From touch at ISI.EDU  Tue Apr  4 16:14:28 2006
From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch)
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2006 16:14:28 -0700
Subject: [ih] IENs now online
In-Reply-To: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060329141314.96C39872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <4432FDD4.7010102@isi.edu>

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Noel Chiappa wrote:
...
> Would these be the same as these IEN's, I assume?
> 
>  64  Sunshine   12-Mar-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 12 March 1977
>  65  Postel      5-Aug-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 14 & 15 July 1977
>  66  Postel     21-Oct-77   TCP Meeting Notes - 13 & 14 October 1977
>  67  Postel      8-Feb-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 30 & 31 January 1978
>  68  Postel     27-Jun-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 15 & 16 June 1978
>  69  Postel      9-Oct-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 18 & 19 September 1978
>  70  Postel     15-Dec-78   TCP Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978
> 
> As far as I know, none are available on the web...
...
> I discussed this issue with Bob Braden and Chris some months ago, 
> when I was looking for IEN-19. The short answer is that ISI has a set
> of hardcopies, and someone scanned them in, but the scanning had some
> problems, and they are hard to read.

Although this is true, the PDFs may be of general interest, so here they
are:

http://www.postel.org/ien

They're now linked off the Internet History website too:
http://www.postel.org/internet-history

Joe
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From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Apr  4 17:08:50 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue,  4 Apr 2006 20:08:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] IENs now online
Message-ID: <20060405000850.D271E872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Joe Touch <touch at ISI.EDU>

    > the PDFs may be of general interest, so here they are:

Oh, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU - to you, and all at ISI who had a hand
in making this happen. These things are a ***TREMENDOUS*** historical
resource.

	Noel


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Apr  4 17:38:55 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Tue,  4 Apr 2006 20:38:55 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration)
Message-ID: <20060405003855.2AD01872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed at reed.com>

    >> David, I wonder, are you conflating two different meetings in your
    >> memory?
    >> ...
    >> the UDP spec didn't come out until January 1979 (IEN-71, Reed,
    >> 21-Jan-79, "User Datagram Protocol") - over a year later.
    >>
    >> Also, I do seem to recall the final format for UDP being hashed out at
    >> a meeting I was at, shortly before you published the spec.
    >>
    >> Is it possible that the *basic concept* of UDP was worked out at one
    >> meeting (at the time of the [TCP/IP] split), and the final *details*
    >> of the protocol were hashed out at a much later meeting (shortly
    >> before the spec was published)?

    > I didn't conflate the meetings - in fact, I believe the '77 meeting is
    > the one I was describing from memory. There was a basic agreement on a
    > UDP at the first meeting. Since no one was implementing UDP, there was
    > no need for a spec at that point. 
    > ...
    > I recall the spec of UDP (which is barely worthy of the name, it's so
    > simple in concept) being written as part of a cleanup process, pushed
    > by Postel to close some loose ends. Remember the point of UDP was to
    > support such things as packet speech, message exchange protocols like
    > DNS, ... and we were still far from understanding what might need to be
    > in UDP for such things. So a long delay from conception to spec'ing was
    > actually what happened.

I don't see that our views necessarily conflict - as I said, I felt it was
likely only the last details that were worked out that the later meeting.

{Added later...]

In just now looking through the IEN's which were just posted, I found the
following in IEN 63 ("Internet Meeting Notes - 30-31 October 1978" - at SRI,
apparently), on page 12 (comments from me in '[]'}:

  DATAGRAM PROTOCOL - Danny Cohen [discussion lead - JNC]

  There was discussion of the need for a Datagram protocol on top of IN
  [the contemporaneous name for IN - JNC] to multiplex IN datagrams to
  various datagram application processes, such as the name server process.

  Dave Reed suggested the following and was then asked to prepare a memo
  on it:

  [Picture of UDP header - JNC]

So it seems my memory of discussion of "the final format for UDP" at a
meeting shortly before the publication of UDP spec (in January, '79) was
correct, although my memory of where that meeting was was wrong (I had
thought it was at ISI).


[Parenthetical note about memory: I'm not a trained historian, but I've done
a certain amount of amateur work, and I gather that historians are wary of
memories, because they do play tricks. I have had several prior experiences
with this, including a rather amusing one in the field of Lotus Indianapolis
race-car history (something I specialized in), which is written up here:

  http://users.exis.net/~jnc/nontech/tmlotus.html

I have come to believe that it's dangerous to rely on memories unaided by any
contemporaneous records, because human memory is so fallible - and when it
"drops a bit", there's often no clue.]

	Noel


From dpreed at reed.com  Tue Apr  4 18:18:33 2006
From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed)
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:18:33 -0400
Subject: [ih] UDP creation (Was: Date of RFC 791 for celebration)
In-Reply-To: <20060405003855.2AD01872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060405003855.2AD01872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <44331AE9.8090804@reed.com>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20060404/48b15838/attachment.html

From touch at ISI.EDU  Tue Apr  4 22:30:29 2006
From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch)
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:30:29 -0700
Subject: [ih] IENs now online
In-Reply-To: <20060405000850.D271E872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060405000850.D271E872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <443355F5.8060206@isi.edu>



Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Joe Touch <touch at ISI.EDU>
> 
>     > the PDFs may be of general interest, so here they are:
> 
> Oh, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU - to you, and all at ISI who had a hand
> in making this happen. These things are a ***TREMENDOUS*** historical
> resource.
> 
> 	Noel

FYI - we have other documents which we would like to put online, as well
as to have these converted to ASCII text (part of that process was
attempted for the IENs, but is not yet complete).

If anyone knows of any resources we might apply for to support that
effort, please do let me know.

Joe


From touch at ISI.EDU  Thu Apr  6 09:05:35 2006
From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch)
Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:05:35 -0700
Subject: [ih] IENs now online
In-Reply-To: <443355F5.8060206@isi.edu>
References: <20060405000850.D271E872E1@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
	<443355F5.8060206@isi.edu>
Message-ID: <44353C4F.9020806@isi.edu>

Another update:

As much ASCII as we currently have is now also online, as are the PDFs,
all at the same URL:

http://www.postel.org/ien

The ASCII has not been verified against the PDF and is available for
only 2/3 of the files, and some of the PDFs have margin notes as well.

