"This Thing Called the Internet: A Conceptual History" Book Proposal by Ronda Hauben rh120@columbia.edu Table of Contents Preface Introduction Chapter 1 - What is this Thing Called the Internet? What are the Conditions that Nurtured its Birth and Early Development? The birth and development of the Internet is one of the most important developments of the 20th century. People from all strata of society, from government officials to technical workers need to know and understand the Internet. Yet there is widespread confusion about what the Internet is, how it developed and what care and further research is needed to support its continued growth and well being. Though many people know that the Internet grew up inside the U.S. Department of Defense, there is very little knowledge about the nature of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) which provided a protective institutional form to nurture the earliest development of the Internet. This chapter will discuss why it is crucial to understand the origins of the IPTO and of the agency which created the IPTO, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA/IPTO made it possible to support, nourish and give leadership to the development of computer science. Such research has created paradigm change in the use of computers, from batch processing and stand alone computer use to interactive computing and computer networking. This paradigm shift is having a profound impact on the world today. When such technological and scientific changes have been created, it is important to understand the conditions that nourished their birth and gestation. Yet very little is known about the situation and people who made the Internet possible. The purpose of this book is to explore how the Internet developed and how the researchers who were part of the IPTO and the IPT community (IPTC) were supported in their work to accomplish such significant innovative development. Chapter 2 - Creating ARPA as the Needed Interface How institutions with scientific functions have evolved within the U.S. government is a crucial topic for study. A related question which is explored in this chapter is why the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been able to be a home for important scientific and technical innovation. To understand this question it is important to understand how and why the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created within the DoD. The experience of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) created by Vannevar Bush during WWII is summarized in Bush's report to President Roosevelt "Science: The Endless Frontier" In this report, Bush sets out a number of ground rules for the effective creation of an interface between the U.S. government and the scientific community. How do these ground rules help to clarify the environment needed to support basic research in science and technology? What kind of environment was created for scientists by the DoD in ARPA and then in the office created at ARPA for research in information processing, i.e. the Information Processing Techniques Office? This chapter will describe efforts by the U.S. government to define the kind of interface needed for certain kinds of scientific and technical research and how such research was then supported by the U.S. Department of Defense. Chapter 3 - Basic Research for the National Defense and the U.S. Department of Defense: A Paradox? After WWII the question was raised of the appropriate form for a research organization to spearhead research for the national defense. This involved support for basic research in fields that might benefit the U.S. Department of Defense. An early proposal was to put such research into a private organization outside of the U.S. government. But there were objections raised that it was not appropriate to put such government functions outside of the U.S. government. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) was created by the U.S. Congress to support research of interest to the Navy. There were also efforts within the Army and Air Force to support the creation of the appropriate research organizations. This chapter describes these efforts and the tension that developed between the need of the services for basic research and the pressure for applied research. The experience of ONR and the Air Force Office of Science Research (AFOSR) with the tension of how to support basic research given the pressure for applied research is explored, helping to outline the problem that will confront IPTO. Chapter 4 - IPTO Centers of Excellence and Creating a Resource Sharing Network After coming to ARPA in 1962, Licklider sets out to create centers of excellence for computer science research. He initiates the creation of Project MAC at MIT as the first center of excellence. He initiates a center at Carnegie Mellon University. He creates several other such centers. Though it is too early to begin networking research, Licklider promotes a vision of an intergalactic network which inspires those who later take over the leadership of the IPT office, like Larry Roberts. Those who follow Licklider at IPTO take on the challenge of creating the new technology of packet switching to create a resource sharing network for ARPA researchers Also Licklider establishes a tradition of the wide dissemination of the research of the IPT community. This leads to collaboration with researchers in Great Britain at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) under the leadership of Donald Davies with the IPTC. This collaboration will contribute to the early development of the ARPANET, a packet switching network that will be sponsored by the IPTO. Researchers who work on the early ARPANET research recognize the significant impact IPTO computer communication research will have on the world. Chapter 5 - Developing the New Field of Computer Communications A public demonstration of the ARPANET