKenzie, A., McQuillan, J., Walden, D., ARPANET
- Completion Report, Washington, 1978.
-
- Licklider, J.C.R., Interview conducted by William Aspray and
- Arthur Norberg on October 28, 1988 Cambridge, Mass. CBI Univ
- of Minn., Madison.
-
- Licklider, J.C.R. and Robert Taylor, "The Computer as a Communi-
- cation Device" from "In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider
- 1915-1990," Aug. 7, 1990, p. 40; reprinted by permission
- from Digital Research Center; originally published as "The
- Computer as a Communication Device," in "Science and Tech-
- nology", April, 1968, pg. 40
-
- Mckenzie, Alexander, Interview with Nov 1, 1993.
-
- Roberts, Lawrence Member IEEE, Invited Paper, "The Evolution of
- Packet Switching", Proceedings of the IEEE Volume 66, Number
- 11, November 1978, pages 1307 - 1313
-
- | Michael Hauben CC '95 | E-mail me for sample copies of |
- | hauben@cs.columbia.edu | The Amateur Computerist Newsletter |
- | hauben@columbia.edu | & read the alt.amateur-comp newsgroup |
-