4 ms·

NCP, the Predecessor of TCP/IP

45 points by turrini 7y ago

cpr 7y ago
But IIRC there was an earlier flag date when all the TOPS-20 and TENEX systems switched to TCP/IP (somewhere in 1979-80?), and that was the real breath-holder for those of us dependent on (and responsible for) those systems at the time. The first TCP/IP implementation for TENEX/TOPS-20 was kind of a dog (large and complex and slow, of course written in -10 assembler), but over time it got tuned quite a bit. When I was at Imagen, a Stanford TeX project laser printer spin-off using the same SUN-1 boards as the first Sun workstations and Cisco routers, we hired Geoff Steckel. Geoff was a genius from the Dave Clark (co-inventor of TCP/IP) group at MIT. He wrote for Imagen a very small, tight, super-fast TCP/IP implementation in C, since he had quite a bit of practice at it in Dave's group.
ancarda 7y ago
>On January 1, 1983, in what is known as a "flag day", NCP was officially rendered obsolete when the ARPANET changed its core networking protocols from NCP to the more flexible and powerful TCP/IP protocol suite, marking the start of the modern Internet. It's a bit of a shame this sort of thing is impossible now. There's so many billions of devices on the Internet now that there's no way to have a flag day for stuff like IPv4.
- senectus1 7y ago
  not impossible, but it would require something like a world/cold war to force.
- LeonM 7y ago
  Well, IPv4 is not bad per se, and it can perfectly co-exist with IPv6. IPv6 has some technical benefits for the internet, but the internet isn't a worse place while IPv4 is still there. IPv6 offers little to no benefit for the average internet user. For ISPs and telcos IPv6 isn't really attractive because they can't market it like other technologies (5G! 5G! 5G! look! we have 5G!). None of my ISPs (home, office and mobile carrier) currently offer IPv6, which I am personally frustrated about, but I totally understand why they don't.
  - ancarda 7y ago
    Don't those arguments apply to NCP too? i.e. You need 2 ports rather than 1, and there's probably other disadvantages, but that doesn't affect the average Internet user much.
    - LeonM 7y ago
      Computers had much less resources back then, and NCP had reached it's limits in terms of scalability. Running both TCP and NCP would have hindered progress and innovation. So the decision to outright deprecate NCP was necessary to keep scaling the network up. Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress, and with the high bandwidth available nowadays the minor overhead improvements of IPv6 will be barely noticeable for the average user. Also keep in mind that the average internet user back in 1983 were a bit different from today ;-) edit: typo
      - pm7 7y ago
        > Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress Because many users/services have only IPv4, practically all services and ISP have to provide IPv4 and do not have to provide IPv6. If we could agree to kill IPv4 at specific date, we could have truly IPv6 Internet years ago.
        sedatk 7y ago
        And in return we would have harder to remember IP addresses. Nothing a user would drool about.
        pm7 7y ago
        User should not use IP addresses. This is what we have DNS and mDNS for. In special cases, like local router if mDNS is unavailable, IPv6 address is even easier than IPv4 (compare "FE80::1" to "192.168.0.1"). Anyway, it's not like it's a choice unless you want to restrict who deserves public IP and who doesn't, because we do not have enough IPv4 for everyone.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  What might work is to gradually degrade IPV4 service. Like an ever-shrinking bandwidth cap and ever-growing latency.
