Talk:ARPANET

First packet switched network

So its not the MKI invented in 1970 at NPL in the UK? I'm confused, the article on Donald Davis states that ARPA incorporated this idea into ARPANET so its totally confusing. Especially since this article cites the creation as mid 1980s, well after MKI and MKII. Can anyone shed some light on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.173 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

References in film and media

This section was removed, wondered why?

• The removal happened some weeks ago thru an anonymous edit and was followed by a bunch of vandalism. Probably the removal was vandalism too.

Intermediate state

This is an intermediate state. Eventually the stuff about the invention of packet switching is going to get moved to the packet switching page (just as some of this was moved here from the History of the Internet page), and more about the history of the ARPANet is going to get added here, as I have time to write it.. This is an improvement on what used to be here, though. Noel 08:07, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

First ARPANET link

Not sure where to put this (from November 21 and 1969):

The first ARPANET link is established.

--mav 05:54, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

I've expanded it. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Data rate

I'm not sure about the nearby material that says they were connected "using modems": I think the link speeds were of the order of 56k, and the modems of that era were not even remotely near that speed (think 1200 bps): the links were more probably DS0 leased lines. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No, "modem" is right - that's a generic term for a device ("modulator - demodulator") that transforms a signal in one form (in this case, a bit stream) into another form (analog signals in this case). The ARPANet modems were provided by ATT; BBN's hardware only included the high-speed serial interfaces. The lines were indeed leased special high-bandwidth lines (but I don't think the concept "DS0" existed back then), again, provided by AT&T. Noel 20:24, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

PS: When I said "high-bandwidth", I meant it in the technical sense (i.e. high band-pass), not as a synonym for "high bit rate" (although of course with the former it's easy to provide the latter). Noel 21:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

According to [1] "The T1 standard was developed in the United States in the early 1960's." This [2] says "Also in 1963 digital carrier techniques were introduced. [...] T1 quickly became the backbone of long distance toll service and then the primary handler of local transmission between central offices." So it's quite plausible that the circuit was part of a then-existing digital trunk system. However, it would be nice to have a reference which can settle this one way or another. -- The Anome 12:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[3] describes original link speeds as having been 56k. For 1960s modems, even 600 bps over an end-to-end analog connection was "high speed". The nearest other possible solution were the FDM interleaving solutions. But why would anyone install this, when T1 was commercially available from 1962 onwards? Allowing for bit-robbing, a single DS0 demultiplexed from a T1 would be 56k, exactly the data rates quoted in the source. -- The Anome 12:57, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Phil Karn also says here [4] that "Actually, the ARPANET backbone links were almost all 56kb/s." -- The Anome 13:05, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I simply don't know the details of how AT+T provided the bandwidth. It may well have been a breakout of a T1 line. I have looked through everything I have, and nothing says anything about it. I do know (from the BBN proposal, in response to the original ARPA ARPANET RFP) that the interface between the IMP and modem was two wires in each direction - a data line and a clock line. So I guess the bit recovery was done by the AT+T gear - maybe, because for all I know AT+T just carried those two signals through from one end to the other, mostly unchanged, and didn't do clock recovery at the far end of each link. Turning the bit stream into packets (framing - i.e. figuring out where the byte boundaries was, and then turning the byte stream into packets) was done by the BBN hardware in the IMPs. The AT+T "modems" (they didn't do everything we now think of modems as doing) were huge - at MIT (which had two AT+T lines early on, when I first became responsible for the IMPs at MIT, and a third later on) the AT+T gear was in a giant rack (about 6' high, and 2.5' square, which was mostly full of stuff). My guess would be that the bandwidth was provided in different ways, at different times and on different links, but that is just a guess. Sorry I can't help more - that's all I know and/or can find out. Noel (talk) 04:38, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley Clark

Well, there are a zillion links to Wesley Clark, and almost certainly all of them mean the general. So although I'd like to make it a disambig page, and then have separate pages for the general and the computer scientist, it's probably too much work to be worth it. If I can figure out the computer scientist's middle name, we can put his page under that (or. more likely, his initial), with a note somewhere on the main Wesley Clark page to refer to it. Noel 17:04, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I believe the MIT Wesley Clark you wish to disambiguate is Wesley A. Clark, as referenced here: Participants in the LINC Evaluation Program -- Tracy 10:25, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oooh, thanks for dredging that up! Noel (talk) 12:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

images?

source:The Computer History Museum ([http://www.computerhistory.org/copyright/ fair use])

source:The Computer History Museum ([http://www.computerhistory.org/copyright/ fair use])

Leonard Kleinrock

I e-mailed Leonard and he outlined that the following was incorrect in the ((cur) (last) 08:23, 4 Nov 2004 Jumbuck m (robot Adding:id)) entry:

This is what was originally in the entry: "Leonard Kleinrock had performed tests on store and forward message systems in 1961, and wrote a very important book in 1964 covering queueing theory and routing in store and forward networks, although this work did not include the concept of breaking a user's message up into smaller units for transmission through the network."

Leonard wrote to me with the following:

Dear Kim,

...

This is not true. In fact, in my July 1962 publication (see my website: www.lk.cs.ucla.edu) I talk about chopping messages into fixed length units and transmitting them separately over the link. That material also appeared in my December 1962 PhD Dissertation which was later published as the book that is quoted, "Communication Nets"; you can easily find the description in that book in Section 5.3. Importantly, you should note that my July 1962 publication was months ahead of Paul Baran's and years ahead of anything that Donald Davies did. Basically, what I did for my PhD research in 1961-1962 was to establish a mathematical theory of packet networks which uncovered the underlying principles that drives today's Internet.

I would appreciate it if you would correct the entry in that link.

Best of luck. Len Kleinrock

I have updated the page accordingly. However there does seem to be some dispute - so I would like updaters to consult with Lenoard Kleirock before making changes his e-mail address is at www.lk.cs.ucla.edu - it would be even better if we could get Paul Baran and Donalad Davies in the dialog to thrash this out amongst themselves - they could then propose a nice summary that would sort out any inconsistencies - So whoever wants to take this on please be my guest! -- Kim Meyrick 21:44, 10 Nov 2004

You need to be careful with Kleinrock's claims, because he has an axe to grind. If you read Baran's page, which I find to be equally incorrect, Baran claims all the credit. Alas, to talk to Donald Davies, you'll need a spirit medium, because he is no longer with us. Before he died, he did dispute Kleinrock's claim. And, needless to say, if you think Baran and Kleinrock are going to agree on a division of the credit, well...

