more on Setting history straight: So, who really did invent the Internet?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mitra <mitra_lists () earth path net>
Date: May 9, 2005 1:00:03 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net, Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Setting history straight: So, who really  
did invent the Internet?


As the originator of the comment in Ian Peter's history that the  
internet would still be the internet if it was based on X.25 or ATM,  
I wanted to add my perspective.

Mike O'Dell states

> sorry - but that could not be, other than as some grandios  
> technological
> edifice. those "telco" technologies were created specifically to  
> provide
> for central planning and control of innovation (aka "new services").
> the power of that control can be seen in how successfully ISDN was
> crushed in the US.  In that world, "new services" (not necessarily
> innovative) are doled out by the network operators, in concert with
> their handmaiden equipment providers, on geologic time scales.

This is simply not true. Our network (GreenNet) and its partners  
(IGC,EcoNet etc) were service providers on the X.25 networks, for  
most intents and purposes the business and technical models were  
almost the same as they are now, i.e. :
* we bought an X.25 line from the phone company, and provided email,  
forums and databases to our users.
* The phone company was also our major competitor in providing email  
services
* Users could get bundled service from us - dial up access, plus  
email boxes and hosting, or buy access directly to the network and  
access any server they wished.
* Users with a fixed address could put up servers, and interchange  
peer-to-peer, but most users had dynamic addresses and did all  
communications via servers.
* Our servers interchanged email with each other in much the same way  
as SMTP servers do now, and used existing standards (uucp) to  
interchange with external servers, hiding this complexity from our  
users who addressed email to addresses in either of the common  
formats in use at the time - e.g. mitra@gn or gn:mitra

X.25 had many problems, and TCP/IP is  of course, a superior  
solution, and the phone company pricing couldn't keep up, which is  
why we - and everyone else- switched to it, but there were plenty of  
hybrids around for many years, and I believe there still are now.

X.25 also had advantages, link-level error correction meant that lost  
packets got noticed quickly, rather than having to be repeated end-to- 
end on what were at the time high latency connections, often  
involving satellites.

At the time of the switch from X.25 to TCP/IP we, and others, were  
moving from dumb-terminal (vt100) applications to client-server apps,  
but these were two orthogonal changes, and the client-server apps  
worked just as well on X.25. It would have been quite feasible to run  
gopher, wais or www over X.25, i.e. to have made the transport layer  
switch at a much later date, and there is nothing really to stop  
applications being run over non TCP/IP services at some point in the  
future.

What most of our users saw was a gradual improvement of email  
services, and addition of new servers, most of them never even knew  
when we switched from X.25 to TCP/IP.

None of this should of course be taken to minimize the contribution  
the developers of TCP/IP made to the internet. The internet was a  
collaboration of many people working on separate parts over several  
decades, and any claims by any one person or entity should be taken  
to have "invented the internet" are not merited.

One other point ...Brad also comments ...

> The internet cost contract is "I pay for my line to the midpoint,  
> you pay for yours, and we don't account for the individual  
> packets." I pay my half, you pay yours. This remarkable billing  
> arrangement gave the illusion that the internet was free.  People  
> were paying for it but you could treat it like it was largely  
> free.   Other systems, including the X.25 network, and of course  
> the PSTN, tended to have usage based accounting.

which if taken literally would imply that we don't have the internet  
in Australia, where almost all end users are subject to some kind of  
usage-based accounting, e.g. I pay about AU$10/Gbyte of committed  
volume and $0.24/Mbyte of any volume above that limit. We certainly  
don't treat usage as free "down-under", this of course is due to the  
Australians having to pay 100% of the cost of the transpacific link,  
and that most of the servers are in the US.

- Mitra

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