RFC 82
Network Meeting Notes
Network Meeting Notes ✨
Okay bestie, first the header tea 🫖. This is RFC 82, called Network Meeting Notes, written by Edwin W. Meyer, Jr. from MIT Project MAC 🎀. It's part of the Network Working Group, and the Network Information Center also filed it as NIC #5619. It's dated December 9, 1970 📅. The header doesn't list a category or status, and it doesn't obsolete or update anything, so it's just vibes and meeting notes 💜.
Okay so Edwin took these notes at three network meetings in Houston during the 1970 Fall Joint Computer Conference 🧚. He tried to be objective, but ngl the notes are biased 🙈. He was kind of obsessed with certain topics and might have misunderstood some of the convos. He tried to paraphrase everybody accurately, but some statements might've gotten twisted 💀.
Attendees of Monday Meeting 🎀
Dick Benjamin MITRE
Jack Bouknight UI-CAC
Al Cocanower MIRUT
Steve Crocker UCLA
Dough Engelbart SRI
Richard Greenblatt MIT-MAC
Eric Harslem RAND
Frank Heart BBN
Allen Joseph ORNL (Oak Ridge)
Peggy Karp MITRE
William B. Kehl UCLA
Bob Long SDC
Jim Madden UI-CAC
Bob Metcalfe MIT-MAC
Edwin Meyer MIT-MAC
Ari Ollikainen UCLA
Tom O'Sullivan Raytheon
Jon Postel UCLA
Chris Reeve MIT-MAC
Tjaart Schipper UCAL-CCN
Michael S. Sher UI-CAC
Bob Sundberg Harvard
Hal van Zoeren CMU
Albert Vezza MIT-MAC
Alfred H. Vorhaus MITRE
Clark Weissman SDCNetwork Meeting, 8:05 PM Monday, 11/16/70 🌸
Crocker kicks things off by saying not everybody's here yet, so let's chat until more people show up 💅. He asks if everybody's happy with the agenda from his announcement?
Meyer says we should talk about the logger protocol. Operational usage of the network, as opposed to experiments, depends on how it's implemented 🔥.
Then everybody does introductions 🫶.
Crocker has an agenda but wants suggestions for topics too. Here's the plan:
- He'll make introductory remarks.
- He'll list topics of concern.
- Engelbart will talk about the Network Information Center.
- He'll review the status of sites.
Introductory remarks ✨
- ARPA will not pay for the coffee and pastry being served, so everyone please chip in to help Crocker pay for it 🍓.
- Crocker is going to devote full time to network coordination in an official capacity 👑. His goals are: (a) to build up usability of the network, (b) to establish protocol levels, and (c) ?
Areas of importance 🌈
- Some site or coalition of sites should prepare a method for checking out a site's NCP.
- The NCP protocol needs reworking 🔧. Some issues could be solved better: (a) error control, (b) flow control, (c) overloading, which means losing network states, and (d) simplification and relayering of the protocol.
- Telnet system console interaction, or logger protocol. This covers how to get into the system and how to get help when you're in trouble 🆘.
- Documentation of individual hosts, with the Network Info Center involved. Maybe each site could get a facsimile device 📠.
- More sophisticated consoles, especially graphics consoles, attached through the network 🎨. There should be a working group to formulate and work out a format for handling sophisticated consoles. There's a graphics meeting in January in Colorado or Utah, and the price of admission is to write a proposal. Crocker expects up to 30 people and will pick a small subset to develop specifications.
- Accounting 💸. In the second half of 1971, more sites will come on where accounting is important, because they want to send bills. Larry Roberts says there will be a kind of banking system with bills passed around. There are two types of sites: billing sites, and free but limited access research sites. Crocker sees no fundamental problems. What happens when a research site talks to a billing site? He thinks it's doable.
- Measurements 📊. The network is a tool, but it's also a model that's better than a simulation package. Various people want to make measurements, and this could be supported by keeping statistics in NCP's. What about increasing the NCP's to include these?
Long says putting accounting and measuring into NCP's costs space, so keep additions to a minimum 😬.
Weissman asks what about scheduled availability of various systems?
Crocker says this has to be coordinated with each individual system.
Someone asks what happens to connections when a system goes down 😱.
Crocker asks what about graphics proposals? He'll write his own paper as a proposal. It uses the DEC 340 as a model. Modes assumes a scope system a memory. Both output and input are included in standards making. He wants a competent protocol developed out of the working group ✨.