  - jxcl 7y ago
    I've successfully deployed this strategy in the past. I used to run a service off a personal server for a bunch of MUDs. Eventually I didn't want the responsibility of hosting some important infrastructure for them so I sent them the source code and instructions for how to set it up, but didn't hear back from the admins for months. So I made everybody who used the service see a message saying "this service is retiring, please move it to your own infrastructure" before it would redirect to the actual service. I gradually increased it from 1 second to 30 seconds and eventually the admins set up the service on their own infrastructure.
DonHopkins 7y ago
https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt For example, the ARPANET is net 10. That means there is a domain called 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA. Within this domain there is a PTR RR at 51.0.0.10.IN-ADDR that points to the RRs for the host SRI-NIC.ARPA (who's address is 10.0.0.51). Since the NIC is also on the MILNET (Net 26, address 26.0.0.73), there is also a PTR RR at 73.0.0.26.IN- ADDR.ARPA that points to the same RR's for SRI-NIC.ARPA. The format of these special pointers is defined below along with the examples for the NIC. http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4 http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4 Title : Gateway To Net Ten Original : Stairway To Heaven Group : Led Zeppelin Author : Mark Lottor <mkl@nisc.sri.com> GATEWAY TO NET TEN -- Mark Lottor [Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant] There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast and he's buying a gateway to net ten. When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed with a SYN he can get what he sent for. Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh and he's buying a gateway to net ten. There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. In a note on the page there's a warning that says sometimes all of our code is broken. Don't ya know, it makes me wonder. There's an error I get when I send to the net and my packets are lost and retransmitting. In my logs I have seen loops of mail thru the machine, and the screams of those who are hacking. Oooh, it makes me wonder. And it's whispered that soon if we all fix and tune then the packets will reach their destinations. And a new day will dawn for hosts that stay long and the telnets will echo quite faster. Ohhhhh, it makes me wonder. If there's a bustle in your cisco, don't be alarmed now it's just a quick ping for the NIC machine. Yes there are two paths you can route by, but in the long haul there's still time to change the protocol. Yowwww, it makes me wonder. Your host is loaded and it will slow in case you don't know, the unix's are asking you to join them. Dear hacker, do you see the overflow, and did you know your gateway is still under development. And as we wind out more coax, and gateways slower than our hosts, There goes a message we all know, it updates routes and wants to show how everything still turns quite slow. And if you listen very hard, the bits will come to you at last. When all are ones and ones are all, to be a rubout and not a null. And he's buying a gateway to net ten...

