Talk:ARPANET

First packet switched network
So its not the MKI invented in 1970 at NPL in the UK? I'm confused, the article on Donald Davis states that ARPA incorporated this idea into ARPANET so its totally confusing. Especially since this article cites the creation as mid 1980s, well after MKI and MKII. Can anyone shed some light on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.173 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just more American historical revisionism, I'll update the article. Twobells (talk) 13:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the confusion is that the article originally stated that ARPANET was the first 'multi-node' packet switched network, which it was. The packet switching implemented by Davies only utilized a single node. But we are splitting hairs at this point :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrono85 (talk • contribs) 15:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I finally got time to update the article and have included both NPL's Mark 1 and the French contribution Cyclades to the opening paragraph. Twobells''t@lk 15:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I see what you are saying, but despite what Mark 1 and Cyclades accomplished, they were never actually part of the internet, but really prototypes of different aspects of the Internet. ARPANET was the first to implement TCP/IP, and therefore became the actual first node on the Internet itself, and so was really its main progenitor. It is more apt to talk about Cyclades and Mark 1 in the history section, or the history of the Internet article, than the opening paragrah for ARPANET. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrono85 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

References in film and media
This section was removed, wondered why?


 * The removal happened some weeks ago thru an anonymous edit and was followed by a bunch of vandalism. Probably the removal was vandalism too.

Now it is back. Anyway. Please check this section "Scenario", an episode of the U.S. television sitcom Benson (season 6, episode 20—dated February 1985), was the first incidence of a popular TV show directly referencing the Internet or its progenitors. The show includes a scene in which the ARPANET is accessed.

I asume that Riptide was earlier because they are receiving information via a satelite connection in the pilot premiered on January 3, 1984. Unfourtunately I have only found a German version of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEEvTWoDdoo). The time codes are 0:56:18 - 0:56:22 but mainly 0:57:18 - 0:57:52.--P. Adamik (talk) 12:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Intermediate state
This is an intermediate state. Eventually the stuff about the invention of packet switching is going to get moved to the packet switching page (just as some of this was moved here from the History of the Internet page), and more about the history of the ARPANet is going to get added here, as I have time to write it.. This is an improvement on what used to be here, though. Noel 08:07, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

First ARPANET link
Not sure where to put this (from November 21 and 1969):
 * The first ARPANET link is established.

--mav 05:54, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)~


 * I've expanded it. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Data rate
I'm not sure about the nearby material that says they were connected "using modems": I think the link speeds were of the order of 56k, and the modems of that era were not even remotely near that speed (think 1200 bps): the links were more probably DS0 leased lines. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * No, "modem" is right - that's a generic term for a device ("modulator - demodulator") that transforms a signal in one form (in this case, a bit stream) into another form (analog signals in this case). The ARPANet modems were provided by ATT; BBN's hardware only included the high-speed serial interfaces. The lines were indeed leased special high-bandwidth lines (but I don't think the concept "DS0" existed back then), again, provided by AT&T. Noel 20:24, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * PS: When I said "high-bandwidth", I meant it in the technical sense (i.e. high band-pass), not as a synonym for "high bit rate" (although of course with the former it's easy to provide the latter). Noel 21:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

According to "The T1 standard was developed in the United States in the early 1960's." This says "Also in 1963 digital carrier techniques were introduced. [...] T1 quickly became the backbone of long distance toll service and then the primary handler of local transmission between central offices." So it's quite plausible that the circuit was part of a then-existing digital trunk system. However, it would be nice to have a reference which can settle this one way or another. -- The Anome 12:39, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

describes original link speeds as having been 56k. For 1960s modems, even 600 bps over an end-to-end analog connection was "high speed". The nearest other possible solution were the FDM interleaving solutions. But why would anyone install this, when T1 was commercially available from 1962 onwards? Allowing for bit-robbing, a single DS0 demultiplexed from a T1 would be 56k, exactly the data rates quoted in the source. -- The Anome 12:57, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Phil Karn also says here that "Actually, the ARPANET backbone links were almost all 56kb/s." -- The Anome 13:05, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I simply don't know the details of how AT+T provided the bandwidth. It may well have been a breakout of a T1 line. I have looked through everything I have, and nothing says anything about it. I do know (from the BBN proposal, in response to the original ARPA ARPANET RFP) that the interface between the IMP and modem was two wires in each direction - a data line and a clock line. So I guess the bit recovery was done by the AT+T gear - maybe, because for all I know AT+T just carried those two signals through from one end to the other, mostly unchanged, and didn't do clock recovery at the far end of each link. Turning the bit stream into packets (framing - i.e. figuring out where the byte boundaries was, and then turning the byte stream into packets) was done by the BBN hardware in the IMPs. The AT+T "modems" (they didn't do everything we now think of modems as doing) were huge - at MIT (which had two AT+T lines early on, when I first became responsible for the IMPs at MIT, and a third later on) the AT+T gear was in a giant rack (about 6' high, and 2.5' square, which was mostly full of stuff). My guess would be that the bandwidth was provided in different ways, at different times and on different links, but that is just a guess. Sorry I can't help more - that's all I know and/or can find out. Noel (talk) 04:38, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley Clark
Well, there are a zillion links to Wesley Clark, and almost certainly all of them mean the general. So although I'd like to make it a disambig page, and then have separate pages for the general and the computer scientist, it's probably too much work to be worth it. If I can figure out the computer scientist's middle name, we can put his page under that (or. more likely, his initial), with a note somewhere on the main Wesley Clark page to refer to it. Noel 17:04, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I believe the MIT Wesley Clark you wish to disambiguate is Wesley A. Clark, as referenced here: Participants in the LINC Evaluation Program -- Tracy 10:25, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Oooh, thanks for dredging that up! Noel (talk) 12:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

images?
[[:Image:First-arpanet-imp-log.jpg|source:The Computer History Museum (fair use)]]

[[:Image:Arpnet-map-march-1977.png| source:The Computer History Museum (fair use)]]



Leonard Kleinrock
I e-mailed Leonard and he outlined that the following was incorrect in the ((cur) (last) 08:23, 4 Nov 2004 Jumbuck m (robot Adding:id)) entry:

This is what was originally in the entry: "Leonard Kleinrock had performed tests on store and forward message systems in 1961, and wrote a very important book in 1964 covering queueing theory and routing in store and forward networks, although this work did not include the concept of breaking a user's message up into smaller units for transmission through the network."

Leonard wrote to me with the following:


 * Dear Kim,
 * This is not true. In fact, in my July 1962 publication (see my website:  www.lk.cs.ucla.edu) I talk about chopping messages into fixed length units and transmitting them separately over the link.  That material also appeared in my December 1962 PhD Dissertation which was later published as the book that is quoted, "Communication Nets"; you can easily find the description in that book in Section 5.3.  Importantly, you should note that my July 1962 publication was months ahead of Paul Baran's and years ahead of anything that Donald Davies did.  Basically, what I did for my PhD research in 1961-1962 was to establish a mathematical theory of packet networks which uncovered the underlying principles that drives today's Internet.
 * I would appreciate it if you would correct the entry in that link.
 * Best of luck. Len Kleinrock
 * Best of luck. Len Kleinrock

I have updated the page accordingly. However there does seem to be some dispute - so I would like updaters to consult with Lenoard Kleirock before making changes his e-mail address is at www.lk.cs.ucla.edu - it would be even better if we could get Paul Baran and Donalad Davies in the dialog to thrash this out amongst themselves - they could then propose a nice summary that would sort out any inconsistencies - So whoever wants to take this on please be my guest! -- Kim Meyrick 21:44, 10 Nov 2004


 * You need to be careful with Kleinrock's claims, because he has an axe to grind. If you read Baran's page, which I find to be equally incorrect, Baran claims all the credit. Alas, to talk to Donald Davies, you'll need a spirit medium, because he is no longer with us. Before he died, he did dispute Kleinrock's claim. And, needless to say, if you think Baran and Kleinrock are going to agree on a division of the credit, well...
 * As to the 1964 book, here's what section 5.3 says:
 * "The server picks the next message in the queue and performs one unit of service upon it (i.e. services this message for exactly Q seconds). At the end of this time interval, the message leaves the system if its service (transmission) is finished; if not, it joins the end of the queue with its service partially completed .."
 * And that is the entirety of what the book says about the topic. Although no details at all are given, the most plausible reading of what was meant is that some kind of link-local fragmentation/reassembly is being used, not end-end packets of the sort described in Baran's work, and now used in the Internet.
 * I have the 1961 PhD proposal, and I'll look at that now. However, I suggest you be wary about rushing in where angels fear to tread! I would have to go check Hafner's book, but my vague recollection is that she got it about right. Noel (talk) 02:13, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I have now checked both the 1961 thesis proposal, and the 1962 RLE QTR - the former says nothing at all, and the latter has exactly the same language as the book (quoted above). It's worth noting that the book is basically entirely about queueing theory, and is not about engineering a data communication network. The examples given in the book are principally telegram networks, although trucking networks also figure in some cases.
 * I also checked Hafner's book, and she doesn't explicitly rate Kleinrock's contribution, although she implicitly seems to credit Baran and Davies with a key role in coming up with the idea of packet data networks. I think there's something in that - they definitely were thinking of practical data communication systems, whereas Kleinrock's work is very much focused on the theory of queueing, which obviously has a much wider application than just packet networks. And of course Licklider and Taylor were the people who actually had the vision to build a real network. Noel (talk) 04:10, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * PS: DARPA's own history of the ARPANet (see article) nowhere mentions Kleinrock's work as a source of inspiration - but does prominently cite Baran and Davies. Not that I wholly believe that either (I think Roberts' quote about relying on Kleinrock's work is probably accurate), but more to show you that the picture painted by Kleinrock is not universally shared, and that you shouldn't rely on any one source. See also my recent comments at Talk:Packet switching on the subject of Kleinrock's proper share of the credit. Noel (talk) 02:44, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Leonard Kleinrock has responded with the following which i post on his behalf:

"Both comments by jnc miss the point. I was not suggesting that others not be mentioned. In fact, I include the contributions of Baran and Davies in every presentation I make regarding the history of the Internet Jnc's referral to bogus claims is amazing! It may be that he has not looked at the source documents.  Anyone familiar with those documents would be able to provide a more balanced view of the early work than he has articluted." -- Kim Meyrick 18:00, 12 Nov 2004


 * I had to laugh at "I include the contributions of Baran and Davies in every presentation I make regarding the history of the Internet". If you look at every page he has linked to from his "The History of the Internet" links page, most of which he wrote, you will not find a single instance of Baran's name, and Davies is only mentioned once, as the originator of the term "packet".
 * I don't know which documents he is speaking of - I have read all the ones he has posted, and a great number more besides (although I don't have access to RAND's working papers, or the internal archives of DARPA). If he has more original, contemporary documents he'd like to post, I'd be happy to review them. Noel (talk) 22:41, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Date clash
Ah, the joys of people adding stuff to articles piece-meal. At ARPANET it says:


 * the first message ever sent over the ARPANET; it took place at 22:30PM on October 29, 1969.

and then later on it says:


 * The first ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between an IMP at UCLA and another at SRI's

So how could a message have been sent on Oct 29 when the first link allegedly wasn't there until November 21? Alas, I don't have the time right now to ressarch this: can someone else straighten this out? Noel (talk) 00:41, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I see this is still an open question. I'll see if I can figure it out; I need to read to to swap in the protocol development stuff to flesh out that section (everything else is looking pretty good, now). Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Another good addition would be the time zone when this is figured out. I don't usually advocate laziness when it comes to research, but time zones are just a little much. LtDonny (talk) 18:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Link speed
According to :


 * All who I have heard from agree that 50kb was the speed. There were experiments with a 230.4kb service but the concerns were with the economics of renting the lines and the overall computing capacity of the IMPs.