Crocker asks what about documentation?
Meyer says documentation on how to use other systems is a must. Only this can motivate operational use of the network 💖.
Someone asks about putting documents online at each site, or at least abstracts 💻.
Crocker asks which sites have documents online. MIT and Harvard do. How do the sites feel about keeping documents on some foreign system?
Crocker asks what about reworking the protocol?
Harslem says they've logged into the UCSB system and are debugging cooperatively 🤝. They're also impressed with eliminating marking and padding (per RFC 67) 😍.
Crocker says they discussed this with the sites. Most seemed to accept it, but some had reservations. He asks what about changes to the basic protocol, and says I'm Meyer has something to say.
Meyer says the position at Project MAC is that they're opposed to changes other than critical fixes right now 🛑. Time spent on changes is time that won't be spent developing other necessary and interesting protocols and systems. And at Multics they have a long lead time for creating and installing changes ⏳.
Weissman prefers putting in changes all in one chunk, say at 6-month intervals, rather than in bits and pieces 📦.
O'Sullivan asks, can't current and new systems work simultaneously?
Crocker says if the changes involve the IMP, no, because all IMPs want to operate the same system 🙅.
Meyer says the feeling at M.I.T. is that to be a success, the network desperately needs to be used operationally. If another year passes without significant operational use, it might go down the drain 😭.
Someone adds that documentation is critical to motivating operational usage 📚.
Engelbart suggests maybe they should put off graphics several months so they don't delay typewriters. Typewriters are important ⌨️.
Someone asks whether that would be sufficiently impressive for DOD people 🤔.
Engelbart says, but if it turns out to be a can of worms in two years... 🪱
Someone asks whether the two development groups, typewriters and graphics, interact.
Vezza and Engelbart both say yes 🙌.
Crocker says let's hear more about this.
Harslem says they want to be able to access files 📁.
Crocker says then maybe the graphics effort would dilute typewriter development. He asks whether it's the consensus of this group that they shouldn't have a graphics meeting 🙅♀️.
Vezza says newcomers should work on graphics, not established people, and current people should be prohibited from going to this meeting 🚫.
Meyer says that would be very frustrating 😤.
Benjamin asks why not solicit position papers but have no meeting 📝.
Weissman says character transmission is easier than graphic transmission. More experiments are needed for graphics, and the lead time for developing a graphic protocol is much longer than for typewriters ⏰.
Vezza agrees 💅.
Crocker says there will be more meetings in the next few days to work on problems of getting useful work over the network 🚀.
Engelbart: Okay so all files in this system are public files, bestie 📂✨
Vezza: You can send a private memo instead of using the NIC service 💌
Engelbart: The master collection holds books and other documents 📚. They're cataloged on-line, and hard copy stuff can be duplicated 🖨️. For information that passes the value test, the service stores, catalogs, indexes, and provides access to documents 💅. We'll support a number of different terminals 💻. We're prepared to go a long time with hard copy items, but we can set up a hard-copy-to-on-line transcription service for a price 🧾.
Weissman: What about distributing OCR Selectric balls to sites? 🎾
--: Will NIC take what is sent, or will it actively search it out? 🤔
Engelbart: More or less whatever comes our way 📬. A system will exist in Spring 1971 that lets an agent insert items into a catalog 🧚. The dialogue that goes on will determine which way the data base grows 🌱. We're pretty sure that eventually SRI will have to charge, because lots of potential users who aren't at primary sites will be seeking limited resources 💸.
--: What about an NCP for your 10X? 👀
Engelbart: If BBN's NCP is ready by February 1971, we'll use it 🙌.
Crocker: How do people get access? 🔑
Engelbart: Each site is registered 📍. Any person who gets in on a site's account has that site's access 🫶. We won't worry about accounting until saturation occurs 🙈. We'd love to encourage use of the agent system to create and use a survey of resources at each site 🌸. Some subgroup should talk about this 💜.
Crocker: When can people meet to discuss this? (Tomorrow morning) ☀️
Engelbart: We have nice facilities for developing mailing lists, private bibliographies, and personnel profiles 🍓, but it depends on the interest of the network people 👑.
Engelbart: Agents have been set up with MIT, UCLA, RAND, UI, Utah, etc. 🦋. A good percentage of sites
Vezza: Many sites are sending out stuff 3rd and 4th class 📦😭. It takes too much time 💀.
