Cybertelecom Federal Internet Law & Policy An Educational Project

ARPAnet (1960s)

1945

Science - The Endless Frontier A report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945.

1947 Cold War Begins

1948

RAND Corporation established as independent non profit. [RAND]

1950

National Science Foundation established. [NSF]

"One leading science spokesman was Vannevar Bush, a respected engineer and science administrator who headed the government's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development. . . . Bush maneuvered to have President Roosevelt request from him a report on how the nation should support science in the postwar period. Bush's 1945 response, Science--The Endless Frontier , became famous as the prescription for government support of science. . . . President Truman signed the bill creating the National Science Foundation on May 10, 1950. The act provided for a National Science Board of twenty-four part-time members and a Director as chief executive officer, all appointed by the president. Among other things, the law directed the agency to encourage and develop a national policy for the promotion of basic research and education in the mathematical, physical, medical, biological, engineering, and other sciences; to initiate and support basic scientific research in the sciences; and to evaluate the scientific research programs undertaken by agencies of the federal government. Organizationally, the Foundation could create whatever divisions were necessary to carry out its activities, but the act specified that four divisions had to be included: medical research; mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences; biological sciences; and scientific personnel and education. The latter division was responsible for scholarships and graduate fellowships."

1951

MIT establishes Lincoln Labs to conduct research and development on missile defense. They hire JCR. US Air Force sponsored . Licklider. [Waldrop 78]

1954

Robert Oppenheimer is stripped of his security clearance during the McCarthy era. [NSF]

1957 Sputnik

October 4, 1957: Russian launch Sputnik, the first man made satellite, demonstrating the technological ability to launch an intercontinental mission. The launch of Sputnik I and Sputnik II shocked the US Government and led to a swift response by Pres. Eisenhower (the former WWII general who fully appreciated the importance of science and technology for national defense). [NASA - Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age] [PBS NOVA - Sputnik Declassified] [NSF History: From Sputnik to the Golden Age]

James R Killian Jr (president of MIT) is named as the presidential science advisor. [James R Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower (MIT Press 1982)]

1958

The Soviet probe Luna 2 lands on the moon [Salus p 5]

In response to Sputnik, the United States in 1958 established the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US Department of Defense to develop US missiles. It was soon decided, however, that missile research should be conducted by a civilian agency and in 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created, taking with it all of the missile research. This left ARPA to focus on information technology and computer network research and development. [NASA History in Brief, NASA] [DARPA Over the Years, DARPA] [ARPA - DARPA The History of the Name Change]

ARPA's director Charlie Herzfeld.

1959

Paul Baran develops resilient comm system over AM frequencies that could transmit GO or NO GO to the commanders in the field. [Abbate p 10]

Larry Roberts joins Lincoln Laboratories. [Abbate p 48]

1960

In 1960 Licklider published "Man Computer Symbiosis." While at BBN, convinces BBN to purchase first PDP-1 computer from Digital Electronics Corporation.

Defense Communications Agency established May 12 Will take over operational oversite of ARPANet in 1975. [DISA]

US U-2 Spy Plane is shot down over the Soviet Union.

1961

Jack Ruina Director of ARPA 1961-63. [Hauben] Ruina would recruit Licklider.

June: Computer Science is added to ARPA's mission [Hauben]

Leonard Kleinrock published Information Flow in Large Communication Nets

Yuri Gargarin is first human to orbit earth in the Soviet Vostok I. USA launches Alan Shepard into suborbital flight three weeks later. [Salus p 5] .

Berlin Wall goes up.

AT&T's places online the Switched Circuit Automatic Network for the US Army. This becomes AUTOVON in 1964. [Abbate p 15]

1962

The Information Processing Technologies Offices within ARPA - funded big iron main frames at university research departments. But these mainframes were disconnected islands that could not be shared between campuses. Networking the computers meant sharing resources and saving DoD money. [Hauben]

The first director of ARPA IPTO was JCR Licklider.[Hauben] He started at ARPA in 1962. The original name of the IPTO was the Command and Control Research Department. The name change which occurred in 1965 reflected Licklider's influence and vision. It reflect a paradigm shift away from the computer as a number crunching device to a networked computer engaged in communications.

August: L.C.R. Licklider & Welden Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication"

Cuban Missile Crisis (see History Unlicensed)

1963

Licklider proposed an idea that came to be known as the Intergalatic Computer Network. [ISOC]

JCR Licklider, Members and Affiliates of the Intergalatic Computer Network, Memo (1963)

IPTO budget $5-8m [Spacewar]

AT&T places online the North American Air Defense Command / Automatic Dial Switching network for the Air Force. This becomes AUTOVON in 1964. [Abbate p 15]

Kleinrock joins faculty of UCLA [Kleinrock 1996]

1964

L. Kleinrock, Communication Nets: Stochastic Message Flow and Delay, Mcgraw-Hill (New York), 1964. [Kleinrock 1996]

September: Licklider was succeeded by Ivan Sutherland as head of ARPA IPTO (Licklider would return in 1974). Sutherland brought Robert Taylor over to ARPA. [Roberts, Net Chronology]

November: Larry Roberts and Licklider meet at the Second Congress on Information System Sciences which took place at Hot Springs, VA.. [Business Week 04] [Roberts, Net Chronology] "Larry Roberts 'concluded that the most important problem in the computer field before us at the time was computer networking; the ability to access one computer from another easily and economically to permit resource sharing.' Roberts recalled, 'That was a topic in which Licklider was very interested and his enthusiasm infected me.'" [Hauben]

Dr. Strangelove released in theaters.

