RFC 77

Network Meeting Report ✨

okay bestie, RFC 77 is from 20 November 1970 🦋 It's written by J. Postel at UCLA, and it's logged as NIC 5604 in the NWG. It's titled Network Meeting Report and it's a summary of a few NWG meetings. There's no category or status listed in the title block, and it doesn't say it obsoletes or updates anything. 💜

This is a report on a series of three Network Working Group meetings at the Fall Joint Computer Conference, held November 16, 17 and 18 in Houston, Texas 🌸 The notes are lumped together, so ideas might not be tied to whoever said them. Steve Crocker chaired the meetings.

Opening Topics 📝

The meetings started with a list of topics everyone was worried about:

1. okay first up: a site or group should be designated as protocol testers 🧪 As NCP's get implemented, they should be put through comprehensive testing by an independent group. no grading your own homework, bestie 💅
2. the Host-Host protocol needs reworking in a bunch of areas: error control, overload conditions, allocation of resources, status information, and system crash problems 😭
3. the immediate need is a spec for TELNET, the third level program that lets people go through their local hosts and use remote hosts 🔥 TELNET must give you ways to log in at a distant site, run programs, transmit files, and call for help. And that call for help will likely mean a systems programmer at the remote site "taking control" of the user console. the way that's giving main character energy 👑
4. documentation on systems across the network has to be available to all sites 📚 The NIC will handle this with help from the other sites. on-line documentation would be especially useful. it was also suggested that each site have an identical hard copy device (for example a line printer) that can reproduce documents 🖨️
5. graphics consoles on the network will need a graphics protocol 🎀 people who care about this should write position papers. a meeting between the paper authors may happen if enough interest builds up. the papers should be distributed as NWG/RFC's before 1 January 71 ⭐
6. some sites have to account for how they use their computer resources, so there has to be some kind of network accounting scheme 💰 Sites can be sorted into Research Centers vs. Service Centers. Service Centers tend to have big machines, lots of users, and accounting problems. Research Centers tend to have specialized hardware, a small number of users, and no accounting at all 🙈
7. some people are into the network as an object of study 🔬 In particular, UCLA-Computer Science and BBN want to take measurements on the network. is it appropriate to ask the NCP to keep statistics? 🤔

---

The Discussion 💬

after the opening, some discussion happened 🫶

It was generally felt that protocol changes should be made in bunches, at about six-month intervals, instead of a constant stream of tiny changes 🍓 People also felt a lead time of three months was not over optimistic. The proposed change to the IMP-Host protocol to get rid of marking was generally approved, but it won't be implemented for a while, because casual changes to the protocol are undesirable 🙅‍♀️

Tom O'Sullivan suggested that new and old protocols might be able to work together. The new protocol would support the old one and offer better mechanisms where it can 🧚 Steve Crocker suggested that a new protocol might be developed as a private experimental protocol between two or three sites 🧪

It was stressed that the network has to be used to gain experience. People said we should get teletype-like console use of remote systems working before we get too deep into graphics 😤 Maybe the graphics protocol should be developed by a different group of people. So a graphics protocol meeting was discouraged, but papers should still get written ✍️ Strong feelings were shared in favour of developing remote subsystem use and file transmission first, instead of stressing about graphics at this stage 💖 It was also suggested that higher-level protocols should be driven by applications ✨

---

Documentation & The NIC 📚

Documentation is going to be a big deal for network users 🌈 Several people said users at their sites had already started asking about the network. As Eric Harslem put it, "What does the ARPA Network have to offer?" Some sites (Multics, SRI) keep their system documentation on-line. It was suggested that the trillion bit store be used to keep on-line documentation for all systems 💜

Then Doug Engelbart gave a presentation on the Network Information Center (NIC) 🦋 Nobody had really defined the NIC's goals or services, so that was left up to the NIC to figure out. The NIC decided one urgent task is making info about the network and its host systems available to network users 🔥 Doug noticed some people feel threatened when their documentation is revealed to be inadequate 🙈