I know Mike Brescia well, he's a very careful engineer, so I would take his data as fairly definitive. I have left mention of the 230KB speed in the article, but said it was not much used due to cost/computing concerns. Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Controversy over invention of packet switching
It might be good to move this section to Internet history or perhaps start a new one on "ARPANET history" so that ARPANET could just be about the actual nature of the network without all the history.--Carl Hewitt 05:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

No thanks, Internet history has its own share of controversy, we don't need more! ;) But seriosuly, there's an article on Packet Switching, this information belongs there, and I'd support a move. --John R. Barberio talk, contribs 13:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, some of the history was previously in the article on packet switching until it was consolidated in ARPANET. Maybe the packet switching article should just be about the technology and we should start a new article on the history of packet switching?--Carl Hewitt 16:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


 * packet switching is currently small enougth that it can take an expansion of its history there, I don't see a need for a seperate article yet. Moving the section. --John R. Barberio talk, contribs 09:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Roberts and credit
I removed this quote from Larry Roberts:


 * Roberts' wrote in his Inernet Chronology that "Although the UK work convinced Roberts to use higher speed lines (50 KB) and to use the word packet, the Rand work had no significant impact on the ARPANET plans and Internet history."

because it frankly conflicts with other things he said, at other times and other places. E.g.:


 * I got this huge collection of reports back at the office, which were sitting around the ARPA office, and suddenly I learned how to route packets. So we talked to Paul and used all of his concepts (Norberg/O'Neill pp. 166)

which is completely 180 degrees away from the first quote!

I don't know for sure what's going on with him. I speculate that in part he's trying to buttress the role of Kleinrock (with whom he had shared an office at MIT, so they were/are old friends, and who has been on a campaign to try and claim credit for packet switching); in part, he also seems irritated (rightfully) at the common myth that "the ARPANET was created to survive a nuclear war". But in any event, with that level of self-contradiction, I don't think one can take anything he says (especially in recent years) as gospel. Noel (talk) 05:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Baran and Roberts
Sigh - another place where the history books seem to disagree! Dream Machine says (pp. 276) that:


 * Meanwhile, Scantlebury had told Roberts one other thing in Gatlinburg. .. they had come across the work of am American who had -again- invented the packet network independently. Baran was his name ... Roberts knew Baran slightly and had in fact had lunch with him during a visit to Rand the previous February.

but Where Wizards says:


 * In December, 1966, when Larry Roberts arrived at the Pentagon ... he had never heard the name Paul Baran. (pp 68) Roberts also learned, for the first time, of the work that had been done by Paul Baran and RAND a few years earlier. (pp. 77)

and I would think they can't both be right. Although I assume the "previous February" above means February, 1966, since Gatlinburg was in October, '67, and I suppose it could have been February, '67 which was meant, which would remove that direct conflict. (Alas, Dream Machine gives no source, so I can't check to verify which one was meant.)

Still, even if it was Febuary '67 (removing the conflict), it's kind of mind-boggling that he could have had lunch with Baran in February '67, when Roberts was already working on the ARPANET (he'd started on that at DARPA at the end of '66), and neither one of them brought up the topic of networking. (I can just imagine the conversation: "So what are you working on now for DARPA?" "Oh, computer networking." "Oh really, I did a big project on that!" etc, etc.)

I shouldn't be surprised if Dream Machine has it right; Roberts probably forgot about it until someone found some old travel records, or something. Noel (talk) 09:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I found a source (probably the one Dream Machine used, but no way to be sure, but that doesn't matter much, since it is corroboration for what Dream Machine says): it turns out that it was February, '67. It's in Baran's oral history interview at the Charles Babbage Institute, pp. 37, but he's quoting from his contemporary desk diary, viz.:


 * "O'NEILL: When you say Roberts came out to RAND, you mean he visited? When would that be, do you remember?
 * BARAN: I really don't remember the dates, so I checked my old calendar (copy attached) and here is what I found: On Tuesday, 28 February 1967 I find a notation on my calendar for 12:00 noon Dr. L. Roberts. On Tuesday, 31 October 1967 I see a notation 9:30 AM to 2:00 PM for ARPA's (Elmer) Shapiro, (Barry) Boehm, (Len) Kleinrock, ARPA Network. On Monday, 13 November 1967 I see the following: Larry Roberts to abt (about?) lunch (time?). Art Bushkin = 1:00 PM. Here. Larry Roberts IMP Committee. On Thursday, 16 November 1967 I see 7 PM Kleinrock, UCLA - IMP Meeting."


 * So that does take out the conflict with Where Wizards (and confirms that Dream Machine had it right). Still, it leaves us the problem of why on earth Roberts went to see Baran after he started working on networking, unless it was to talk about Baran's work - and what on earth would they have talked about other than networking, anyway? I suspect that Roberts simply forgot (years later) about this. Noel (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Art Bushkin: I don't know how to make an entry here, and I don't recall the specific meeting, but I knew and worked with Paul Baran and Larry Roberts during that time period. Paul Baran testified before Congress during hearings (I don't remember when) on the subject of a National Data Center.  The crux of his testimony was the fears of a National Data Center existing in single, large-scale computer were based on an erroneous assumption regarding the way that technology would emerge.  Rather, Baran testified that there would emerge a distributed network in which many interconnected computers would create the effect of the feared National Data Center without a single central computer or locus of control.  Baran's testimony and other writings, etc., greatly influenced my involvement in this field.  As an intern at ARPA in the summer of 1967, and then as a consultant thereafter, I worked on privacy and security of information, and the early creation of the Internet (I invented nothing and was a very minor participant.).  Baran was to me, and others, an influential thinker, and I recall speaking with him often about the use of the emerging technology, not just the network development. 24.250.118.155 23:57, 29 January 2006 (UTC) Art Bushkin

A wise point
BTW, that Baran interview (a few pages on) has some interesting thoughts on attribution, which I reproduce here because they are so incredibly apt:


 * My experience with innovations is that everything has a predecessor event or events. ... The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral. Over the course of several hundred years: new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, 'I built a cathedral.' Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, 'Well, who built the cathedral?' Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.


 * Too often history tends to be lazy and give credit to the planner and to the funder of the cathedral. Maybe we should take the care to avoid the simplifications and say, 'Okay, this person did this or did that, and that person did so and so.' No single person can do it all, or ever does it all. But we are lazy and tend to give all the credit to a single person most closely identified with an activity and forget all the others who really made it all possible.

Having been there myself :-), I an in absolute, perfect agreement with these sentiments. Noel (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting factoid
Davies found out about Baran's work from a MoD official after a presentation he gave at NPL in March, 1966. Source: Norberg/O'Neill, pp. 161. Noel (talk) 09:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Charles Herzfeld, Citation
I added a bit about Mr. Herzfeld's statement on the impetus for ARPAnet. However, I have a hard time seeing where to put the links I used as reference. I admit ignorance of the protocol for citation (e.g., what I should make a note (named reference?), and what deserves simply an external link. Therefore, I will give them here, and anyone interested in polishing my contribution, please do, with my thanks.

I took the quote from an article at about.com. For credentials on Mr. Herzfeld, I looked to his entry at the staff pages of Potomac Institute.


 * That's kind of dangerous. Please see Verifiability, No original research, and Reliable sources.  For how to actually find good sources, see How to write a great article. --Coolcaesar 20:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've corrected where the article says Herzfeld was "director of ARPANET from 1965 to 1967" since the 'net didn't exist before 1969. Rick Smith 18:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible vandalism in progress
Some clown who clearly never read any of the early RFCs just moved the article to ARPANet, which was NEVER the title of the network. That constitutes original research in violation of Wikipedia's strict no original research policy. It may also constitute possible use of Wikipedia as a soapbox in violation of What Wikipedia is not. I am posting my message to that user below. To all admins tracking this article: I suspect that User:Nethac DIU is a troll who should be blocked for possible vandalism.


 * Please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia core policies before making drastic changes, or they will be classified as vandalism and reverted, and you will be blocked as a vandal. These policies, particularly NPOV, are non-negotiable, according to Jimbo Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation.  See No original research, Neutral point of view, and What Wikipedia is not.
 * If you actually bothered to review the early RFCs, nearly all of which are freely available online from the Internet Engineering Task Force, you would have realized the ARPANET was the standard spelling from 1972 onward. Yes, prior to 1972, the network was called the ARPA Computer Network or just the Network for short, but ARPANET (in all caps) became the dominant usage after 1972.  And ARPANet was never in widespread use.
 * For examples of the ARPANET usage in 1972, see:, , and . For an example of the earliest discussions on the ARPA Computer Network, see:.

We need an admin to clean up Nethac DIU's mess immediately. --Coolcaesar 20:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * To clarify further: The problem is that even if ARPANet may be the more grammatically correct usage, longstanding Wikipedia policy is to defer to the "common name" of a topic, even if that name is grammatically incorrect or politically incorrect. This is the same policy used by all major encyclopedias, including Britannica, Encarta, World Book, Americana, etc.
 * If Nethac DIU has an issue with that policy, he or she should directly contest it at Naming conventions, but it is highly unlikely that anyone will support a change of the policy. Most Wikipedians recognize that in order for WP to gain acceptance and legitimacy, it will need to follow a few of the basic policies commonly used by other encyclopedias, including having a similar article naming system.  --Coolcaesar 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've fixed the vandalism for now. The article is back at ARPANET. --Coolcaesar 20:33, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, those of us who were actually involved at the time, the terms were ARPAnet (and DARPAnet). The 'all caps' that one occasionally sees referred to in RFCs happened because many computers at the time had single case, typically upper case only. However, we actually referred to it as ARPAnet, since the 'net' part was not the initials of an acronym. I believe this has been mentioned before.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry...
Well, I were wrong. I thought ARPANet was the official name, and I've seen written ARPANet, with two last letters in lower-case. I'd never think that would make such a problem.

