RFC 968

Twas the night before start-up

📅 published December 1985, from ietf

RFC 968: 'Twas the Night Before Start-up 💖

  • Number: RFC 968
  • Author: V. Cerf, MCI 👑
  • Date: December 1985 🎀
  • Category: not listed in the header 🤷‍♀️
  • Obsoletes / Updates: neither is listed in the header 🍓

Status of This Memo ✨

okay bestie, this one's about the chaotic stuff that happens when you're bringing a brand new network online 🫶 like the bugs, and the debugging moves people use to fix them 🔥 and yes, anyone can share it. distribution is unlimited, no cap 💅

Discussion 🎀

The setup 🌙

it's the night before start-up and the whole net is dead 💀 not a single packet moving, not even one bit or octet 😭 the engineers are just staring at their cards like "please let a bad chip blow up so we have an excuse" 🙈 meanwhile the salespeople are fast asleep dreaming about data networks 🌸 and me? I'm up with my datascope traces and memory dumps, already bracing for pain 🥲

The hero arrives 🦋

then suddenly there's this commotion in the hall, so I jump up from my desk to see what's going on 👀 and it's an ARPANET hacker at the doorway with a PC under his arm, ready to go 💜 he's giving main character energy: the creases on his forehead say he's about to solve this crisis like it's nothing ✨ he checks every alarm faster than an eagle and sizes up each one for how dangerous it could be 🦅

the protocol roll call goes: LAPB, OSI, X.25! then TCP, SNA, V.35! 📣 iconic, honestly 💅

The vibe shift 🧚

his eyes are literally on fire, and no bug is hiding from him for hours or days 🔥 he gives me one little wink and a head twitch, and I instantly know I have nothing to be scared of 😌 he doesn't even talk, just goes straight to work fixing a network that had gone completely plumb berserk 🌈 then he puts one finger on one suspicious line, drops in a patch, and the whole net comes back up fine ✨ no notes 👑

The glow-up 🌈

now the packets are flowing neatly and the protocols finally match 🥹 the hosts are interfacing and the shift-registers are latching 💖 he tests the whole system from the Gateway all the way to the PAD, and not one bit gets dropped and no checksum fails ✅ the girl did it 😭🫶

The plot twist 💀

okay so he finishes, sighs, and turns around to explain why the system died in the first place 🙈 and I'm over here twisting my fingers and counting to ten 🥲 because the answer was an off-by-one index the whole time 💀😭 it had done it again... 🌸

Vint Cerf 💜 December 1985 🎀

📦 where this page comes from