We are currently still seeking:
	IEN 33 Internet Meeting Notes - 1&2 May 1978.

IENs 125 and 126 are available in ASCII only at this time.

If ANYONE has a copy of any of these three they can scan or mail to me,
I would be glad to include them as well.

Joe

Joe Touch wrote:
> 
> Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>     > From: Joe Touch <touch at ISI.EDU>
>>
>>     > the PDFs may be of general interest, so here they are:
>>
>> Oh, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU - to you, and all at ISI who had a hand
>> in making this happen. These things are a ***TREMENDOUS*** historical
>> resource.
>>
>> 	Noel
> 
> FYI - we have other documents which we would like to put online, as well
> as to have these converted to ASCII text (part of that process was
> attempted for the IENs, but is not yet complete).
> 
> If anyone knows of any resources we might apply for to support that
> effort, please do let me know.
> 
> Joe




From craig at aland.bbn.com  Thu Apr 13 08:11:36 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:11:36 -0400
Subject: [ih] data networking @ BBN history
Message-ID: <20060413151136.063AA67@aland.bbn.com>


Hi folks:

Right now, IEEE has an article that Steve Blumenthal and I wrote about
the history of data networking research at BBN available on-line for
free (usually requires payment).  See

    http://www.computer.org/portal/site/annals/index.jsp

The focus on the article is work between about 1975 and 1995 (early Internet
until about the time Annals asks you to cut off as too recent for perspective).

Thanks to Dave Walden for pointing out the free access.

Craig

E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Thu Apr 13 20:36:42 2006
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:36:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] data networking @ BBN history
Message-ID: <20060414033642.21593.qmail@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi,

Craig, thanks for posting this. Of course, SRI and
BBN always disagree slightly about things :-) but
I wanted to point out that in August of 1976 there was

an email transmission from the Packet Radio 
Net across the Arpanet utilizing "TCP". For you
history
buffs, check out:

http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CORE-3-1-SRI-TCP-IP.html

regards,
barbara





From craig at aland.bbn.com  Fri Apr 14 06:01:49 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:01:49 -0400
Subject: [ih] very early email question
Message-ID: <20060414130149.65F2867@aland.bbn.com>


Hi folks:

Strange question.  I've been delving into the history of email and discovered
that the original SNDMSG did not spool messages or seek to retry if a remote
host was down.  It simply returned an error.

So when did email systems start to assume that a remote host being unreachable
was a transient event and save messages for retransmission rather than bouncing
them immediately back to the user?

Anyone know?

Craig

PS: While we're on this general topic.  Another unanswered question.
RFC 354 (first FTP spec that looks like FTP we know) was the product of
an April 1972 meeting in which one of the issues was getting email support
into FTP.  RFC 354 makes clear the idea was to use the APPEND to file
command (which was what SNDMSG used).  Then five weeks later RFC 385
modifies 354 to define MAIL and MLFL in place of APPEND for mail support.
What happened in the five weeks between the two RFCs to cause the sudden
change of approach?


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Apr 14 06:50:43 2006
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:50:43 -0400
Subject: [ih] very early email question
In-Reply-To: <20060414130149.65F2867@aland.bbn.com>
References: <20060414130149.65F2867@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <a06230989c065557c9c1b@[10.0.1.8]>

At 9:01 -0400 2006/04/14, Craig Partridge wrote:
>Hi folks:
>
>Strange question.  I've been delving into the history of email and discovered
>that the original SNDMSG did not spool messages or seek to retry if a remote
>host was down.  It simply returned an error.
>
>So when did email systems start to assume that a remote host being unreachable
>was a transient event and save messages for retransmission rather 
>than bouncing
>them immediately back to the user?
>
>Anyone know?

More or less immediately.  In those days, everyone implemented their 
own mail program.  So the the fact that SNDMSG (what system was that 
for?  Tenex?) didn't do it, doesn't mean that no one did.  I am 
pretty sure that Multics for example, just integrated it with the 
existing Multics mail system (after adding append to the access 
control list structure).  But memory is hazy on this.

>Craig
>
>PS: While we're on this general topic.  Another unanswered question.
>RFC 354 (first FTP spec that looks like FTP we know) was the product of
>an April 1972 meeting in which one of the issues was getting email support
>into FTP.  RFC 354 makes clear the idea was to use the APPEND to file
>command (which was what SNDMSG used).  Then five weeks later RFC 385
>modifies 354 to define MAIL and MLFL in place of APPEND for mail support.
>What happened in the five weeks between the two RFCs to cause the sudden
>change of approach?

Note that 385 is not an FTP spec.  The title is "Comments on the File 
Transfer Protocol." Have another cup of coffee, Craig  ;-) (This is 
back when RFC still meant Request for Comment.) This is Bhushan's 
proposal for including them.   MAIL and MLFL were not included in the 
spec until the March 1973 meeting.  That famous meeting where in 
response to a question about what happens when strange parameters for 
the BYTE command are used to store and retrieve a file, MAP gave that 
famous answer, "Sometimes when changing oranges into apples, one gets 
lemons!"  ;-)

MAIL was included so that mail could be sent to systems that didn't 
implement a file system, such as the TIPs, or as a low overhead way 
to send short emails.  MLFL was the "right" way and for longer 
messages.  The append command remained for uses other than mail.

Take care,
John



From craig at aland.bbn.com  Fri Apr 14 06:57:45 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:57:45 -0400
Subject: [ih] data networking @ BBN history
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 13 Apr 2006 20:36:42 PDT."
	<20060414033642.21593.qmail@web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> 
Message-ID: <20060414135745.95FA067@aland.bbn.com>


Hi Barbara:

I enjoyed the note.  But I was hard-pressed to find a disagreement between
Steve's and my article and the web page you posted.  Was there supposed to
be one?