But then, ARPANet is incorrect because it is traditionally ARPANET, or just a non-standard spelling?

—Nethac DIU, complaints, suggestions?— 20:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Originally, it was ARPA net, compacted to read ARPAnet. SOMETIMES ARPANET APPEARED IN SENTENCES LIKE THIS, because early keyboards had only one case, usually upper.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 21:51, 8 November 2008 (UTC).

More vandalism
I deleted "YOU SUCK" someone put in the middle of the article. I am a newbie to Wiki, but I think it was the user 207.63.191.20. Can some1 ban him if its true pls. Gavin 00:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

See what happens when Weird Al does a video for White and Nerdy? Chris-marsh-usa (talk) 02:23, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Lint Much? Shouldn't use an autolint sys Not loose enough Haskell or 4chan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:280:4E80:1799:92C:DA28:B6AC:BC25 (talk) 23:29, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Growth?
The section on the growth of the network has: "By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a new host being added approximately every twenty days." and a few lines later "In 1984, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANet was broken off as a separate network, the MILNET. Prior to this there were 113 nodes on the ARPANet."

Which is confusing if not contradictory. Can anyone shed any light? Citations would help. --Philbarker 16:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)--


 * I think "node" means IMP, and each IMP connected to several nodes. After TCP/IP, each port could even be a router with thousands of hosts behind. Need to clarify. W Nowicki (talk) 00:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

DARPAnet
I needed information on DARPAnet (when the philosophy and name change occurred, etc). However, keying DARPAnet redirected me to ARPAnet, which isn't precisely synonymous. Further, the ARPAnet article contains no mention of DARPA at all. What gives? Shouldn't readers be able to find this on Wikipedia?

Also, I'm curious why the ARPAnet is fully capitalized? I no longer have reference material from the era, but I believe ARPAnet was the original spelling.

regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 10:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Many of the early RFCs from the early 1970s refer to ARPANET, in all caps (or all lower case), making mixed case impossible. (see, e.g., RFC 321 and RFC 333.  As far as I can tell, none of the RFCs ever referred to it as DARPANET.--Coolcaesar (talk) 15:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * In that early era, many keyboards, screens, TTYs, and especially keypunches were all caps. However, I refer to mixed case references, typical of late 70s – early 80s. ARPA (and DARPA) were acronyms, and the "net" was appended.


 * You're both literally and technically correct that ARPAnet was the official name. The DARPAnet term came into use after the Defense Department took over ARPA (making it DARPA). Here's a reference here:
 * http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml
 * Note the mixed case in the article.


 * Would anyone be opposed to correcting the all caps to mixed case, supported by a Redirect?


 * regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 14:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Then I'll proceed with rename to ARPAnet.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, this has been blocked. Seeking explanation.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:54, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Gem of a phrase

 * ...the switching nodes and network links were not highly reliable, even without any nuclear attacks.

+1 to whoever wrote this gem of a phrase. May it remain on Wikipedia for ever. Tempshill (talk) 18:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

what do we call arpanet today
what do we call arpanet today?

--69.38.215.226 (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)w


 * The internet. --UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Still queasy about name change to ARPAnet, there is no historical foundation for that
I'm still queasy about UnicornTapestry's insistence on changing the article title from ARPANET to ARPAnet. As a history major who specialized in the history of computer science and computing, I've read hundreds of books and thousands of articles and ARPAnet has always been used only by a tiny minority of them.

All major books on the history of the Internet (which judging from their bibliographies are all based on thorough reviews of primary sources) consistently use the spelling ARPANET. Examples include Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Hafner & Lyon (a husband-wife team of technology journalists), Casting the Net by Peter Salus (who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and is an accomplished computer scientist and historian), Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (both professional historians), and Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate (also a professional historian). There are also a few books that use ARPAnet, but they tend to be non-historical books by persons who are not historians, who are merely mentioning ARPANET briefly before transitioning to a different topic; an example is Executive Strategy by Frederick Betz. I haven't found any book by a professional historian (who by training would be careful to mirror the usage in the primary sources) that uses ARPANET.

Also, UnicornTapestry's claim that ARPAnet was the intended usage in the older RFCs but couldn't be typed due to lack of lower case has no historical support and is mere unsupported speculation. For one thing, it's immediately obvious from running a Google search on the RFCs for the term ARPANET that the overwhelming majority of RFCs use the spelling "ARPANET," especially the ones published prior to 1990 when ARPANET was still alive. Furthermore, even back in 1971 it's clear that several of the ARPANET sites could handle upper and lower-case text, as evidenced by the ongoing discussions over how to properly handle text transmission over TELNET connections between those sites and sites that could handle only upper-case text. This debate is preserved in several RFCS such as 139, 206, and 318.

From what I can tell, the first published sources using the spelling ARPAnet were Ed Krol's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet (1987) and his subsequent book, The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. (1993) (of which excerpts were heavily quoted and attributed in RFC 1462). But Krol didn't get involved with the Internet until 1985 and did not publish RFCs prior to 1987, which makes sense because he was at NCSA in 1985 when it got the contract to move the Internet from ARPANET to NSFNET and therefore wasn't really involved in ARPANET per se prior to the contract. Practically all RFCs use ARPANET, with a couple using Arpanet (RFCs 508 and 756). RFC 3869 uses ARPAnet in a brief discussion of Internet history, but that's probably borrowed from the spelling Krol introduced.

The point I'm getting at is, it's obvious that ARPAnet is a neologism invented after the fact by Krol or someone he knew at NCSA during the time period when ARPANET was being phased out in favor of NSFNET (1985-1990). But ARPANET during its period of development (1967-1972) and its heyday (1972-1985) was consistently spelled as such. Wikipedia should reflect the actual historical record as evidenced by the actual spelling recorded in the vast majority of RFCs and the literature by professional historians and technology journalists who have reviewed numerous primary sources and interviewed all the key ARPANET players (Engelbart, Taylor, Kleinrock, Licklider, Kahn, Cerf, et al.). Wikipedia should not reflect after-the-fact, groundless wild speculation based on a rather thin reed: the fact that some computer terminals during the relevant period could not support lower case. In law school, as well as graduate programs for historians, one would be lucky to get a C (if not an F) for building speculative arguments like that with such a thin foundation.

If no one objects, I'm going to revert this article back to the correct spelling within a few weeks. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Naturally, I for one oppose. It boils down to a dedicated history student versus someone one who was actually involved.


 * Don't be too quick to dismiss that TTY (Telex) machines and keypunches of the era (through the mid-to-late 70s) did not have mixed case. Not only were most input machines of that early era monocase, some early CRTs were also monocase. Yes, ASCII and EBCDIC supported full character sets, but sadly, monocase is what most of us had to work with: 026 and 029 keypunches, Telex (and occasionally) TWX machines, and rarely CRTs, themselves seldom dual case. (Some early implementations of C had work-arounds because the colon and semicolon weren't available on some keyboards.) Those are usually what we had available to us for both programming and documention. Recent generations find it difficult to believe how limited our resources were or how we managed to do so much with so little.


 * This doesn't address the issue that ARPAnet (and DARPAnet) are made up of two different components, the acronym ARPA + net. A.R.P.A. stands for something; by implication, N.E.T. is meaningless.


 * With your interest in history, I know you want to get it right. I urge you to further investigate rather than simply make well-meaning changes.


 * Finally, it troubles me that the cry of "neologism" is often brought up which ultimately inhibits discussion. Please understand from my viewpoint, it's the opposite, having those who follow insist (for example) that eMail, eCommerce, DARPAnet, etc, are not mixed case and unintentionally rewrite history.


 * In any case, be of good cheer.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 00:12, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I am already well aware of the situation as to the ability to type lower case on many commercial machines prior to the widespread deployment of terminals like the VT100 and the later generations of the IBM 3270. But that's not relevant.
 * You haven't cited any evidence for your position, such as in the form of a document from prior to 1985 that indicates that the ARPAnet spelling was actually in common use at any of the early ARPANET sites, or an interview or personal memoir by an early ARPANET participant that indicates the same. I also suspect that you probably were not involved with ARPANET directly---otherwise, you could and should have easily trumped my position by simply revealing yourself as the author of one or more of the early RFCs and disclosing which ARPANET site, if any, you were involved with.
 * Lawyers are always careful to distinguish between actual evidence based on being an actual witness to an event or possessing a document or other physical evidence that can be directly attributed to the event, versus inferences. All you have at this point is inferences.
 * If you were not a direct participant in ARPANET development at an ARPANET site (in the sense of actually developing ARPANET hardware or software on a daily basis and interacting with other users over ARPANET), if you didn't author any of the RFCs, and if you can't point to any published RFC or other document that supports your position, then you're simply drawing a rather weak inference based on your personal experiences in the computer industry (which are almost certainly significantly different from what the ARPANET people were going through). That's speculation and that's totally inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. See WP:NOT.
 * And your weak inference is easily rebuttable. Any historian of technology is well aware that commercially deployed technology tends to trail experimental technology by a range of time that varies from five to twenty years depending upon the characteristics of a particular technology.  The classic example is how various features pioneered on NLS in 1968 and on the Xerox Alto in 1973 took anywhere from 5 to 20 years to migrate into the marketplace.  Just because most commercial users didn't personally use computer mice in 1974 doesn't mean they didn't exist; they were simply an experimental technology used only at a handful of ARPANET sites.  Same thing for hypertext, windowed applications, light pens, digital tablets, and many other ARPA-sponsored technologies which indisputably existed by 1970 but simply weren't in broad commercial use.
 * Sorry to burst your bubble, but what you may have personally seen or not seen in the 1970s at some underfunded commercial computer center or timesharing network doesn't mean jack if you weren't actually participating in cutting-edge ARPANET research at one of the well-funded universities or think tanks where all the real action was happening during the 1970s. The ARPANET sites, particularly the Augmentation Research Center, were light-years ahead of the commercial computer industry in terms of what they were doing with hardware and software.  To put it more frankly, your inference is nearly as asinine as describing the state-of-the-art early 21st century supermarket based on a study of small grocery stores in developing countries.  Certainly, they have a lot in common (they both sell groceries), but they also have a lot that is different. The First World supermarkets have superior interior design with wide corridors and bright lighting, professionally trained and attired personnel, and advanced point-of-sale terminals, including some with self-service features. My point is that if you don't have solid evidence, your inferences had better be damned strong, or they just fall apart.
 * Furthermore, I looked into whether any of the early ARPANET sites supported terminals that are known for certain to have supported upper and lower case text through the time period. As you should know, the first two sites were UCLA and SRI-ARC (which together were largely responsible for most ARPANET research from 1968 to 1975 until ARC collapsed from lack of funding). RFC 90 clearly indicates that UCLA Campus Computing Network was using a IBM 360/91KK in 1971 which supported IBM 2741 Selectric typewriter terminals, which clearly had lower and upper case support (besides the diagram in the Wikipedia article, there are several photos available on Google).  RFC 599 indicates that by 1973, UCLA CCN was already supporting ASCII-68 (which included upper and lower case support) with a special feature for switching to ASCII-63 for users at RAND who were using ASR 33 teletypes (which supported only upper case).  And Engelbart's report for SRI-ARC in 1968 indicates that "the alphanumeric keyboard has 94 normal characters in two cases" when describing the early NLS terminals which were being built at ARC. He also mentions that the chord keyset for typing with one hand can be used to generate both upper and lower case text.
 * I think at this point it's fairly obvious that I've thoroughly rebutted your position by showing that the overwhelming majority of sources, both primary (that is, generated during the relevant period by the relevant parties) and secondary (based on careful academic study of the primary sources) used the ARPANET spelling; both of the first two ARPANET sites supported upper and lower case text entry; and that multiple early RFCs demonstrated that lower case was available on ARPANET because people were debating what to do about transmitting text between sites with and without lower case support. If all they could type in was upper case, then such a debate would have made no sense at all (and in fact would have been an incredible waste of ARPA's money, which was being used to subsidize all the research during that time period).  Therefore, the available historical documentation clearly reflects the usage (all uppercase) intended by its authors. Unless you were personally employed at UCLA CCN, SRI-ARC, UCSB, University of Utah, RAND, or any of the early ARPA sites, I strongly urge you to concede the point. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Coolcaesar all points. A Brief History of the Internet, written by people who were definitely involved in the development of ARPANET and who had access to both lower and upper case keys uses uppercase ARPANET throughout. Likewise the journal publications they produced at the time use upper case. On UnicornTapestry's point about "ARPA" being an acronym but not "NET", well maybe it's unsatisfactory but there are other examples, in the UK we have [JANET]. -- Phil Barker 18:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * IBM's Wall Street Data Center and AEC's Courant CDC 6600 Center are "some underfunded commercial computer centers"? Whoa. The snide lawyer assault and offensive remarks are uncalled-for and don't compensate for false assumptions and lack of knowledge about an era you weren't present in. Personal attacks don't make up for a lack of knowledge and aren't suitable for the forum.


 * I believe they've been mentioned above, but there are articles presently on the web that clearly indicate the use of ARPAnet in mixed case.


 * Terminals and monocase: Since the majority of people never had their hands on (and probably never seen) the IBM 2741 and other equipment of that era you refer to, you fail to realize that (a) the dancing ball as shipped was monocase and (b) the keyboard shift didn't change case per se. The IBM 3270s you refer to came out in the 1970s, after the ARPAnet initiative. Beside tty machines, the PDP-1, and other monocase devices, there probably were mixed case terminals, but they would have been expensive and rare. Some Unix terminals didn't even contain colons and semicolons, which led to compiler modifications to handle ".." and ",.". True, both ASCII and EBCDIC supported mixed case, but that's character encoding, not what's directly available on a given terminal or ubiquitous keypunches, which you disregarded. (The usual way to get mixed case input at that time was to use escape character sequences.)


 * I regret I don't follow how the Engelbart report directly relates. Like the mouse it mentions in the article, neither mixed case terminals nor mice were widely available in the 1960s.


 * To say you "thoroughly rebutted" is not the same as personally undercut, which you would not need to do if you were secure in your position. You insist I should be "personally employed at UCLA CCN, SRI-ARC, UCSB, University of Utah, RAND, or any of the early ARPA sites" and "actually developing ARPANET hardware or software on a daily basis" while excluding yourself (a part of the X-Box generation) from these requirements. (I mentioned my associations of the era in the first paragraph, and yes, I'm a developer, OS and teleprocessing.)


 * I proposed correcting the acronym to camel case ages ago, and no other developer objected. My goal was to educate. Snide personal attacks are meant to deter people from commenting. Put them aside.


 * best regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 19:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * N.B: I checked with two different colleagues and got two opposite answers with two different reasonings.
 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The generation thing isn't the issue; your lack of evidence for your position (apart from unreliable personal observations) is the issue. Just to point out, since I specialized as an undergraduate in the history of computer science, I've probably physically handled more dusty old issues of IEEE Computer and Communications of the ACM than you have, not to mention all the research trips to over 100 libraries throughout California during which I've pawed through thousands of old books and periodicals, manually skimmed several miles of microfilm, and run hundreds of searches against all major academic and commercial databases.  Three times, I've spent an entire day visiting Stanford Special Collections at Green Library to review Douglas Engelbart's papers under the extremely strict access conditions for such important historical materials (the prohibition on digital cameras and the requirement of writing up a detailed form just to order photocopies are quite annoying). Also, pay attention to who took the photo of DARPA headquarters in Arlington for Wikipedia earlier this year.
 * Frankly, I am appalled that you don't understand how the Engelbart report directly relates. For someone who purports to be interested in the history of ARPANET, that's a big problem.  To make it crystal clear: ENGELBART'S SITE WAS THE FIRST NETWORK INFORMATION CENTER and produced many if not most of the early RFCs! This has been extensively discussed in published works by many historians, journalists, and sociologists, especially sociologist Thierry Bardini, currently the leading expert on Engelbart's work.  It's also general knowledge among all professional Internet historians (including the ones I've already cited) as well as the entire ARPANET technical community (which you were clearly not a member of).  If you actually bothered to sample a few dozen of the early RFCs at random (I have), you'd soon realize that a huge number of them are written by people at SRI-ARC, which refers to the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute, which Engelbart founded.
 * Also, it is PRECISELY MY POINT that the technology described in the Engelbart report was NOT WIDELY AVAILABLE in the 1960s; but it is also my point that it did exist and was in use at SRI-ARC (and by 1974, at OFFICE-1, a Tymshare-owned mirror of NLS, which is mentioned in RFCs 609 and 620). The ARPANET community was relatively small and close-knit prior to the NSFNET transition which started in 1985, because the network was run first by ARPA and later by DCA, both of which preferred to keep commercial companies off the network except for contractors working directly on ARPANET hardware, like BBN.  The ARPANET people, especially at SRI-ARC, were working with expensive and rare technology because it has always been ARPA's mission to stimulate revolutionary technological advances that give the United States an overwhelming advantage over its adversaries (that's why today it does crazy things like the DARPA Grand Challenge).
 * Also, regardless of your understandable rage at having your comprehension of your own industry questioned, you're also forgetting that Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research (such what you personally observed). As you should know, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on verifiable, reliable published sources (I have managed to persuade ArbCom to ban one editor banned for consistently violating these core policies).  I have cited a small mountain of such sources, including both primary sources from the time period and secondary sources from later experts.  All you have to fall back on is your own personal observations, since the published historical record does not support you (have you found yet a RFC published prior to Ed Krol that used "ARPANet?"), you clearly never visited any ARPA sites, and you still are resisting the fact that ARPANET sites like SRI-ARC were way ahead of the commercial commercial industry.  But personal observations not already documented in a source published elsewhere are improper for Wikipedia.
 * Keep in mind, it is precisely because ARPANET was so advanced for its time that most people who worked in the 1960s commercial computer industry consider themselves lucky to get a footnote in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (itself a rather obscure journal), while ARPANET researchers get all the press attention (Vinton Cerf, Robert Taylor, and Leonard Kleinrock come to mind), and J.C.R. Licklider and Douglas Engelbart are both the subject of published book-length biographies.
 * Finally, the reason I didn't object earlier when you first proposed the change was because I was too busy with my practice. But it kept nagging at me because I knew from reviewing hundreds of primary sources from that time period that the historical spelling was, and always has been ARPANET.  Finally, when I had the time, I was able to double-check and verify that ARPANET is the correct spelling. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, both of the designers of TCP/IP have consistently used the ARPANET spelling. Vinton Cerf was interviewed in 1990 by Judy O'Neill when it was just beginning to become clear that the Internet would be important. The transcript is here.  Note how the spelling is consistently ARPANET (and keep in mind that this transcript was intended to be used as a primary source by future historians, which means that the transcript would have been edited for accuracy).  Robert Kahn used the spelling ARPANET in 2003 when he looked back at the history of the network.  I doubt that both men, clearly already aware of their place in the history of technology, would have been sloppy about spelling the name of the network they worked on!
 * Ever heard of the Nickelback song "Rockstar"? "I'm tired of standing lines when I'm never getting in, it's the bottom of the ninth and I'm never going to win, this life never turned out the way it was supposed to be..." Unfortunately, not all of us get to win the National Medal of Technology like Kahn and Cerf. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

J.M. McQuillan, "The New Routing Algorithm for the ARPANET," IEEE Transactions on Communications, COM-28, 711-719, May (1980). And many others with ARPANET in the title from BBN in the appropriate time period. BBN designed the thing, I suppose they knew how to spell it when they were writing about it. I have several college level textbooks that use ARPANET from 1984 and 1988. Note that NSFNET and TYMNET and all of the networks at the time capitalized the "net". I have several books that use the sequence "the ARPA network" often and one from 1988 that uses "the ARPA net" once (notice the space between ARPA and net): perhaps this is how the confusion started. I have to agree with Coolceasar in that the sources overwhelmingly show that the appropriate spelling should be "ARPANET" with a redirect from "ARPA network" and "ARPA net". But, I do not agree with personal attacks: please keep the discussion respectful. — Dgtsyb (talk) 12:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have been asked to comment. I don't know all the rules and protocols here, but I'll do my best. For those who don't want to read to the end, both sides are right in their own way.

When historians say that modern man finds it almost impossible to understand the context of past eras, they usually speak of 400 years or 4000 years ago, but we see it's difficult to understand as little as 40 years ago. To me, our young lawyer friend cops an attitude that if you remember the 60s you weren't there. Be that as it may, let's look beyond the rhetoric.

First, the implication leveled about working in small mom and pop shops. In the mid 60's, there were no small mom and pop shops. Computers were so valuable, we recycled antique Bendix, Burroughs and Honeywells into what you'd call today print servers and spoolers. If you had a computer, you were one of three things: a major corporation, a major government agency, a college or university. Remember what Al Gore said in 1992, that they were shocked when they came into the White House and found typewriters instead of computers. (I grant you the preceding administrations were behind the times, but it serves to demonstrate.)

Typewriters segues us into keyboards. I can appreciate when our lawyer friend points to documentation dated 1968 that refers to a mixed case terminal, that he seems to assume (or not, because the argument sounds like doublespeak) mixed case must have been in common use, like assuming an 1940's ad for automatic transmissions meant all cars must have had them. All caps terminals were the norm through about 10 years later. Computer languages required all caps and wouldn't have known what to do with lower case if available. APL, an interesting language, found only limited distribution partly because it used characters not found on ordinary keyboards.

Ourselves were a little ahead of the curve, but it was only about 30 years ago that mixed case keyboards for programmers were to be found in most every shop. Before that, if you wanted mixed characters, you had to use gawd-awful SGML or other specialized text manipulation programs. Until 20 years ago, newspapers and magazines used typesetters and not computer data entry people.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned ADA, but it wasn't till C rolled around that we saw the first widely popular language accepting mixed case. Then, you could distinguish old school from the new young guys because old timers banged out all caps and young guys banged out all lower case. This both argues for and against both positions.

The ORIGINAL original term? Probably ARPA Net or ARPA net (or possibly even ARPA NET, DARPA Net, etc.) Somewhere along the line they were jammed together. I can see that mixed case is a little more meaningful, in other words, using lower case net implies a level of semantics not found in the all caps version, but I don't know if any of us were thinking about that back then. Certainly 25-30 years ago, you saw ARPAnet floating about. 40 years ago, you did not, at least as I recall. Does that make mixed case a neologism as our young lawyer argues if it became common only during the last 30 out of 40 years? Or does it imply ARPANET itself is neologist compared to ARPA Net? That's not up to me to decide.

Our developer friend argues that 40 years ago that using mixed case was well-nigh impossible. Let's say it was difficult. S/he is right about having only all caps keyboards. That's mostly what was available. Programmers didn't change case if they didn't have to because you had to jump through hoops to get it. (Does anyone remember what a double-punch was?) In fact, we didnt' know what "case" meant. Same with the DOD guys, they wouldn't know the shift key on their typewriters if it bit their little finger.

There's another complication no one's brought forward. I once wrote an article describing General Electric's Network for Information Exchange, or GEnie. General Electric used mixed case and so I used mixed case when writing the article, but by the time editors stuck their oars in, the final story read GENIE. 20 years later, which version is considered historically correct?

As I said at the beginning, both sides have their points. I've limited spelling the term more than once out here so not to influence. I'm cautious because lawyers love to win rather than search out the truth. The sneering doesn't impress me and that saying he's appalled we didn't know we had mixed case terminals or would know IEEE journals. That having been said, though, doesn't mean s/he must be wrong---or right, or that their developer friend is either. It's not clearcut unless you decide upon rules of engagement. Was mixed case 25-30 years ago right or should you now specify all caps from an era when that's all they had? Me, I'm not going to let that GEnie out of the bottle. You decide, I'm going fishing.

Been there, done that. Deke 64.45.228.207 (talk) 06:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The typewriters that BBN typed their IEEE papers on were mixed case. The typesetters for IEEE print set them in mixed case.  The books written at the time were typeset in mixed case.  It really doesn't matter what a terminal did or didn't do: we are not citing a an old FORTRAN or COBOL computer program. (BTW I used to code in APL: on an IBM Selectrix Typewritter off of an IBM 14000 series mainframe back in 1971, and gee, it had mixed case as well as all those greek and mathematical symbols.)  — Dgtsyb (talk) 12:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Kudos to Dgtsyb for siding with the side supported by the historical evidence. It sounds like UnicornTapestry and I are talking past each other at this point.  I am going to go ahead and fix this article in the New Year. If you want to start an edit war, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (and then I suppose at that point ArbCom would have to get involved).


 * The basic problem is that UnicornTapestry keeps relying upon his (or her) alleged personal knowledge without citing actual documents in support of his/her position, in violation of official policy No original research. If you published your personal account in a reliable hard copy journal several years ago, you can put onto Wikipedia a summary of your points with citations to that journal (which is fine because one or more editors would presumably have read and edited your assertions for accuracy).  But if you are attempting to use Wikipedia as the first publisher of personal observations, that's a no-no.  That's what UnicornTapestry is doing by making the assertion (unsupported other than by his/her personal observations) that ARPANET was not really intended to be spelled as ARPANET, even though ARPANET appears consistently in the published record for almost twenty years before Ed Krol introduced the ARPANet spelling in 1985.  No original research is one of Wikipedia's core policies, going back to the earliest days of the project, and as Jimbo Wales and ArbCom have repeatedly emphasized, it is non-negotiable.  Ultimately, all Wikipedia can rely upon is the published record, and the published record from the 1960s and 1970s shows ARPANET.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, talking references: the RFC database has 88 lines in which ARPAnet occurs, and 3045 lines in which ARPANET appears; ARPAnet appears in 23 RFCs; ARPANET appears in 356 RFCs. What is even more is that ARPANET appears in the title of 24 RFCs (RFC 254, RFC 302, RFC 308, RFC 351, RFC 364, RFC 369, RFC 423, RFC 508, RFC 511, RFC 518, RFC 584, RFC 585, RFC 600, RFC 619, RFC 635, RFC 662, RFC 714, RFC 757, RFC 802, RFC 851, RFC 852, RFC 871, RFC 878, RFC 1005), whereas ARPAnet never appears in the title of an RFC.  I suppose glaring errors are always fixed in titles, but not so much deep in the text.  I can't find it spelt ARPAnet in a single text book.  Anyone? — Dgtsyb (talk) 10:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's be crystal, cc-- you don't have a consensus. We've a wide and varied history as several have pointed out and not everybody thinks or writes the same. Let's make a deal-- you don't instruct us computer people and we won't tell you how to run your legal pages. I appreciate you've got thousand of edits, but please not to overstep. We can work it out ourselves without a lawyer.
 * Dgtsyb, are you sure that was a 14000 series? Client434 (talk) 23:01, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Slip of the finger (or brain): it was a 1400 series. Had to change the ball on the typewritter to get APL characters.  It had one of those acoustic coupler modems (later replaced with a data set).  Late 1968 thruough early 1970. — Dgtsyb (talk) 02:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not relevant that CoolCeasar is a lawyer. It may be relevant that he was a history major specializing in computer history (taking him on his word). But what's really relevant is the usage ARPANET vs ARPAnet in contemporaneous accounts and subsequent published accounts by those involved. Sure, sometimes they may have been constrained by using terminals that supported uppercase only, but it seems to me that there's plenty of ARPANET usage in RFCs and articles where lower case was available. -- Phil Barker 17:17, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I said previously that I appreciated cc has made thousands of edits. What I left unsaid is that some of us didn't appreciate the way he smears and sneers as he's done for years and is demonstrated here. cc relies upon ridicule to win his arguments. If you're winning, he'll ignore your points and leer at your spelling errors. He likes to argue that lawyer logic is somehow superior to computer logic or the reasoning of others. He's like Karl Rove's advice how not to lose, not to debate your opponent, but destroy your opponent. He tells it like it wasn't. I hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned above, but we really didn't have mixed case (generally) available to us even though cc argues otherwise, and then he screams original research when someone tries to tell him how it really the times really were. TeX and sgml had to have provisions to convert case because most computers couldn't. Check the logs- None of this is new, he's been doing this for years. Notice that old time geeks didn't take up the cause because the terms been used both ways. Frankly cc (and some others like him) are the reason many of us stopped editing. We didn't need the personal attacks. Has ut been back since cc smeared them? The problem Phil is that cc's in the room drive those with real knowledge out. Well, about now someone we all know will be invoking WP:I'mRightYou'reWrong. Gotta run. Client434 (talk) 01:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I look in from time to time to see how the debate rages. I gave up trying to make a dent, particularly when Caesar failed to recognize the AEC or the CDC 6600, the most powerful supercomputer of its day.


 * After watching the debate and talking to past and present colleagues, I've concluded there can't be a clear-cut answer. Perhaps the sensible thing to do is write a paragraph regarding it.


 * Dgtsyb, what were you using APL for? A 1400 with APL has got to be one of the most peculiar marriages with its curious architecture and limited character coding. I had an emulation group under me and I vaguely remember it used a delta (kind of a mode-setting escape character) with BCD which didn't support lower case at all. Was this in the US?


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 04:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I was using APL for Hexapawn game trees and Grade 5 and 6 algebra teaching programs, in Canada (it was a University of Alberta mainframe). Actually there was one character we couldn't get without an escape (ceiling or floor as I recall: gee there are no symbols on Wiki for these... ...does that mean that APL should be Apl ;) — Dgtsyb (talk) 20:23, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... a brand new editor jumping in as Client434, whose position is almost precisely aligned with UnicornTapestry, and also manages to make a lot of empty ad hominem arguments based on personal observations without providing any substantive citations to support his/her position...the possibilities are fascinating...I hope no one here is engaging in sockpuppeting, or else they will be banned really, really quickly as soon as an admin starts running Checkuser. That's how User:Ericsaindon2 got permanently banned after I persuaded ArbCom to impose a temporary ban on him and he tried to evade the ban with sockpuppets.


 * Anyway, since it sounds like UnicornTapestry is reluctantly conceding the point, I will proceed with the necessary edits to this article and the other Internet-related articles in a few days when I have the time to do it right.--Coolcaesar (talk) 09:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Coolcaesar, your ad hominem remarks are both incorrect and offensive, nor did I 'concede the point'. Winning at all costs is not what this is about. Remove your insinuation now.


 * --UnicornTapestry (talk) 22:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * New editor or not, it is a good idea to assume good faith.