Crocker: Site status report 📋. ILLIAC IV is not to be operational until mid-71, and on the network later (72?) 🕰️. Other possible sites: RADC, AWS, NCAR 🌈. Currently up: UCSB and RAND ✨. Imminent (January 71): MIT, BBN, Harvard, UCLA, Utah, LL, SDC 🔥. Some percentage by the end of the year, and the rest in January 🎀.
Heart: A brand new IMP system (major change) goes in tomorrow 🚀. Some more sites are thinking about coming on, and the network will grow considerably beyond what's already on board 🌟. We're also interested in site resource information 🦋. No long-term interest, but we will put information on paper to help ARPA 📄.
Crocker: A lot of people are yawning 🥱. What about meeting schedules? During FJCC's? 1-day vs. 2-day meetings? What about dual East and West coast meetings? 🗓️
Network Meeting
9:15 AM Tuesday, 11/17/70 ⏰
Crocker: Engelbart will talk in more detail 🎤. Later we may discuss the logger protocol and file transfer 📁.
Engelbart: The basic thing is a collection of documents with a catalog to describe it 🗂️. Each entry has lots of data items, including where to find it 🔍. There are techniques for adding and updating entries ✏️. We do it now, but we'd want to give the capability to other sides too, partly because we can't determine what's of value 💎. (Displayed 3 types of printout.) 1) Catalog listing, by ordinal index in the collection and NIC index, for inventory control and finding out what's there 📊. 2) Compacted format on one line 🧃. 3) Sorted by author, one line per entry 🖋️. We will have procedures where an untrained user can manage a collection 🥰.
Meyer: How are these systems implemented? 🛠️
Engelbart: We have a compiler-compiler on the 940 🧠. Our subsystems are written in a specialized high-level language 💜. We're moving this over to the 10X 🚚.
Heart: How many people can the 10X support, in rough figures? 🔢
Engelbart: Perhaps 100 to 1000 collections 📚✨.
--: Perhaps people could supply their own DEC tapes for additional storage 📼.
Engelbart: They could, but it requires an on-site operator, and access is slow 🐢. We don't have money for more storage, but we're considering shipping files down to UCSB 🌴. We provide on-line querying of on-line data 🔎. We're willing to worry about data management, whether or not we store it 🫶.
Crocker: Please describe the various subsystems. (Description by Engelbart follows.) 📝
Heart: Have people tried to use it over the network? 🌐
Engelbart: No 🙅♀️. We don't have an NCP on the 940 💅. We decided against putting it in a system that's going away 🚪. The biggest hang-up is when the 10X gets an NCP. Bobrow is developing it, but it's slipping 😩.
Heart: Who is going to get at it (SRI) early? 🏃♀️
UI: Illinois can access only SRI to begin with 🌽.
Postel, UCLA: We plan to use it 💖.
Heart: It would be a significant task if someone took it as a goal to get into Engelbart's system 🏆.
MITRE: We're going to use other systems from BBN's 10X 🧁.
Engelbart: We're trying to isolate essential subsystems so people can use them easily 🧩. Files are organized hierarchically and will fill out as the years go by 🌳. Documents are referenced by pathnames 🛤️. (Discussion of systems follows.)
Crocker: Row does one get into the system? (Engelbart describes the entry sequence to TOdas.) 🚪✨
Crocker: How does one get registered on the system? 📝
Engelbart: Ultimately by personal entry, but currently there's one user id per site 🆔.
Meyer: I think we're ignoring unsolved problems in the typewriter interfacing 😤. For example, the entry sequence to TOdas, where the user types one or two characters and the system types out the remaining characters of a key word, will be frustrating to use from a half-duplex system like Multics 🙃. Our system will not recognize an input line until a new line is typed 📏.
Various: Discussion of 1/2 duplex communication 🗣️. It brings out the distinction between a) full duplex systems, where the system echoes input, vs. 1/2 duplex, where input is typed locally, and b) systems where each character is recognized as it is typed in, vs. systems where the entire line is recognized only after the EOL character ⌨️.
Crocker: Isn't Multics the only half-duplex, line-oriented system on the network? 🤨
Meyer: I can't believe this. Don't the IBM systems operate like that? 😱
Engelbart: We could have a 1/2 duplex interface on our system (SRI) 🫠. Is it the Multics hardware that enforces this restriction? 🤷♀️
Meyer: Yes, the input-output controller.* 💁♀️
* The Multics IO controller's typewriter adaptor is 1/2 duplex, but can accept break characters other than the "new line" character.
