Xah Lee's Unixism

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

"John Thingstad" <john.thingstad at chello.no> writes:
> Internet was discovered long before this.  (In 1965 a research
> project, by the Rand cooperation, for a network that could survive a
> nuclear attack. Sponsored by DARPA.  These is the real creators of
> the Internet technology. Not Unix hackers.)  It was the realization
> of www (CERN) that spawned the movement toward the Internet.
>
> So the year in question is about 1987.

packet networking was "discovered" in the 60s(?) ... but it was
homogeneous networking with pretty much homogeneous infrastructure
implementation.

the great switch-over to internetworking protocol was 1/1/83. i've
frequently asserted that one of the reasons that the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

was larger than the arpanet from just about the beginning until
sometime mid-85 ... was because the internal network nodes effectively
had a form of gateway functionality ... which showed up in the
internetworking protocol switchover on 1/1/83.

packet switching technology for the (homogeneous) arpanet is somewhat
orthogonal to internetworking protocol technology .... which was
deployed in the great switchover on 1/1/83.

some minor other references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm

CERN and SLAC were sister sites, did some amount of common tool
development, used common infrastructures and were big GML users
.... which had been done at the science center circa 1970
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

which morphed into SGML and then html, xml, etc. SLAC had the first
web server outside of europe .... running on vm/cms system
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

the distinction of internetworking protocol isn't packet switching
... it is gateways and interoperability of lots of different kinds of
networking.

OSI can support x.25 packet switching and/or even the arpanet packet
switching from the 60s & 70s .... but it precludes internetworking
protocol. internetworking protocol (aka internet for short) is a
(non-existant) layer in an OSI protocol stack between
layer3/networking and layer4/transport. misc. osi (& other) comments
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

the switch-over to internetworking protocol on 1/1/83 somewhat also
coincided with the expanding role of csnet activity ... and more &
more NSF involvement .... compared to the extensive earlier arpa/darpa
involvement; aka csnet ... and then nsfnet1 backbone rfp and then
nsfnet2 enhanced backbone rfp.

misc. internet and nsfnet related history pointers:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietf.htm#history

the proliferation of the internetworking protocol and use in the
commercial sector was also happening during the 80s .... which you
could start to see by (1988) at the interop '88 show. misc.  interop
'88 references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#interop88

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/