Jonathan B. Postel

A brief history of the internet

This paper was first published online by the Internet Society in December 20031 and is being re-published in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review because of its historic import. It was written at the urging of its primary editor, the late Barry Leiner. He felt that a factual rendering of the events and activities associated with the development of the early Internet would be a valuable contribution. The contributing authors did their best to incorporate only factual material into this document. There are sure to be many details that have not been captured in the body of the document but it remains one of the most accurate renderings of the early period of development available.

The past and future history of the Internet

The Internet also represents one of the most successful examples of sustained investment and commitment to research and development in information infrastructure. Beginning with early research in packet switching, the government, industry, and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. Today, terms like “leiner@mcc.com” and “http://www.acm.org” trip lightly off the tongue of random people on the street.1 The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects—technological, organizational, and community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.2

The ARPA internet protocol

Abstract A variety of computer networks are interconnected by gateway computers in the ARPA internetwork system. Processes on different networks may exchange messages with each other by means of an Internet Protocol which must be implemented in each subscriber (host) computer and in the gateways. The Internet Protocol is a relatively simple protocol that provides for the delivery of individual messages (datagrams) with high but not perfect reliability. This Internet Protocol does not replace the existing protocol in any network, but is used by processes to extend the range of communications. Messages in Internet Protocol are transmitted through any individual network by encapsulating them in that networks protocol. This paper presents an overview of the Internet Protocol and the operation of the gateway computers in the ARPA internet system.

An experimental multimedia mail system

A computer-based experimental multimedia mail system that allows the user to read, create, edit, send, and receive messages containing text, images, and voice is discussed.

Reliable host-to-host protocols: Problems and techniques

Host-to-host protocols capable of supporting internetworking and reliable transmission have been under development for several years. This paper discusses problems and techniques related to one type of reliable protocol, which features end-to-end positive acknowledgement, retransmission, internetwork addressing capabilities, and ordered delivery. The issues of interest are protocol correctness and completeness, protocol efficiency, and complexity of implementation. These will be discussed in a framework of three problem areas, flow control, sequence number space management, and reliable transmission of controls. Flow control heuristics using windowing techniques are explored. Flow control information is augmented to allow fair apportionment of bandwidth, better bandwidth utilization through optimistic credits, flow control credits matched to the type of traffic, and increased performance for high precedence connections. Alternatives for selecting the startup sequence number for a connection are presented. Techniques and problems of several sequence number space management strategies are presented. These include delayed startup, incarnation numbers, and resynchronization. The transmission of controls are discussed, with emphasis on whether or not to share a logical transmission channel between controls and data. The effect of data flow control on the delivery of out-of-band signals is an important consideration. The findings are presented both to further the understanding of and to encourage intelligent implementations of reliable protocols.

On protocol multiplexing

The notion of protocol multiplexing usually means the ability of a protocol to accommodate several instances of higher level protocols at the same time. In this paper we propose to extend this notion to allow sharing of messages, and packets, among several simultaneous communicating processes, which will increase the communication efficiency by reducing the total number of messages transmitted through the media. This paper discusses several aspects of multiplexing and the interaction of multiplexing with other protocol issues.

An internetwork message structure

The focus of this paper is the provision of computer-aided message services between users of computers in a multinetwork environment. An assembly of interconnected networks is called an internetwork. The task at hand is to provide an internetwork computer message service. It can be expected that a large number of message services will arise with some general aspects of equivalent functionality and some will have a few unusual, possibly unique, features. Certainly there will be many distinct user interface models for the human interaction with message systems. For these reasons the internetwork message system suggested here is based on the assumption of a standard for the internal machine-oriented representation of a message and the assumption that a variety of user interface programs will be available. The proposed system provides for the transmission of messages composed of a rigidly defined and structured set of command information fields and an arbitrarily defined and structured message content. Within the content may be transmitted text, facsimile, graphics, or voice data. This paper is based on a more detailed proposal for an internetwork message system [1].

An informal comparison of three protocols

Abstract Three pairs of higher level computer communication protocols are compared to reveal design choices. The comparisons are between the host level protocols NCP and TCP used in the ARPANET, between the virtual terminal protocols Telnet and SMVT, and between the file transfer protocols FTP and BTF. The Telnet and FTP protocols are used in the ARPANET, while the SMVT and BTF are proposed for use in the EIN.

Intermail & commercial mail relay services

This RFC discusses the history and evolution of the Intermail and Commercial mail systems. The problems encountered in operating a store-and-forward mail relay between commercial systems such as Telemail, MCI Mail and Dialcom are also discussed. This RFC provides information for the Internet community, and does not specify any standard.

Panel on multimedia computer mail—technical issues and future standards

A computer-based message system (CBMS) consists of computer facilities that expedite the creation, management, and nonreal time distribution of messages. These systems are increasingly being used for formal and informal communication, supporting the distribution of textual messages. However, nontext media such as voice and graphics are very important for human interaction, and are becoming more and more important in computer system applications. As a result, there is a growing need for the support of media other than text in CBMS. Before standards for multimedia CBMS can be implemented, there are many technical issues that must be addressed. These range from the design of new mechanisms for the distribution of multimedia mail, to the design of tools needed for editing nontext media. This panel will be discussing issues encountered in the development of multimedia CBMS and an outlook for standards for multimedia computer mail.