[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Doug McIlroy]

> One thing that I'm unclear about is why all this Arpanet work was not filtering more into the versions of Unix done at Bell Labs.

The short answer is that Bell Lbs was not on Arpanet. In the early
80s the interim CSNET gave us a dial-up window into Arpanet, which
primarily served as a conduit for email. When real internet connection
became possible, network code from Berkeley was folded into the
research kernel. (I am tempted to say "engulfed the research kernel",
for this was a huge addition.)

The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.

When Arpanet came along MCI was far more eager to carry its data
than AT&T was. It was all very well for Sandy Fraser to build
experimental data networks in the lab, but this was seen as a
niche market. AT&T devoted more effort to specialized applications
like hotel PBXs than to digital communication per se.

Doug

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Marc Rochkind]

Thanks for this, Doug.

When I started at Bell Labs, in the Summer of 1970, my organization was
involved in what I think was called the Digital Data System. I recall that
it was synchronous, meaning, I think, that there were clocks that timed
everything on the network.

Where does that fit into your story?

--Marc

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 9:00 AM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> > One thing that I'm unclear about is why all this Arpanet work was not
> filtering more into the versions of Unix done at Bell Labs.
>
> The short answer is that Bell Lbs was not on Arpanet. In the early
> 80s the interim CSNET gave us a dial-up window into Arpanet, which
> primarily served as a conduit for email. When real internet connection
> became possible, network code from Berkeley was folded into the
> research kernel. (I am tempted to say "engulfed the research kernel",
> for this was a huge addition.)
>
> The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
> did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
> was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
> AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.
>
> When Arpanet came along MCI was far more eager to carry its data
> than AT&T was. It was all very well for Sandy Fraser to build
> experimental data networks in the lab, but this was seen as a
> niche market. AT&T devoted more effort to specialized applications
> like hotel PBXs than to digital communication per se.
>
> Doug
>
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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:00:00AM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
> did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
> was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
> AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.

AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking.  I gave a short talk at Hot
Interconnects in the heyday of ATM.  Paul Borrill got me a speaking spot,
I wasn't well known person but inside of Sun I had been railing against
ATM and pushing for 100Mbit ethernet and Paul decided to see what the
rest of the world thought.

The gist of my talk was that ATM was a joke.  I had an ATM card (on loan
from Sun Networking), I think it was 155 Mbit card.  I also had an 
ethernet card that I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
The ATM card cost $4000.  The ethernet card cost $49 IIRC.

The point I was making was that ATM was doomed.  This was at the time in
history when every company was making long bets on ATM, they all thought
it was the future; well, all meaning the execs had been convinced.

I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."

There was a shocked silence.  Weirdest talk ever, the room just went
silent for what seemed forever.  Then someone, I'm sure it was an engineer
who had been forced to work on ATM, started clapping.  Just one guy.
And then the whole room joined in.

I took the silence as "yeah, but my boss says I have to" and the clapping
as "we agree".

At the time AT&T was the biggest pusher of ATM.  Telephone switches were
big and expensive and it was clear, to me at least, that AT&T looked at
all those cheap ethernet switches and said "yeah, let's get the industry
working on phone switching and we'll get cheap switches too".  Nice idea,
didn't work out.

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Marc Rochkind]

If you think AT&T looked askance at cheap networking, you can imagine what
they thought of cheap telephones. When I interviewed in early 1970 at
Columbus, I recall one of the engineers joking that you'd have to buy one
of those "imitation" phones at a discount store, as if that vision was
enough to kill off the idea.

