Jon Postel

The DARPA internet protocol suite

THE MILITARY requirement for computer communications between heterogeneous computers on heterogeneous networks has driven the development of a standard suite of protocols to permit such communications to take place in a robust and flexible manner. These protocols support an architecture consisting of multiple packet switched networks interconnected by gateways. The DARPA experimental internet system consists of satellite, terrestrial, radio, and local networks, all interconnected through a system of gateways and a set of common protocols.

DOD standard transmission control protocol

Abstract : The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is intended for use as a highly reliable host-to-host protocol between hosts in packet-switched computer communication networks, and especially in interconnected systems of such networks. This document describes the functions to be performed by the Transmission Control Protocol, the program that implements it, and its interface to programs or users that require its services. Computer communication systems are playing an increasingly important role in military, government, and civilian environments. This document primarily focuses its attention on military computer communication requirements, especially robustness in the presence of communication unreliability and availability in the presence of congestion, but many of these problems are found in the civilian and government sector as well. As strategic and tactical computer communication networks are developed and deployed, it is essential to provide means of interconnecting them and to provide standard interprocess communication protocols which can support a broad range of applications.

Book Review: The Cuckoo's Egg:Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll (Doubleday 1989)

If you are interested in computer networks or espionage, this book is for you. The book is a very interesting, even exciting, book to read. The book is so consistently interesting that yo u can open the book to any page at random and begin reading, and before finishing the page yo u will be hooked on the story. This is the story of Cliff Stolls fast track education as a UNIX system programmer and network wizard, with the main course being tracking down a spy! Cliff is an astronomer, throw n into the computer support group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories by a temporary fundin g crunch on his astronomy project. As his first task, he looked into the accounting system on the unix machines and found that two different routines disagreed by 75 cents. While most of us would say thats close enough , Cliff decided to dig into it. Someone had set up a new account but had done only half the things needed to enter it into the accounting scheme. Looking into that account lead to the conclusion that there was a hacker in the system ! The story tells of the schemes that Cliff used to track the spy, to keep him interested withou t letting him get too much critical data, or tipping him off to the fact he was being watched. The tricks the spy used are described, the data he was after (anything to do with SDI), hi s methods of access, of getting superuser status, of cracking passwords. It also describes the utter frustration of dealing with our government agencies that are suppose d to care about these problems. In contrast to this is the incredible response of the carriers i n tracing calls. It is also a very human and personal story with clear characterizations of the people involved. It is deals directly with Cliffs own life inside and outside the lab .