DCA consolidates the Army and Air Force networks into AUTOVON, which is built on top of the PSTN. Command and Control of AUTOVON was is a single Op Center - a network design vulnerability that Baran would react to and advise against. [Abbate p 15]

1965

October: Larry Roberts and Thomas Merrill demonstrate the first wide area computer network, packets over telephone network. [ISOC] [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Roberts: History s3]

Don Davies travels to the US. [Abbate p 26]

DEC introduces the PDP-8.

Vint Cerf works for IBM working on operating systems [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

1966

Robert Taylor succeeded Sutherland as director director of IPTO in 1966. Taylor started at NASA in 1961. Robert Taylor's office in the Pentagon was Room 3D-200. [Roberts, Net Chronology]

Taylor receives approval from ARPA Director Charles Herzfeld and $1 m funding. [Waldrop 80]

While at Lincoln Labs, L. Roberts & T. Merrill, "Toward a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers", Fall AFIPS Conf., Oct. 1966. Demonstrate an early computer network; funded by IPTO. [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Abbate p 48] [Heart 1990]

DOD funded MIT Lincoln Lab and System Development Corp in Santa Monica to demonstrate a cross country network. The linking of the computers was successful. However, Roberts stated "The problem... was with using telephone circuit switching technology because the throughput was inadequate to accomplish their goals." [Hauben] See ARPANET Telecommunications

Robert Taylor persuaded ("blackmailed") Larry Roberts moved from MIT to DARPA to be the Chief Scientist of the ARPANet. [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Abbate p. 44] [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

IPTO funding 17 computer sites. [Salus p 19]

Frank Heart and Robert Kahn joins BBN [Vanity Fair] [Heart 1990]

Don Davies publicly presents his ideas on packet switching, is introduced to the work of Paul Baran. One of Davies design objectives was to build a communications network for data communications. A packet switched network would be a commercial service competing along side other communications networks, optimized for computer and data traffic, and targeting business consumers. Responsibility to build an experimental network was given to the UK General Post Office. [Abbate p 27-28] [Heart p 24 1990 (discussing working with Davies)]

1967

April: IPTO Principal Investigator Meeting, ARPANet Design Session in Ann Arbor, MI. Wesley Clark recommends use of the Interface Message Processor (subnetwork of micro computers) [Clark] [Roberts, Net Chronology (" It was at this meeting that Wes Clark suggested the use of mini-computers for network packet switches instead of using the main frame computers themselves for switching.")] The design objective was to have the mainframes only interact with the IMPs, and have the IMPs do all the network work. The result was a subnetwork dedicated to networking functions without any processing at the application or content layers. [Salus p 19] [Waldrop 83] [Abbate p 49, 52 (discussing adoption of layering in ARPANet design]

June: Larry Roberts discusses preliminary plans of the ARPANET which would include 35 computers at 16 locations. Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communications, June 1967

The suggestion of networking mainframes for the purposes of sharing computer resources was not received with enthusiasm. Schools were hesitant to share their prized DARPA funded mainframe computers with other schools. However, since these computer resources were ARPA funded, ARPA could use this funding source in order to leverage and persuade the recalcitrant universities to participate in the ARPANet and play nice with the other participating schools, sharing their resources. [Babbage 23, 24] [Abbate p 49]

October: ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles Gatlinburg, Tennessee [Hauben]

• Larry Robert's plan for ARPANet, Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication [Roberts, Net Chronology]
  • Abstract: "There are many reasons for establishing a network which allows many computers to communicate with each other to interchange and execute programs or data. The definition of a network within this paper will always be that of a network between computers, not including the network of typewriter consoles surrounding each computer. Attempts at computer networks have been made in the past; however, the usual motivation has been either load sharing or interpersonal message handling. Three other more important reasons for computer networks exist, at least with respect to scientific computer applications. Definitions of these reasons for a computer network follow."
  • Referred to network as "ARPANet" for the first time. [Segaller 62]
  • Larry Robert's plans relies upon the earlier work of Leonard Kleinrock. The transmission likes would be 2400 bps and ASCII was specified. The network would connect 16 research groups [Salus p 19] [Hauben]
• Roger Scantlebury deliver paper (written with Donald W Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory, England) "A digital communication network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals." (first reference to "packet") (Abstract: "Those computer applications which involve rapid response to events at distant points create special problems in digital communication. Such applications are increasing in number, and could increase more rapidly if better solutions existed to the communication problems. The present-day methods for communication of data in rapid-response systems employ 'private wires' for the transmission paths or, where the available data rate and reliability is sufficient, employ voice channels from the switched telephone network. Given these rather arbitrary transmission facilities the user adds the terminal equipment necessary to make a communication system and sometimes integrates a number of paths into a private network."