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:00:00AM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> > The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
> > did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
> > was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
> > AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.
>
> AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking.  I gave a short talk at Hot
> Interconnects in the heyday of ATM.  Paul Borrill got me a speaking spot,
> I wasn't well known person but inside of Sun I had been railing against
> ATM and pushing for 100Mbit ethernet and Paul decided to see what the
> rest of the world thought.
>
> The gist of my talk was that ATM was a joke.  I had an ATM card (on loan
> from Sun Networking), I think it was 155 Mbit card.  I also had an
> ethernet card that I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
> The ATM card cost $4000.  The ethernet card cost $49 IIRC.
>
> The point I was making was that ATM was doomed.  This was at the time in
> history when every company was making long bets on ATM, they all thought
> it was the future; well, all meaning the execs had been convinced.
>
> I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
> always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
> a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
> do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
> long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
> going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."
>
> There was a shocked silence.  Weirdest talk ever, the room just went
> silent for what seemed forever.  Then someone, I'm sure it was an engineer
> who had been forced to work on ATM, started clapping.  Just one guy.
> And then the whole room joined in.
>
> I took the silence as "yeah, but my boss says I have to" and the clapping
> as "we agree".
>
> At the time AT&T was the biggest pusher of ATM.  Telephone switches were
> big and expensive and it was clear, to me at least, that AT&T looked at
> all those cheap ethernet switches and said "yeah, let's get the industry
> working on phone switching and we'll get cheap switches too".  Nice idea,
> didn't work out.
>
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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Steve Johnson]

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This comment reminded me of an internal talk I attended at Bell
Labs.  It had the single most powerful slide I've ever seen in a
talk.  It was a talk about internal networking, and the slide looked
like your standard network diagram -- lots of circles with lots of
lines connecting them.  The computation centers were networked. 
UUCP was on there, and datakit.

But dead in the middle of the slide was a circle that had absolutely
no connections with anything.  Of course, somebody asked about, and
was told "Oh.  That's the networking department..."

As I recall, said department ceased to exist about a month later...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry McVoy" <lm@mcvoy.com>

. . .
 AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking. 
. . .

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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Larry McVoy]

It is pretty stunning that the company that had the largest network
in the world (the phone system of course) didn't get packet switching
at all.  I dunno how Bell Labs was allowed to do all that great work
with management that clueless, that's a minor (major?) miracle right
there.

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:17:09AM -0800, Steve Johnson wrote:
> This comment reminded me of an internal talk I attended at Bell
> Labs.?? It had the single most powerful slide I've ever seen in a
> talk.?? It was a talk about internal networking, and the slide looked
> like your standard network diagram -- lots of circles with lots of
> lines connecting them.?? The computation centers were networked.??
> UUCP was on there, and datakit.
> 
> But dead in the middle of the slide was a circle that had absolutely
> no connections with anything.?? Of course, somebody asked about, and
> was told "Oh.?? That's the networking department..."
> 
> As I recall, said department ceased to exist about a month later...
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Larry McVoy" <lm at mcvoy.com>
> 
> . . .
>  AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking. 
> . . .
> 

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Ken Thompson]

note: this is my partisan recollection.

a network proposal would arise from the
previous BIG network failure. it would have
a name like super-colossal-inter-galactic-hyper-
bolic-better-than-last-time network.
it would have merits that spoke to the failure
of the last attempt. then some marketeers
(all sun-tanned ex-IBM executives, i do
remember one in particular -- roger moody)
would try to get bell to warp the engineering
so that they had an advantage from the
inside on content. after all, money was to
be made on services, not transportation.
this would make the engineering teeter
and after more and more "requirements"
it would eventually fall. and then we start
over with "stupendous" added to the
new project name.

thus, it is my opinion that it was totally
impossible to make a network with
engineers direct by marketeers. there
are several things that should also
be understood. the bell vs ibm rivalry;
the new competition on phones;
the desire to be in services and not
equipment.



On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:21 AM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> It is pretty stunning that the company that had the largest network
> in the world (the phone system of course) didn't get packet switching
> at all.  I dunno how Bell Labs was allowed to do all that great work
> with management that clueless, that's a minor (major?) miracle right
> there.
>
> On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:17:09AM -0800, Steve Johnson wrote:
>> This comment reminded me of an internal talk I attended at Bell
>> Labs.?? It had the single most powerful slide I've ever seen in a
>> talk.?? It was a talk about internal networking, and the slide looked
>> like your standard network diagram -- lots of circles with lots of
>> lines connecting them.?? The computation centers were networked.??
>> UUCP was on there, and datakit.
>>
>> But dead in the middle of the slide was a circle that had absolutely
>> no connections with anything.?? Of course, somebody asked about, and
>> was told "Oh.?? That's the networking department..."
>>
>> As I recall, said department ceased to exist about a month later...
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Larry McVoy" <lm at mcvoy.com>
>>
>> . . .
>>  AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking.
>> . . .
>>
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Tim Bradshaw]

