Claim: In 1987, the networking community became well aware of IP fragmentation's problems (error and flow control and relaying and multiplexing (IP) functions in the same protocol), and Richard Watson provided a fundamental theory of reliable transport in 1981 whereby connection management requires only timers bounded by a small factor of the Maximum Packet Lifetime and developed the Delta-1 protocol which allows a connection's state to be determined simply by bounding three timers, with no handshaking.
Evidence: Richard A. Watson (programmer) (born 1971), programmer and game designer for the Myst series of computer games Richard Watson (cricketer) (1921–1987), English cricketer Richard Watson in 1981 provided a fundamental theory of reliable transport whereby connection management requires only timers bounded by a small factor of the Maximum Packet Lifetime (MPL). Based on this theory, Watson et al. developed the Delta-t protocol which allows a connection's state to be determined simply by bounding three timers, with no handshaking. By 1987, the networking community was well aware of IP fragmentation's problems, to the point of considering it harmful. Initial TCP versions performed the error and flow control (current TCP) and relaying and multiplexing (IP) functions in the same protocol.