17 Sep
2007
17 Sep
'07
5:24 p.m.
"William Donzelli" wrote:
* ARPAnet, for getting the lions share of credit for inventing the
computer network, mostly just invented (and implemented) packet
switching.
This is off topic, and we should stop, but I don't think this accurate.
Technically the phone system is circuit switched. The ARPAnet did
pioneer the notion of concatenated networks, or a "catanet" (if I recall
correctly) which was dynamically reconfigurable. The original idea was
to create a network which would survive a nuclear blast, which the phone
system would not, at least not it the sense of being dynamically
reconfigurable.
These days the internet is pretty statically routed, since BGP setup is,
well, more of an art than a science and peering is more political than
technical.
I think hop by hop routing with dynamic reconfiguration was bit of an
innovation.
-brad