Engelbart: Each system should have a preprocessor to talk with other systems 🤝. We're going to put a graphics interface onto the network 🎨.
Meyer: How do you view these interfaces? Do these adhere to some network standard, or will each system construct an interface to you? 🧐
Engelbart: Standard network protocol 🌟.
Crocker: Let's move on to other things 🏃♀️.
O'Sullivan: What about 2741's on your (CMU) 10X system? Do you have serious interfacing problems? (CMU's 2741's go through a software package that transforms them into TTY 37's. No serious difficulty.) 🖥️
Various: Brief discussion on how Multics handles input 🎀.
Sundberg, HARVARD: Our 10X can take char-oriented input, but our higher-level subsystems prefer line-oriented input 💕.
--: What about the efficiency of transmitting messages through the network one character at a time? 🤔
Crocker: There is more output, which goes packed, than input, so the input inefficiency is negligible 📈.
Engelbart: We plan to have several different ports into our system 🚪🚪. If each system had a NIC module, it could communicate with us without the necessity of a login 🔐. We prefer a batch-type system, where a site sends a spooled batch of edit requests, gets stuff back, and frees ports 📦. The typewriter transmission by line problem could be handled similarly to spooled-up requests 🧃. We encourage spooling, but we will support interactive users 🫶. We can support more batch than interactive people 💅.
* The Multics IO controller's typewriter adaptor is 1/2 duplex, but can accept break characters other than the "new line" character.
Vezza: Do people feel that the full and 1/2 duplex issue is a problem? Let all the people go back and find out about this 🔍. M.I.T., with a full and 1/2 duplex system 20 feet apart, can help here 🏫.
O'Sullivan: There seem to be 2 issues: (1) echoing (full duplex) vs. 1/2 duplex, and (2) single character vs. full line transmission 🧩.
Crocker: Two definitions: a serving host provides computation; a using host is parasitic and manages the user's terminal 🦋. This view treats network usage as a link between a local user and a foreign server 🌐.
Vezza: What about 1/2 duplex to full duplex interconnection, if some full duplex systems echo something other than what was input? 🤯
Crocker: Two independent possibilities. Let's diagram 🎨:
| "2741" | "33, 35, 37" |
| hard wire | 2 separate |
| local echo | lines all |
| computer does | printed |
| not echo | |
____________|_________________|___________________|
Process | hard | X |
each | | |
character | | |
____________|_________________|___________________|
Process | X | easy |
only after | | |
EOL | | |
____________|_________________|___________________|Crocker: I claim there are really only two possibilities (marked by X's) ✌️.
Postel: What about a system where echoing is done at such a low level that it can't be deleted? 🤔
Crocker: If so, it's like non-echoing 🙃.
Van Zoeren: Our system thinks we have full duplex TTYs, but our 2741's are attached via a software transformation box 📦.
Meyer: What happens when non-echoing systems are attached to echoing systems via the network? I type my input line, then the echoing system responds with my input, then some output. My system can't filter this, because there's no way of differentiating echo from output 😭.
Crocker: This isn't necessarily a bad thing 💫. I type a command abbreviation to SRI, then the next output line is an expanded form of the input command ✨.
Meyer: Our goal should be one common protocol, rather than a bunch of kludgy schemes to implement communication between specific pairs of hosts 🙄💅.
Long, SDC: We prefer to receive a full line fed through the network 🎀.
Crocker: Let's differentiate between research centers and service centers 🔬. Only the service centers are concerned with a half-duplex interface (lower left-hand X on the chart) 📍. These include SRI, BBN, and Multics 🌟.
O'Sullivan: What about research centers? 🤷♀️
Crocker: They can call up service centers, but they may themselves be hard to use 😅.
Illinois: Then the ILLIAC IV will have to be half-duplex 🌽.
Postel: I think half-duplex, line-oriented is weaker than full-duplex, character-oriented protocol 💜.
Sundberg: Harvard can go either way, but prefers line-oriented 💖.
