50 yrs. ago today

[allison]

On 10/29/19 8:50 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. via cctalk wrote:
> We celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Internet less than 2 years
> ago:
> 
>> https://computerhistory.org/blog/born-in-a-van-happy-40th-birthday-to-the-internet/
> 
> The ARPAnet was a WAN (wide area network) and not an Internet, but it
> was one of the three networks involved in that first test on November
> 22, 1977 (after a two network test the previous year). The option to use
> TCP/IP in addition to the native NCP became popular on the ARPAnet to
> the point that NCP was turned off in 1983. It was hardly the only
> network to get assimilated into the Internet, but it was the one with
> the most impact. That makes the 50th anniversary of the first ARPAnet
> packet an important milestone in Internet pre-history.
> 
> -- Jecel
> 

The whole story of what was going on was far more complex and interesting.

Funny thing was DECnet was in 1983 the largest world wide network
period.  By then is was well over 300 nodes and climbing fast.
And none of it used IP or NCP though it did transport P packets
encapsulated using DECnet.  A lot of DEC hardware was involved
in the DARPA/Arpanet.

The network wars were warming up about then (1982ish) and it
would take till the late 80s early 90s for IP to win that war.
The big explosion was WWW.

Other names or routable networks, Banyan vines, and IPX come
to mind besides DECNET Phase III and IV.

Allison