Less than ten years ago I wrote a big rant at people where I worked about fibre channel: all our machines had two entirely different networks attached to them: one built on ethernet which was at that point all Gb on new machines and 10Gb on some (I don't think that 10Gb switches were really available yet though) & where you could stuff a machine with interfaces for the cost of a good meal, and where everything just talked to everything else ... and one built on fibre channel which might have been 2Gb, where an interface cost as much as a car, and where interoperability involved weeks pissing around with firmware in the cards, and sometimes just buying new ones.  Fibre channel was just laughably worse than ethernet.

No one listened, of course, because my political skills are akin to those of a goat, and fibre channel is *storage* which is completely different than networking, somehow.

Perhaps people still use fibre channel.

> On 16 Jan 2017, at 16:44, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
> always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
> a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
> do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
> long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
> going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Brantley Coile]

Beware of SCSI folks who think they can design data network protocols.

  Brantley
  coraid.com

> On Jan 16, 2017, at 6:41 PM, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote:
> 
> Less than ten years ago I wrote a big rant at people where I worked about fibre channel: all our machines had two entirely different networks attached to them: one built on ethernet which was at that point all Gb on new machines and 10Gb on some (I don't think that 10Gb switches were really available yet though) & where you could stuff a machine with interfaces for the cost of a good meal, and where everything just talked to everything else ... and one built on fibre channel which might have been 2Gb, where an interface cost as much as a car, and where interoperability involved weeks pissing around with firmware in the cards, and sometimes just buying new ones.  Fibre channel was just laughably worse than ethernet.
> 
> No one listened, of course, because my political skills are akin to those of a goat, and fibre channel is *storage* which is completely different than networking, somehow.
> 
> Perhaps people still use fibre channel.
> 
>> On 16 Jan 2017, at 16:44, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
>> always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
>> a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
>> do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
>> long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
>> going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."
> 

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Jason Stevens]

I only used FC when everyone was jumping onto the iSCSI bandwagon for 1gb NICs and you could get FC stuff on the cheap.  I was using the Compaq MSA arrays with a built in FC switch, and using all like cards on like servers with the then "new" ESX 2.5 and it worked like a champ.  I've always been a fan of separate storage networks but in the brave new world of virtual everything it really doesn't matter as more and more moves up the stack.  I'm sure we will be on AWS in the next few years then in 10 years there will be the tick tock swing of moving processing into closets and then back to private data centres...

On January 17, 2017 7:41:16 AM GMT+08:00, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org> wrote:
>Less than ten years ago I wrote a big rant at people where I worked
>about fibre channel: all our machines had two entirely different
>networks attached to them: one built on ethernet which was at that
>point all Gb on new machines and 10Gb on some (I don't think that 10Gb
>switches were really available yet though) & where you could stuff a
>machine with interfaces for the cost of a good meal, and where
>everything just talked to everything else ... and one built on fibre
>channel which might have been 2Gb, where an interface cost as much as a
>car, and where interoperability involved weeks pissing around with
>firmware in the cards, and sometimes just buying new ones.  Fibre
>channel was just laughably worse than ethernet.
>
>No one listened, of course, because my political skills are akin to
>those of a goat, and fibre channel is *storage* which is completely
>different than networking, somehow.
>
>Perhaps people still use fibre channel.
>
>> On 16 Jan 2017, at 16:44, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card
>is
>> always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
>> a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's
>gonna
>> do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over
>fiber,
>> long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
>> going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[William Corcoran]

However, in the high transaction volume corporate world,  the FC card is peanuts and the Ethernet card is peanut shells.

A product's security defense is often said to be inversely proportional to its market share.  So, we chose FC over Ethernet primarily for this reason (not lack of market share, but for its purported security.)

