sterben mythen wirklich so langsam. take that

One of the original goals of the ARPANET was resource sharing to optimize computer resources. | larry roberts, the arpanet & computer networks, acm, 1986

paul baran, rand papers on distributed communications donald watts davies, proposal for the development of a national communication service for on-line data processing, overview

i was warned it's hard to find useful material in geneva by going through old protocols on standardization, as most things get decided during coffee breaks and corridor talks. but as long as people write memos there is a little bit of hope.

recommended reading: donald davies historical notes on packet switching and a 1967 meeting of the ccitt "special study group a"

a paper that made it into hugo kirnbauer's "das elektron" 1967 and was highly discussed at its time is j.w. halina: data transmission - current trends and future prospects, a speech halina gave 1963 at aiee.

includes multiplexing, costs of data transfer, paper explosion due to computing and the question: who should read and write all this?

1969: imp, interface message processor, sort of early router. price per imp $150.000, designed by bolt beranek &newman, bbn. a company that is still around today. still contractor of darpa? i have no idea.

1984: new kind of router for the nsfnet was needed. nsfnet inhaled arpanet and got itself inhaled later on by aol. the only companie that accomplished the spec for the switching gateways, as it was called back then, was - again - bbn; but their price was high: $250.000 for one router; with a discount from darpa you could get it for $180.000 ..

fuzzball, programmed by dave mills, made the game. One programmer in charge for the whole new network of networks, as nsfnet gets described. in fact one guy in charge of the internet backbone. he didn't get a ot of sleep during those days, dennis jennings says, at that time head of nsf.

i didn't ask for the price of snowball, but it must have been less than $10.000, because that was the price jennings felt is all right for campuses and regional networks and the backbone of nsfnet.

2007 cost of a cisco router: between $1,123.00 and $264.00 (i guess one would take a better one for something like a backbone ...)