 * I'm happy that you're planning to edit the article. It may be worth a paragraph on the alternative names. Deke wrote this in his contribution "The ORIGINAL original term? Probably ARPA Net or ARPA net (or possibly even ARPA NET, DARPA Net, etc.) Somewhere along the line they were jammed together. I can see that mixed case is a little more meaningful, in other words, using lower case net implies a level of semantics not found in the all caps version, but I don't know if any of us were thinking about that back then. Certainly 25-30 years ago, you saw ARPAnet floating about. 40 years ago, you did not, at least as I recall." which might contain the kernel of what should be said. I think it is (partly) justified by contemporary evidence such as some of the early "ARPA NET MAPS", see for example. -- Phil Barker 18:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Two things, well three
 * 1) A paragraph about the divergence of capitalization used at the time may be a good solution.
 * 2) For reasons of nostalgia, I prefer all caps, since there was a dear time I so well remember that only caps were available, and it is clear that all caps were sometimes used, and no contemporaneous documentation of desire to use the lower case. And it would be a subtle reminder of the state of the technology at that time.
 * 3) What about the AlohaNet? It was an CSMA/CD wireless network in Hawaii. Oops. It's in wikipedia already: ALOHAnet, and I see a capitalization issue here as well. ( Martin |  talk • contribs 17:59, 6 December 2009 (UTC))

Datagraphs?
The article text says "disassembling data into datagraphs, then gather [sic] these as packets" but never explains what a datagraph is. Apart from the bad grammar, the sentence is confusing as I can find no reference to the word "datagraph" (other than as meaning a graph plotted from a set of data, or as a trade name). The closest I can find is "datagram" but that has a very specific meaning within the context of the User Datagram Protocol which is analogous to the term "packet" within the context of the Transmission Control Protocol, so I don't think that is what the original poster meant. Any clues, anyone? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 03:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion
Would the Growth of the network chapter be more readable if the information was presented as a table of dates and corresponding IMP amounts? --84.249.164.59 (talk) 01:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Multiple connections anomaly
Does anybody have a source or more information about the thousands of connections that were opened up when the initial 4-node network was deployed? The linked reference [5] does not seem to mention it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomScrace (talk • contribs) 00:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the anomaly thing is a joke and should be deleted. There is nothing about it in the reference ([5]) - I think the guy just put a random reference to prevent removal of the sentence. Ldk linux (talk) 18:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Lead section
The lead doesn't explain very clearly who used the network and for what. I think this is essential information that should be included in the lead summary. 86.133.247.170 (talk) 02:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC).


 * Sorry to take a year and a half, but I agree the lead section needs work. In particular, it says the network was "created" at MIT and DARPA, which does not match any source. The sources say the contractor was BBN and DARPA (then ARPA, sigh) provided the funding. Now certainly given the "revolving door" it turns out BBN is down the street from MIT and many people were MIT alums, and the program manager was also from MIT. But the first nodes were in California, so very misleading. Needs to set context in the lead, not delve into details pushing one Alma Mater. W Nowicki (talk) 00:28, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

DARPA/ARPA
The lead paragraph says that the ARPAnet was developed by DARPA. Only, DARPA didn’t exist at that time. It was formed to take over ARPA when the CIA no longer wanted to fund it. DoD didn’t want to fund it either, but was essentially forced into it by an uproar from the participating sites. Apologies if this has already been discussed.Objective3000 (talk) 15:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Not sure where you got your info, but it does not seem accurate. See DARPA for the chronology. With only half-sarcasm mode: the same agency was called "ARPA" when they wanted to get money from Democrats (congress or president) but needed to have the word "Defense" in their agency to get money from Republicans. The name switched back and forth twice. In 1975, however, the ARPANET was run by DCA, not DARPA as it became "operational". That needs to be clarified. W Nowicki (talk) 22:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

* * *

The two paragraphs above are pure speculation; I believe every word of them to be incorrect. I know most of it to be incorrect.

The word "Defense" being in there to stroke Republicans is childish silliness -- though it seems reasonable today, when childish silliness is the norm in much of Washington. The fact is that in the 89th Congress Senator Mike Mansfield, a Democrat, indeed the Democratic leader in the Senate, had tacked what came to be called "the Mansfield Amendment" nto some money bill, making it illegal for any military agency to spend money on non-military research. This was a nice pious thought -- that one should stop the military from corrupting civilian research -- but it has no contact with the Real World(tm). ARPA was changed to DARPA, sometme in early 1972, purely as a fig-leaf to give the appearance of compliance with the Mansfield Amndment. The pre-DARPA funding was from the Pentagon, not CIA, and most of the money in most of the years came from the Air Force. Certainly I would be very unsurprised if there turned out to have been some projects (not the Net) which received joint funding from ARPA and from CIA, e.g. in the tapping of Russian cables, some cute stuff that went on in the Baltic, and so on. These projects, however, were operational, with both scientific and military components; they were not research in the R&D sense. The research base and the financing of the secure retaliatory triad is a story which has still not yet been made public, afaik. Johnny Foster, of Livermore and then of the JFK White House, would be one good authority on this. Ed Applewhite's papers, whenever they are made public, will also make some of it clear.

Remember the Agency was up to its ass in Vietnam at the time. Long term scientific and technological studies were the least of its worries. -dlj. david.lloydjones@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidLJ (talk • contribs) 20:48, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Should we change the 1977 picture to one from 1971?
On first glance of the article, seeing the diagram "ARPANET LOGICAL MAP, March 1977" made me think ARPANET was started in 1977 which I knew was wrong. The internet is full of earlier diagrams with one dated "April 1971". Would anyone have a problem if I replaced the 1977 diagram with the 1971 diagram? Neilrieck (talk) 14:37, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think having both would be interesting.Objective3000 (talk) 13:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The ARPANET Dialogues
Found Website with an archive: http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/ --79.232.76.150 (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

First User of Arpanet
Hello,

During the late 80's and early 90's when I was eleven years old, using a dialup modem connected to Tymnet, I switched over from Tymnet to Telnet, and hanging around a government chatroom, a government employee gave me a text message that stated, the outdial number he gave me was to Arpanet, and that I will be it's first user. I connected to Arpanet with this outdial number he gave me and it said on the screen...

(something like) Arpanet. "Operation Red Sand" Government Property and Copyright(r)All Rights Reserved.

Login: Password:

But, I noticed something wrong as if it was not connected at the back to anything, as if it were a splash page. I do not think there was a valid answer to the login and password question.

Can you add me as the first user of Arpanet? maybe, the first user of the Internet evolution? My name is Ken Pochinko, username: Miley Lindsey password: arpanet

70.181.249.210 (talk) 12:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


 * "late 80's and early 90's" is pretty vague and sort of late to be the first user, since the ARPANET was first used in 1969. Do you have any third party sources that can be used to verify your claim? Without that or something like that, it will be hard to add you to this article as "the first user of the ARPANET". Jeff Ogden (talk) 22:49, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Miconception of design goals
I was working for the Department of Defense in R&D support in the 1980's. We were told specifically that ARPAnet (aka DARPAnet) was developed as an interconnected web to provide for continuous computer connectivity in the event of a hostile nuclear strike. Either someone was lying then, or someone is lying now. Unfortunately, I do not have any documentation to verify what I was told by my superiors, but perhaps some research is in order? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.124.92.254 (talk) 15:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, please feel free to do research and add details with sources. An obvious explanation is that motivations behind such a long-term project are not so clear-cut. For example, anyone who has worked in the government research sector knows the careful dance. If one wants to get money from Republicans, put "Defense" in your name and say it is needed to protect America from its enemies. To get money from Democrats, take "Defense" out of your name and say it is needed to promote social justice (or save the environment). So certainly to the Reagan administration I can imagine which justification was used, and which to the congress of the other party. This is not meant to be negative; in fact, there is a basis of truth. The Rand Baran research was indeed done to plan for a survivable military network, and the ARPANET was seen as more reliable and cost-effective than the Autodin project, which led to MILNET etc. That quote is a bit misleading, since the Rand study was not totally "unrelated". This and the previous section should do more paraphrasing with citations from reliable sources instead of quoting web pages verbatim perhaps. The DARPA article does mention the name changes, but we need to be careful to avoid using personal anecdotes. W Nowicki (talk) 17:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I can vouch for the "take Defense out of your name to get money from Democrats". I worked for DTI Associates in Arlington, VA (today a sector of Kratos Defense and Security Solutions) and such was the tale of how the name changed from Defense Technology, Inc: expanding the company into Federal civilian I.T. during the Clinton years. Civilians in the Federal government were averse to the word "Defense". Chris-marsh-usa (talk) 02:32, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * See the discussion below. Clearly nuclear war was one consideration.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/Internet35.htm
 * In Douglas Engelbart on 2011-03-17 15:19:18, 404 Not Found
 * In History of the University of California, Los Angeles on 2011-04-01 02:07:59, 404 Not Found
 * In ARPANET on 2011-06-20 00:57:15, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 00:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Missing a key point: going from military project to university project
I have been studying history of computing for twenty years now, and have read a lot about the origins of Internet. But throughout all these years, some key aspect was always missing, as if everybody forgot to talk about it - so I decided to start talking about it right now. Arpanet, the predecessor of Internet, was a military project - so how, and why, did it go from military project to university project intended for public service? Re-reading this article today I learnt that Arpanet, even tough being a military project, was developed by universities from its very start - but so many unanswered questions remain. Did the Arpanet initial funding from the military (and the CIA too, as I read today from this article and talk) stop, and if so why? I read a professor stating "Arpanet was a failed military project". Was it really deemed a failure by the US DoD? Afterwards, had the universities complete freedom to carry on the project on its own, and if so why there was no secrecy over a former military project, or was it over some parts the universities had to do without? How did happen this "military give away project to universities" thing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ignacio.Agulló (talk • contribs) 16:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes has no ARPANET references
I just watched said movie. No ARPANET references. I'm removing the line. 64.142.28.55 (talk) 23:43, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

What is an Internet-ted Radar System? Possibly Related to Internet Nuclear War Hoax?
Wings Over The Gulf (Discovery Channel) describes Iraq as having had an "Internet-ted radar system [or network]". I am not a military person, but I think the implication is that Iraq's radar network was intended to survive partial destruction. Maybe it has something to do with the now obvious rumor that "The Internet was intended to survive nuclear war". Could a military person elaborate on (a) the concept of radar networks and (b) the Internet-Nuclear War hoax? Chris-marsh-usa (talk) 02:17, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Nuclear war survival myth perhaps not a myth
I think it is unrealistic to suggest that nuclear war survival was not a motivating factor. It seems feasible that it would have came up in discussion at least.

If you look at anecdotal evidence

Mike Muuss at the balistics research facility tested the BSD and BBN implementations of TCP/IP.

Kirk McKusick says they both made suggestions for the benchmark, he says the BSD guys suggested throughput as the goal, and said that BBN suggests:

""how well it works in the face of large packet rate losses" because of course to the military, if you drop a nuclear bomb on chicago, you want to make sure it routes down through dallas"

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds77e3aO9nA at around 34 minutes.