The cost of an FC solution was absurd when compared to Ethernet by any rational and reasonable means.

Nevertheless, businesses that relied on these devices for larger volumes of financial transactions were led to believe that the NET cost of FC was far cheaper than Ethernet.

I complained to our vendor at the time that Ethernet speeds were eclipsing FC.  We were told that the FC fabric was far superior to Ethernet---especially its security.

Hogwash.  I remember racks of 2Gb FC switches, only three years old, completely and totally obsolete.

There are guys like me with lollipops on the cheeks----born every minute.




On Jan 16, 2017, at 11:42 PM, Jason Stevens <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com<mailto:jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com>> wrote:

I only used FC when everyone was jumping onto the iSCSI bandwagon for 1gb NICs and you could get FC stuff on the cheap. I was using the Compaq MSA arrays with a built in FC switch, and using all like cards on like servers with the then "new" ESX 2.5 and it worked like a champ. I've always been a fan of separate storage networks but in the brave new world of virtual everything it really doesn't matter as more and more moves up the stack. I'm sure we will be on AWS in the next few years then in 10 years there will be the tick tock swing of moving processing into closets and then back to private data centres...

On January 17, 2017 7:41:16 AM GMT+08:00, Tim Bradshaw <tfb at tfeb.org<mailto:tfb at tfeb.org>> wrote:

Less than ten years ago I wrote a big rant at people where I worked about fibre channel: all our machines had two entirely different networks attached to them: one built on ethernet which was at that point all Gb on new machines and 10Gb on some (I don't think that 10Gb switches were really available yet though) & where you could stuff a machine with interfaces for the cost of a good meal, and where everything just talked to everything else ... and one built on fibre channel which might have been 2Gb, where an interface cost as much as a car, and where interoperability involved weeks pissing around with firmware in the cards, and sometimes just buying new ones.  Fibre channel was just laughably worse than ethernet.

No one listened, of course, because my political skills are akin to those of a goat, and fibre channel is *storage* which is completely different than networking, somehow.

Perhaps people still use fibre channel.

 On 16 Jan 2017, at 16:44, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com<mailto:lm at mcvoy.com>> wrote:

 I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
 always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
 a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
 do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
 long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
 going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Jason Stevens]

Oh wow flashbacks to the joys of using ATM LANE over OC-3 as that 155Mb was "so superior" to 10 Mbit Ethernet and how "straightforward" it was getting pvp's from the phone company and setting up the LECS, BUS, LES, and each LEC.  And how all the consultants scoffed at PC's with 100mbit Ethernet as the old 33Mhz bus couldn't push 100mbit in their crazy minds of thinking all buses push data one byte at a time.  It was great once we started to get Cisco fast Etherchannel on the acquired catalyst switches so we could dump ATM at the core and even better to get those dance Intel NICs that could also FEC for super high bandwidth servers.  It's a shame it took a while to get metroE and ether WAN, but here we are in that awesome future devoid of the disaster of ATM as it couldn't even begin to scale at and beyond OC-128, 10 gig E put an end to all that nonsense.

There was a brief window I made some good money setting up ATM networks, but they all went from oc12 to at the end being over t1 bonds for rural areas.  Can't say I miss it.