As to the 1964 book, here's what section 5.3 says:

"The server picks the next message in the queue and performs one unit of service upon it (i.e. services this message for exactly Q seconds). At the end of this time interval, the message leaves the system if its service (transmission) is finished; if not, it joins the end of the queue with its service partially completed .."

And that is the entirety of what the book says about the topic. Although no details at all are given, the most plausible reading of what was meant is that some kind of link-local fragmentation/reassembly is being used, not end-end packets of the sort described in Baran's work, and now used in the Internet.

I have the 1961 PhD proposal, and I'll look at that now. However, I suggest you be wary about rushing in where angels fear to tread! I would have to go check Hafner's book, but my vague recollection is that she got it about right. Noel (talk) 02:13, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have now checked both the 1961 thesis proposal, and the 1962 RLE QTR - the former says nothing at all, and the latter has exactly the same language as the book (quoted above). It's worth noting that the book is basically entirely about queueing theory, and is not about engineering a data communication network. The examples given in the book are principally telegram networks, although trucking networks also figure in some cases.

I also checked Hafner's book, and she doesn't explicitly rate Kleinrock's contribution, although she implicitly seems to credit Baran and Davies with a key role in coming up with the idea of packet data networks. I think there's something in that - they definitely were thinking of practical data communication systems, whereas Kleinrock's work is very much focused on the theory of queueing, which obviously has a much wider application than just packet networks. And of course Licklider and Taylor were the people who actually had the vision to build a real network. Noel (talk) 04:10, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PS: DARPA's own history of the ARPANet (see article) nowhere mentions Kleinrock's work as a source of inspiration - but does prominently cite Baran and Davies. Not that I wholly believe that either (I think Roberts' quote about relying on Kleinrock's work is probably accurate), but more to show you that the picture painted by Kleinrock is not universally shared, and that you shouldn't rely on any one source. See also my recent comments at Talk:Packet switching on the subject of Kleinrock's proper share of the credit. Noel (talk) 02:44, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Leonard Kleinrock has responded with the following which i post on his behalf:

"Both comments by jnc miss the point. I was not suggesting that others not be mentioned. In fact, I include the contributions of Baran and Davies in every presentation I make regarding the history of the Internet Jnc's referral to bogus claims is amazing! It may be that he has not looked at the source documents. Anyone familiar with those documents would be able to provide a more balanced view of the early work than he has articluted." -- Kim Meyrick 18:00, 12 Nov 2004

I had to laugh at "I include the contributions of Baran and Davies in every presentation I make regarding the history of the Internet". If you look at every page he has linked to from his "The History of the Internet" links page, most of which he wrote, you will not find a single instance of Baran's name, and Davies is only mentioned once, as the originator of the term "packet".

I don't know which documents he is speaking of - I have read all the ones he has posted, and a great number more besides (although I don't have access to RAND's working papers, or the internal archives of DARPA). If he has more original, contemporary documents he'd like to post, I'd be happy to review them. Noel (talk) 22:41, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Date clash

Ah, the joys of people adding stuff to articles piece-meal. At ARPANET#Initial ARPANET deployment it says:

the first message ever sent over the ARPANET; it took place at 22:30PM on October 29, 1969.

and then later on it says:

The first ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between an IMP at UCLA and another at SRI's

So how could a message have been sent on Oct 29 when the first link allegedly wasn't there until November 21? Alas, I don't have the time right now to ressarch this: can someone else straighten this out? Noel (talk) 00:41, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I see this is still an open question. I'll see if I can figure it out; I need to read to to swap in the protocol development stuff to flesh out that section (everything else is looking pretty good, now). Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Link speed

According to [5]:

All who I have heard from agree that 50kb was the speed. There were experiments with a 230.4kb service but the concerns were with the economics of renting the lines and the overall computing capacity of the IMPs.

I know Mike Brescia well, he's a very careful engineer, so I would take his data as fairly definitive. I have left mention of the 230KB speed in the article, but said it was not much used due to cost/computing concerns. Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Controversy over invention of packet switching

It might be good to move this section to Internet history or perhaps start a new one on "ARPANET history" so that ARPANET could just be about the actual nature of the network without all the history.--Carl Hewitt 05:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

No thanks, Internet history has its own share of controversy, we don't need more! ;) But seriosuly, there's an article on Packet Switching, this information belongs there, and I'd support a move. --John R. Barberio ^{talk, contribs 13:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC)}

Actually, some of the history was previously in the article on packet switching until it was consolidated in ARPANET. Maybe the packet switching article should just be about the technology and we should start a new article on the history of packet switching?--Carl Hewitt 16:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

packet switching is currently small enougth that it can take an expansion of its history there, I don't see a need for a seperate article yet. Moving the section. --John R. Barberio ^{talk, contribs 09:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)}

Roberts and credit

I removed this quote from Larry Roberts:

Roberts' wrote in his Inernet Chronology that "Although the UK work convinced Roberts to use higher speed lines (50 KB) and to use the word packet, the Rand work had no significant impact on the ARPANET plans and Internet history."

because it frankly conflicts with other things he said, at other times and other places. E.g.:

I got this huge collection of reports back at the office, which were sitting around the ARPA office, and suddenly I learned how to route packets. So we talked to Paul and used all of his concepts (Norberg/O'Neill pp. 166)

which is completely 180 degrees away from the first quote!

I don't know for sure what's going on with him. I speculate that in part he's trying to buttress the role of Kleinrock (with whom he had shared an office at MIT, so they were/are old friends, and who has been on a campaign to try and claim credit for packet switching); in part, he also seems irritated (rightfully) at the common myth that "the ARPANET was created to survive a nuclear war". But in any event, with that level of self-contradiction, I don't think one can take anything he says (especially in recent years) as gospel. Noel (talk) 05:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Baran and Roberts

Sigh - another place where the history books seem to disagree! Dream Machine says (pp. 276) that:

Meanwhile, Scantlebury had told Roberts one other thing in Gatlinburg. .. they had come across the work of am American who had -again- invented the packet network independently. Baran was his name ... Roberts knew Baran slightly and had in fact had lunch with him during a visit to Rand the previous February.

but Where Wizards says:

In December, 1966, when Larry Roberts arrived at the Pentagon ... he had never heard the name Paul Baran. (pp 68) Roberts also learned, for the first time, of the work that had been done by Paul Baran and RAND a few years earlier. (pp. 77)

and I would think they can't both be right. Although I assume the "previous February" above means February, 1966, since Gatlinburg was in October, '67, and I suppose it could have been February, '67 which was meant, which would remove that direct conflict. (Alas, Dream Machine gives no source, so I can't check to verify which one was meant.)

