On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 00:15 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote: > Originally it was a few trusted nodes and the only real security was > physical, meaning access to a terminal. ARPA/DARPAnet security guards > certainly would not let just anyone access a terminal.
I do not think that there were DARPA guards at the universities that designed and built the first parts of the internet. Remember DARPA funded it but didnt create it, that was by other university folk. In addition DARPA stopped any oversight in 1975 (a year after the term "internet" was first notably seen) becuase their job was not to manage or maintain things such as this network, but it was to fund research and development. As such, the policy of posting guards when they acknowledged it wasnt their job to manage or maintain the network seems questionable. The initial funding meant that it was non-commercial in nature, this meant that universities, researchers, and some military was there, but remember milnet didnt join until 1980, and split it off in 1983 (maintaining gateways but not trafficing over the same links) Many of the initial users were scientists, librarians, computer experts and such. Yeah, there was a movement in the 60s in Ohio to computerize book catalogs that by the 70s was an international effort. This did eventually join the internet as there was in the US a multi-state effort to not only have these catalogs but share them. Spam had its 30th birthday just the other day (email from DEC on May 3 1978), where were the guards? What about for the few hundred that received the original email and complained their systems costing often hundreds of thousands of dollars was being used for marketing. Ok, they gave up oversight in 1975, so that means from 1962 (when DARPA got a guy from MIT who earlier that year was the first to publicly propose a global network of computers) to 1975 the guards would have had to been there at least in some fashion, but there wasnt milnet (joined in 1980) or really anything classified on the network during those years, and TCP didnt exist until 1973 (NCP did exist prior though). Why the first attempt to connect on Oct 29, 1969 crashed at the 3rd character (G in LOGIN). So now we have the years 1969-1975 for DARPA to still be in control and a network actually working. You cant guard someone logging in from a terminal when the network itself crashes, so its unlikely they were guarding the terminals prior to the network actually running. But still during this period nothing classified is trafficing over the network. It was also envisioned in 1962 by someone to be a global network of computers all over everywhere. That guy was specifically snatched up by DARPA to further develop the network concept. Its seeming less likely, especially since just a few years after that companies like DEC were there complete with sales people having access to it (it was a sales guy that sent the original spam message). Wikipedia states that it wasnt until the 80s that DEC joined, but the sales guy who sent the first spam was prior to this so wikipedia is wrong (yet again). Basically I dont have proof there were no guards (its almost impossible to prove a negative) but it doesnt look like its that probable given what was on the network and its state through most of the early years of it. If you have some reference that states there was DARPA guards that restricted access to the network I would like to hear about it. I know by 1979 that wasnt the case, as that was the first year I started using world wide networks and there were zero guards at any of the many terminals that I had access to. -- Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com Bret McDanel Belfast +44 28 9099 6461 US +1 516 687 5200 http://www.trxtel.com the phone company that pays you! _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
