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The myth was that the ARPANET was designed to survive nuclear war. Wikipedia sets this one straight, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.

by msla 4y ago

The myth was that the ARPANET was designed to survive nuclear war. Wikipedia sets this one straight, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET > The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them. Citation: Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967) as quoted here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/50-years-ago-today-the-internet-was-born-sort-of/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/50-ye...

Animats 4y ago
MILNET actually was. It was 5-connected - each node had at least 5 connections to other nodes. Same technology as ARPANET, but DoD-only.
KineticLensman 4y ago
Don’t have refs to hand but IIRC the concept of packet switching was developed theoretically as a candidate for a military network but was deemed impractical by the Pentagon’s telecoms providers. However, the theory papers were picked up again by the early Arpaner designers
- mlyle 4y ago
  https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html (1964) "We will soon be living in an era in which we cannot guarantee survivability of any single point. However, we can still design systems in which system destruction requires the enemy to pay the price of destroying n of n stations. If n is made sufficiently large, it can be shown that highly survivable system structures can be built—even in the thermonuclear era. "

by msla 4y ago

Animats 4y ago

MILNET actually was. It was 5-connected - each node had at least 5 connections to other nodes. Same technology as ARPANET, but DoD-only.

KineticLensman 4y ago

Don’t have refs to hand but IIRC the concept of packet switching was developed theoretically as a candidate for a military network but was deemed impractical by the Pentagon’s telecoms providers. However, the theory papers were picked up again by the early Arpaner designers

mlyle 4y ago
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html (1964) "We will soon be living in an era in which we cannot guarantee survivability of any single point. However, we can still design systems in which system destruction requires the enemy to pay the price of destroying n of n stations. If n is made sufficiently large, it can be shown that highly survivable system structures can be built—even in the thermonuclear era. "