Still, even if it was Febuary '67 (removing the conflict), it's kind of mind-boggling that he could have had lunch with Baran in February '67, when Roberts was already working on the ARPANET (he'd started on that at DARPA at the end of '66), and neither one of them brought up the topic of networking. (I can just imagine the conversation: "So what are you working on now for DARPA?" "Oh, computer networking." "Oh really, I did a big project on that!" etc, etc.)

I shouldn't be surprised if Dream Machine has it right; Roberts probably forgot about it until someone found some old travel records, or something. Noel (talk) 09:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I found a source (probably the one Dream Machine used, but no way to be sure, but that doesn't matter much, since it is corroboration for what Dream Machine says): it turns out that it was February, '67. It's in Baran's oral history interview at the Charles Babbage Institute, pp. 37, but he's quoting from his contemporary desk diary, viz.:

"O'NEILL: When you say Roberts came out to RAND, you mean he visited? When would that be, do you remember?

BARAN: I really don't remember the dates, so I checked my old calendar (copy attached) and here is what I found: On Tuesday, 28 February 1967 I find a notation on my calendar for 12:00 noon Dr. L. Roberts. On Tuesday, 31 October 1967 I see a notation 9:30 AM to 2:00 PM for ARPA's (Elmer) Shapiro, (Barry) Boehm, (Len) Kleinrock, ARPA Network. On Monday, 13 November 1967 I see the following: Larry Roberts to abt (about?) lunch (time?). Art Bushkin = 1:00 PM. Here. Larry Roberts IMP Committee. On Thursday, 16 November 1967 I see 7 PM Kleinrock, UCLA - IMP Meeting."

So that does take out the conflict with Where Wizards (and confirms that Dream Machine had it right). Still, it leaves us the problem of why on earth Roberts went to see Baran after he started working on networking, unless it was to talk about Baran's work - and what on earth would they have talked about other than networking, anyway? I suspect that Roberts simply forgot (years later) about this. Noel (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Art Bushkin: I don't know how to make an entry here, and I don't recall the specific meeting, but I knew and worked with Paul Baran and Larry Roberts during that time period. Paul Baran testified before Congress during hearings (I don't remember when) on the subject of a National Data Center. The crux of his testimony was the fears of a National Data Center existing in single, large-scale computer were based on an erroneous assumption regarding the way that technology would emerge. Rather, Baran testified that there would emerge a distributed network in which many interconnected computers would create the effect of the feared National Data Center without a single central computer or locus of control. Baran's testimony and other writings, etc., greatly influenced my involvement in this field. As an intern at ARPA in the summer of 1967, and then as a consultant thereafter, I worked on privacy and security of information, and the early creation of the Internet (I invented nothing and was a very minor participant.). Baran was to me, and others, an influential thinker, and I recall speaking with him often about the use of the emerging technology, not just the network development. 24.250.118.155 23:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC) Art Bushkin

A wise point

BTW, that Baran interview (a few pages on) has some interesting thoughts on attribution, which I reproduce here because they are so incredibly apt:

My experience with innovations is that everything has a predecessor event or events. ... The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral. Over the course of several hundred years: new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, 'I built a cathedral.' Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, 'Well, who built the cathedral?' Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.

Too often history tends to be lazy and give credit to the planner and to the funder of the cathedral. Maybe we should take the care to avoid the simplifications and say, 'Okay, this person did this or did that, and that person did so and so.' No single person can do it all, or ever does it all. But we are lazy and tend to give all the credit to a single person most closely identified with an activity and forget all the others who really made it all possible.

Having been there myself :-), I an in absolute, perfect agreement with these sentiments. Noel (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting factoid

Davies found out about Baran's work from a MoD official after a presentation he gave at NPL in March, 1966. Source: Norberg/O'Neill, pp. 161. Noel (talk) 09:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Charles Herzfeld, Citation

I added a bit about Mr. Herzfeld's statement on the impetus for ARPAnet. However, I have a hard time seeing where to put the links I used as reference. I admit ignorance of the protocol for citation (e.g., what I should make a note (named reference?), and what deserves simply an external link. Therefore, I will give them here, and anyone interested in polishing my contribution, please do, with my thanks.

I took the quote from an article at about.com. For credentials on Mr. Herzfeld, I looked to his entry at the staff pages of Potomac Institute.

That's kind of dangerous. Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. For how to actually find good sources, see Wikipedia:How to write a great article. --Coolcaesar 20:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've corrected where the article says Herzfeld was "director of ARPANET from 1965 to 1967" since the 'net didn't exist before 1969. Rick Smith 18:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible vandalism in progress

Some clown who clearly never read any of the early RFCs just moved the article to ARPANet, which was NEVER the title of the network. That constitutes original research in violation of Wikipedia's strict no original research policy. It may also constitute possible use of Wikipedia as a soapbox in violation of What Wikipedia is not. I am posting my message to that user below. To all admins tracking this article: I suspect that User:Nethac DIU is a troll who should be blocked for possible vandalism.

Please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia core policies before making drastic changes, or they will be classified as vandalism and reverted, and you will be blocked as a vandal. These policies, particularly NPOV, are non-negotiable, according to Jimbo Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation. See Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.

If you actually bothered to review the early RFCs, nearly all of which are freely available online from the Internet Engineering Task Force, you would have realized the ARPANET was the standard spelling from 1972 onward. Yes, prior to 1972, the network was called the ARPA Computer Network or just the Network for short, but ARPANET (in all caps) became the dominant usage after 1972. And ARPANet was never in widespread use.

For examples of the ARPANET usage in 1972, see: [6], [7], and [8]. For an example of the earliest discussions on the ARPA Computer Network, see: [9].

We need an admin to clean up Nethac DIU's mess immediately. --Coolcaesar 20:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

To clarify further: The problem is that even if ARPANet may be the more grammatically correct usage, longstanding Wikipedia policy is to defer to the "common name" of a topic, even if that name is grammatically incorrect or politically incorrect. This is the same policy used by all major encyclopedias, including Britannica, Encarta, World Book, Americana, etc.