On January 17, 2017 12:44:21 AM GMT+08:00, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:00:00AM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
>> The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
>> did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
>> was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
>> AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.
>
>AT&T seemed pretty clueless about networking.  I gave a short talk at
>Hot
>Interconnects in the heyday of ATM.  Paul Borrill got me a speaking
>spot,
>I wasn't well known person but inside of Sun I had been railing against
>ATM and pushing for 100Mbit ethernet and Paul decided to see what the
>rest of the world thought.
>
>The gist of my talk was that ATM was a joke.  I had an ATM card (on
>loan
>from Sun Networking), I think it was 155 Mbit card.  I also had an 
>ethernet card that I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
>The ATM card cost $4000.  The ethernet card cost $49 IIRC.
>
>The point I was making was that ATM was doomed.  This was at the time
>in
>history when every company was making long bets on ATM, they all
>thought
>it was the future; well, all meaning the execs had been convinced.
>
>I held up the two cards, disclosed the cost, and said "this ATM card is
>always going to be expensive but the ethernet card is gonna be $10 in
>a year or two.  Why?  Volume.  Every computer has ethernet, it's gonna
>do nothing but get cheaper.  And you're gonna see ethernet over fiber,
>long haul, you're going to see 100 Mbit, gigabit ethernet, and it's
>going to be cheap.  ATM is going nowhere."
>
>There was a shocked silence.  Weirdest talk ever, the room just went
>silent for what seemed forever.  Then someone, I'm sure it was an
>engineer
>who had been forced to work on ATM, started clapping.  Just one guy.
>And then the whole room joined in.
>
>I took the silence as "yeah, but my boss says I have to" and the
>clapping
>as "we agree".
>
>At the time AT&T was the biggest pusher of ATM.  Telephone switches
>were
>big and expensive and it was clear, to me at least, that AT&T looked at
>all those cheap ethernet switches and said "yeah, let's get the
>industry
>working on phone switching and we'll get cheap switches too".  Nice
>idea,
>didn't work out.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Joerg Schilling]

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Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> The highest levels of AT&T were happy to carry digital data, but
> did not see digital as significant business. Even though digital T1
> was the backbone of long-distance transmission, it was IBM, not
> AT&T, that offered direct digital interfaces to T1 in the 60s.

Was T1 a "digital" line interface, or was this rather a 24x3.1 kHz channel?

How was the 64 ??? Kbit/s interface to the first IMPs implemented?

Wasn't it AT&T that provided the lines for the first IMPs?

I was always wondering how they could provide such a "high speed" line in the 
1960s.

I hope somebody knows this....

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Joerg Schilling]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1282 bytes --]

Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> The gist of my talk was that ATM was a joke.  I had an ATM card (on loan
> from Sun Networking), I think it was 155 Mbit card.  I also had an 
> ethernet card that I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
> The ATM card cost $4000.  The ethernet card cost $49 IIRC.
>
> The point I was making was that ATM was doomed.  This was at the time in
> history when every company was making long bets on ATM, they all thought
> it was the future; well, all meaning the execs had been convinced.

I cannot speak for the US, but ATM was rather popular in the European 
telecommunication in the mid 1990s.

I was e.g. in a EU research project, where I wrote IP-Multicast enhancements 
for the FORE ATM driver to support video multicast. From what I know, there may
still have been ATM in the core network of German Telekom when they started 
their IP-TV offer that is based on IP-multicast.

So people tried to work around the problems in ATM for a while until ATM was 
given up.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                  (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Paul Ruizendaal]

I asked over at the internet history list
(http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2017-January/thread.html)

Short of it is that it used Bell 303C modems which operated at 50kb/s operating
over an analog "broadband" channel predating the T1. It used the space of 12 voice
channels and some fairly fancy modulation techniques. Connection to the trunk
exchange was over a leased line.

On 17 Jan 2017, at 16:32 , Noel Chiappa wrote:

> 
>> From: Joerg Schilling
> 
>> Was T1 a "digital" line interface, or was this rather a 24x3.1 kHz
>> channel?
> 
> Google is your friend:
> 
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signal_1
> 
> 
>> How was the 64 ??? Kbit/s interface to the first IMPs implemented?
>> Wasn't it AT&T that provided the lines for the first IMPs?
> 
> Yes and no. Some details are given in "The interface message processor for the
> ARPA computer network" (Heart, Kahn, Ornstein, Crowther and Walden), but not
> much.  More detail of the business arrangement is contained in "A History of
> the ARPANET: The First Decade" (BBN Report No. 4799).
> 
> Details of the interface, and the IMP side, are given in the BBN proposal,
> "Interface Message Processor for the ARPA Computer Network" (BBN Proposal No.
> IMP P69-IST-5): in each direction there is a digital data line, and a clock
> line. It's synchronous (i.e. a constant stream of SYN characters is sent
> across the interface when no 'frame' is being sent).
> 
> The 50KB modems were, IIRC, provided by the Bell system; the diagram in the
> paper above seems to indicate that they were not considered part of the IMP
> system. The modems at MIT were contained in a large rack, the same size as
> the IMP, which stood next to it.
> 
> I wasn't able to find anything about anything past the IMP/modem interface.
> Perhaps some AT+T publications of that period might detail how the modem,
> etc, worked.
> 
> 	Noel

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Joerg Schilling

    > Was T1 a "digital" line interface, or was this rather a 24x3.1 kHz
    > channel?

