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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical FW: Purpose of the Internet
------ Forwarded Message From: Lixia Zhang <[email protected]> Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 21:55:25 -0800 To: Alan Hannan <[email protected]>, <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Purpose of the Internet On 3/13/02 9:14 PM, "Alan Hannan" <[email protected]> wrote: > ...... > With regards to the purpose of the internet, I recall reading > in the Prologue to _Where Wizards Stay Up Late_, by Katie Hafner > and Matthew Lyon, a true anecdote about Bob Taylor. The authors > quote Mr. Taylor as refuting that the purpose of the arpanet was > to provide communications in spite of a nuclear attack. > > Rather, it is asserted, the purpose of the arpanet was to > interconnect computers at various research/education facilities > so as to allow researchers to share resources. > > We all heard that story too, but popular media tended to focus > on the sensationalist nuclear story. There might be a mixup between what's the purpose of *packet switching* vs what was the originally intended use of ARPAnet. For those interested: here is a paper by Paul Baran, inventor of packet switching, "Some Perspectives on Networks-Past, Present and Future" back in 1977, recalling some of the history http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/ifip.ps Lixia If you are really interested: another paper by Paul, "On Distributed Communications Networks", published in IEEE Trans on communications back in 1964, http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/trans.ps (predated ARPANET) Dave Goldberg of PARC (my ex-office neighbor) helped scan in these historical papers. ------ End of Forwarded Message
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