Doug's project at SRI built a system that lets users create catalogs and indices into a collection of information. The system has a master catalog of all information files, and each user may have a number of private (or shared) catalogs 🗂️ It lets you examine catalogs on-line and amend them. It also lets you examine any information file that happens to be on-line, and create new information files on-line too 💅

Several problems will delay the NIC from joining the network 😩 One is the move from the XDS-940 to the PDP-10 (TENEX). The switch is happening because the 940 system can't handle the anticipated load 💀 At first the plan was to offer service on the 940 and switch to the 10 when it came up, but it would take way too much effort for a very small payoff 🫠

Doug explained how the Network Dialoge System works 🌸 Each site has a communication agent and a technical liaison officer. The NIC will train the agents to use its facilities to get information about the network and other sites 🧚 Agents will pull documents from the NIC that matter to users at their local site. They'll be able to contact the NIC at a toll free number, and they should have an on-line console into the network (and therefore the NIC) 📞 So the Network Dialoge System is basically a network of people (the agents). iykyk, it's giving networking and networking 🫶

Steve Crocker then brought everyone up to speed on the network's status. He drew a picture of what's connected and what's proposed, and talked about how far along different sites were with implementation 🗺️ Eric Harslem mentioned that RAND and UCSB ran tests of their NCP implementations the week before (10 Nov 70), and things worked well 🎉

Frank Heart announced that BBN was planning to develop a "Terminal IMP" 🍓 The Terminal IMP would support a large number of a wide range of consoles, and it would also provide the normal IMP functions 💖

At this point we broke and scheduled to reconvene Tuesday morning 🌙

---

Tuesday Morning 🌸

The Tuesday meeting started with Doug giving another pass at explaining the SRI system, this time in more detail 🦋 The basic thing to understand is the collection. A user can query over the collection or over sub-collections 🔍 The user can get bibliographic references of three kinds: a) full references, b) first line, c) author indexed 📖 Information files in the collection might be on-line, in tape libraries, or only in hard copy 💾

It was suggested that a lot of data could be kept at other network sites, for example the trillion bit store, and before that maybe on disk at UCSB 🌈 If files are kept at other sites, the system must be able to retrieve them automatically when they're requested 🤖

The subsystem to be used is called TODAS. TODAS is still an evolving program, and its documentation is inadequate 😭 In TODAS, files are organized hierarchically, each paragraph is numbered, and it's possible to do context analysis on the text 🧠

Doug then brought up some things about console interaction. That raised a question about half vs. full duplex and line oriented vs. character oriented systems 🎀 The rest of the meeting revolved around this issue. 🫶

Steve proposed that 3 or 4 people get designated to solve particular problems 💅 Al responded that 3 people can't legislate 🙅‍♀️. Any solution like that has to be considered the same way as a proposal from an individual, which is honestly the most reasonable thing anyone said all week.

Steve convinced Peggy Karp to become NWG/RFC editor 🎀 This is a separate job from cataloging RFC's or assigning numbers, which NIC handles now. The RFC editor will only categorize RFC's as "hot issues", current, out of date, or superseded 🗂️

The Logger protocol (aka how to get the first connection 🔌) needs to be officially defined. NWG/RFC #66 suggests one way. Eric Harslem will revise it and send it out as a proposed official protocol 💌 Ed Myer is also sending out a proposal ✨

Steve then reopened discussion of the previous meeting's topics, suggesting we talk about message boundaries, half duplex vs. full duplex, line oriented vs. character oriented, file transmission, byte counts in messages, byte sizes and transactional units 🧩 It was proposed that transactions on the command link (i.e. between NCP's) always be in multiples of eight bits 💖 That means the length field in the ECO, ERP, and ERR commands will always have three low order zeroes. This was approved 🔥

