[SATLUG] OT: Walmart Selling Linux PCs/ Right-Left paradigm

[Brad Knowles]

On 11/3/07, Al Castanoli wrote:

>  I guess historical corrections in the media have worked... Much of the
>  early work on the current Internet were done on milnet.

Initially, it was pretty much all done on what 
was then known as ARPAnet, and later became known 
as Milnet.

The Hobbes timeline is considered definitive. 
See <http://home.utah.edu/history.html>.

>                                                           The move from
>  the standard of NCP to TCP/IP was only possible at first because of
>  government funding early development on the IMP.  Then, before the
>  InterNIC was farmed out to Network Solutions, one of the greatest
>  contributors in terms of funding and full time computer scientists and
>  network engineers was General Atomics (part of what the media calls the
>  military industrial complex).

Most of the early work was done by Bolt Beranek 
and Newman (BBN) and the Stanford Research 
Institute (SRI).  There were other players, of 
course.  But these were the two biggies.

>                                    General Atomics stepped away from the
>  InterNIC because of media scrutiny of their operations.

Before today, I had never heard the term "General 
Atomics".  I had heard of CERTFnet, and had 
always assumed that it was formed by Vint Cerf.

But looking in the Hobbes timeline, the name 
"General Atomics" doesn't come into play until 
1991, long after the original work was done by 
BBN, SRI, and others.


When I first became the DISA.MIL Technical POC 
and the Milnet Manager was a customer of mine, 
SRI-NIC was still the one and only NIC in 
operation, and they were operating the DDN 
facilities on behalf of the Milnet Manager.

The InterNIC was created in 1993, and CERFnet was involved in that process.

>                                                           Without General
>  Atomic's support, the NSF could no longer afford to administer it, and
>  contracted .com and .net domains out to Network Solutions.  If you think
>  that was an improvement over the original InterNIC, I guess you weren't
>  managing domains back then and having to deal with what we
>  affectionately termed notwork solutions.

Originally, Network Solutions wasn't a problem. 
As the DISA.MIL Technical POC, I dealt with them 
on a number of occasions.

I took the DOD CERT domain (ASSIST.MIL) from 
concept to fully operational in one week, 
hand-carrying the paperwork from the Milnet 
Manager through the Network Solutions process, 
and creating and managing all the DNS records 
myself -- remotely, because the systems which 
actually served this data were kept in a SCIF 
where I didn't have normal access, although they 
were actually connected to the real, live 
Internet.  Note that this was done at a time when 
there was only one update made to the root zone 
per week, and yet I still managed to get in under 
the deadline.

>  The folks I worked for when milnet was folded into the Internet were a
>  bunch of egghead scientists and engineers, and they formed the original
>  Internet Engineering Task Force. We didn't see many politicians on the
>  operations room floor at the time.

I knew both Major Paciorkowski and Major Plzak, 
two people who served as the Milnet Managers 
during the time I was working in that area within 
DISA, in the basement of the Pentagon.

At the time that the SRI-NIC was closed and the 
InterNIC was created, and before there was a 
separate DDN NIC, I didn't see much in the way of 
egghead scientists or engineers, but I was aware 
of their existence behind-the-scenes at places 
like SRI and BBN (both of whom still had 
involvement with ARPAnet/Milnet/NIPRnet, even if 
they weren't as heavily involved as they had 
been).

The sad thing is that, at the late stages where I 
was involved, the SIPRnet Manager was still 
seriously considering using random network 
numbers pulled out of their @$$ and static 
HOSTS.TXT tables, instead of real registered 
network numbers as assigned by the NIC and using 
a dynamic`1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
	ٵ
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>
>Given all the scientific inaccuracies in "An Inconvenient Truth", it
>appears the Nobel prize was given for political reasons more than for
>having actually accomplished anything.
>
>I respect Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, but I think they're giving too much
>credit to Gore.
>
>Al Castanoli
>
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-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
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