[e2e] Nature mag, DARPA, and the Internet

[Jon Crowcroft]

In missive <200308091337.h79DbI1T024042 at ginger.lcs.mit.edu>, "J. Noel Chiappa" typed:

 >>I'm completely unable to comprehend, through all the numerous errors, what the
 >>point is here. The ARPAnet was *not* byte-oriented, and all the original Xerox
 >>protocols (PUP, etc) were! Did you mean that they didn't have the semantics
 >>for higher-level objects? And since Unix was very much a side-line item when
 >>TCP was developed (I remember, I was *there*, as were several other people on
 >>this list), you can't blame Unix for the byte (or low-level, if that's what
 >>you really meant) orientation of TCP.
 

right - unix tcp/ip implementations were 2nd or 3rd generation - the IMP and pdp 11 gateway
code was not unix based - quite a few small systems (MOS, PC/IP, etc) were byte oriented
due to
a) efficiency of byte addressing on the cpu/memory architectures in early days
b) space efficiency

oh and the termal-host thing - well maybe an IMP was such a thing (as were early DEC
networks as well as SNA ) but pretty soon, real peer-to-peer (in the network or LU sense)
emerged 

 >>Sheesh. Talk about the illerati not knowing our history - it seems like a lot
 >>of *us* don't know our own history.
 
post modernism did us no favours

 cheers

   jon