If Nethac DIU has an issue with that policy, he or she should directly contest it at Wikipedia:Naming conventions, but it is highly unlikely that anyone will support a change of the policy. Most Wikipedians recognize that in order for WP to gain acceptance and legitimacy, it will need to follow a few of the basic policies commonly used by other encyclopedias, including having a similar article naming system. --Coolcaesar 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've fixed the vandalism for now. The article is back at ARPANET. --Coolcaesar 20:33, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, those of us who were actually involved at the time, the terms were ARPAnet (and DARPAnet). The 'all caps' that one occasionally sees referred to in RFCs happened because many computers at the time had single case, typically upper case only. However, we actually referred to it as ARPAnet, since the 'net' part was not the initials of an acronym. I believe this has been mentioned before.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry...

Well, I were wrong. I thought ARPANet was the official name, and I've seen written ARPANet, with two last letters in lower-case. I'd never think that would make such a problem.

But then, ARPANet is incorrect because it is traditionally ARPANET, or just a non-standard spelling?

—Nethac DIU, complaints, suggestions?—
20:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Originally, it was ARPA net, compacted to read ARPAnet. SOMETIMES ARPANET APPEARED IN SENTENCES LIKE THIS, because early keyboards had only one case, usually upper.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 21:51, 8 November 2008 (UTC).

More vandalism

I deleted "YOU SUCK" someone put in the middle of the article. I am a newbie to Wiki, but I think it was the user 207.63.191.20. Can some1 ban him if its true pls. Gavin 00:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Growth?

The section on the growth of the network has: "By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a new host being added approximately every twenty days." and a few lines later "In 1984, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANet was broken off as a separate network, the MILNET. Prior to this there were 113 nodes on the ARPANet."

Which is confusing if not contradictory. Can anyone shed any light? Citations would help. --Philbarker 16:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)--

DARPAnet

I needed information on DARPAnet (when the philosophy and name change occurred, etc). However, keying DARPAnet redirected me to ARPAnet, which isn't precisely synonymous. Further, the ARPAnet article contains no mention of DARPA at all. What gives? Shouldn't readers be able to find this on Wikipedia?

Also, I'm curious why the ARPAnet is fully capitalized? I no longer have reference material from the era, but I believe ARPAnet was the original spelling.

regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 10:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Many of the early RFCs from the early 1970s refer to ARPANET, in all caps (or all lower case), making mixed case impossible. (see, e.g., RFC 321 and RFC 333. As far as I can tell, none of the RFCs ever referred to it as DARPANET.--Coolcaesar (talk) 15:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

In that early era, many keyboards, screens, TTYs, and especially keypunches were all caps. However, I refer to mixed case references, typical of late 70s – early 80s. ARPA (and DARPA) were acronyms, and the "net" was appended.

You're both literally and technically correct that ARPAnet was the official name. The DARPAnet term came into use after the Defense Department took over ARPA (making it DARPA). Here's a reference here:

http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml

Note the mixed case in the article.

Would anyone be opposed to correcting the all caps to mixed case, supported by a Redirect?

regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 14:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Then I'll proceed with rename to ARPAnet.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, this has been blocked. Seeking explanation.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:54, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Gem of a phrase

...the switching nodes and network links were not highly reliable, even without any nuclear attacks.

+1 to whoever wrote this gem of a phrase. May it remain on Wikipedia for ever. Tempshill (talk) 18:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

what do we call arpanet today

what do we call arpanet today?

--69.38.215.226 (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)w

The internet. --UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Still queasy about name change to ARPAnet, there is no historical foundation for that

I'm still queasy about UnicornTapestry's insistence on changing the article title from ARPANET to ARPAnet. As a history major who specialized in the history of computer science and computing, I've read hundreds of books and thousands of articles and ARPAnet has always been used only by a tiny minority of them.

All major books on the history of the Internet (which judging from their bibliographies are all based on thorough reviews of primary sources) consistently use the spelling ARPANET. Examples include Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Hafner & Lyon (a husband-wife team of technology journalists), Casting the Net by Peter Salus (who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and is an accomplished computer scientist and historian), Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (both professional historians), and Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate (also a professional historian). There are also a few books that use ARPAnet, but they tend to be non-historical books by persons who are not historians, who are merely mentioning ARPANET briefly before transitioning to a different topic; an example is Executive Strategy by Frederick Betz. I haven't found any book by a professional historian (who by training would be careful to mirror the usage in the primary sources) that uses ARPANET.

Also, UnicornTapestry's claim that ARPAnet was the intended usage in the older RFCs but couldn't be typed due to lack of lower case has no historical support and is mere unsupported speculation. For one thing, it's immediately obvious from running a Google search on the RFCs for the term ARPANET that the overwhelming majority of RFCs use the spelling "ARPANET," especially the ones published prior to 1990 when ARPANET was still alive. Furthermore, even back in 1971 it's clear that several of the ARPANET sites could handle upper and lower-case text, as evidenced by the ongoing discussions over how to properly handle text transmission over TELNET connections between those sites and sites that could handle only upper-case text. This debate is preserved in several RFCS such as 139, 206, and 318.

From what I can tell, the first published sources using the spelling ARPAnet were Ed Krol's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet (1987) and his subsequent book, The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. (1993) (of which excerpts were heavily quoted and attributed in RFC 1462). But Krol didn't get involved with the Internet until 1985 and did not publish RFCs prior to 1987, which makes sense because he was at NCSA in 1985 when it got the contract to move the Internet from ARPANET to NSFNET and therefore wasn't really involved in ARPANET per se prior to the contract. Practically all RFCs use ARPANET, with a couple using Arpanet (RFCs 508 and 756). RFC 3869 uses ARPAnet in a brief discussion of Internet history, but that's probably borrowed from the spelling Krol introduced.

The point I'm getting at is, it's obvious that ARPAnet is a neologism invented after the fact by Krol or someone he knew at NCSA during the time period when ARPANET was being phased out in favor of NSFNET (1985-1990). But ARPANET during its period of development (1967-1972) and its heyday (1972-1985) was consistently spelled as such. Wikipedia should reflect the actual historical record as evidenced by the actual spelling recorded in the vast majority of RFCs and the literature by professional historians and technology journalists who have reviewed numerous primary sources and interviewed all the key ARPANET players (Engelbart, Taylor, Kleinrock, Licklider, Kahn, Cerf, et al.). Wikipedia should not reflect after-the-fact, groundless wild speculation based on a rather thin reed: the fact that some computer terminals during the relevant period could not support lower case. In law school, as well as graduate programs for historians, one would be lucky to get a C (if not an F) for building speculative arguments like that with such a thin foundation.