At this meeting, Larry Roberts meets Scantlebury, Davies, and Baran. [Roberts, Net Chronology] [ISOC] [Abbate p 38]

David Walden joins BBN and Frank Heart's Division. [Walden 1990 p 5]

1968

April: Kleinrock receives an ARPA research contract. The ARPA funding went to support PhD students such as Cerf, Crocker and Postel. This was 100% of Kleinrock's funding at UCLA [Babbage 6, 14, 15] [Roberts, Net Chronology]

Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf work for Jacobi Systems, a company that bid on the contract to build ARPANET RFP, but lost. [Cerf, Oral History 1990] [Vint Cerf and Steve Crocker, Nov. 2011 Smithsonian American Art Museum lecture]

June 3 ARPAnet Plan "Resource Sharing Computer Networks" submitted for approval. [Salus p 26]

June 21 ARPANet plan is approved by Robert Taylor with a budget of $2.2 million. [Salus p 26] [Abbate p 56]

"It was an extremely difficult problem to produce a proposal like that in a very short time, because the government has the very natural tendency to spend an enormous amount of time getting an RFP out. Then they breathe a big sigh of relief, and they want the people to write the proposal in zero time." Frank Heart 1990.

ARPA RFQ for IMPs is released Aug. [ISOC] [Roberts, Net Chronology]

September: Twelve proposals were received. [Hauben] [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Walden 1990 p 5 (helped prepare BBN's bid)]

JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor, The Computer as a Communications Device, Science and Technology 1968 [Markoff Dec. 20, 1999]

December: Elmer Shapiro, A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters, SRI ("Ideally, the communication subsystem should represent a 'transparent pipe' between hosts, in that a message from host A for host B would arrive at B as an identical copy of the source message.") [Salus p 25] [Def Tech Info Center]

1969

In January 1969 ARPA awarded a contract to BBN to build the first interface message processor (IMP) (to become routers in a stupid sub-network). [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Hauben] People at BBN who had prepared the proposal included Frank Heart, Robert Kahn, Will Crowther, Dave Walden, Hawley Rising, Ben Barker, and Severo Ornstein. [Heart 1990]

The other finalist bid for the ARPA contract was from Raytheon. [Nerds2.0 p. 79][Vanity Fair] Jacobie Systems in Santa Monica was a bidder [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

"BBN designed the IMP to accommodate no more than 64 computers and only one network." [Kleinrock] The BBN team was headed by Robert Kahn. [Kahn] [Babbage 22 (installation of first IMP)] The IMPs were to be delivered to UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and the Uni of Utah. BBN was located near Honeywell in Boston and would use the Honeywell H-516 for the first IMPs. [Abbate p 57] [RFC 1000] [Kleinrock 1996] [Hauben] [Heart 1990]

"These sites were running a Sigma 7 with the SEX operating system, an SDS 940 with the Genie operating system, an IBM 360/75 with OS/MVT (or perhaps OS/MFT), and a DEC PDP-10 with the Tenex operating system. Options existed for additional nodes if the first experiments were successful." [RFC 1000]

Sen. Ed Kennedy sent BBN a telegram informing BBN that they had won the contract and said that they were "to be congratulated on winning the contract for the interfaith message processor." Some reports have him congratulating BBN on its ecumenical efforts. [Nerds2.0 p 80] [No Credit] [How the Web was Born p 27] [Roots of the Internet] [Vanity Fair]

Severo Ornstein of BBN quote

I talked to Frank about it one night and he said, "Well, here's this RFQ, from ARPA. They want to build a network and so why don't you take it home and look at it?" And I did and I thought about it a little bit overnight and it seemed as though this was fairly straightforward thing to do. It was fairly well described in the RFQ. And so it seemed we could build it. And I went in and told Frank in words that I guess have become somewhat immortalized that sure, we could build it, "But I had no idea why anybody would want such a thing." [Nerds2.0 p 76]

IBM and AT&T did not bid on the contract [Segaller 62] (note that AT&T may have been prohibited to have built the IMPs pursuant to the MFJ) IBM apparently considered the project "impossible" and too expensive. Two decades later IBM had learned from its mistake and was making great concessions in order to be a part of NSFNET. [Segaller 72]

Leonard Kleinrock recalled

The computer guys would say, "Communication guys, will you please give us good data communications." The communications guys would turn around and say, "What are you talking about, the United States is a copper mine. You've got wires all over the place; use them." The computer guys would say, "No, you don't understand. It takes half a minute to set up a call, and your charge is for a minimum of three minutes. All I want to do is send a hundred milliseconds of data." These guys would turn around back to the computing guys and say, "Go away little boy, there's no revenue there." So the little boys went away, and they created packet switching. [Babbage 27] [See also Gaudin]

Steve Crocker volunteered to manage the RFCs initially. In the early 70s, Jon Postel become the editor of the RFCs. RFCs were maintained by Stanford SRI in its capacity as NIC. The RFCs came to be a function of the Network Working Group. [Roberts, Net Chronology][Crocker NYT ("The early R.F.C.'s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called "rough consensus and running code." Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.")] [Living Internet RFC History] [IETF RFC 2555, 30 Years of RFCs (7 April 1999)] [Hauben] [Abbate]

