[TUHS] Early Internet work (Was: History of select(2))

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2017-01-16 03:00, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
>     > From: Johnny Billquist
>
>     > Like I pointed out, RFC760 lacks ICMP.
>
> So? TCP will work without ICMP.

True. However, IP and UDP will have issues.

>     > Which also makes one question how anyone would have known about IPv4 in
>     > 1978.
>
> Well, I can assure you that _I_ knew about it in 1978! (The decision on the v4
> packet formats was taken in the 5th floor conference room at 545 Tech Sq,
> about 10 doors down from my office!)
>
> But everyone working on TCP/IP heard about Version 4 shortly after the June,
> 1978 meeting.

Over a year before any documents said anything about it. This is where I 
have problems. :-)

>     > Also, first definition of TCP shows up in RFC 761
>
> If you're speaking of TCPv4 (one needs to be precise - there were also of
> course TCP's 1, 2, 2.5 and 3, going back to 1974), please see IEN-44. (Ignore
> IEN's -40 and -41; those were proposals for v4 that got left by the wayside.)

That is a very good point. I've been talking v4 all the time (both for 
IP and TCP). Like I said, I'm sure people were doing networking 
protocols and stuff earlier, but it wasn't the TCP/IP we know and talk 
about today, and you just reaffirmed this.

And yes, the TCP/IP we know today did not come out of a blue sky. Of 
course it is based on earlier work. (Just do you don't have to go on 
about that again.)

>     > So yes, I still have problems with claims that they had it all running
>     > in 1978.
>
> I never said we had it "all" running in 1978 - and I explicitly referenced
> areas (congestion, addressing/routing) we were still working on over 10 years
> later.
>
> But there were working implementations (as in, they could exchange data with
> other implementations) of TCP/IPv4 by January 1979 - see IEN 77.

But not TCP4 then. And thus, not interoperable with an implementation 
today, and interoperable in general being a rather floating and moving 
target, as you had several imvompatible TCP versions, using different 
protocol numbers, and several incompatible IP versions.

> (I'll never forget that weekend - we were in at ISI on Saturday, when it was
> normally closed, and IIRC we couldn't figure out how to turn the hallway
> lights on, so people were going from office to office in the gloom...)

Fun times, I bet.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol