RE: The Curious Case of 143.95.0.0/16
Very interesting story great work Ronald
-Original Message-
From: NANOG On Behalf Of Ronald F. Guilmette
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2019 2:27 AM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: The Curious Case of 143.95.0.0/16
Fair Warning: Those of you not enamored of my long-winded exposés of various
remarkable oddities of the IPv4 address space may wish to click on the tiny
little wastebasket icons on your mail clients at this point. For the rest of
you, please read on. I think you may find the following story intriguing. It
contains at least a few surprising twists.
+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
++_
Our story today consists of three acts.
Act 1 - It is Born
--
In mid-February of 1990 a new venture-capital backed company was formed in
Sunnyvale, California. In some ways it was no different than the hundreds or
thousands of hopeful high-tech startups that had been formed in Silicon Valley,
both before and since. It started with a hopeful dream that, in the end, just
didn't work out.
The founders of this company settled initially on a temporary placeholder
company name, XYZ Corporation:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CkDNKq4M1DQKuTxBBhlYxUNAjU2cvDnY/view
The mission of the company was to design and manufacture so-called X-Windows
terminals. These would be diskless workstations, complete with CPUs, color
(CRT) displays, graphics, memory, and an ethernet interface. The basic idea
what that such a diskless workstation could run the free X-Windows client
software, and that the system would be cheaper than ordinary PeeCees due to it
not having any hard drives or optical drives.
By some odd twist of fate, I myself was working in the same geographic area as
a software engineer at around the same time, but I worked for a different
Silicon Valley startup, just down the road from XYZ Corporation. And by a
rather remarkable coincidence, the company I worked for had exactly the same
goal and mission as the XYZ Corporation. The name of this other X-Windows
workstation startup was Network Computing Devices, or just "NCD"
for short.
Quite obviously, both companies were inherently "network-centric" and thus,
both requested and were granted blocks of IPv4 addresses. That wasn't at all
within my area of responsibility at NCD, so I don't know who actually issued
those blocks. My guess, based on published historical accounts, was that it
was most probably Dr. Jon Postel who assigned the blocks. I'm sure that
someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
Months passed, and eventually the founders of XYZ Corporation settled on
something they would use as a permanent replacement for their temporary
placeholder corporate name. They decided to call the thing Athenix, Inc.
Once they had settled on that name, they filed papers to update their records
with the California Secretary of State's office:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dUjsvSkzzdzUsIbIZCS7RF0afsI3uU0l/view
At some point, they also and likewise updated the ARIN WHOIS record for the
/16 block which had been assigned to them, on or about 1990-09-06, as was
appropriate to reflect their new permanent corporate identity:
https://pastebin.com/raw/YbH6zYrR
More time passed and eventually it became clear that the entire world was not
in fact breathlessly waiting for -two- companies to bring to market diskless
X-Windows workstations. In fact, as history now shows, market demand would not
support even one such company over the long term.
Thus it came to pass in the year 1993 that an all-too-familiar end-of-life
ritual played out once again in Silicon Valley. At Athenix, Inc. HQ in
Sunnyvale, the people were all let go, including the founders. The desks, the
chairs, the phones, the computers, and the tools were all sold at auction, with
the proceeds going to the preferred shareholders, i.e. the poor fools who had
put up all of the money for this now-failed venture in the first place, the
venture capitalists. Foremost among those in this instance, was the venerable
Menlo Park venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
I've confirmed this historical account of the rise and fall of the original
1990-vintage Athenix, Inc. in multiple phone and email exchanges with both the
original CEO of the original Athenix, Mr. Robert ("Bob") Garrow. lately of Los
Altos, California, and also the original CTO of the company, Mr. John Garman,
lately of Reno, Nevada.
Act 2 - Rebirth - The Athenix Phoenix
-
Fast forward fifteen years. On April 22, 2008 a pair of gentlemen in the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to establish a new corporate entity
within the commonwealth. It's name would be Athenic, Inc.[1]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jYUqtgYprI4iyJkTT91-yRBYJt0c2ufF/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mlVML8z7vzp7aeGmOK-3cWBBJeNBuThn/view
As you can see in the documents above, a certain Mr. Ofer Inbar and
Re: The Curious Case of 143.95.0.0/16
Ronald,
I have one question, “of late”, regarding your post: Is it “Antia” or “Anita”?