"A month later, after a particularly delightful meeting in Utah, it became clear to us that we had better start writing down our discussions. We had accumulated a few notes on the design of DEL and other matters, and we decided to put them together in a set of notes. I remember having great fear that we would offend whomever the official protocol designers were, and I spent a sleepless night composing humble words for our notes. The basic ground rules were that anyone could say anything and that nothing was official. And to emphasize the point, I labeled the notes "Request for Comments." I never dreamed these notes would distributed through the very medium we were discussing in these notes. Talk about Sorcerer's Apprentice!" [RFC 1000] 

S. Crocker, RFC001 Host software, Apr-07-1969.

Network Working Group                     Steve Crocker
Request for Comments: 1                  UCLA
                                                              7 April 1969

Title: Host Software
Author: Steve Crocker
Installation: UCLA
Date: 7 April 1969
Network Working Group Request for Comment: 1

Introduction

The software for the ARPA Network exists partly in the IMPs and partly in the respective HOSTs. BB&N has specified the software of the IMPs and it is the responsibility of the HOST groups to agree on HOST software.

During the summer of 1968, representatives from the initial four sites met several times to discuss the HOST software and initial experiments on the network. There emerged from these meetings a working group of three, Steve Carr from Utah, Jeff Rulifson from SRI, and Steve Crocker of UCLA, who met during the fall and winter. The most recent meeting was in the last week of March in Utah. Also present was Bill Duvall of SRI who has recently started working with Jeff Rulifson.

Somewhat independently, Gerard DeLoche of UCLA has been working on the HOST-IMP interface.

I present here some of the tentative agreements reached and some of the open questions encountered. Very little of what is here is firm and reactions are expected. . . . . .

BBN Report No 1822, Interface Message Processor: Specifications for the Interconnection of a Host and an IMP (May).

Sept Larry Roberts succeeded Taylor as head of IPTO in 1969. [Roberts, Net Chronology] Robert Taylor will end up at Xerox PARC. Pressure from Vietnam and Congress is redirecting ARPA's mission towards DoD's military needs. [Almanac] [Markoff Dec. 20, 1999]

Roberts 1967: "The common carriers currently provide 2 or 4 wire, 2 kc lines between two points either dialed or leased, as well as higher band width leased lines and lower band width teletype service. Considering the 2 kc offering, since it is the best dial up service, the use of 2 wire service appears to be very inefficient for the type of traffic predicted for .the network. In the Lincoln-SDC experimental link the average message length appears to be 20 characters. Each message must be acknowledged so that the originator may retransmit o; free the buffer. Thus the line must be reversed so often that the reversal time will effectively half the transmission rate. Therefore, full duplex, four-wire service is more economic and simpler to use. "Current automatic dialing equipment requires about 20 seconds to obtain a connection and a similar time to disconnect. Thus the response time is much too long assuming a call is made only after a message arrives and that the line is disconnected if no other messages arrive soon. It has proven necessary to hold a line which is being used intermittently to obtain the one-tenth to one second response time required for interactive work. This is very wasteful of the line and unless faster dial up times become available, message switching and concentration will be very important to network participants." Larry Roberts, Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communications, June 1967

Telecommunications: "Since nobody was going to give the agency a few billion dollars to string its own wires across the country, ARPA would have to move the data through AT&T's telephone system . Unfortunately, that system's basic dial up process was far too cumbersome and slow for computer-speed communications. So instead, Roberts decided ARPA would make a series of long-distance calls, and just never hang up. More precisely, the agency would go to AT&T and lease a series of high-capacity phone lines linking one ARPA site to the next, so that the computers would always be connected." ARPANet connected the IMPs with leased 56 kbps AT&T long distances lines. [Waldrop 80] [Abbate p 56] [Salus p 35] [Nerds p 82] [NIST 1992 p 4] [Roberts Wessler 1970 ("The IMPs are connected together via 50 Kbps data transmission facilities using common carrier (ATT) point to point leased lines... The communications circuits for this network will cost $49K per node per year and the network can support an average traffic of 16 KB per node. ")]

Compuserve founded by Jeffery Wilkins

ARPA Lore

Alan Kay on ARPA: "90 percent of all good things that I can think of that have been done in computer science have been funded by that agency. Chances that they would have been funded elsewhere are very low. The basic ARPA idea is that you find good people and you give them a lot of money and then you step back. If they dont do good things in three years they get dropped - where 'good' is very much related to new or interesting." [Spacewar]

ARPA Project Multiple Access Computer story by Alan Kay: "They had a thing on the PDP-1 called 'The Unknown Glitch'. They used to program the thing either in direct machine code, direct octal, or in DDT. In the early days it was a paper-tape machine. It was painful to assemble stuff, so they never listed out the programs. The programs and stuff just lived in there, just raw seething octal code. And one of the guys wrote a program called 'The Unknown Glitch,' which at random intervals would wake up, print out I AM THE UNKNOWN GLITCH. CATH ME IF YOU CAN, and then it would relocate itself somewhere else in core memory, set a clock interrupt, and go back to sleep. There was no way to find it." [Spacewar]

Old Boys Network: The informal culture of ARPANet has been described as an Old Boys Network. Those who were on the inside were said to have the advantage in receiving ARPA funding; those on the outside were not so advantaged. [Abbate p 55] This informal culture of the community would continue into the 90s, when the Internet was privatized, and create problems. As the Internet moved from private network to public network, questions about arrangements, authority, and structures created consternation, that would be echoed for years in such forums as the COM-PRIV discussion group.

