------ Forwarded Message From: Lixia Zhang <lixia@cs.ucla.edu> Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 21:55:25 -0800 To: Alan Hannan <alan@routingloop.com>, <nanog@merit.edu> Subject: Re: Purpose of the Internet On 3/13/02 9:14 PM, "Alan Hannan" <alan@routingloop.com> 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