If no one objects, I'm going to revert this article back to the correct spelling within a few weeks. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Naturally, I for one oppose. It boils down to a dedicated history student versus someone one who was actually involved.

Don't be too quick to dismiss that TTY (Telex) machines and keypunches of the era (through the mid-to-late 70s) did not have mixed case. Not only were most input machines of that early era monocase, some early CRTs were also monocase. Yes, ASCII and EBCDIC supported full character sets, but sadly, monocase is what most of us had to work with: 026 and 029 keypunches, Telex (and occasionally) TWX machines, and rarely CRTs, themselves seldom dual case. (Some early implementations of C had work-arounds because the colon and semicolon weren't available on some keyboards.) Those are usually what we had available to us for both programming and documention. Recent generations find it difficult to believe how limited our resources were or how we managed to do so much with so little.

This doesn't address the issue that ARPAnet (and DARPAnet) are made up of two different components, the acronym ARPA + net. A.R.P.A. stands for something; by implication, N.E.T. is meaningless.

With your interest in history, I know you want to get it right. I urge you to further investigate rather than simply make well-meaning changes.

Finally, it troubles me that the cry of "neologism" is often brought up which ultimately inhibits discussion. Please understand from my viewpoint, it's the opposite, having those who follow insist (for example) that eMail, eCommerce, DARPAnet, etc, are not mixed case and unintentionally rewrite history.

In any case, be of good cheer.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 00:12, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I am already well aware of the situation as to the ability to type lower case on many commercial machines prior to the widespread deployment of terminals like the VT100 and the later generations of the IBM 3270. But that's not relevant.

You haven't cited any evidence for your position, such as in the form of a document from prior to 1985 that indicates that the ARPAnet spelling was actually in common use at any of the early ARPANET sites, or an interview or personal memoir by an early ARPANET participant that indicates the same. I also suspect that you probably were not involved with ARPANET directly---otherwise, you could and should have easily trumped my position by simply revealing yourself as the author of one or more of the early RFCs and disclosing which ARPANET site, if any, you were involved with.

Lawyers are always careful to distinguish between actual evidence based on being an actual witness to an event or possessing a document or other physical evidence that can be directly attributed to the event, versus inferences. All you have at this point is inferences.

If you were not a direct participant in ARPANET development at an ARPANET site (in the sense of actually developing ARPANET hardware or software on a daily basis and interacting with other users over ARPANET), if you didn't author any of the RFCs, and if you can't point to any published RFC or other document that supports your position, then you're simply drawing a rather weak inference based on your personal experiences in the computer industry (which are almost certainly significantly different from what the ARPANET people were going through). That's speculation and that's totally inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. See WP:NOT.

And your weak inference is easily rebuttable. Any historian of technology is well aware that commercially deployed technology tends to trail experimental technology by a range of time that varies from five to twenty years depending upon the characteristics of a particular technology. The classic example is how various features pioneered on NLS in 1968 and on the Xerox Alto in 1973 took anywhere from 5 to 20 years to migrate into the marketplace. Just because most commercial users didn't personally use computer mice in 1974 doesn't mean they didn't exist; they were simply an experimental technology used only at a handful of ARPANET sites. Same thing for hypertext, windowed applications, light pens, digital tablets, and many other ARPA-sponsored technologies which indisputably existed by 1970 but simply weren't in broad commercial use.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but what you may have personally seen or not seen in the 1970s at some underfunded commercial computer center or timesharing network doesn't mean jack if you weren't actually participating in cutting-edge ARPANET research at one of the well-funded universities or think tanks where all the real action was happening during the 1970s. The ARPANET sites, particularly the Augmentation Research Center, were light-years ahead of the commercial computer industry in terms of what they were doing with hardware and software. To put it more frankly, your inference is nearly as asinine as describing the state-of-the-art early 21st century supermarket based on a study of small grocery stores in developing countries. Certainly, they have a lot in common (they both sell groceries), but they also have a lot that is different. The First World supermarkets have superior interior design with wide corridors and bright lighting, professionally trained and attired personnel, and advanced point-of-sale terminals, including some with self-service features. My point is that if you don't have solid evidence, your inferences had better be damned strong, or they just fall apart.

Furthermore, I looked into whether any of the early ARPANET sites supported terminals that are known for certain to have supported upper and lower case text through the time period. As you should know, the first two sites were UCLA and SRI-ARC (which together were largely responsible for most ARPANET research from 1968 to 1975 until ARC collapsed from lack of funding). RFC 90 clearly indicates that UCLA Campus Computing Network was using a IBM 360/91KK in 1971 which supported IBM 2741 Selectric typewriter terminals, which clearly had lower and upper case support (besides the diagram in the Wikipedia article, there are several photos available on Google). RFC 599 indicates that by 1973, UCLA CCN was already supporting ASCII-68 (which included upper and lower case support) with a special feature for switching to ASCII-63 for users at RAND who were using ASR 33 teletypes (which supported only upper case). And Engelbart's report for SRI-ARC in 1968 indicates that "the alphanumeric keyboard has 94 normal characters in two cases" when describing the early NLS terminals which were being built at ARC. He also mentions that the chord keyset for typing with one hand can be used to generate both upper and lower case text.

I think at this point it's fairly obvious that I've thoroughly rebutted your position by showing that the overwhelming majority of sources, both primary (that is, generated during the relevant period by the relevant parties) and secondary (based on careful academic study of the primary sources) used the ARPANET spelling; both of the first two ARPANET sites supported upper and lower case text entry; and that multiple early RFCs demonstrated that lower case was available on ARPANET because people were debating what to do about transmitting text between sites with and without lower case support. If all they could type in was upper case, then such a debate would have made no sense at all (and in fact would have been an incredible waste of ARPA's money, which was being used to subsidize all the research during that time period). Therefore, the available historical documentation clearly reflects the usage (all uppercase) intended by its authors. Unless you were personally employed at UCLA CCN, SRI-ARC, UCSB, University of Utah, RAND, or any of the early ARPA sites, I strongly urge you to concede the point. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Coolcaesar all points. A Brief History of the Internet, written by people who were definitely involved in the development of ARPANET and who had access to both lower and upper case keys uses uppercase ARPANET throughout. Likewise the journal publications they produced at the time use upper case. On UnicornTapestry's point about "ARPA" being an acronym but not "NET", well maybe it's unsatisfactory but there are other examples, in the UK we have [JANET]. -- Phil Barker 18:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

IBM's Wall Street Data Center and AEC's Courant CDC 6600 Center are "some underfunded commercial computer centers"? Whoa. The snide lawyer assault and offensive remarks are uncalled-for and don't compensate for false assumptions and lack of knowledge about an era you weren't present in. Personal attacks don't make up for a lack of knowledge and aren't suitable for the forum.

