From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Sun,  3 Jan 2016 09:26:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [TUHS] etymology of cron
Message-ID: <20160103142603.DF91F18C0A1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Jacob Goense <dugo at xs4all.nl>

    > Mills's 1983 RFC889[2] calls the original PING Packet InterNet Groper.

I have a strong suspicion that Packet-etc is a 'backronym' from Dave Mills.

Note that the use of the term "echo" for a packet returned dates back quite a
while before that, see e.g. IEN 104, "Minutes of the Fault Isolation
Meeting", from March 1979:

  "ability to echo packets off any gateway"

When ICMP was split from GGP (see IEN-109, RFC-777), the functionality
migrated from GGP to ICMP, and was generalized so that all hosts provided the
capability, not just routers.

	Noel