Google is your friend:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signal_1


    > How was the 64 ??? Kbit/s interface to the first IMPs implemented?
    > Wasn't it AT&T that provided the lines for the first IMPs?

Yes and no. Some details are given in "The interface message processor for the
ARPA computer network" (Heart, Kahn, Ornstein, Crowther and Walden), but not
much.  More detail of the business arrangement is contained in "A History of
the ARPANET: The First Decade" (BBN Report No. 4799).

Details of the interface, and the IMP side, are given in the BBN proposal,
"Interface Message Processor for the ARPA Computer Network" (BBN Proposal No.
IMP P69-IST-5): in each direction there is a digital data line, and a clock
line. It's synchronous (i.e. a constant stream of SYN characters is sent
across the interface when no 'frame' is being sent).

The 50KB modems were, IIRC, provided by the Bell system; the diagram in the
paper above seems to indicate that they were not considered part of the IMP
system. The modems at MIT were contained in a large rack, the same size as
the IMP, which stood next to it.

I wasn't able to find anything about anything past the IMP/modem interface.
Perhaps some AT+T publications of that period might detail how the modem,
etc, worked.

	Noel

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Brad Spencer]

jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) writes:

>     > From: Larry McVoy
>
>     > It is pretty stunning that the company that had the largest network in
>     > the world (the phone system of course) didn't get packet switching at
>     > all.
>
> Actually, it's quite logical - and in fact, the lack of 'getting it' about
> packets follows directly from the former (their large existing circuit switch
> network).
>
> This dates back to Baran (see his oral history:
>
>   https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107101
>
> pg. 19 and on), but it was still detectable almost two decades later.

I was at AT&T much later then most who have commented, in 1992+ and I am
pretty sure that a lot of people at that time who had been at AT&T a
while STILL did not get packet networks.

> For a variety of all-too-human reasons (of the flavour of 'we're the
> networking experts, what do you know'; 'we know all about circuit networks,
> this packet stuff is too different'; 'we don't want to obsolete our giant
> investment', etc, etc), along with genuine concerns about some real issues of
> packet switching (e.g. the congestion stuff, and how well the system handled
> load and overload), packet switching just was a bridge too far from what they
> already had.

I can't fully explain it, but "a bridge too far" does describe it well.
Everything had to be a circuit and it if wasn't, well, it was viewed
with a great deal of suspicion.  I worked with a lot of very smart and
talented folks, but this was a real blind spot.

> Think IBM and timesharing versus batch and mainframe versus small computers.
>
> 	Noel



-- 
Brad Spencer - brad at anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS
http://anduin.eldar.org  - & -  http://anduin.ipv6.eldar.org [IPv6 only]

[TUHS] TUHS Digest, Vol 14, Issue 63

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Larry McVoy

    > It is pretty stunning that the company that had the largest network in
    > the world (the phone system of course) didn't get packet switching at
    > all.

Actually, it's quite logical - and in fact, the lack of 'getting it' about
packets follows directly from the former (their large existing circuit switch
network).

This dates back to Baran (see his oral history:

  https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107101

pg. 19 and on), but it was still detectable almost two decades later.

For a variety of all-too-human reasons (of the flavour of 'we're the
networking experts, what do you know'; 'we know all about circuit networks,
this packet stuff is too different'; 'we don't want to obsolete our giant
investment', etc, etc), along with genuine concerns about some real issues of
packet switching (e.g. the congestion stuff, and how well the system handled
load and overload), packet switching just was a bridge too far from what they
already had.

Think IBM and timesharing versus batch and mainframe versus small computers.

	Noel