I believe they've been mentioned above, but there are articles presently on the web that clearly indicate the use of ARPAnet in mixed case.

Terminals and monocase: Since the majority of people never had their hands on (and probably never seen) the IBM 2741 and other equipment of that era you refer to, you fail to realize that (a) the dancing ball as shipped was monocase and (b) the keyboard shift didn't change case per se. The IBM 3270s you refer to came out in the 1970s, after the ARPAnet initiative. Beside tty machines, the PDP-1, and other monocase devices, there probably were mixed case terminals, but they would have been expensive and rare. Some Unix terminals didn't even contain colons and semicolons, which led to compiler modifications to handle ".." and ",.". True, both ASCII and EBCDIC supported mixed case, but that's character encoding, not what's directly available on a given terminal or ubiquitous keypunches, which you disregarded. (The usual way to get mixed case input at that time was to use escape character sequences.)

I regret I don't follow how the Engelbart report directly relates. Like the mouse it mentions in the article, neither mixed case terminals nor mice were widely available in the 1960s.

To say you "thoroughly rebutted" is not the same as personally undercut, which you would not need to do if you were secure in your position. You insist I should be "personally employed at UCLA CCN, SRI-ARC, UCSB, University of Utah, RAND, or any of the early ARPA sites" and "actually developing ARPANET hardware or software on a daily basis" while excluding yourself (a part of the X-Box generation) from these requirements. (I mentioned my associations of the era in the first paragraph, and yes, I'm a developer, OS and teleprocessing.)

I proposed correcting the acronym to camel case ages ago, and no other developer objected. My goal was to educate. Snide personal attacks are meant to deter people from commenting. Put them aside.

best regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 19:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

N.B: I checked with two different colleagues and got two opposite answers with two different reasonings.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The generation thing isn't the issue; your lack of evidence for your position (apart from unreliable personal observations) is the issue. Just to point out, since I specialized as an undergraduate in the history of computer science, I've probably physically handled more dusty old issues of IEEE Computer and Communications of the ACM than you have, not to mention all the research trips to over 100 libraries throughout California during which I've pawed through thousands of old books and periodicals, manually skimmed several miles of microfilm, and run hundreds of searches against all major academic and commercial databases. Three times, I've spent an entire day visiting Stanford Special Collections at Green Library to review Douglas Engelbart's papers under the extremely strict access conditions for such important historical materials (the prohibition on digital cameras and the requirement of writing up a detailed form just to order photocopies are quite annoying). Also, pay attention to who took the photo of DARPA headquarters in Arlington for Wikipedia earlier this year.

Frankly, I am appalled that you don't understand how the Engelbart report directly relates. For someone who purports to be interested in the history of ARPANET, that's a big problem. To make it crystal clear: ENGELBART'S SITE WAS THE FIRST NETWORK INFORMATION CENTER and produced many if not most of the early RFCs! This has been extensively discussed in published works by many historians, journalists, and sociologists, especially sociologist Thierry Bardini, currently the leading expert on Engelbart's work. It's also general knowledge among all professional Internet historians (including the ones I've already cited) as well as the entire ARPANET technical community (which you were clearly not a member of). If you actually bothered to sample a few dozen of the early RFCs at random (I have), you'd soon realize that a huge number of them are written by people at SRI-ARC, which refers to the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute, which Engelbart founded.

Also, it is PRECISELY MY POINT that the technology described in the Engelbart report was NOT WIDELY AVAILABLE in the 1960s; but it is also my point that it did exist and was in use at SRI-ARC (and by 1974, at OFFICE-1, a Tymshare-owned mirror of NLS, which is mentioned in RFCs 609 and 620). The ARPANET community was relatively small and close-knit prior to the NSFNET transition which started in 1985, because the network was run first by ARPA and later by DCA, both of which preferred to keep commercial companies off the network except for contractors working directly on ARPANET hardware, like BBN. The ARPANET people, especially at SRI-ARC, were working with expensive and rare technology because it has always been ARPA's mission to stimulate revolutionary technological advances that give the United States an overwhelming advantage over its adversaries (that's why today it does crazy things like the DARPA Grand Challenge).

Also, regardless of your understandable rage at having your comprehension of your own industry questioned, you're also forgetting that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research (such what you personally observed). As you should know, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on verifiable, reliable published sources (I have managed to persuade ArbCom to ban one editor banned for consistently violating these core policies). I have cited a small mountain of such sources, including both primary sources from the time period and secondary sources from later experts. All you have to fall back on is your own personal observations, since the published historical record does not support you (have you found yet a RFC published prior to Ed Krol that used "ARPANet?"), you clearly never visited any ARPA sites, and you still are resisting the fact that ARPANET sites like SRI-ARC were way ahead of the commercial commercial industry. But personal observations not already documented in a source published elsewhere are improper for Wikipedia.

Keep in mind, it is precisely because ARPANET was so advanced for its time that most people who worked in the 1960s commercial computer industry consider themselves lucky to get a footnote in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (itself a rather obscure journal), while ARPANET researchers get all the press attention (Vinton Cerf, Robert Taylor, and Leonard Kleinrock come to mind), and J.C.R. Licklider and Douglas Engelbart are both the subject of published book-length biographies.

Finally, the reason I didn't object earlier when you first proposed the change was because I was too busy with my practice. But it kept nagging at me because I knew from reviewing hundreds of primary sources from that time period that the historical spelling was, and always has been ARPANET. Finally, when I had the time, I was able to double-check and verify that ARPANET is the correct spelling. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, both of the designers of TCP/IP have consistently used the ARPANET spelling. Vinton Cerf was interviewed in 1990 by Judy O'Neill when it was just beginning to become clear that the Internet would be important. The transcript is here. Note how the spelling is consistently ARPANET (and keep in mind that this transcript was intended to be used as a primary source by future historians, which means that the transcript would have been edited for accuracy). Robert Kahn used the spelling ARPANET in 2003 when he looked back at the history of the network. I doubt that both men, clearly already aware of their place in the history of technology, would have been sloppy about spelling the name of the network they worked on!