Craig

In message <20060414033642.21593.qmail at web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>, Barbara De
nny writes:

>Hi,
>
>Craig, thanks for posting this. Of course, SRI and
>BBN always disagree slightly about things :-) but
>I wanted to point out that in August of 1976 there was
>
>an email transmission from the Packet Radio 
>Net across the Arpanet utilizing "TCP". For you
>history
>buffs, check out:
>
>http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CORE-3-1-SRI-TCP-IP.html
>
>regards,
>barbara
>
>


From craig at aland.bbn.com  Fri Apr 14 07:13:19 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:13:19 -0400
Subject: [ih] very early email question
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:50:43 EDT."
	<a06230989c065557c9c1b@[10.0.1.8]> 
Message-ID: <20060414141319.6FF6267@aland.bbn.com>


In message <a06230989c065557c9c1b@[10.0.1.8]>, John Day writes:

>Note that 385 is not an FTP spec.  The title is "Comments on the File 
>Transfer Protocol." Have another cup of coffee, Craig  ;-) (This is 
>back when RFC still meant Request for Comment.) This is Bhushan's 
>proposal for including them.   MAIL and MLFL were not included in the 
>spec until the March 1973 meeting.

Hi John:

Actually my note was the result of two days of research, so perhaps coffee
*is* in order.

Nonetheless if you read RFC 542 (product of the March 1973 meeting) it states
that it incorporates:

    "a considerable number of changes for the last 'official' version,
    see RFCs 354, 385."

And RFC 385, while entitled comments, is an odd hybrid to wit:

    "The following comments... include errata, further discussion,
    emphasis points, and additions to the protocol.  I shall incorporate
    these comments into the main protocol document after we have had
    sufficient experience."

I've got email notes from at least one other person from that time
saying that MLFL and MAIL were widely implemented soon after 385 came out.

So I could be deeply confused, but there's a strong suggestion that
someone had a brainwave (Bhushan?) between July and August 1972 and that
it was promptly implemented, at least in west Cambridge (perhaps east
Cambridge too longer :-)?).

On the other subject...

Yes, SNDMSG was for TENEX.  It was the program Ray Tomlinson created
in 1971 and was the prototype email system discussed in the April '72 FTP
meeting (that led to RFC 354).  It remained TENEX's mailer for some time
and I assume it evolved a lot (I have to talk to Ray Tomlinson some more about
it).

Have you got a good pointer to the evolution of Multics' mailer?  I've been
digging through archives trying to figure out how the mailers (MTAs) worked
and the literature is worse than sparse.  Lots of stuff about user agents
(RD, BANANARD, MSG, etc) but until Eric Allman appears with delivermail
(sendmail's predecessor) nothing I can find on MTA development (even though
clearly a lot had to be going on).

Many thanks!

Craig


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Apr 14 07:24:18 2006
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:24:18 -0400
Subject: [ih] very early email question
In-Reply-To: <20060414141319.6FF6267@aland.bbn.com>
References: <20060414141319.6FF6267@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <a0623098bc0655f94e24c@[10.0.1.8]>

>In message <a06230989c065557c9c1b@[10.0.1.8]>, John Day writes:
>
>>Note that 385 is not an FTP spec.  The title is "Comments on the File
>>Transfer Protocol." Have another cup of coffee, Craig  ;-) (This is
>>back when RFC still meant Request for Comment.) This is Bhushan's
>>proposal for including them.   MAIL and MLFL were not included in the
>>spec until the March 1973 meeting.
>
>Hi John:
>
>Actually my note was the result of two days of research, so perhaps coffee
>*is* in order.

;-)

>Nonetheless if you read RFC 542 (product of the March 1973 meeting) it states
>that it incorporates:
>
>     "a considerable number of changes for the last 'official' version,
>     see RFCs 354, 385."
>
>And RFC 385, while entitled comments, is an odd hybrid to wit:
>
>     "The following comments... include errata, further discussion,
>     emphasis points, and additions to the protocol.  I shall incorporate
>     these comments into the main protocol document after we have had
>     sufficient experience."
>
>I've got email notes from at least one other person from that time
>saying that MLFL and MAIL were widely implemented soon after 385 came out.

Interesting.  I was at the March meeting but not the earlier one. 
Grossman may have been there for us.

>So I could be deeply confused, but there's a strong suggestion that
>someone had a brainwave (Bhushan?) between July and August 1972 and that
>it was promptly implemented, at least in west Cambridge (perhaps east
>Cambridge too longer :-)?).

Good point.  That is interesting because I have this very strong 
recollection of Steve Crocker coming into the 73 FTP meeting near the 
end of the second day and basically saying shouldn't we put mail in. 
There was a discussion and the two commands were agreed to.

>On the other subject...
>
>Yes, SNDMSG was for TENEX.  It was the program Ray Tomlinson created
>in 1971 and was the prototype email system discussed in the April '72 FTP
>meeting (that led to RFC 354).  It remained TENEX's mailer for some time
>and I assume it evolved a lot (I have to talk to Ray Tomlinson some more about
>it).
>
>Have you got a good pointer to the evolution of Multics' mailer?  I've been
>digging through archives trying to figure out how the mailers (MTAs) worked
>and the literature is worse than sparse.  Lots of stuff about user agents
>(RD, BANANARD, MSG, etc) but until Eric Allman appears with delivermail
>(sendmail's predecessor) nothing I can find on MTA development (even though
>clearly a lot had to be going on).

I would guess Pogran or MAP would know.  I remember there was a mail 
daemon fairly soon.  Not surprised there is not much documentation. 
The concept of MTAs and MUAs was still several years away.

