"First Internet message" and ...

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Nigel Johnson

    > No, your home has an intranet!

Can you please provide a crisp, definitive, technical definition of what an
'intranet' is (similar to the one I just provided for 'internet' - "disparate
networks tied together with packet switches which examine the internet-layer
headers")?

If not, it's just marketing-speak, and should go where "Hitchhiker's Guide"
said marketing should go. (Having said that, only half-jokingly, I should add
that I am fully aware that _really good_ marketing people are worth their own
weight in gold-pressed latinum; the prime example being Steve Jobs, who
invented several products that people didn't know they needed/wanted until he
produced them.)


    > From: Paul Koning

    > No, "internet" has (had?) a very different meaning. Loosely, a network
    > of computers belonging to different organizations, or using different
    > technologies.

That's not the definition used by the originators of the term: see the
Cerf/Kahn paper. (I basically regurgitated it, above.)

    > "Internet" .. the term picked to replace "ARPAnet" when it became
    > desirable to call that network by a name that doesn't designate it as a
    > US government research agency creation.

I can guarantee you that that is not correct (sorry). In 1982, which is
approximately when the term was created, you _had_ to have a USG connection to
get connected to the Internet. And the ARPANET was always called the ARPANET
until its last remnants were turned off in 1990 (although use of NCP was
discarded in January 1983, considerably earlier, so it was only used as a
component of the Internet after that).

In fact, I recollect the conversion with Vint Cerf (at an INENG/IETF meeting,
IIRC) where the term 'Internet' was suggested/adopted; in fact I may have been
the person who suggested it, although the memory is now too dim. The adoption
was _solely_ to do with the need for a name for the large internet we were all
connecting to, and _nothing_ to do with organizational stuff.

	Noel