Steve then proposed that connections could be established with a declared byte size and a maximum record length in bytes 🦋 Transactional units on this type of connection would be of the form:

                  n c1 c2 c3 ... cn

where 0 <= n <= max record length

If n = 0, then the transactional unit acts like a semaphore 🚦 Steve suggested we look into the theory of information exchange, particularly along the lines of Richard Kaline (NWG/RFC #60) 📚 Maybe for each information unit sent there should be some status response, he said 🤔

Next up was file transmission, and the big question: how do you find the end? 😭 Frank Heart suggested that each portion have a flag indicating "this is not the end" until the last portion flips it to "this is the end" 🏁 Eric Harslem suggested that each portion have an "opcode" field, a length field, and the text, which is length bits (bytes?) long. This seems to match the data types proposed at the Lincoln Lab meeting last spring 🧠

Ed Myer proposed two connections, one for the file transmission and the other to control it 🎀 The file control connection would specify the data connection and indicate that transmission is about to start. After the sender finished the file transmission, they'd send the total number of bits sent on the file control link. The receiver would then know how many bits to receive and exactly where the end of the file should be 🎯 Bob Metcalfe was concerned that some proposals mixed control information with data, and felt that perhaps this mixing should be avoided 🙈

Steve asked if anybody could suggest an advisor to talk through these problems 🧚 Bob Metcalfe suggested Anatol Holt. Bob Sundberg suggested George Mealy. Eric Harslem and Peggy Karp suggested that people who worked on the COIN System might be helpful 💜 Frank Heart pointed out that no one has solved these problems 😅

Steve proposed that Service Centers offer line oriented interaction with no echoing of the input. Any simple editing (e.g. back space) would be done at the using site 💅 Ed Meyer suggested that there be official protocols for both line oriented and character oriented interaction 🫶 Steve promised to write a NWG/RFC clarifying the issues and laying out the arguments on full transactions, byte counts, and accumulating data on the receive side 📝

It was felt these were hard problems that needed more thought 🌸 So the meeting adjourned with a request that people circulate any ideas or proposals as NWG/RFC's. Ed Myer took notes and agreed to also prepare a NWG/RFC summarizing these meetings 💖

        Network Meeting Attendance List 16 - 18 Nov. 70 Houston

Name                       Site                   Sessions

 1. Dick Benjamin          MITRE                      1

 2. Jack Bouknight         Illinois - CAC             1,2

 3. Al Cocanower           MERIT                      1,3

 4. Steve Crocker          UCLA - SPADE               1,2,3

 5. Doug Engelbart         SRI - ARC                  1,2,3

 6. Wayne Fischer          MERIT                      3

 7. Richard Greenblatt     MIT - AI                   1

 8. Eric Harslem           RAND                       1,2,3

 9. Frank Heart            BBN                        1,2,3

10. Allen Joseph           ORNL                       1

11. Peggy Karp             MITRE                      1,2,3

12. William Kehl           UCLA - CCN                 1

13. Bob Long               SDC                        1,2,3

14. Jim Madden             Illinois - CAC             1,2

15. Bob Metcalfe           MIT - DM                   1,3

16. Edwin Myer             MIT Multics                1,2,3

17. Ari Ollikainen         UCLA - SPADE               1,2,3

18. Tom O'Sullivan         Raytheon                   1,2,3

19. Jon Postel             UCLA - SPADE               1,2,3

20. Chris Reeve            MIT - DM                   1,3

        Network Meeting Attendance List 16 - 18 Nov. 70 Houston

Name                       Site                   Sessions

21. Tijaart Schipper       UCLA - CCN                 1

22. Michael Sher           Illinois - CAC             1

23. Bob Sundberg           Harvard                    1,2,3

24. Hal Van Zoeren         CMU                        1,2,3

25. Albert Vezza           MIT - DM                   1,2,3

26. Alfred Vorhaus         MITRE                      1

27. Clark Weissman         SDC                        1

       [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
       [ into the online RFC archives by Gottfried Janik 02/98 ]