Ever heard of the Nickelback song "Rockstar"? "I'm tired of standing lines when I'm never getting in, it's the bottom of the ninth and I'm never going to win, this life never turned out the way it was supposed to be..." Unfortunately, not all of us get to win the National Medal of Technology like Kahn and Cerf. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

J.M. McQuillan, "The New Routing Algorithm for the ARPANET," IEEE Transactions on Communications, COM-28, 711-719, May (1980). And many others with ARPANET in the title from BBN in the appropriate time period. BBN designed the thing, I suppose they knew how to spell it when they were writing about it. I have several college level textbooks that use ARPANET from 1984 and 1988. Note that NSFNET and TYMNET and all of the networks at the time capitalized the "net". I have several books that use the sequence "the ARPA network" often and one from 1988 that uses "the ARPA net" once (notice the space between ARPA and net): perhaps this is how the confusion started. I have to agree with Coolceasar in that the sources overwhelmingly show that the appropriate spelling should be "ARPANET" with a redirect from "ARPA network" and "ARPA net". But, I do not agree with personal attacks: please keep the discussion respectful. — Dgtsyb (talk) 12:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have been asked to comment. I don't know all the rules and protocols here, but I'll do my best. For those who don't want to read to the end, both sides are right in their own way.

When historians say that modern man finds it almost impossible to understand the context of past eras, they usually speak of 400 years or 4000 years ago, but we see it's difficult to understand as little as 40 years ago. To me, our young lawyer friend cops an attitude that if you remember the 60s you weren't there. Be that as it may, let's look beyond the rhetoric.

First, the implication leveled about working in small mom and pop shops. In the mid 60's, there were no small mom and pop shops. Computers were so valuable, we recycled antique Bendix, Burroughs and Honeywells into what you'd call today print servers and spoolers. If you had a computer, you were one of three things: a major corporation, a major government agency, a college or university. Remember what Al Gore said in 1992, that they were shocked when they came into the White House and found typewriters instead of computers. (I grant you the preceding administrations were behind the times, but it serves to demonstrate.)

Typewriters segues us into keyboards. I can appreciate when our lawyer friend points to documentation dated 1968 that refers to a mixed case terminal, that he seems to assume (or not, because the argument sounds like doublespeak) mixed case must have been in common use, like assuming an 1940's ad for automatic transmissions meant all cars must have had them. All caps terminals were the norm through about 10 years later. Computer languages required all caps and wouldn't have known what to do with lower case if available. APL, an interesting language, found only limited distribution partly because it used characters not found on ordinary keyboards.

Ourselves were a little ahead of the curve, but it was only about 30 years ago that mixed case keyboards for programmers were to be found in most every shop. Before that, if you wanted mixed characters, you had to use gawd-awful SGML or other specialized text manipulation programs. Until 20 years ago, newspapers and magazines used typesetters and not computer data entry people.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned ADA, but it wasn't till C rolled around that we saw the first widely popular language accepting mixed case. Then, you could distinguish old school from the new young guys because old timers banged out all caps and young guys banged out all lower case. This both argues for and against both positions.

The ORIGINAL original term? Probably ARPA Net or ARPA net (or possibly even ARPA NET, DARPA Net, etc.) Somewhere along the line they were jammed together. I can see that mixed case is a little more meaningful, in other words, using lower case net implies a level of semantics not found in the all caps version, but I don't know if any of us were thinking about that back then. Certainly 25-30 years ago, you saw ARPAnet floating about. 40 years ago, you did not, at least as I recall. Does that make mixed case a neologism as our young lawyer argues if it became common only during the last 30 out of 40 years? Or does it imply ARPANET itself is neologist compared to ARPA Net? That's not up to me to decide.

Our developer friend argues that 40 years ago that using mixed case was well-nigh impossible. Let's say it was difficult. S/he is right about having only all caps keyboards. That's mostly what was available. Programmers didn't change case if they didn't have to because you had to jump through hoops to get it. (Does anyone remember what a double-punch was?) In fact, we didnt' know what "case" meant. Same with the DOD guys, they wouldn't know the shift key on their typewriters if it bit their little finger.

There's another complication no one's brought forward. I once wrote an article describing General Electric's Network for Information Exchange, or GEnie. General Electric used mixed case and so I used mixed case when writing the article, but by the time editors stuck their oars in, the final story read GENIE. 20 years later, which version is considered historically correct?

As I said at the beginning, both sides have their points. I've limited spelling the term more than once out here so not to influence. I'm cautious because lawyers love to win rather than search out the truth. The sneering doesn't impress me and that saying he's appalled we didn't know we had mixed case terminals or would know IEEE journals. That having been said, though, doesn't mean s/he must be wrong---or right, or that their developer friend is either. It's not clearcut unless you decide upon rules of engagement. Was mixed case 25-30 years ago right or should you now specify all caps from an era when that's all they had? Me, I'm not going to let that GEnie out of the bottle. You decide, I'm going fishing.

Been there, done that. Deke 64.45.228.207 (talk) 06:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The typewriters that BBN typed their IEEE papers on were mixed case. The typesetters for IEEE print set them in mixed case. The books written at the time were typeset in mixed case. It really doesn't matter what a terminal did or didn't do: we are not citing a an old FORTRAN or COBOL computer program. (BTW I used to code in APL: on an IBM Selectrix Typewritter off of an IBM 14000 series mainframe back in 1971, and gee, it had mixed case as well as all those greek and mathematical symbols.) — Dgtsyb (talk) 12:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Kudos to Dgtsyb for siding with the side supported by the historical evidence. It sounds like UnicornTapestry and I are talking past each other at this point. I am going to go ahead and fix this article in the New Year. If you want to start an edit war, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (and then I suppose at that point ArbCom would have to get involved).