Take care,
John


From b_a_denny at yahoo.com  Fri Apr 14 11:30:11 2006
From: b_a_denny at yahoo.com (Barbara Denny)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:30:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] data networking @ BBN history
In-Reply-To: <20060414135745.95FA067@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <20060414183011.19854.qmail@web30110.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

oops.. Just saw Craig cc'd the list so here is
my reply to him.

barbara

***************************************************
hi Craig,

It depends on what you call a disagreement.
Your article mentioned September as the
date of a quasi-operational PRNet. I thought it
seemed too late so I used the example of this
email message to show it was up earlier than
that. I guess it all depends on how you define
operational. I didn't look at the reference in 
your paper. I haven't had time for that. I also
didn't have a chance to read your article in
entirety but of course, I was very curious to see
what you decided to include on packet radio.

barbara

--- Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi Barbara:
> 
> I enjoyed the note.  But I was hard-pressed to find
> a disagreement between
> Steve's and my article and the web page you posted. 
> Was there supposed to
> be one?
> 
> Craig
> 
> In message
>
<20060414033642.21593.qmail at web30107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>,
> Barbara De
> nny writes:
> 
> >Hi,
> >
> >Craig, thanks for posting this. Of course, SRI and
> >BBN always disagree slightly about things :-) but
> >I wanted to point out that in August of 1976 there
> was
> >
> >an email transmission from the Packet Radio 
> >Net across the Arpanet utilizing "TCP". For you
> >history
> >buffs, check out:
> >
>
>http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CORE-3-1-SRI-TCP-IP.html
> >
> >regards,
> >barbara
> >
> >
> 



From braden at ISI.EDU  Fri Apr 14 12:42:16 2006
From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 12:42:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5
Message-ID: <200604141942.MAA02933@gra.isi.edu>


  *> ------------------------------
  *> 
  *> Message: 2
  *> Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:01:49 -0400
  *> From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
  *> Subject: [ih] very early email question
  *> To: internet-history at postel.org
  *> Message-ID: <20060414130149.65F2867 at aland.bbn.com>
  *> 
  *> 
  *> Hi folks:
  *> 
  *> Strange question.  I've been delving into the history of email and discovered
  *> that the original SNDMSG did not spool messages or seek to retry if a remote
  *> host was down.  It simply returned an error.

Even better, for many years the UCLA-CCN site (IBM 360/91) was a
receive-only site for email.  Incoming email (originating from FTP, at
first) was simply spooled to an IBM 1403 printer with a TN train, to
get upper-lower case that was hard to find in EBCDICland.  We used our
Tenex account at ISI for sending email.

Bob Thomas would probably recall more about Tenex sndmsg, but I believe
that the mail subprotocol within FTP was supposed to provide reliable
delivery to a user.

Bob Braden


  *> 
  *> PS: While we're on this general topic.  Another unanswered question.
  *> RFC 354 (first FTP spec that looks like FTP we know) was the product of
  *> an April 1972 meeting in which one of the issues was getting email support
  *> into FTP.  RFC 354 makes clear the idea was to use the APPEND to file
  *> command (which was what SNDMSG used).  Then five weeks later RFC 385
  *> modifies 354 to define MAIL and MLFL in place of APPEND for mail support.
  *> What happened in the five weeks between the two RFCs to cause the sudden
  *> change of approach?
  *> 
  *> 

I think Jon changed his mind ;-))

Bob



From braden at ISI.EDU  Fri Apr 14 12:47:00 2006
From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 12:47:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5
Message-ID: <200604141947.MAA02938@gra.isi.edu>

  *> 
  *> So I could be deeply confused, but there's a strong suggestion that
  *> someone had a brainwave (Bhushan?) between July and August 1972 and that
  *> it was promptly implemented, at least in west Cambridge (perhaps east
  *> Cambridge too longer :-)?).
  *> 

It seemed a little difficult for denizens of Cambridge to grasp at the
time, but the fact is that there were ARPAnet sites that were not even
(gasp) in Massachussetts!  And some of these sites even had programmers
capable of implementing the protocols.

Was I annoyed at times by the arrogance of the BBN/MIT axis? Well, yes,
but we got the job done.

Bob Braden



From jeanjour at comcast.net  Fri Apr 14 12:59:07 2006
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:59:07 -0400
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <200604141947.MAA02938@gra.isi.edu>
References: <200604141947.MAA02938@gra.isi.edu>
Message-ID: <a0623098fc065af5ede37@[10.0.1.8]>

Certain sites were referred to as the big bad neighbor, but that was 
only in the ritual for catharsis#1.

At 12:47 -0700 2006/04/14, Bob Braden wrote:
>   *>
>   *> So I could be deeply confused, but there's a strong suggestion that
>   *> someone had a brainwave (Bhushan?) between July and August 1972 and that
>   *> it was promptly implemented, at least in west Cambridge (perhaps east
>   *> Cambridge too longer :-)?).
>   *>
>
>It seemed a little difficult for denizens of Cambridge to grasp at the
>time, but the fact is that there were ARPAnet sites that were not even
>(gasp) in Massachussetts!  And some of these sites even had programmers
>capable of implementing the protocols.
>
>Was I annoyed at times by the arrogance of the BBN/MIT axis? Well, yes,
>but we got the job done.
>
>Bob Braden



From the.map at alum.mit.edu  Fri Apr 14 15:04:05 2006
From: the.map at alum.mit.edu (Mike Padlipsky)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:04:05 -0700
Subject: [ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 14, Issue 5
In-Reply-To: <a0623098fc065af5ede37@[10.0.1.8]>
References: <200604141947.MAA02938@gra.isi.edu>
	<a0623098fc065af5ede37@[10.0.1.8]>
Message-ID: <7.0.0.16.0.20060414140105.01d2ad20@alum.mit.edu>

At 12:59 PM 4/14/2006, John Day wrote:
>Certain sites were referred to as the big bad neighbor, but that was 
>only in the ritual for catharsis#1.

Actually, as you probably know and were just trying to force me to 
stop sulking in my tent by appearing not to, only one site was the 
Big Bad Neighbor in the privately-circulated Ritual for Catharsis 
#1.  Its identity ought to be downright obvious, and when the fact 
that "RFC #1" was written by the then-Multics Network Technical 
Liaison is taken into account the _non_-existence of a Cambridge axis 
ought to be at least quite evident.

Indeed, to gloss your earlier message some, it was the tediously 
lengthy argument between one of Big Bad Neighbor's representatives 
and the representative from a West Coast place over whether a file 
transfered from TENEX to TSO (I guess it was) and back again under a 
particular BYTE and STRU combination would lead to one or two 
"incorrect" and/or redundant trailing zero-bytes (owing to the 
vagaries of the filesystems in play) that led me to remark, on the 
way out of the room for a self-declared personal coffeebreak, "Come 
on, you guys, sometimes when you try to turn an apple into an orange 
you get back a lemon".

(As to my own recollections of the origins of netmail, as we called 
it when we were inventing it, and FTP, if I were to cite the article 
I wrote on the topic this message would almost certainly get censored 
for [mis]perceived ad homineminity.)

And just to save doing a separate message, note for Craig: Tom Van 
Vleck's article[s] on the history of mail on Multics are readily 
findable....  What, me make any cracks about whether coffee's enough?


cheers, map
http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html

"One (indeed, perhaps the only) indisputable benefit of the 'Net is 
that you don't have to waste any stamps on, nor be complicitous in 
the killing of any trees for, letters to editors and/or other 
invincibly smug corporate behemoths that aren't going to be responded 
to because they show said institutions up, but need to be sent anyway."

        --first new, official Elements of Networking Style Slogan in 
yearsandyears



From craig at aland.bbn.com  Thu Apr 27 13:47:44 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:47:44 -0400
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060427204744.0632467@aland.bbn.com>


If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
"Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240?  (It appears that the final
standard for email over FTP never appeared as an RFC but appeared
in the protocol handbook!).

[Discovered this perusing old HEADER-PEOPLE and finding Wayne Hathaway
on 10 February 1978 pointing out a bug in the spec...]

Thanks!

Craig

E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com


From jeanjour at comcast.net  Thu Apr 27 13:57:56 2006
From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:57:56 -0400
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060427204744.0632467@aland.bbn.com>
References: <20060427204744.0632467@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <a06230900c076e092862e@[10.0.1.2]>

Do you want just the Mail Protocol or the Standard Header Formats as well?

At 16:47 -0400 2006/04/27, Craig Partridge wrote:
>If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
>"Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240?  (It appears that the final
>standard for email over FTP never appeared as an RFC but appeared
>in the protocol handbook!).
>
>[Discovered this perusing old HEADER-PEOPLE and finding Wayne Hathaway
>on 10 February 1978 pointing out a bug in the spec...]
>
>Thanks!
>
>Craig
>
>E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com



From casner at acm.org  Thu Apr 27 14:19:36 2006
From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:19:36 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060427204744.0632467@aland.bbn.com>
References: <20060427204744.0632467@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <20060427141639.W51387@ash.packetdesign.com>

Craig,

> If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
> "Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240?  (It appears that the final
> standard for email over FTP never appeared as an RFC but appeared
> in the protocol handbook!).

Were there multiple revisions all numbered 7104?  I have a copy of NIC
7104 REV January 1978, but pp. 239-240 is SUPDUP.

> [Discovered this perusing old HEADER-PEOPLE and finding Wayne Hathaway
> on 10 February 1978 pointing out a bug in the spec...]

So then January 1978 would be an appropriate revision to have been
examined at that time?

                                                        -- Steve


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Apr 27 14:28:13 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:28:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060427212813.E036A872D9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>

    > NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
    > ..
    > If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
    > "Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240? 

Craig, which version of 7104? My January, 1978 Rev has "Mail Protocol (NIC
29588) on pp. 333-334.

If that's what you want, I'll be happy to scan it, OCR it, and post both.

	Noel


From craig at aland.bbn.com  Thu Apr 27 14:36:02 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:36:02 -0400
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:28:13 EDT."
	<20060427212813.E036A872D9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> 
Message-ID: <20060427213602.9E0FA67@aland.bbn.com>


Hi Noel:

Sounds great!  (John D., you're off the hook)

Craig

In message <20060427212813.E036A872D9 at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>, Noel Chiappa writes
:

>    > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
>
>    > NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
>    > ..
>    > If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
>    > "Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240? 
>
>Craig, which version of 7104? My January, 1978 Rev has "Mail Protocol (NIC
>29588) on pp. 333-334.
>
>If that's what you want, I'll be happy to scan it, OCR it, and post both.
>
>	Noel


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Apr 27 15:35:08 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:35:08 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060427223508.70F6A872DE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>

    >> which version of 7104? My January, 1978 Rev has "Mail Protocol (NIC
    >> 29588)" on pp. 333-334.
    >> If that's what you want, I'll be happy to scan it, OCR it, and post
    >> both.

    > Sounds great!

OK, the text is at:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol.txt

and page images at:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p0_15.jpg
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p1_15.jpg


(If for some reason someone wants hi-res scans, I put the ones I used as OCR
input [I find that my OCR S/W works much better with very hi-res input] here:

  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p0L_1.jpg
  http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p1L_1.jpg

but they are about 900K each.)


Enjoy!

	Noel


From casner at acm.org  Thu Apr 27 16:53:54 2006
From: casner at acm.org (Stephen Casner)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:53:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060427223508.70F6A872DE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060427223508.70F6A872DE@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <20060427165313.I51387@ash.packetdesign.com>

Noel,

There is an OCR error in the following:

NOTE:	See also RFC 7431 which proposes a more efficient scheme for
	mailing to several recipients

The character after 743 is supposed to be a comma.

                                                        -- Steve

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Noel Chiappa wrote:

>     > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
>
>     >> which version of 7104? My January, 1978 Rev has "Mail Protocol (NIC
>     >> 29588)" on pp. 333-334.
>     >> If that's what you want, I'll be happy to scan it, OCR it, and post
>     >> both.
>
>     > Sounds great!
>
> OK, the text is at:
>
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol.txt
>
> and page images at:
>
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p0_15.jpg
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p1_15.jpg
>
>
> (If for some reason someone wants hi-res scans, I put the ones I used as OCR
> input [I find that my OCR S/W works much better with very hi-res input] here:
>
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p0L_1.jpg
>   http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/history/Mail_Protocol-p1L_1.jpg
>
> but they are about 900K each.)
>
>
> Enjoy!
>
> 	Noel
>


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Apr 27 16:57:20 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:57:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060427235720.899F3872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Stephen Casner <casner at acm.org>

    > There is an OCR error in the following:

Ooops. I proofed it, and fixed a number of errors, but must have missed that
one.

    > The character after 743 is supposed to be a comma.

Fixed. Thanks for the catch!

	Noel


From the.map at alum.mit.edu  Thu Apr 27 19:32:57 2006
From: the.map at alum.mit.edu (Mike Padlipsky)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:32:57 -0700
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060427235720.899F3872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060427235720.899F3872C4@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <7.0.0.16.0.20060427190728.01d0c008@alum.mit.edu>

At 04:57 PM 4/27/2006, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>Ooops. I proofed it, and fixed a number of errors, but must have missed that
>one.

speaking of missed errors, 'couRand' pretty clearly ought to be 'command'.

but what i don't understand is who forged this thing.  note that i'm 
NOT, repeat NOT, accusing you, it's just that i find it extremely 
difficult believe the real jon would've been so sloppy as to fail to 
show 'the argument' in the command line in some explicit form, much 
less so sloppy as to offer such vague descriptions of what the 
argument[s] should be, and i find it impossible to believe that the 
real jon could have written:

It is suggested that a modest volume of mail service should be free; 
i.e., it may be entered before a USER command.

since i know he knew the difference between i.e. and e.g., having 
discussed it with him at some length [i won't say taught it to him, 
honest i won't] when i did rfc 491.  he also knew the base ftp spec 
allowed Hosts, especially multics, to require a user command before 
mail, or any other command, was sent.  so i think that by occam's 
razor the choice between jon had an utterly uncharacteristically bad 
day when 'he' wrote this thing and he didn't write this thing must 
fall to the latter.

unless, of course, he did it deliberately to get a rise out of me and 
somehow neglected to make sure i even knew it existed, which i didn't 
until now ... but i still think somebody pretending to be him having 
snuck it into the protocol handbook is the simpler hypothesis.


cheers, map

[whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and 
create a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly 
customary e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing 
for a long time now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't 
know ... and who's further broken down and done 
http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html , rather grudgingly] 



From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Apr 27 19:49:01 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:49:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060428024901.8BDE9872E9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Mike Padlipsky <the.map at alum.mit.edu>

    > speaking of missed errors, 'couRand' pretty clearly ought to be
    > 'command'.

Fixed.

    > but what i don't understand is who forged this thing. note that i'm
    > NOT, repeat NOT, accusing you

Huh! My hardcopy is old enough that you could probably carbon-date it! :-)

     Noel


From chris at cs.utexas.edu  Thu Apr 27 20:08:26 2006
From: chris at cs.utexas.edu (Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan)
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:08:26 -0500
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060427212813.E036A872D9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
References: <20060427212813.E036A872D9@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <22cf56551b47017ee9d6538c0ac03ea0@cs.utexas.edu>

Craig/John/Steve/Noel: Actually, 7104 is a virtual number:

In Jon's boxes at the USC archives that I examined in Fall 2004 as the 
Postel Research Scholar, these are the 7104's in his archives, along 
with my annotations.

1) 1974 Dec 1 (my annotations: "highly interesting, copy of ToC would 
be helpful, it has 2 telnet NICS which I had been looking for, when 
[ih] last discussed telnet.  The Notebook is 2 inches high, but not as 
thick as later Arpanet Protocol Handbooks)

2) 1976 7104 (?April?) Arpanet Protocol Handbook

3) 1978 January.  (my annotations: Revised 7104; a copy of the ToC 
would be helpful)

Thanks, Chris


On Apr 27, 2006, at 4:28 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

>> From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
>
>> NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
>> ..
>> If, by any chance, anyone has a copy, could you send me a copy of
>> "Official Mail Protocol", pp. 239-240?
>
> Craig, which version of 7104? My January, 1978 Rev has "Mail Protocol 
> (NIC
> 29588) on pp. 333-334.
>
> If that's what you want, I'll be happy to scan it, OCR it, and post 
> both.
>
> 	Noel
>


Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan
(chris at cs.utexas.edu)
Contact info:  www.cs.utexas.edu/~chris/



From craig at aland.bbn.com  Fri Apr 28 06:07:56 2006
From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:07:56 -0400
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:32:57 PDT."
	<7.0.0.16.0.20060427190728.01d0c008@alum.mit.edu> 
Message-ID: <20060428130756.52FAC67@aland.bbn.com>


In message <7.0.0.16.0.20060427190728.01d0c008 at alum.mit.edu>, Mike Padlipsky wr
ites:

>It is suggested that a modest volume of mail service should be free; 
>i.e., it may be entered before a USER command.
>
>since i know he knew the difference between i.e. and e.g., having 
>discussed it with him at some length [i won't say taught it to him, 
>honest i won't] when i did rfc 491.  he also knew the base ftp spec 
>allowed Hosts, especially multics, to require a user command before 
>mail, or any other command, was sent.  so i think that by occam's 
>razor the choice between jon had an utterly uncharacteristically bad 
>day when 'he' wrote this thing and he didn't write this thing must 
>fall to the latter.

Hi MAP:

So this comment raises a bunch of questions:

* If you read Wayne Hathaway's note of 10 February 1978 from HEADER-PEOPLE
    (appended), it is clear that most folks did not expect to log into
    (via USER) before delivering email.  Sounds like the Multicians
    expected it.  So how did mailers handle this? Did they try MLFL and
    when it bounced with a 5xx message say, "oh $%!, its a Multics
    machine?" and try a USER ANONYMOUS command.  Or did they do something
    smarter, or did Multics just not get all the mail coming to it?

