RFC 471

RFC 471 💌 Announcement Of A (Tentative) Workshop On Multi Site Executive Programs

okay bestie, let's get the vibe check done first 🎀✨

• RFC number: #471 🦋
• Series: Network Working Group
• NIC number: #14800
• Author: Bob Thomas, BBN-TENEX 🧚
• Date: March 13, 1973 📅
• Category or status: not stated in the original 🤷‍♀️
• Obsoletes or updates: nothing listed 💜

What Even Is An Executive Program 👑

okay so an executive program is basically a program that takes in commands from a user, then calls on other programs to get whatever resources each command needs 💅 it's the thing actually running the show, and it's giving main character energy 🔥

The ARPANET Executive Dream 🌈

there's a lot of interest right now in making resources on the ARPANET available through a standard, conversational facility, which people are calling an ARPANET Executive 💖 the iconic part is that a user at a Host site or a TIP could reach a whole bunch of resources at other sites without having to learn the quirks of every Host operating system that's contributing 😭

the ARPANET Executive could let you find someone (by name) who's logged in anywhere on the network, then set up a teletype link so you two can have a live chat 💬 it could also give you status info on the subnet and on all the Hosts, on-line ARPANET news, on-line collections of trouble reports, and more 🍓 honestly the possibilities are basically endless once there's a basic structure for calling these services ✨

Big Questions We're Obsessed With 🧠

the major areas of interest are:

1. How can the interfaces to resources of interest be standardized so as to be accessible by "server" processes?
2. How can communications with such server processes be standardized? (an ARPANET Executive protocol?)
3. To what extent can the conversational user interface be standardized in the user processes? (an ARPANET Executive language?)
4. How can access authentication and accounting procedures be modified to permit a user to "login" only once, yet use resources at many Host sites?

Want In? Slide Into The Workshop DMs 🫶

if you're into discussing any of this, forward your name to Bob Thomas (BTHOMAS @BBN-TENEX) at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., 50 Moulton Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, (617) 491-1850, extension 483 📞 contact details, copied exactly:

BTHOMAS @BBN-TENEX
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
50 Moulton Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
(617) 491-1850, extension 483

if there's enough response, a Workshop (tentatively planned for April) will be hosted by the BBN TENEX and BBN TIP groups 🎉 it'll be a space for participants to present relevant work and talk through the issues above 🌸

Something To Try While We Wait 🧚‍♀️

in the meantime, there's an executive program that handles a limited set of commands in a multi-site context, and TIP and TENEX users can try it out for experimental use 🧪 the "N" command on the TIP and the RSEXEC (Resource Sharing Executive) subsystem on TENEX both do command interpretation for TENEX and ITS sites 🔥

if your access to the network is through neither a TIP nor a TENEX, you can still use the RSEXEC. just point your user TELNET at ICP, socket 367 (Octal) at BBN-TENEX 💜

ngl this is the part where the original says you can get in even without a TIP or TENEX. the socket number is 367 in octal, so don't mess it up 🙈

Here are the machine-readable form notes from the archive, copied exactly:

   [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
   [ into the online RFC archives by Alex McKenzie with    ]
   [ support from GTE, formerly BBN Corp.             9/99 ]