So you've got someone who was around when the TCP/IP implementations ultimately used in ARPANET were being tested, with these pointers to consideration at least for large packet losses. And his belief of a link to nuclear war survival, I think it is a bit naive just to call it a "myth" and completely rule out that there could it could even be a CONSIDERATION. 86.178.32.217 (talk) 16:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that it is wrong to call it a 'myth'. At worst it is an exaggeration. Paul Baran's page says, 'After joining the RAND Corporation in 1959, Baran took on the task of designing a "survivable" communications system that could maintain communication between end points in the face of damage from nuclear weapons' and later, 'In 1969, when the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) started developing the idea of an inter-networked set of terminals to share computing resources, the reference materials which they considered included Baran and the RAND Corporation's "On Distributed Communications" volumes. The resiliency of a packet-switched network that uses link-state routing protocols used on the Internet stems in some part from the research to develop a network that could survive a nuclear attack'. In the Wired interview cited on this page, Baran says, 'I had many, many discussions with the folks at Arpa, starting in the very early '60s.' He adds, 'But the origin of packet switching itself is very much Cold War' and goes on to talk about nuclear strikes.
 * The History of the Internet has a link to an article by Johna Till Johnson which downplays the role of Baran, and claims without evidence that the Internet was developed from economic need.
 * It should be noted that any military research is to some degree secret. At the same time people seem to be going to great lengths to deny the nuclear war connection, including cherry-picking sources.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:37, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

ARPAnet was Not The First
The first sentence of this article, that ARPAnet was the first packet-switched network, is incorrect. The first packet-switched network may have been the proprietary Usenet (same name, different, earlier, Usenet), the network which Digital Equipment used to connect all its customers. At the time when I was user number 300 on ARPAnet, (back when the addresses were all bangs! because TCP/IP hadn't come along yet) in 1971, ARPAnet, or "the Net" as we called it, had seven nodes: MIT, Utah (or Brigham Young, I forget, wherever Ivan Sutherland was), Wisconsin, University of Edinborough, the Brit Defense Establishment, Bolt Beranek and Newman, and somebody on the coast, probably Stanford Research, precursor to today's SRI. At this time, compared to ARPA's seven nodes and 300 users, Usenet had 400 nodes, all DEC's customers, and they loosly kicked around the number 10,000 users, assuming, imho a little loosely, an average of 25 people at each customer site. Then again, it may not have been the first: both MIT and University of Waterloo, Ontario, had packet switched networks in operation pretty early on, quite possibly before ARPA came into the picture. Somebody at Carnegie Corporation would be the person to ask: they wrote the original outlines, four or five three-inch thick binders of good stuff that I read in Toronto in 1962. David Lloyd-Jones david.lloydjones@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidLJ (talk • contribs) 20:23, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * From the History section of the Wikipedia article on Packet switching:
 * The first computer network and packet switching network deployed for computer resource sharing was the Octopus Network at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that began connecting four Control Data 6600 computers to several shared storage devices (including an IBM 2321 Data Cell in 1968 and an IBM Photostore in 1970) and to several hundred Teletype Model 33 ASR terminals for time sharing use starting in 1968.


 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 22:28, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Was the DEC network really packet switching? Any source for it we can see? Might be interesting. The LLL page does not say anything about packet switching in Octopus. As implied by the name, it was a star network so there was not really switching for routing either. There were indeed all sorts of star-shaped networks for connecting terminals to a central computer, so those need to be given credit. Most of the university research projects were either circuit switched, or the packet networks earlier than Arpanet were within a building or at most a campus. The real advance in Arpanet was the distributed nature of the switching: might be safe to say it was the first wide-area packet network, I think? Anyway there is enough hype so we should stick to citable facts. Thanks. W Nowicki (talk) 16:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅. I changed the article's lead from, "The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the world's first operational packet switching network, ..." to "The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was one of the world's first operational packet switching networks, ...". --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 22:38, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * This article has WAY to much WP:OR. Besides, much is false. I know this because I was involved with both ARPANet and DARPANet and the politics at the time and much of this is simply not true. And, there were many, many networks prior. I will not add anything nor make any edits because that would also be WP:OR. But, so much should be removed.Objective3000 (talk) 23:57, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Well a good start might be for you tell us what you think is false. If it not sourced to a citation, it can be removed without any issues of conflict of interest or "original research" (I never like the way Wikimedia uses that term, sigh). It is worse when material is added based on personal observation. Reliable sources are hard to get for something before the Internet age but there should be some. It will take some time. A good part of the problem is that many myths get passed along as truth in "pop" journalism for example, so those need to be treated as less reliable. It will take time and all help is appreciated. W Nowicki (talk) 16:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

ARPANET in popular culture
This section is really quite silly. These are mostly fictional inventions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual ARPANet or DARPANet or anything having to do with these actual organizations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Objective3000 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 11 August 2014‎ (UTC)
 * And getting more and more silly. Is this an encyclopedia? This is embarrassing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Objective3000 (talk • contribs) 23:51, 19 September 2014‎ (UTC)

Minor grammar issue
has twice removed the second conjunction from the following sentence, rendering it grammatically incorrect in American English, the language of this article:

Packet switching was based on concepts and designs by Americans Leonard Kleinrock and Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory. (emphasis mine. reference removed)

His rationale for doing so is that a conjunction only goes at the end of the sentence, but as can be seen, the sentence has three at various points in the sentence, joining elements of various clauses. To remove the bold-faced and creates a problem with the first modifier in the final clause because only Kleinrock and Baran are Americans. To be clear the modifier applies to them, their names are joined by and in the first sub clause, thus limiting the description American to them. The second modifier, British, applies to Donald Davies. Without the limiting conjunction, the modifier American would apply to all of the names the series, as separation by commas would suggest. That leaves us with: Americans Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts, thus creating a new nationality: American British, since both modifiers are now applied to Davies and Roberts.

In other words, to be grammatically correct and accurate, the conjunction between the first two must stay. Hopefully this will prevent an endless edit war over grammatical minutia. --Drmargi (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

TCP/IP Again Called "Foundation." MCI Propaganda?
"The ARPANET was an early packet-switching network and the first network to implement the Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, which became the technical foundation of the Internet." it sez here. I associate this "the technical foundation" stuff very much with the public relations department of MCI, puffing up that company's own importance after they acquired Vint Cert ("Cerf," obviously, but I love "Cert" as a Freudian slip!) as a director or senior officer. (Somebody please correct me on which it was.) MCI's pioneering, to my mind, deserves most kudos not for TCP/IP, but for their microwave line between St. Louis and Chicago, which both demonstrated it, and a lot of other good engineering, no doubt, but also cleared out the legalistic underbrush in Washington, and made it clear to the world that the age of copper wire was over. (Some fashion designer at the time was trying to make us all wear green suits, but I have only ever seen two. One was on the MCI lobbyist who visited my office in the Rayburn House Office Building in 1968 or '69, and the other on a Secret Service man I almost bumped into when President Nixon passed me on his way to the Senate Dining Room about that time. They, the suits, not the lobbyist and the security guy, then vanished without a trace, and upscale polyester was the rag trade's next inane try.) The fact is the Internet was perking along quite nicely, i.e. it had its foundations in place, with all those bang-bang-bang addresses, before the excellent Cerf came along and eased expansion with his development of TCP/IP/. TCP/IP was useful, and is today necessary, but it's the ceiling of the first floor, or maybe the floor of the mezzanine. It's not any foundation. David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 11:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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References

Items numbered 47 through 55 are missing retrieved dates. --Panarej2 (talk) 14:42, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Use of the definite article
Please, it's always 'the' ARPANET. See e.g. the DARPA report "A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade", which always uses the definite article; it never uses the bare term "ARPANET" as a subject, object, etc. I'm not sure how the use of bare "ARPANET" got started (perhaps by someone who wasn't a native English speaker), but it's wrong. Noel (talk)

ARPANET Images
I suppose it doesn't matter much, but there is at least one error in the 1977 ARPANET image in the infobox. Rutgers had a PDP-10 followed by a DEC-20 on the net. They never had a PDP-11; although they later had a VAX-11, not connected to the IMP. O3000 (talk) 12:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)


 * That's the Rutgers IMP - but the "Rutgers" is merely a name for the IMP, it was actually owned by DCA. DCA made the decisions on what hosts were connected to each IMP - and one PDP-11 that's connected to that IMP is, according to a copy of the Hosts file from 1977, host 3/46, "NUSC", a PDP-11/40 running ELF, front-ending a Univac 1108. NUSC probably stands for "Naval Underwater Systems Center" or Command. According to the Hosts file, "UPENN" was also connected to that IMP (host 1/46); the file doesn't say what kind of machine, but according to the map, apparently another PDP-11. You'll notice both of them have a little 'v' in a corner; that means they were both 'Very Distant Hosts', a way to connect up over a phone line that allowed the host to be a long way from the IMP. Noel (talk) 00:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Seems unlikely. I was head of systems and communications at Rutgers when the IMP was installed. But then, even if my memory was perfect, I'm not an RS.:) O3000 (talk) 14:35, 3 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hey, don't take my word for it: you can find a 1977 copy of the Hosts.Txt file at the end of this, with the non-Rutgers hosts on that IMP listed there. You can find confirmation of the meaning of the "v" legend here: the small "v" represents a Very Distant Host (VDH) interface to the IMP. If you want to know more about VDH interfaces, find a later copy of BBN Report 1822. Noel (talk) 00:11, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

ARPANET’s relation to the modern internet
This article could really do a better job of explaining the relation of ARPENET to the modern internet. Some sources describe “the internet” as direct descendent of ARPENET while other suggest it was created as a separate network that operated alongside ARPENET for a short while but using technologies first developed and tried out in mass on ARPENET and that for a time they where operating in parallel before the last bits of ARPENET where shut down. So exactly what is the deal? Was the modern internet essentially what was once ARPENET but now under a different name or did they both exist in parallel at one time, with ARPENET only contributing packet-switching technology to the internet but with both being technically separate networks? Notcharliechaplin (talk) 03:51, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

BBC article
Interesting bit at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49842681 which includes a couple of early maps: one hand-drawn by Larry Roberts dated (by the BBC) 1969, and another undated but apparently preceding the ones used in this article. These are credited Getty but presumably also exist in the public domain.

The latter map is divided into East Coast (Mitre, Burroughs, Harvard, BBN, MIT and Lincoln), West Coast (Rand, SDC, UCLA, Stanford, Ames, SRI and UCSB) and other (Utah, Illinois, Case and Carnegie) sites, and every site is served by at least two connections. MarkMLl (talk) 07:23, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Burroughs is rarely mentioned in this context, but at the time they had a significant involvement with military computers and communications hardware. I'm told that

"From it's position on the map, I suspect it was either the Burroughs Research Center in Paoli, Pennsylvania (suburban Philadelphia), or their Great Valley Laboratories (GVL), about four miles away, next door to the Tredyffrin facility where the B8500, B7700, and other large systems originated. The Tredyffrin is still a Unisys facility, although they no longer own it and have leased it for years. The last I knew, they occupied only half of the building.