is planned for the ICCC'72 in Washington D.C. Over a thousand researchers from around the world attend this conference and personally experience the power of the ARPANET technology. Researchers at this conference raise the question of who can take on the challenge the merger of computer and communications technological advances will pose to the world. They anticipate the important changes these new developments will bring. As researchers in different countries begin to create packet switching networks to meet their local and national needs, the question of how to link up dissimilar packet switching networks becomes a research problem to be solved. This problem is identified by Robert Kahn who organized the ICCC'72 demonstration as the Multiple Network Problem. Chapter 6 - The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural Conception to Solve the Multiple Network Problem Robert Kahn, a researcher at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) responsible for the system design of the ARPANET goes to work at IPTO in October 1972 after the successful ICCC'72 demonstration. He initiates a program to create a mobile ground packet switching network based on radio broadcast technology. Also he takes on responsibility for an existing initiative to create a satellite based packet switching network. The challenge of making it possible to link these two dissimilar networks with the ARPANET is a technical and scientific challenge. Kahn recognizes that this will require a new architecture and the design of a new protocol to embody the new architecture. This chapter describes how communication science presents a model that is helpful in solving this problem. The conception of an open architecture networking environment will make it possible to solve the Multiple Networking problem. Chapter 7 - Designing the Internetworking Protocol TCP/IP At the ICCC '72 demonstration researchers from around the world formed the International Network Working Group (INWG) to share their research efforts creating packet switching networks. Steve Crocker at IPTO funded Vinton Cerf to head the INWG. Cerf had just gotten his PhD at UCLA and joined the Stanford University faculty. Kahn invited Cerf to collaborate with him on the design for a protocol to embody the open architecture conceptions. The chapter will describe the details of creating the design for the protocol that has become known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). And it will describe the technical aspects of the design. Chapter 8 - Creating SATNET and PRNET and linking them with the ARPANET The details of the TCP protocol implementation were not to be be developed in the isolation of a laboratory. To the contrary, they were born in collaborative research among IPTO researchers and researchers from Great Britain and Norway. Linking Europe and the US via a packet communications network presented the challenge of creating a packet satellite network (SATNET). SATNET was created for the INTELSAT IV satellite, to link the University College of London (UCL) with a site in Norway and with the ARPANET. Research creating TCP also involved developing a mobile packet radio network (PRNET). This chapter will describe the process of creating these networks and how they provided the research environment to create the early specification and implementation for the TCP/IP protocol. Also this chapter will describe how the technical collaboration between IPTO and UCL researchers overcame the political barriers they faced. Chapter 9 - IPTO as the Center of the IPT Community What was it like working in the IPT office? This chapter will present observations and descriptions from the program managers and directors of the office about how the office gave them an important vantage point from which to support researchers in the IPT community. Also the chapter will describe the observations from those in the IPT community about their interactions with the IPTO. The ways that the IPTO staff found to support researchers because of their government position provides important experience to be understood in the continuing need to develop government institutions to support scientific and technological innovation. Chapter 10 - The Pressures on the IPTO and their Efforts to Protect the IPT Community: Turning Basic Research into Applied? By 1974, changes which had been initiated by Congress began to affect what would happen at IPTO. Most importantly, there was a change in the institutional placement of ARPA. ARPA was originally created as part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and under its protection. Soon after it was created there were some changes in its reporting status, but it retained OSD protection. By the early 1970's, however, ARPA had an administrative change and lost the protection of the Secretary of Defense. The Barber Report, perhaps the only institutional history of ARPA, was written as ARPA was being transferred to a different administrative form and placement. ARPA was ended and many of its functions transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). These changes in administrative form were accompanied by changes in the kind of research that IPTO was under pressure to do. There was increased pressure for applied research in place of the support for basic research. Efforts of the IPTO to support basic research required protective camouflage, similar to what had happened with ONR and AFOSR. And this pressure had a serious effect on the IPT community just as it had with AFOSR and ONR. Also the continuing pressure to do research related to weapons development at IPTO put the research organization into an increasingly vulnerable situation as had happened with ONR. The political importance of such developments on the services and their contractors was reflected in the IPTO experience with the Strategic Computing Initiative. This all left IPTO very vulnerable. Chapter 11 - For the DoD, AUTODIN II or TCP? The Department of Defense was faced with a problem. Western Union had won the contract for providing a network for the DoD. They had installed Autodin II, a packet switching network using problemmatic technology. It was becoming increasingly evident at the DoD that there was a need for alternatives to Autodin II. Steve Walker at the DoD was asked to propose an alternative. He presented the case for the adoption of TCP/IP by the DoD. The chapter will describe the case made for the adoption of TCP/IP and how TCP was chosen to replace Autodin II. The contract for Autodin II was ended and efforts initiated to adopt TCP/IP as the DoD protocol. This chapter thus helps to explore the issue of why basic research is important as a foundation for needed applied research developments, and why basic research needs to be protected if applied research developments are desired. Chapter 12 - TCP digest: Creating the Cutover to TCP and an early Internet The decision to adopt TCP/IP by the Department of Defense in March 1982 meant that a schedule was set for the cutover from the ARPANET protocol NCP to TCP/IP on ARPANET computers. This chapter will describe how a mailing list, the TCP Digest, was created and how it helped to set the basis for the cutover from NCP to TCP/IP. It also helped those in the Department of Defense who were developing networks in their areas to share their experiences and to get the support they needed to help in their technical work. The deadline for the cutover meant that there was a need to explore the problems that the cutover would entail. The cutover to TCP/IP set the basis to split the ARPANET into an ARPANET for research and a MILNET for operational DoD traffic. And communication was possible between these two different networks via TCP/IP. Chapter 13 - TCP/IP is Spread Through the Research Community IPTO supported the creation of a version of UNIX that could be freely distributed to the academic community. This version of UNIX was called Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD). In the early 1980's IPTO supported the creation of an implementation of the TCP/IP protocol to be distributed as part of BSD. The version was originally created by researchers at BBN and then modified by Bill Joy at the University of California Berkeley for BSD. Also IPTO supported the design and fabrication of computer chips as part of a program called Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). And IPTO supported the creation of a workstation using chips designed as part of this program. This led to the development of the SUN workstation. The manufacture of SUN workstations was transitioned to the private sector and the workstations were widely used by the research community. The distribution of TCP/IP by SUN helped to spread TCP/IP among the academic and research community. Chapter 14 - IPTO is ended: The legacy? In 1986, IPTO was ended. ARPA also made a decision to curtail its involvement in networking research. Further responsibility for the Internet became split between ARPA and the NSF. This chapter will explore the contradictory experience of the birth, development and problems experienced by the IPTO and IPT community. What are the implications of the IPTO experience to continued technological and scientific development of the Internet and of computer science research? What lessons can be learned for future science and technology policy from the IPTO experience? What does the IPTO experience suggest is a possible form of research program that it is important to understand? What forms of protection in such a program are needed for researchers? How are the needs of such a scientific research program different from the needs of normal procurement that the government does? How are they different from a research program based on peer review? These questions will be raised and discussed. The question of whether there are lessons from the IPTO experience that can be useful for the future will be explored. Are there lessons from the experience of IPTO, along with the experience of ONR and AFOSR that can be useful in proposing a future direction for some form of science technology policy in general and for policy regarding the future development of the Internet, in particular? Is there a need to create an institutional entity within the U.S. government to carry on long range planning and administration for the Internet? If so what does the experience of IPTO suggest are lessons that it would do well to learn from in considering how to create such a government institutional form? This chapter will propose that there are vital lessons that need to be learned from the experience of IPTO and especially from how IPTO made possible the early conceptual and development research that gave birth to the Internet. "This Thing Called the Internet: A Conceptual History" Chapter 1 - What is this Thing Called the Internet? What are the Conditions that Nurtured its Birth and Early Development? Chapter 2 - Creating ARPA as the Needed Interface Chapter 3 - Basic Research for the National Defense an the U.S. Department of Defense: A Paradox? Chapter 4 - IPTO Centers of Excellence and Creating a Resource Sharing Network Chapter 5 - Developing the New Field of Computer Communications Chapter 6 - The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural Conception to Solve the Multiple Network Problem Chapter 7 - Designing the Internetworking Protocol TCP/IP Chapter 8 - Creating SATNET and PRNET and linking them with the ARPANET Chapter 9 - IPTO as the Center of the IPT Community Chapter 10 - The Pressures on the IPTO and their Efforts to Protect the IPT Community: Turning Basic Research into Applied? Chapter 11 - For the DoD, AUTODIN II or TCP? Chapter 12 - TCP digest: Creating the Cutover to TCP and an early Internet Chapter 13 - TCP/IP is Spread Through the Research Community Chapter 14 - IPTO is ended: The legacy?