"First Internet message" and ...

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2019-Nov-25, at 11:01 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>> On Nov 25, 2019, at 1:45 PM, Richard Pope via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> On 11/25/2019 12:06 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
>>>> From: Fred Cisin
>>>> Is that message about 1) history of internet? (THANK YOU for specifying
>>>> "internet", otherwise "computer to computer" involves much older history.
>>>> ...
>>>> those messages were sent on PRECURSORS to the internet, NOT on the
>>>> internet.
>>> 
>>> Did you mean "internet" or 'Internet'?
>>> 
>>> The poorly educated cretins at the AP nothwithstanding, those are two
>>> different words, with _different meanings_.
>>> ...

>> 
>> Noel,
>>   Isn't the proper term for my network of computers here at home: internet and the term : Internet the proper term for the worldwide collection of networked computers?
>> 
>> rich

> No, "internet" has (had?) a very different meaning.  Loosely, a network of computers belonging to different organizations, or using different technologies.  I think at the time, "network" was used to designate a collection of computers in a single building, or under single management, talking to each other.  If you connect such "networks" together, the result is an "internet".
> 
> I'd say that term is at this point rather obsolete.  I don't think I've seen it in use as a technical term for decades.
> 
> "Internet", with a capital letter, is something different entirely: it is (or feels like) 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.
> 	paul


(From my recollection from back in the early 80s), "internet" was about interworking between different *types* of networks.

Different types of networks and network technologies presented different capabilities and restrictions to the user - packet/frame sizes, flow control, routing/addressing specification, etc.

The point of 'internetting' was to provide a uniform interface for the user to 'the network' while your data could flow through instances of all sorts of different types of networks (not necessarily just different types of physical links) to get to the other end.
Roughly, IP took care of a common addressing scheme and a common packet presentation, TCP took care of end-to-end flow control.
(It wasn't (only) about bridging geographically-separated but otherwise-similar networks.)

It seems this is so all-encompassing nowadays that the original meaning is being lost.
As so much nowadays is about throwing ethernet frames around on different types of links and network formats (not what ethernet was originally designed for), some of the earlier diversity that made 'interneting' necessary may no longer be there.

It might be arguable whether we have an 'internet' any longer or just a great big 'network' with different types of links.