"I think the location is likely GVL Building #3. That is where the Illiac IV was assembled in the late 1960s and early '70s. I worked in GVL #1 during the summer and fall of 1970 as a new hire, and my apartment-mate was an electrical engineer working on the I/O subsystem of the Illiac IV. I saw the IV several times. I also saw an IMP in the room with it, although my roommate had to tell me what it was. So there was definitely at least the possibility of an ARPANET node in GVL #3 in 1970.

"The military/special projects would have been next door in the GVL buildings. The Tredyffrin building was originally constructed for the B8500 project, so I think it belonged to corporate engineering. After the B8500 product failed, that site became the home of the B7000-series systems. The military/space business got sold off to one of the big U.S. contractor firms a long time ago (probably in the '90s)."

Above from Paul Kimpel in the context of discussion of his B5500 emulator. MarkMLl (talk) 07:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Commercial partnerships
I'm not sure DARPA contracting with BBN to add TCP/IP qualifies as a commercial partnership - the Department of Defense contracts with commercial entities for a number of reasons.

If the intent here is to discuss commercial adoption of TCP/IP, as per Internet protocol suite, that's the commercial adoption of TCP/IP for non-ARPANET use. As that section indicates, it wasn't just the BBN BSD stack. Guy Harris (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion Guy, I linked to that section in the article. Whizz40 (talk) 09:33, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Time-sharing of mainframe computers didn't require the ARPANET
You can time-share a computer - mainframe or otherwise - by directly attaching terminals to the computer; that doesn't require packet switching or even circuit switching. You can also have dial-up access, which just requires circuit switching on the plain old telephone service network.

In addition, time-sharing normally referred to conversational access, of the sort that, on the ARPANET, was provided by Telnet. The ARPANET also supported FTP and email.

(And, of the four initial machines on the ARPANET, only the IBM System/360 Model 75 is generally considered a "mainframe". The SDS 940 could be considered a midicomputer, and the SDS Sigma 7 could either be considered a minicomputer or perhaps an early supermini; the PDP-10 might be considered a mainframe, but it was generally thought of as a different type of machine from an IBM mainframe.) Guy Harris (talk) 08:30, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree, thanks for clarifying. Whizz40 (talk) 08:34, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Always thought of the PDP-10 as a midicomputer. Even the later Dec-20 I didn't think of as a mainframe, although some called it such. SDS-940 definitely mini. I thought of the SDS/Xerox Sigma series as mainframes, as they used the IBM instruction set, like the RCA Spectra series. RAX was a little used timesharing system on the System/360. Pre-system/360, there was Quiktran on the IBM 7040/7044. Of course there were earlier timesharing efforts. I'm getting old. O3000 (talk) 10:41, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Dubious claim in lede
1st to use TCP/IP? It's my understanding that testing was simultaneous with SATNET, and full adoption was done by others before arpanet? Satnet went over in early 82, ARPNET in Jan 83 (officially, defacto dec 82)...86.142.118.35 (talk) 23:12, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll change the lede to read ARPANET was one of the first to adopt TCP/IP. Whizz40 (talk) 04:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

"By 1973, e-mail constituted 75% of the ARPANET traffic" as a dubious claim
Hey all, Even though it is undoubted and actually referenced that e-mail has grown very quickly in ARPANET traffic since its inception, this actual figure seems unreferenced and even considered as dubious in a recent discussion of the History of computing "SIGCIS" mailing list. References 9 and 84 do not actually state that figure at all and should refer to the previous sentence. I am thus witching the references to the previous sentence,removing the dubious claim, replacing it with a similar, but unquantified, phrasing, adding a valid reference to it. Feel free to discuss it here. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 23:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Quite right. I handled a node and I wouldn't be surprised at the stat. But, I've never seen any actual published stats. O3000 (talk) 00:03, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. Here is a link to the discussion on the SIGCIS mailing list as a ref Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 00:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems there is a source for 75%, which has been referenced in Hafner (1996) and reused elsewhere: Looks like this can be restored in the article. Whizz40 (talk) 20:38, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
 * "By 1973, a study “found that three quarters of all traffic on the ARPANET was email”" (Hafner 1996, p. 194). https://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/isis_review.pdf
 * "An ARPA study in 1973, a year after network email was introduced to the ARPANET community, found that three-quarters of the traffic over the ARPANET consisted of email messages." https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2015/01/02/a-very-short-history-of-the-internet-and-the-web-2/?sh=3fad22937a4e
 * "The report was commissioned by then ARPA director, Stephen Lukasik, who himself was a big fan of email." https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~almeroth/classes/F04.176A/homework1_good_papers/jay-akkad.html
 * "By the early 1970's, three-quarters of all traffic on the Arpanet was e-mail." https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20011207friday.html

Invention of the Internet
The following statement in the last sentence of the lead seems inaccurate:
 * "The ARPANET project was formally decommissioned in 1990, after partnerships with the telecommunication and computer industry paved the way for future commercialization of a new world-wide network, known as the Internet."

This implies that the Internet was newly created after ARPANET was decommissioned, which contradicts established facts, including other Wikipedia articles such as History of the Internet. To suggest that the Internet came about only after it was commercialized is obviously false, as this ignores the fact that email, Usenet, IRC, etc. were developed and active much earlier. The actual infrastructure and technologies of the Internet did not magically change after 1990. The Internet was known as the Internet for many years beforehand. In short, what I am saying, is that the Internet in 1990 was not a "new world-wide network." Laval (talk) 08:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it did not imply this. The text merely implies that this network was more commonly known as the Internet from thereon, while previously it was in fact more commonly referred to as the ARPANET. The new term gradually became more prevalent after the NSF expanded the ARPANET with new infrastructure circuits that had no connection to military funding.kbrose (talk) 14:25, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Reworded to read as follows:
 * "The ARPANET project was formally decommissioned in 1990, after partnerships with the telecommunication and computer industry had paved the way for the adoption of the Internet protocol suite."
 * Whizz40 (talk) 20:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Excellent wording. Thank you. Laval (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Therefore this wording is in fact incorrect, or at least misleading, and untimely because the decision to use TCP/IP was far from final, despite already in use for a decade. It was a pragmatic result from commercial preference of developing TCP/IP applications and products. Many academic participants and the large network operators where still promoting the use of OSI technologies. PS: After the NSF funding expanded the network, the result really was as if a new network had been created. Rarely anyone among the academic drivers of the expansion wanted to connect to the old ARPANET branch, but wanted to connect to the NSFNet to connect to supercomputing centers and exchange datasets, papers, and communications among researchers who were constantly pushing for new, faster circuits. In terms of networking technologies, including network management, this was indeed a new network. Internet2 is a similar expression of that. kbrose (talk) 14:25, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not what the sources say and it is absolutely untrue that the Internet in 1990 was "new," as discussed above. Laval (talk) 03:07, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The sentence does not state that the Internet was new in 1990, but that the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990, AFTER the arrival of commercial partners and build-out.
 * What sources? Sources need to reflect history correctly. By 1990, the TCP/IP suite was already in use for almost a decade, it didn't need any paving the way anymore. In fact many industry players were trying to pave the way for OSI protocols, which eventually failed because of the head start that TCP/IP already had. In many ways, the Internet expansion of 1986 forward was a new network in terms of infrastructure, and even of software (c.f. DNS, for example) as the old IMPs were phased out with modern routing equipment interconnect by new links that completely superseded the old infrastructure.
 * Furthermore, it is widely acknowledged that the ARPANET was a PREDECESSOR to the Internet, and not one and the same, and therefore it is well within bounds that the new network was in fact a new entity. In the academic circles, the main users of the network between 1986 and the very early 1990s, nobody talked about ARPANET anymore, but about NSFNet and Internet. Consequently, the ARPANET was retired in short order.
 * Other Wikipedia articles, such as NSFNET, correctly reflect this history, and pretty much make it clear that a new network came into existence with the NEW BACKBONES of the NSFNET with speeds of 56kb/s, then T1, and T3 circuits, and other regional networks (such as MERIT, and MIDNET,...), and the commercial backbones (IBM/MCI, ANS). kbrose (talk) 16:35, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll drop the word "new", which may suffice for consensus. Whizz40 (talk) 22:43, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * While that might help, some more nuances are important. The DARPA research formulated, specified (in RFCs), developed and tested TCP/IP. International public data networks already existed as commercial services based on X.25, such as the International Packet Switched Service. So private sector expansion and future commercialization was a matter of time, indeed already existed. An internet was inevitable; even if it relied on gateways. Equally, the Internet that we have today, based on the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP including DNS, etc) was not quite assured at that point, as discussed above. It was the DARPA partnerships with the telecommunication and computer industry in the 1980s that had catalyzed the adoption of TCP/IP. That, along with its use on the NSFNET, at CERN and other benefits of TCP/IP compared with its alternatives, made it the protocol of choice for adoption on existing networks (e.g. JANET) as well as for the private sector expansion and commercialization as it happened. But even then its adoption for the Internet also depended on changes in NSFNET policies and ultimately NSFNET retirement as well as legislative changes in the US. We should be clear on what we attribute to DARPA/ARPANET. Whizz40 (talk) 13:15, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Epilogue: dropped the words "new" and "future" and merged the two proposed sentences to read as follows:
 * "The ARPANET project was formally decommissioned in 1990, after DARPA partnerships with the telecommunication and computer industry had paved the way for the widespread adoption of the Internet protocol suite as part of the private sector expansion and commercialization of a world-wide network, known as the Internet."

-- Whizz40 (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Two new sources for ARPANET history
For editors looking to improve or update this article and seeking reliable sources for ARPANET history, I've recently learned of two historical documents from or about DARPA that have been made available online:


 * A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade - published in April 1981 and prepared for DARPA by BBN.
 * DARPA Technical Accomplishments - A Historical Review of Selected DARPA Projects, Volume 1 - published in February 1990 by the Institute for Defense Analyses. The ARPANET text begins on page 20-1 which is page 243 of the PDF. (Note that this document covers a wide range of other DARPA projects and so may be useful for improving the history of those Wikipedia articles, too.)

I don't currently have time myself to see if these sources can help improve this article, but I thought I would leave them here in case other editors do have the time. - Dyork (talk) 12:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)