* If you read the NIC document, it appears that the ARPANET was a messy
    place with people running "Old FTP" (apparently defined by RFC 454
    bizarrely enough, as 454 is actually the announcement of the 1973
    FTP meeting with a discussion draft attached) and "New FTP" (the
    product of the 1973 meeting)...  Did people just drop everything
    to do work on TCP[/IP]?

Craig


***************************
Date: 10 FEB 1978 1508-PST
To: HEADER-PEOPLE at MIT-MC
From: Hathaway at AMES-67
Subject: BRIAN'S "LET'S HEAR IT ..."

Brian, you're beautiful!
 
And I will be the first to admit that my server's response is probably
wrong (we returned a 503 for "Unknown User"), but it was a bit hard
arriving at that decision, since: 
 
    1. there is no mention of MLFL in the official FTP protocol,
 
    2. in the "Official Mail Protocol" (pages 239-240 in the ARPANET
        Protocol Handbook) it says that MLFL has the same replies as
        APPE, which can't be right because APPE (almost) always
        requires logon and MLFL usually does not, and
 
    3. RFC 640, which was supposed to become official in February of
        1974 (yep!) is not yet in universal use.
 
At any rate, it seems the correct reply would be 530, at least ac-
cording to RFC 640.  That means "permanent failure" (since "Unknown
User" is not likely to succeed if you tried it again) and "failure
in authentication and accounting."  Also I note that 530 is listed
as a reply for MLFL (page 228) although it is not in the list of
example messages (pages 225-226).  It is particularly interesting
that this "correct" code is one of the relatively few three digit
numbers which was used by NOBODY in Brian's sample!
 
And to repeat:  Let's hear it for uniform standards!!!!
 
                                       Wayne
 
PS:  An aside to UTEXAS:  "Howdy Pardner!"??????  That sounds like
      something a Teasip system would say!    W.


From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Apr 28 06:26:25 2006
From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 09:26:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
Message-ID: <20060428132625.AE1D7872F6@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>

    > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>

    > So this comment raises a bunch of questions:

If you're interested in early Multics email, you know about:

  http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html

I assume? And of course MAP already wrote:

  http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/allnight.html

which contains a lot of info.

      Noel


From the.map at alum.mit.edu  Fri Apr 28 14:55:12 2006
From: the.map at alum.mit.edu (Mike Padlipsky)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:55:12 -0700
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060428130756.52FAC67@aland.bbn.com>
References: <Your message of "Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:32:57 PDT."
	<7.0.0.16.0.20060427190728.01d0c008@alum.mit.edu>
	<20060428130756.52FAC67@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.0.16.0.20060428141057.010e0ed8@alum.mit.edu>

At 06:07 AM 4/28/2006, Craig Partridge wrote:
>If you read Wayne Hathaway's note of 10 February 1978 from HEADER-PEOPLE
>     (appended), it is clear that most folks did not expect to log into
>     (via USER) before delivering email.  [...]

that's not at all clear to me, based on the copy you 
enclosed.  unless there's something to make you draw that inference 
in the context of whatever it was brian the beautiful had said that 
elicited wayne's response, it looks to me as if wayne didn't even 
believe in netmail because it wasn't in what he thought the official 
protocol was.

>Sounds like the Multicians
>     expected it.

indeed.  see rfc 491 [and 501, 505].

>So how did mailers handle this? Did they try MLFL and
>     when it bounced with a 5xx message say, "oh $%!, its a Multics
>     machine?" and try a USER ANONYMOUS command.  Or did they do something
>     smarter,

to the best of my knowledge and belief, they used the rfc 491 
convention -- even the tenexes, after the version of their 
mail-sending command that a friend of mine who ran an non-bbn tenex 
site did at my request got propagated through the tenex jungle somehow.

>or did Multics just not get all the mail coming to it?

since the whole rfc 491 fuss was triggered by larry roberts's having 
decreed that p.i.'s would only be able to communicate with him via 
netmail after a given date [which of course escapes me], as far as i 
know things did work out the way they were supposed to.

that being said, let's go back to your initial message that set this 
chain off, where you said

>(It appears that the final
>standard for email over FTP never appeared as an RFC but appeared
>in the protocol handbook!).

having been compelled by vestigial curiosity to do more 'scholarship' 
than i ever intended to do again, i suggest it wasn't quite right 
to've taken wayne's word for it about there being no spec until the 
rather flawed protocol handbook thingie.  the mlfl and mail commands 
were in rfc 385, a followup to rfc 354, and in rfc 454; they were 
also discussed in rfc's 487,491, 501, and 505, among others, and were 
of course in widespread use before and after rfc 542.  however, 
although i hadn't realized it until a very few minutes ago, somehow 
they weren't in rfc 542.   i believe that must have been an accident, 
since rfc 640 [by jon on the transcription i just looked at of on the 
first page, and by jon and nancy neigus, who was the primary author 
of 542, as well as ken pogran, on the second page] does specify 
revised ftp reply codes for them.

i cannot account for my failure to have noticed the omission when 542 
came out, nor for nancy's having omitted them [although i suppose 
it's remotely possible she did it on purpose, to bug me -- make that 
very remotely; i seem to recall we were on fairly good terms with one 
another].  that jon didn't indicate their having been unintentionally 
left out of the 542 spec in NIC 29588 is, i take it, further evidence 
that he had an uncharacteristically bad day when he wrote it.

finally, as to

>If you read the NIC document, it appears that the ARPANET was a messy
>     place [...]

i don't have to have read the nic document to know that the 'net was 
messy, having lived through it.


cheers, map

[whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and 
create a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly 
customary e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing 
for a long time now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't 
know ... and who's further broken down and done 
http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html , rather grudgingly] 



From jack at 3kitty.org  Fri Apr 28 17:24:22 2006
From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 17:24:22 -0700
Subject: [ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)
In-Reply-To: <20060428130756.52FAC67@aland.bbn.com>
References: <20060428130756.52FAC67@aland.bbn.com>
Message-ID: <1146270262.4457.124.camel@pc2800.3kitty.org>

On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 09:07 -0400, Craig Partridge wrote:
> So how did mailers handle this? Did they try MLFL and
>     when it bounced with a 5xx message say, "oh $%!, its a Multics
>     machine?" and try a USER ANONYMOUS command.  Or did they do
> something
>     smarter, or did Multics just not get all the mail coming to it?