Telephone Network Reliability: Frank Heart: "the phone company had never been able to tell when a phone line was about to fail. Their technology for dealing with phone lines was when someone called up and said, "I can't talk over the phone," they would send someone out to figure out what was wrong with the phone line. The IMPS watched the phone lines all the time, all the time, and they could tell when a line was degrading, not just when it was failing. So there were amusing instances when somebody here would call up the phone company office in California, and tell them that the phone line between Los Angeles and San Francisco was about to break. And the phone company guy, after first thinking we were calling as a joke, would then say, "How could you possibly know that in Boston?" A lot of that went on." [Heart p 27 1990]

ARPANet Design Objectives

1967: ARPA initiates planning of the ARPANet. Design objectives of ARPANet included

• interconnecting different researchers and research computers,
• Data Sharing ,
• Load Sharing of processing power (where one mainframe was busy, processing could be shifted to a different mainframe with available capacity)
• Program Sharing
• Remote Service
• general purpose open platform reducing need for duplication and
• Message Service: communications between different research centers (minor objective that became a major benefit and use). See Email History.

[See NIST 1992 p 4 ("Sharing of computing resources among researchers was the primary objective. . . Despite heavy military involvement, the resulting ARPANET turned out to be a fairly open network. It provided a test bed for the development of communication protocols to support functionality such as transmission of graphical data, remote login, file transfer, and electronic mail.")] [Roberts 1967 ("The advantages which can be obtained when computers are interconnected in a network such that remote running of programs is possible, include advantages due to specialized hardware and software at particular nodes as well as increased scientific communication.")] [Abbate p. 44, 96]

ARPAnet Plan 1967

"At the meeting it was agreed that work could begin on the conventions to be used for exchanging messages between any pair of computers in the proposed network, and also on consideration of the kinds of communications lines and data sets to be used. In particular, it was decided that the inter-host communication 'protocol' would include conventions for character and block transmission, error checking and retransmission, and computer and user identification. Frank Westervelt, then of the University of Michigan, was picked to write a position paper on these areas of communication, an ad hoc 'Communication Group' was selected from among the institutions represented, and a meeting of the group scheduled." (ARPA draft, III-26)

Resource Sharing: Instead of paying for duplicated resources spread isolated at different universities, ARPA's objective was to network those computers in order to share resources and to share money.

About 1966, Mr. [Robert] Taylor recalls, his office in the Pentagon had a terminal connected to time-sharing community at MIT, a terminal connected to a different kind of computer at the University of California at Berkeley, and a third terminal to the Systems Development Corp. in Santa Monica. "To talk to MIT I had to sit at the MIT terminal. To bring in someone from Berkeley, I had to change chairs to another terminal," he says. "I wished I could connect someone at MIT directly with someone at Berkeley. Out of that came the idea: Why not have one terminal that connects with all of them? "That's why we built ARPAnet," he says. [Almanac] [See also Taylor quoted in Vanity Fair]

Kleinrock: "The interesting thing is, as I recall, that part of the motivation for this network is the fact that in 1967, in the mid 1960s DARPA was heavily supporting a lot of people doing work on time-sharing. And every time an investigator got a new contract, the first thing he wanted was a computer - the best and biggest. Pretty soon Larry said, "This is getting ridiculous," because each facility they created evolved into a specialized kind of facility, like the graphics capability at Utah, the database capability at SRI, and the simulation capability at UCLA. So Larry came up with the concept of a resource sharing network, where there would be specialized sites, and if you wanted that special capability, you connect to that site to get it, or you would pull back data or programs and use them locally. That was one of his motivating reasons, namely, to reduce the number of time-sharing systems he had to support." [Babbage 7]

"Currently, each computer center in the country is forced to recreate all of the software and data files it wishes to utilize. In many cases this involves complete reprogramming of software or reformatting the data files. This duplication is extremely costly and has led to considerable pressure for both very restrictive language standards and the use of identical hardware systems." [Roberts Wessler 1970]

Recalcitrants: As with most technology transitions, not all in the community were enthused. Why, after all, should a university with the latest-greatest main frame have any incentive to share it with others? The quality of one's computer facilities was a boasting right for universities. In order to motivate reluctant participants, further ARPA funding was conditioned upon participation in ARPANET. [Abbate p 55] [Kleinrock 1996 ("most of the ARPA-supported researchers were opposed to joining the network for fear that it would enable outsiders to load down their "private" computers")]

"If you had to give the single most important reason why it was as successful as it was, it was that Larry Roberts had a great deal of authority and freedom and was able to control not only the contractors who were working on it, like BBN, but also the users, since he was supplying all their money. In other words, all the sites at which the IMPs were installed were research sites being supported by DARPA. So he could get their cooperation by the simplest of techniques: he was supplying the money." [Heart 1990]

The western ARPA-funded universities gave Larry Roberts less resistance to this idea of sharing over a network, and this is the reason why the first four nodes on the ARPANET are found out west. [Steve Crocker, Nov. 2011, Smithsonian American Art Museum talk]

By 1972, the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Computation was acquiring 90% of the computer services remotely over the ARPANET, at 40% the cost of doing provisioning those services themselves locally. [Abbate p 99]

General Purpose Network / Open / End to End

Larry Roberts sought to avoid the duplication by creating a single general purpose computer network. In 1970 he stated,

"There are many applications of computers for which current communications technology is not adequate. One such application is the specialized customer service computer systems in existence or envisioned for the future; these services provide the customer with information or computational capability. If no commercial computer network service is developed, the future may be as follows:

"One can envision a corporate officer in the future having many different consoles in his office: one to the stock exchange to monitor his own company's and competitor's activities, one to the commodities market to monitor the demand for his product or raw materials, one to his own company's data management system to monitor inventory, sales, payroll, cash flow, etc., and one to a scientific computer used for modeling and simulation to help plan for the future. There are probably many people within that same organization who need some of the same services and potentially many other services. Also, though the data exists in digital form on other computers, it will probably have to be keypunched into the company's modeling and simulation system in order to perform analyses. The picture presented seems rather bleak, but is just a projection of the service systems which have been developed to date.

"The organization providing the service has a hard time, too. In addition to collecting and maintaining the data, the service must have field offices to maintain the consoles and the communications multiplexors adding significantly to their cost. A large fraction of that cost is for communications and consoles, rather than the service itself. Thus, the services which can be justified are very limited.

"Let us now paint another picture given a nationwide network for computer-to-computer communication. The service organization need only connect its computer into the net. It probably would not have any consoles other than for data input, maintenance, and system development. In fact, some of the service's data input may come from another service over the Net. Users could choose the service they desired based on reliability, cleanliness of data, and ease of use, rather than proximity or sole source.

"Large companies would connect their computers into the net and contract with service organizations for the use of those services they desired. The executive would then have one console, connected to his company's machine. He would have one standard way of requesting the service he desires with a far greater number of services available to him.

"For the small company, a master service organization might develop, similar to today's time-sharing service, to offer console service to people who cannot afford their own computer. The master service organization would be wholesalers of the services and might even be used by the large companies in order to avoid contracting with all the individual service organizations.

"The kinds of services that will be available and the cost and ultimate capacity required for such service is difficult to predict. It is clear, however, that if the network philosophy is adopted and if it is made widely available through a common carrier, that the communications system will not be the limiting factor in the development of these services as it is now." [Roberts Wessler 1970]

Sharing Data: In 1970, Larry Roberts described the ARPANET as follows:

"The data sharing between data management systems or data retrieval systems will begin an important phase in the use of the Network. The concept of distributed databases and distributed access to the data is one of the most powerful and useful applications of the network for the general data processing community. As described above, if the Network is responsive in the human time frame, databases can be stored and maintained at a remote location rather than duplicating them at each site the data is needed. Not only can the data be accessed as if the user were local, but also as a Network user he can write programs on his own machine to collect data from a number of locations for comparison, merging or further analysis." [Roberts Wessler 1970]

"The major lesson from the ARPANET experience is that information sharing is a key benefit of computer networking. Indeed it may be argued that many major advances in computer systems and artificial intelligence are the direct result of the enahnced collaboration made possible by the ARPANET." [Jennings p. 945] [Abbate p 100 quoting Jennings]

Software Sharing:

"When the network was originally built, Larry probably had - if you had to list his goals, you can look at the DARPA order, but if you had to list his goals - he certainly had high in his set of goals the idea that different host sites would cooperatively use software at the other sites. There's a guy at host one, instead of having to reproduce the software on his computer, he could use the software over on somebody else's computer with the software in his computer. And that goal, has, to this day, never been fully accomplished. That goal still to this very day has not been really accomplished to the degree that it was hoped for in its early days." [Heart p 25 1990]

Connectivity: "This network is envisioned as an interconnected communication facilities to utilize capabilities available at other ARPA sites. The network will provide a link between user(s) programs at one site, and programs and data at remote sites." [BBN Proposal]

1968: "The stated objectives of the program were to develop experience in interconnection computers and to improve and increase computer research productivity through resource sharing. Technical needs in scientific and military environments were cited as justification for the program objectives. Relevant prior work was described. It was noted that the computer research centers supported or partially supported by IPT provided a unique testbed for computer networking experiments, as well as providing immediate benefits to the centers and valuable research results to the military. The network planning that had gone on was described, the need for a network information center was noted, and the network design was sketched. A five year schedule for network procurement, construction, operation, and transfer out of ARPA was presented. (It was noteworthy that IPT had initially had in mind eventual transfer of the operational network to a common carrier.) Finally a several-million-dollar, several-year budget was stated." (ARPA draft, III-35)

"The Internet developed out of research efforts funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1960s and 1970s to create and test interconnected computer networks. The fundamental aim of computer scientists working on this "ARPANET" was to develop an overall Internet architecture that could connect and make use of existing computer networks that might, themselves, be different both architecturally and technologically. The secondary aims of the ARPANET project were, in order of priority: (1) Internet communication must continue despite the loss of networks or gateways between them; (2) the Internet architecture must support multiple types of communications services; (3) the architecture must accommodate a variety of networks; (4) it must permit distributed, decentralized management of its resources; (5) the architecture must be cost-effective; (6) the architecture must permit attachment by computer devices with a low level of effort; and (7) the resources used in the Internet architecture must be accountable. [FTC Report 2007 p 13-14]

See also Salus p 19; David D. Clark, The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols, COMPUTER COMM. REV., Aug. 1988

The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols, D.D.Clark, Proc SIGCOMM 88, ACM CCR Vol 18, Number 4, August 1988, pages 106-114 (reprinted in ACM CCR Vol 25, Number 1, January 1995, pages 102-111).

The initial network planned was first 4 nodes and then 12 nodes

Public Untility: Many in the community saw what they were doing as building a public utility for computer communications.

• Paul Baran: "One of his recommendations was for a national public utility to transport computer data, much in the way the telephone system transports voice data. "Is it time now to start thinking about a new and possibly non-esistent public utility," Baran asked, "a common user digital data communication plant designed specfically for the transmission of digital data among a large set of subscribers?"" [Hauben]
• In 1971 Alex McKenzie took charge of the Network Control Center at BBN. He envisioned the ARPNet as a "computing utility." [Abbate p 65]
• William F Massy, Computer Networks: Making the Decision to Join One, Science 1 November 1974, Vol. 186 No. 4162, pp. 414-20 (discussing how computer utility would meet needs of university computer centers).
• Frank Heart: "A utility is something people depend upon. Like the electricity, or the phones, or the lights, or the railroads, or the airplanes. Yes, it was a utility. That's the thing that was the amazing surprise. It was started as an experiment to connect four sites, and it became a utility much, much faster than anybody would have guessed. People began to depend upon it." [Heart p 16 1990]

Costs

Larry Roberts believed that the existing communications networks at the time were inefficient and did not properly support communications for computers. By designing a computer network, Roberts believed that he was reinventing communications, designing it to benefit from the advantages and efficiencies of computers. In a 1970 paper, he set out to compare the cost of transmitting one million bits of information 1400 miles (the average distance between ARPANet nodes).

Media	Cost per Megabit
Telegram	$3300.00	For 100 words at 30 bits/wd, daytime
Night Letter	565.00	For 100 words at 30 bits/wd, overnight delivery
Computer Console	374.00	18 baud avg. use, 300 baud DDD service line & data sets only
TELEX	204.00	50 baud teletype service
DDD (103A)	22.50	300 baud data sets, DDD daytime service
Autodin	8.20	2400 baud message service, full use during working hours
DDD (202)	3.45	2000 baud data sets
Letter	3.30	Airmail, 4 pages, 250 wds/pg, 30 bits/wd
W.U. Broadband	2.03	2400 baud service, full duplex
WATS	1.54	2000 baud, used 8 hrs/working day
Leased Line (201)	.57	2000 baud, commercial, full duplex
Data 50	.47	50 KB dial service, utilized full duplex
Leased Line (303)	.23	50 KB, commercia, full duplex
Mail DEC Tape	.20	2.5 megabit tape, airmail
Mail IBM Tape	.034	100 megabit tape, airmail

"Cost per Megabit for Various Communication Media 1400-Mile Distance" [Roberts Wessler 1970]

Roberts table above shows two things. First, it shows how compeling an efficient cost effective computer network could be, bypassing what would otherwise be significant charges from existing networks. Second, it also shows, what was subsequently demonstrated multiple times - that one of the most efficient means of transmitting data was by loading all the data on a memory device, and driving (or mailing) it to its destination.

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" -.Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. pp. 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6

Roberts notes that a significant amount of the cost in switched networks are the switches themselves. "P revious store and forward systems like DoD's AUTODIN system, have had such complex, expensive switches that over 95% of the total communications service cost was for the switches. Other switch services adding to the system's cost, deemed superfluous in a computer network, were: long term message storage, multi-address messages and individual message accounting." [Roberts Wessler 1970] Remove the switch from the computer network and you remove the costs.

Packet Switching

"By the late 1960s, computer scientists were experimenting with non-linear "packet-switched" techniques to enable computers to communicate with each other. Using this method, computers disassemble information into variable-size pieces of data called "packets" and forward them through a connecting medium to a recipient computer that then reassembles them into their original form. Each packet is a stand-alone entity, like an individual piece of postal mail, and contains source, destination, and reassembly information. Unlike traditional circuit-switched telephone networks, packet-switched networks do not require a dedicated line of communication to be allocated exclusively for the duration of each communication. Instead, individual data packets comprising a larger piece of information, such as an e-mail message, may be dispersed and sent across multiple paths before reaching their destination and then being reassembled. This process is analogous to the way that the individual, numbered pages of a book might be separated from each other, addressed to the same location, forwarded through different post offices, and yet all still reach the same specified destination, where they could be reassembled into their original form.31 [FTC Report 2007 p 14]

Larry Roberts considered several different desgins for the ARPANet including fully interconnected point to point leased lines, line switched (dial-up) service, and packet switching. Roberts stated, "For the kind of service required, it was decided and later verified that the message switched service provided the greater flexibility, higher effective bandwidth, and lower cost than the other two systems." [Roberts Wessler 1970]

End to End

Also, during the Internet's early years, network architectures generally were based on what has been called the "end-to-end argument." This argument states that computer application functions typically cannot, and should not, be built into the routers and links that make up a network's middle or "core." Instead, according to this argument, these functions generally should be placed at the "edges" of the network at a sending or receiving computer.41 This argument also recognizes, however, that there might be certain functions that can be placed only in the core of a network. Sometimes, this argument is described as placing "intelligence" at or near the edges of the network, while leaving the core's routers and links mainly "dumb" to minimize the potential for transmission and interoperability problems that might arise from placing additional complexity into the middle of the network. [FTC Report 2007 p 17]

ARPANet is Born Fall 1969

The first node of the ARPANet, an Interface Massage Processor (IMP) (built by BBN), delivered on August 30. There had been ruminations that BBN would be late with the delivery, giving those on the receiving end the false perception that they had additional breathing room in which to prepare. But BBN got their work done and airlifted the hulk of an IMP out to UCLA on time.

The first IMP was installed in October 1969 in UCLA. It was a Honeywell DDP-516. The Operating System took 6K of memory. [Picture of Leonard Kleinrock with IMP1 at UCLA] [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Salus p 35] [RFC 1000 (UCLA was counting on a delay by BBN which was having timing troubles. BBN fixed the problem and air shipped the IMP)] [Hauben] "They were each the size of a refrigerator and cost about $100,000 in 1969 dollars." [RFC 2555] [Kleinrock 1996] [Cerf, Oral History 1990] It connected to a host computer a Sigma7 [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

"(This minicomputer had just been released in 1968 and Honeywell displayed it at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference where Kleinrock saw the machine suspended by its hooks at the conference; while running, there was this brute whacking it with a sledge hammer just to show it was robust. Kleinrock suspects that that particular machine is the one that was delivered by BBN to UCLA.) As it turns out, BBN was running two weeks late (much to Kleinrock's delight, since he and his team badly needed the extra development time); BBN, however, shipped the IMP on an airplane instead of on a truck, and it arrived on time. [Kleinrock 1996]

Present the day were Kleinrock and his team, BBN, Honeywell, Scientific Data Systems, AT&T long lines, GTE (the local telephone company), and ARPA. [Kleinrock 1996] Graduate students involved in the project included Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker, Jon Postel... [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

The hosts interconnected with a host-to-host software. "The host-to-host interface was awful to begin with." [Babbage 23] This would would be replaced by NCP which would then be replaced by TCP/IP.

In the Fall, Bob Kahn comes out to UCLA to examine the IMP's performance, and meets Vint Cerf [Cerf, Oral History 1990]

Notes of Licklider: "29 Oct 1969 22:30 talked to SRI Host to Host"

Second IMP: Oct. 29, 10:30 pm:

"A month later the second node was added (at Stanford Research Institute) and the first Host-to-Host message ever to be sent on the Internet was launched from UCLA. This occurred in early October when Kleinrock and one of his programmers proceeded to "logon" to the SRI Host from the UCLA Host. The procedure was to type in "log" and the system at SRI was set up to be clever enough to fill out the rest of the command, namely to add "in" thus creating the word "login". A telephone headset was mounted on the programmers at both ends so they could communicate by voice as the message was transmitted. At the UCLA end, they typed in the "l" and asked SRI if they received it; "got the l" came the voice reply. UCLA typed in the "o", asked if they got it, and received "got the o". UCLA then typed in the "g" and the darned system CRASHED! Quite a beginning. On the second attempt, it worked fine!" [Kleinrock, Net History] [Kleinrock 1996]

The Second IMP was delivered to SRI in the beginning of October. [RFC 1000][Kleinrock 1996]

By the end of the year, there were four nodes: [Hauben]

• UCLA (Vint Cerf - PdD student, Steve Crocker - PhD student, and Jon Postel with Leonard Kleinrock) Installed Sept 1, 1969
  • Designated the Network Measurement Center. The network itself was part of the experiment and therefore a significant endeavor for decades would be measuring network performance. The NMC would test, measure, and refine the network. [Abbate p 58] [Kleinrock] [Kleinrock 1996] [Cerf, Oral History 1990]
• SRI (Doug Engelbart) (ARPANet's Network Information Center [ISOC]) Installed Oct. 1, 1969 [Roberts, Net Chronology]
• UCSB (Glen Culler), Installed Nov. 1, 1969 and
• Uni Utah Salt Lake (Dave Evans, Ivan Sutherland). installed Dec. 1, 1969

Apollo 11 Goes to the Moon with Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon July 20 [Apollo] Of the two original ARPA projects, one made headlines, the public knew nothing about - both radically changed the world.

Nov. 21 Larry Roberts visits UCLA. Telenet connection to SRI is demonstrated. [RFC 1000]

40th Anniversary of the Net - October 29, 1969 Computer History Museum

ARPAnet - the team behind the internet Created by Arlington County 2011

See also FCC :: Customer Premises Equipment (which affirmed individual's right to attach devices to the end of the telephone network, a necessary precondition to being able to attach IMPs and then modems to the network)