Okay so graphics terminals are harder to put on the network bc of the non-standard input 😭🎀
Harslem: bestie, you're thinking of the keys as function keys instead of input keys 💅
Engelbart: I'm worried about people who wanna use graphics 🦋
O'Sullivan: we haven't really talked about what kind of protocol should get set up 🌸
Crocker: that's not a hard technical thing ✨ we'll get to it later and make a call
Meyer: I'm not authorized to make any decision 🥺 I'm just supposed to report back to the MAC group
Crocker: okay!! so a proposal, to be accepted through the normal mechanism 💖
Intermission
Crocker: I'm gonna propose how to handle X'ed boxes, ignoring hard and ease boxes 🍓
Line-Oriented Input - 8 bit ascii including End of Line character:
n, C1,...,Cn;
Cn=EOL
120>n>>_1 n is the character count in an 8-bit field.The character count comes before the line so the software system gets the same efficiency as the hardware system. The computer doesn't have to scan for the EOL, which is lowkey genius 🧚
Vezza: wait, don't you get the length info with the IMP message? 🤔
Crocker: my philosophy is that IMP message boundaries should be completely invisible 👑
Long: I object to splitting typewriter messages into two separate chunks 😤
Crocker: so what's your objection: 1) lines beginning on message boundaries, or 2) messages not beginning on a line boundary?
Long: both 💀
Engelbart: each host should write an interface to handle the most common terminal types 🌈
Crocker: the official protocol does not allow IMP message boundaries to have any significance 🙈
Engelbart: I don't want to worry about IMP message boundaries. The network should be invisible (at this level) ✨
Vezza, Long: we'll concede, we'll go along 🫶
Meyer: I'd like to change the restriction 💜 The last character in the line packet doesn't need to be an EOL (like when an output doesn't advance to a new line), but an EOL cannot appear in the middle of a packet.
Van Zoeren: I don't like this restriction 😬
Meyer: the count tells us any EOL is at the end, so we don't need to scan 🎀
Crocker: the EOL is the character that tells the system to take action 🔥
Harslem: our system has 46 function keys, not just one EOL 💅💅
Crocker: how about if C, E {breakset}; i=n? This is more complex bc we have to transmit a breakset, and I'll propose it in a moment. But here's the vibe: message oriented (1/2 duplex) connection between User and Server hosts for console interaction. Local echo, no server echo. This is for line oriented service systems. These are slight generalizations of Multics conventions 🌸
Meyer: I'm sure systems other than Multics use it too. It's not as bad as you seem to think 🙄
Engelbart: upper management should know that it is bad 😭
Meyer: that's not clear. There are efficiency questions 🤓
Van Zoeren: I don't want to have to transmit files this way 💀
Crocker: this is for consoles, not file transmission 🍓
Engelbart: we need a unified scheme for data transmission 👑
O'Sullivan: (for consoles) we're supposed to figure out a way to tell a system where its interrupt should be simulated 🧚
Crocker: there's a general problem of data transmission for tapes and files 🦋
O'Sullivan: but we've got the specific problem of implementing typewriter communications 🎀
Engelbart: but what we really need is a general way of sending stuff through the network (so it's invisible), and then the host interprets it however it wants 🌈
Meyer: there should be one console interface for the network, not several at each site 💜
Crocker: this problem is perhaps overblown 🙈
Engelbart, Meyer, O'Sullivan: discussion about supporting specific terminal types 🌸
Engelbart: I'll draw a graph of systems vs. terminal type. The intersection of a system and a terminal that is accepted by that system is marked by a dot. The network communication problem is finding a terminal at the local host that is also supported at the target host ✨
_____|_____|_____|_____|_____
| | | |
systems_____|_____|_____._____|_____
| | | |
_____|_____._____|_____|_____
| | | |
_____|_____|_____|_____|_____
| | | |
terminalsCrocker: there's a general problem of a subsystem reacting to input. Let's propose that input should be sent as a full message or in multiples of 8-bits 💖
Vezza: are we constraining too much? 🤨
Meyer: why is it necessary to have 8-bit multiples? 🤔
Crocker, Engelbart: okay, throw that away 🗑️
End of Second Meeting 🌙
Network Meeting ✨
8:20 PM Wednesday, 11/18/70
(The following notes are greatly condensed and only try to present the major themes discussed at this meeting.) 🎀
Crocker: let's meet at the SJCC with more prior organization 📅 Let's have several day meetings at 2-3 month intervals. We've got a lot of good discussion on the next level protocol, so let a subgroup work it out 🫶
(Harslem volunteers to redraft the logger protocol proposed in RFC 66. Meyer will revise the proposal in RFC 46. 💅)
Meyer: let's go back, discuss these issues, and write proposals. Later we have an open meeting to decide on a formal proposal 📝
Crocker: a small group is better, so maybe I'll pick a subset 🦋