45 points by turrini 7y ago

cpr 7y ago

But IIRC there was an earlier flag date when all the TOPS-20 and TENEX systems switched to TCP/IP (somewhere in 1979-80?), and that was the real breath-holder for those of us dependent on (and responsible for) those systems at the time. The first TCP/IP implementation for TENEX/TOPS-20 was kind of a dog (large and complex and slow, of course written in -10 assembler), but over time it got tuned quite a bit. When I was at Imagen, a Stanford TeX project laser printer spin-off using the same SUN-1 boards as the first Sun workstations and Cisco routers, we hired Geoff Steckel. Geoff was a genius from the Dave Clark (co-inventor of TCP/IP) group at MIT. He wrote for Imagen a very small, tight, super-fast TCP/IP implementation in C, since he had quite a bit of practice at it in Dave's group.

ancarda 7y ago

>On January 1, 1983, in what is known as a "flag day", NCP was officially rendered obsolete when the ARPANET changed its core networking protocols from NCP to the more flexible and powerful TCP/IP protocol suite, marking the start of the modern Internet. It's a bit of a shame this sort of thing is impossible now. There's so many billions of devices on the Internet now that there's no way to have a flag day for stuff like IPv4.

senectus1 7y ago
not impossible, but it would require something like a world/cold war to force.
LeonM 7y ago
Well, IPv4 is not bad per se, and it can perfectly co-exist with IPv6. IPv6 has some technical benefits for the internet, but the internet isn't a worse place while IPv4 is still there. IPv6 offers little to no benefit for the average internet user. For ISPs and telcos IPv6 isn't really attractive because they can't market it like other technologies (5G! 5G! 5G! look! we have 5G!). None of my ISPs (home, office and mobile carrier) currently offer IPv6, which I am personally frustrated about, but I totally understand why they don't.
- ancarda 7y ago
  Don't those arguments apply to NCP too? i.e. You need 2 ports rather than 1, and there's probably other disadvantages, but that doesn't affect the average Internet user much.
  - LeonM 7y ago
    Computers had much less resources back then, and NCP had reached it's limits in terms of scalability. Running both TCP and NCP would have hindered progress and innovation. So the decision to outright deprecate NCP was necessary to keep scaling the network up. Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress, and with the high bandwidth available nowadays the minor overhead improvements of IPv6 will be barely noticeable for the average user. Also keep in mind that the average internet user back in 1983 were a bit different from today ;-) edit: typo
    - pm7 7y ago
      > Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress Because many users/services have only IPv4, practically all services and ISP have to provide IPv4 and do not have to provide IPv6. If we could agree to kill IPv4 at specific date, we could have truly IPv6 Internet years ago.
      - sedatk 7y ago
        And in return we would have harder to remember IP addresses. Nothing a user would drool about.
        pm7 7y ago
        User should not use IP addresses. This is what we have DNS and mDNS for. In special cases, like local router if mDNS is unavailable, IPv6 address is even easier than IPv4 (compare "FE80::1" to "192.168.0.1"). Anyway, it's not like it's a choice unless you want to restrict who deserves public IP and who doesn't, because we do not have enough IPv4 for everyone.
im3w1l 7y ago
What might work is to gradually degrade IPV4 service. Like an ever-shrinking bandwidth cap and ever-growing latency.
- jxcl 7y ago
  I've successfully deployed this strategy in the past. I used to run a service off a personal server for a bunch of MUDs. Eventually I didn't want the responsibility of hosting some important infrastructure for them so I sent them the source code and instructions for how to set it up, but didn't hear back from the admins for months. So I made everybody who used the service see a message saying "this service is retiring, please move it to your own infrastructure" before it would redirect to the actual service. I gradually increased it from 1 second to 30 seconds and eventually the admins set up the service on their own infrastructure.

DonHopkins 7y ago

https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt For example, the ARPANET is net 10. That means there is a domain called 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA. Within this domain there is a PTR RR at 51.0.0.10.IN-ADDR that points to the RRs for the host SRI-NIC.ARPA (who's address is 10.0.0.51). Since the NIC is also on the MILNET (Net 26, address 26.0.0.73), there is also a PTR RR at 73.0.0.26.IN- ADDR.ARPA that points to the same RR's for SRI-NIC.ARPA. The format of these special pointers is defined below along with the examples for the NIC. http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4 http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4 Title : Gateway To Net Ten Original : Stairway To Heaven Group : Led Zeppelin Author : Mark Lottor <mkl@nisc.sri.com> GATEWAY TO NET TEN -- Mark Lottor [Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant] There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast and he's buying a gateway to net ten. When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed with a SYN he can get what he sent for. Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh and he's buying a gateway to net ten. There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. In a note on the page there's a warning that says sometimes all of our code is broken. Don't ya know, it makes me wonder. There's an error I get when I send to the net and my packets are lost and retransmitting. In my logs I have seen loops of mail thru the machine, and the screams of those who are hacking. Oooh, it makes me wonder. And it's whispered that soon if we all fix and tune then the packets will reach their destinations. And a new day will dawn for hosts that stay long and the telnets will echo quite faster. Ohhhhh, it makes me wonder. If there's a bustle in your cisco, don't be alarmed now it's just a quick ping for the NIC machine. Yes there are two paths you can route by, but in the long haul there's still time to change the protocol. Yowwww, it makes me wonder. Your host is loaded and it will slow in case you don't know, the unix's are asking you to join them. Dear hacker, do you see the overflow, and did you know your gateway is still under development. And as we wind out more coax, and gateways slower than our hosts, There goes a message we all know, it updates routes and wants to show how everything still turns quite slow. And if you listen very hard, the bits will come to you at last. When all are ones and ones are all, to be a rubout and not a null. And he's buying a gateway to net ten...