Dave, I defer. And thanks for the history lesson plus, as you said, the information for further research.
Best, CB Quoting Dave Tutelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Corey, > I can help you with that one, too -- at least a little. > > I never heard of Cerfnet (at least not in that era), but it must refer to > Vint Cerf. He had been at UCLA, but he moved to Stanford in 1972, just > before he started collaborating with Bob Kahn (who had moved that year from > BBN to ARPA -- incestuous organizations? or just a rather small community > of interest; probably the latter, see below). In late '73 or '74, they > published a paper, "A Protocol for Internetworking" or something like that. > The protocol was indeed the forerunner to the IP protocol. The TCP protocol > came later, and I don't remember if it was Cerf/Kahn or others who had the > biggest input into that one. > > While I still support Larry Roberts as THE father of the Internet, Cerf & > Kahn have much more legitimate claim to the title than Licklider, IMHO. > > The Cerf/Kahn IP paper was published in the IEEE Transactions on Data > Communications, a "refereed journal". That means that any paper published > is first reviewed by experts in the field. Adam Lender (the editor of the > journal) flattered me by inviting me to be one of the three reviewers. > > BTW, my review was mostly favorable; my main objection was the lack of > accountability (what we'd think of today as security or identity assurance) > in the protocol. That was never rectified. I guess I should be glad of > that; from 1997 to 2000, I made a very good living implementing an Internet > firewall to try to give users the security that the protocol never did. > > Back to Internet contributions from UCLA: > * Wesley Chu is generally credited with the first analysis of packet > multiplexing, published in the early '70s when he was at UCLA. But he was > at Bell Labs in the '60s, and knew Randy Pilc and Pat Marino there -- who > had done earlier, similar analyses but were prevented from publishing > proprietary info. (I have some personal pain -- and a rueful grin -- about > that.) BTW, Wesley shared a house with my brother and another bachelor > engineer when he was at Bell Labs -- yes computer networking WAS a real > small world in those days. > * Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA did a lot of the packet traffic theory in the > '70s, when it was a very hot topic. I didn't meet him personally until > 1977, when he came to Bell Labs to give a guest lecture to a course I was > teaching. > * Jonathan Postel, who went on to become perhaps the most important > protocol innovators for the Internet, started his networking career as a > graduate student at UCLA in 1969. But I don't think he did his most > important work there. That probably happened in the mid-'70s at MITRE > (Massachussetts) and SRI (Palo Alto), then back in the LA area at USC in > 1977, where he made many major contributions until his passing in 1998. > > Hope this sheds some light on your comment and, if you choose to research > it further, gives you specific enough handles to use Google fruitfully. And > I won't apologize for the name-dropping; it was fun for this retired Labbie > to wander down memory lane. > > Cheers! > DaveT > >