Yep, all sorts of tricks were necessary.  

I wrote the mail daemon running on MIT-ITS, which talked a lot with
MIT-MULTICS back in the mid/late 70s.  The daemon was written in Muddle
(a home-grown language that looked somewhat like LISP).  This daemon
tried to process messages as structured data; today we would call it a
relational database, but that technology hadn't been invented yet.  

There was a machine online at CCA called "The DataComputer" that was
probably the first online network database.  It provided a very
primitive (by today's standards) interface for storing and querying data
- SQL did not yet exist.   The idea was to have an online repository
into which important messages could be placed and made available for
posterity to search and retrieve - we called this a "message archive".

To make the messages in the Datacomputer useful, it was important to get
the data precise.  E.G., a field like "To: PDL, Cerf at ISIA" was ambiguous
was "PDL" really "PDL at ISIA" (picking up the host from the end of the
line)?  Or was it "PDL at MIT-DMS" (picking up the host from the "From:
JFH at MIT-DMS" elsewhere in the header)? 

Various mail programs adopted different such "abbreviations" which drove
me crazy.  This is in addition to the quirks in the interactions over
the net (e.g., the Multics problem with USER). 

To handle all of this protocol chaos, I wrote (and rewrote, and tweaked)
a sizable (for a LISPish world) chunk of code to try to deduce the
precise meaning of each message header contents and semantics based on
where the message came from.  Different mail programs had different
ideas about the interpretation of fields in the headers.

That code first tried to figure out where an incoming message had come
from.  This was not so obvious as it might seem because of
redistribution and forwarding of messages, and differences in behavior
of various versions of the other guy's software.   So it wasn't enough
to just look to see if you were talking to MIT-MULTICS.   I remember
having conditional clauses that in essence said "If I see a pattern like
such-and-such in the headers, this is probably a message from version
xx.yy of Ken Pogran's Multics mailer."   With enough such tests, it
formed an opinion about which mail daemon it was talking with, and which
mail UI program had created a message.

Having hopefully figured out the other guy's genealogy (and therefore
protocol dialect), the code then acted based on a painfully collected
set of observations about how that system behaved.   This is where
things like "It looks like Multics, let's try USER ANONYMOUS" came into
play.   That particular one was easy.   Figuring out many of the "naked
usernames" was very difficult.

Of course, as mail usage grew this nonsense got more and more painful
and unreliable.  So eventually, for this and other reasons (e.g., poor
query language of the Datacomputer), we abandoned the notion of trying
to archive messages in a structured way in an online database.   It's
really too bad - it would be nice today to be able to search
HEADER-PEOPLE and other archives that way.

The root of the problem was the conflict between people who viewed the
protocol as a human-friendly environment, where someone could read the
textual parts of the protocol interactions and do the right thing, and
people (me) who were trying to view the protocol as a computer-friendly
environment.

I tried pushing the envelope toward computer-friendly by writing up RFCs
713 and 722, but there weren't many other people trying to do things
like using the Datacomputer, so human-friendly (and therefore slightly
fuzzy) protocols prevailed.

Error messages (like the 5xx responses) were similarly unreliable.   I
remember one anecdote...  One day Ken Pogran asked me why I had just
sent him a message with comments about some document (probably an ARPA
proposal) that we had finished a year prior.  I hadn't sent such a
message, so he showed it to me, and sure enough it was my message -
except that the "Date:" field showed that I sent it about a year
earlier, but he didn't get it until that day.  So, where had it been all
year....?

Well, it was a short message, something like: "Ken - take a look at
this:  FILE NOT FOUND  /Jack"   We both dug into our respective year-old
pile of mailer daemon logs to figure it out.

Well, my mail composition program had a feature where you could "attach"
a file.  This wasn't attachments like we have today since the protocol
didn't allow for that.  But when I composed a message, rather than
inserting the file into the editor, I could tell the mail daemon to
insert the file on-the-fly as it sent it out over the network.

My wayward message had a large attached file - probably a new version of
the document.   But when the message got to Ken, instead of the
document, it just said FILE NOT FOUND.

It turned out that just before Ken got that message, I had a rare
episode of cleaning out old disk files, and I deleted the document -
hence the FILE NOT FOUND.

In the logs, we found the evidence.  Dutifully, mindlessly, stubbornly,
persistently, my mailer daemon had been connecting to Multics, every few
minutes or so, for *a year*, and sending the whole message with large
document.   Multics slurped it all in, but had an unpublished policy of
not accepting messages bigger than a certain size.   So it responded to
the (lengthy) MAIL (or MLFL, I forget) command with an error, something
like: "XXX Message exceeds size limits, please send smaller messages."

I always have wondered what percentage of the overall Arpanet traffic
that year was attributable to that one message.....

The problem?   Well, the Multics mailer used an XXX code which was one
of the "temporary error, try again later" flavors, and my mail daemon
wasn't clever enough to read/understand the ascii text, nor suspicious
enough to set some kind of "time-to-live" counter on outgoing queued
messages.   So it tried again, and again, and again, .....

We really really should have looked at the logs more often.

When I finally deleted the document, the message suddenly became small
enough to please the Multics bureaucracy, ... and the mail went through.

So, another few lines of code in the mail daemon's "it looks like
Multics" section went in that day.

Then there was the day that three people's mailing lists got
accidentally configured into a loop and created an out-of-control data
firehose spanning the continent .... but that's another story.

By the way, those incidents were the motivation for putting the
"MESSAGE-ID" field in the headers, so you could write code to detect
such behavior.   But I doubt there are (m)any mailer daemons today that
do anything "smart" with that information.

Yep, lots of tweaks, lots of heuristics.   But smart?   Your call...

/Jack