The basic problem is that UnicornTapestry keeps relying upon his (or her) alleged personal knowledge without citing actual documents in support of his/her position, in violation of official policy Wikipedia:No original research. If you published your personal account in a reliable hard copy journal several years ago, you can put onto Wikipedia a summary of your points with citations to that journal (which is fine because one or more editors would presumably have read and edited your assertions for accuracy). But if you are attempting to use Wikipedia as the first publisher of personal observations, that's a no-no. That's what UnicornTapestry is doing by making the assertion (unsupported other than by his/her personal observations) that ARPANET was not really intended to be spelled as ARPANET, even though ARPANET appears consistently in the published record for almost twenty years before Ed Krol introduced the ARPANet spelling in 1985. No original research is one of Wikipedia's core policies, going back to the earliest days of the project, and as Jimbo Wales and ArbCom have repeatedly emphasized, it is non-negotiable. Ultimately, all Wikipedia can rely upon is the published record, and the published record from the 1960s and 1970s shows ARPANET. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, talking references: the RFC database has 88 lines in which ARPAnet occurs, and 3045 lines in which ARPANET appears; ARPAnet appears in 23 RFCs; ARPANET appears in 356 RFCs. What is even more is that ARPANET appears in the title of 24 RFCs (RFC 254, RFC 302, RFC 308, RFC 351, RFC 364, RFC 369, RFC 423, RFC 508, RFC 511, RFC 518, RFC 584, RFC 585, RFC 600, RFC 619, RFC 635, RFC 662, RFC 714, RFC 757, RFC 802, RFC 851, RFC 852, RFC 871, RFC 878, RFC 1005), whereas ARPAnet never appears in the title of an RFC. I suppose glaring errors are always fixed in titles, but not so much deep in the text. I can't find it spelt ARPAnet in a single text book. Anyone? — Dgtsyb (talk) 10:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Let's be crystal, cc-- you don't have a consensus. We've a wide and varied history as several have pointed out and not everybody thinks or writes the same. Let's make a deal-- you don't instruct us computer people and we won't tell you how to run your legal pages. I appreciate you've got thousand of edits, but please not to overstep. We can work it out ourselves without a lawyer.

Dgtsyb, are you sure that was a 14000 series? Client434 (talk) 23:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Slip of the finger (or brain): it was a 1400 series. Had to change the ball on the typewritter to get APL characters. It had one of those acoustic coupler modems (later replaced with a data set). Late 1968 thruough early 1970. — Dgtsyb (talk) 02:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not relevant that CoolCeasar is a lawyer. It may be relevant that he was a history major specializing in computer history (taking him on his word). But what's really relevant is the usage ARPANET vs ARPAnet in contemporaneous accounts and subsequent published accounts by those involved. Sure, sometimes they may have been constrained by using terminals that supported uppercase only, but it seems to me that there's plenty of ARPANET usage in RFCs and articles where lower case was available. -- Phil Barker 17:17, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I said previously that I appreciated cc has made thousands of edits. What I left unsaid is that some of us didn't appreciate the way he smears and sneers as he's done for years and is demonstrated here. cc relies upon ridicule to win his arguments. If you're winning, he'll ignore your points and leer at your spelling errors. He likes to argue that lawyer logic is somehow superior to computer logic or the reasoning of others. He's like Karl Rove's advice how not to lose, not to debate your opponent, but destroy your opponent. He tells it like it wasn't. I hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned above, but we really didn't have mixed case (generally) available to us even though cc argues otherwise, and then he screams original research when someone tries to tell him how it really the times really were. TeX and sgml had to have provisions to convert case because most computers couldn't. Check the logs- None of this is new, he's been doing this for years. Notice that old time geeks didn't take up the cause because the terms been used both ways. Frankly cc (and some others like him) are the reason many of us stopped editing. We didn't need the personal attacks. Has ut been back since cc smeared them? The problem Phil is that cc's in the room drive those with real knowledge out.

Well, about now someone we all know will be invoking WP:I'mRightYou'reWrong. Gotta run. Client434 (talk) 01:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I look in from time to time to see how the debate rages. I gave up trying to make a dent, particularly when Caesar failed to recognize the AEC or the CDC 6600, the most powerful supercomputer of its day.

After watching the debate and talking to past and present colleagues, I've concluded there can't be a clear-cut answer. Perhaps the sensible thing to do is write a paragraph regarding it.

Dgtsyb, what were you using APL for? A 1400 with APL has got to be one of the most peculiar marriages with its curious architecture and limited character coding. I had an emulation group under me and I vaguely remember it used a delta (kind of a mode-setting escape character) with BCD which didn't support lower case at all. Was this in the US?

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 04:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I was using APL for Hexapawn game trees and Grade 5 and 6 algebra teaching programs, in Canada (it was a University of Alberta mainframe). Actually there was one character we couldn't get without an escape (ceiling or floor as I recall: gee there are no symbols on Wiki for these... ...does that mean that APL should be Apl ;) — Dgtsyb (talk) 20:23, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... a brand new editor jumping in as Client434, whose position is almost precisely aligned with UnicornTapestry, and also manages to make a lot of empty ad hominem arguments based on personal observations without providing any substantive citations to support his/her position...the possibilities are fascinating...I hope no one here is engaging in sockpuppeting, or else they will be banned really, really quickly as soon as an admin starts running Checkuser. That's how User:Ericsaindon2 got permanently banned after I persuaded ArbCom to impose a temporary ban on him and he tried to evade the ban with sockpuppets.

Anyway, since it sounds like UnicornTapestry is reluctantly conceding the point, I will proceed with the necessary edits to this article and the other Internet-related articles in a few days when I have the time to do it right.--Coolcaesar (talk) 09:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Coolcaesar, your ad hominem remarks are both incorrect and offensive, nor did I 'concede the point'. Winning at all costs is not what this is about. Remove your insinuation now.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 22:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

New editor or not, it is a good idea to assume good faith.

I'm happy that you're planning to edit the article. It may be worth a paragraph on the alternative names. Deke wrote this in his contribution "The ORIGINAL original term? Probably ARPA Net or ARPA net (or possibly even ARPA NET, DARPA Net, etc.) Somewhere along the line they were jammed together. I can see that mixed case is a little more meaningful, in other words, using lower case net implies a level of semantics not found in the all caps version, but I don't know if any of us were thinking about that back then. Certainly 25-30 years ago, you saw ARPAnet floating about. 40 years ago, you did not, at least as I recall." which might contain the kernel of what should be said. I think it is (partly) justified by contemporary evidence such as some of the early "ARPA NET MAPS", see [10] for example. -- Phil Barker 18:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Datagraphs?

The article text says "disassembling data into datagraphs, then gather [sic] these as packets" but never explains what a datagraph is. Apart from the bad grammar, the sentence is confusing as I can find no reference to the word "datagraph" (other than as meaning a graph plotted from a set of data, or as a trade name). The closest I can find is "datagram" but that has a very specific meaning within the context of the User Datagram Protocol which is analogous to the term "packet" within the context of the Transmission Control Protocol, so I don't think that is what the original poster meant. Any clues, anyone? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 03:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

Would the Growth of the network chapter be more readable if the information was presented as a table of dates and corresponding IMP amounts? --84.249.164.59 (talk) 01:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Multiple connections anomaly

Does anybody have a source or more information about the thousands of connections that were opened up when the initial 4-node network was deployed? The linked reference [5] does not seem to mention it.