:)
-mel
> On Aug 27, 2019, at 11:27 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette
> wrote:
>
> Fair Warning: Those of you not enamored of my long-winded exposés of
> various remarkable oddities of the IPv4 address space may wish to click
> on the tiny little wastebasket icons on your mail clients at this
> point. For the rest of you, please read on. I think you may find the
> following story intriguing. It contains at least a few surprising
> twists.
>
> +_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
>
>
> Our story today consists of three acts.
>
>
> Act 1 - It is Born
> --
>
> In mid-February of 1990 a new venture-capital backed company was formed in
> Sunnyvale, California. In some ways it was no different than the hundreds
> or thousands of hopeful high-tech startups that had been formed in Silicon
> Valley, both before and since. It started with a hopeful dream that, in
> the end, just didn't work out.
>
> The founders of this company settled initially on a temporary placeholder
> company name, XYZ Corporation:
>
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CkDNKq4M1DQKuTxBBhlYxUNAjU2cvDnY/view
>
> The mission of the company was to design and manufacture so-called X-Windows
> terminals. These would be diskless workstations, complete with CPUs, color
> (CRT) displays, graphics, memory, and an ethernet interface. The basic
> idea what that such a diskless workstation could run the free X-Windows
> client software, and that the system would be cheaper than ordinary PeeCees
> due to it not having any hard drives or optical drives.
>
> By some odd twist of fate, I myself was working in the same geographic area
> as a software engineer at around the same time, but I worked for a different
> Silicon Valley startup, just down the road from XYZ Corporation. And by a
> rather remarkable coincidence, the company I worked for had exactly the
> same goal and mission as the XYZ Corporation. The name of this other
> X-Windows workstation startup was Network Computing Devices, or just "NCD"
> for short.
>
> Quite obviously, both companies were inherently "network-centric" and thus,
> both requested and were granted blocks of IPv4 addresses. That wasn't at
> all within my area of responsibility at NCD, so I don't know who actually
> issued those blocks. My guess, based on published historical accounts,
> was that it was most probably Dr. Jon Postel who assigned the blocks. I'm
> sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
>
> Months passed, and eventually the founders of XYZ Corporation settled on
> something they would use as a permanent replacement for their temporary
> placeholder corporate name. They decided to call the thing Athenix, Inc.
> Once they had settled on that name, they filed papers to update their
> records with the California Secretary of State's office:
>
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dUjsvSkzzdzUsIbIZCS7RF0afsI3uU0l/view
>
> At some point, they also and likewise updated the ARIN WHOIS record for the
> /16 block which had been assigned to them, on or about 1990-09-06, as was
> appropriate to reflect their new permanent corporate identity:
>
>https://pastebin.com/raw/YbH6zYrR
>
> More time passed and eventually it became clear that the entire world was
> not in fact breathlessly waiting for -two- companies to bring to market
> diskless X-Windows workstations. In fact, as history now shows, market
> demand would not support even one such company over the long term.
>
> Thus it came to pass in the year 1993 that an all-too-familiar end-of-life
> ritual played out once again in Silicon Valley. At Athenix, Inc. HQ in
> Sunnyvale, the people were all let go, including the founders. The desks,
> the chairs, the phones, the computers, and the tools were all sold at
> auction, with the proceeds going to the preferred shareholders, i.e. the
> poor fools who had put up all of the money for this now-failed venture in
> the first place, the venture capitalists. Foremost among those in this
> instance, was the venerable Menlo Park venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
>
> I've confirmed this historical account of the rise and fall of the original
> 1990-vintage Athenix, Inc. in multiple phone and email exchanges with both
> the original CEO of the original Athenix, Mr. Robert ("Bob") Garrow. lately
> of Los Altos, California, and also the original CTO of the company, Mr. John
> Garman, lately of Reno, Nevada.
>
>
> Act 2 - Rebirth - The Athenix Phoenix
> -
>
> Fast forward fifteen years. On April 22, 2008 a pair of gentlemen in
> the Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to establish a new corporate
> entity within the commonwealth. It's name would be Athenic, Inc.[1]
>
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jYUqtgYprI4iyJkTT91-yRBYJt0c2ufF/view
>