Vezza: it's true that things aren't settled here. Major proposals should be on paper before a meeting. We can't legislate what a small group does, since it has no more authority than an individual 👑
(Karp of MITRE volunteers to produce a bibliography of network documents, perhaps by January 📚)
(Who has implemented the logger protocol? UCSB and UCLA mod 91 have it or are planning to. SDC may have it by 21/1. They found it awkward but are willing to change 🌈)
(Discussion of file transmission. Crocker proposes that a future protocol change might attach a byte size such as 8, 32, or 36 bits to a connection 🍓)
(Regarding control links, everything is transmitted in 8-bit bytes except the ECO, ERP, and ERR commands. No objection was voiced to changing the protocol so that they also must be multiples of 8-bit bytes 💜)
(Discussion of how to specify the end of a file. Should we send the bit count beforehand, or send an EOR character at the end? Someone suggested we want a global solution to the general problem of sending an arbitrary length message, not just file transmission 🧚)
(Discussion of "transaction units" or record sizes. What is an optimum transaction unit size? IMP message boundaries are invisible (by protocol fiat) and aren't connected to this discussion. Multics block size came up. The nearest thing is page size, 1024 words ✨)
(How to specify end of file. Engelbart says send data packets, then an EOF packet. Crocker suggests that a CLSing connection can act as EOF. Vezza suggests that IMP message boundaries be used to determine the end. If it's less than a full IMP message, that's the last part of the file. Meyer suggests using two connections, a data channel and a control channel, over which all control messages (like file name, bit length, etc.) are passed 🫶)
(Discussion of the different situations where the whole file, part of the file, or the whole file in arbitrary chunks was wanted 🌸)
Meyer: why not defer this and talk about typewriter communications, which is the most critical? 🎀
Vezza: Engelbart wants a clean general solution 🙄
Crocker: if we get an ad hoc solution now, it may interfere with implementing a general solution later 🔥
(Crocker proposes a format for transmitting a file of arbitrary length records of fixed sized bytes of 8-26 bits. A record is less than 10^5 bytes. Each record is headed by a count byte 💅)
1 2 n 1 2 m
|----------------------------------------------------|
| n | | | | | m | | | | |
|----------------------------------------------------|
<------- record -----------> <-------- record ------->O'Sullivan: does this model fit a terminal that has character and graphic modes? 🤔
(Discussion about the differences between keyboard and file transmission. Uncertain whether a global solution would fit both 🦋)
(Who wants to ship files through the network? Multics and 6-10, RAND to UCLA, MITRE using BBN 🌈)
Crocker: let's go away thinking about this and propose solutions later 💖
(Harslem proposes a format for transmitting data with operation codes. Each record consists of: <opcode> <length> <data>. This gives the opportunity to send many types of status info 👑)
(Discussion regarding sending data and control information intermixed or on separate connections. Issues of pollution of data vs. synchronization and race problems. It was claimed that synchrony problems are easily overcome 🧚)
(Suggestion that we really don't know much about this area. We should go off and write 📝)
Intermission
Crocker: what has to be done before we can log onto other systems? 🤔
Meyer: 3 issues: 1) how to establish the connection, 2) what the character set is, 3) what the mode of transmission is (relating to the full and 1/2 duplex problem) 💜
(Discussion of orienting the standard protocol toward service systems, which are generally line-oriented and 1/2 duplex. Any systems offering services should have a 1/2 duplex interface 🫶)
(Discussion of whether it's possible or desirable for the logger protocol to allow transmission of partial lines in an IMP message. Taking partial lines is less efficient, and sending a full line is reasonable. It was pointed out that the NCP protocol disallows any meaning to IMP message boundaries, so systems must be prepared to accept lines straddling IMP message boundaries. However, it's best to send a complete line 🌸)
(Discussion of whether the line-oriented protocol should bend so as to accept single character transmission from full duplex systems. It seems we're coming up with a protocol that lets any system use a line-oriented system. Using a char-oriented system from other systems is more difficult and requires a separate protocol 🎀)
Heart: I'm in favor of an immediate solution ⚡
Postel: once something goes in, it will be hard to change it 😬
Crocker: I think these meetings will turn out to be more important than we ever wanted them to be. I'm more concerned with the long-term effects than the starting date 🌟
Van Zoeren: if we don't decide it, somebody else will decide it the bad way 💀
[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by Gottfried Janik 2/98 ]
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