From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: bqt@update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2017 11:21:41 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Early Internet work (Was: History of select(2)) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7d72b495-6d6a-661a-9625-674bd79c672d@update.uu.se> 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