Talk:ARPANET

message: So its not the MKI invented in 1970 at NPL in the UK? 
I'm confused, the article on Donald Davis states that ARPA incorporated this idea into ARPANET 
so its totally confusing. Especially since this article cites the creation as mid 1980s, well after MKI and MKII.
Can anyone shed some light on this?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.184.173 (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just more American historical revisionism, I'll update the article. Twobells (talk) 13:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  I finally got time to update the article and have included both NPL's Mark 1 and the French contribution Cyclades to the opening paragraph. Twobellst@lk 15:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see what you are saying, but despite what Mark 1 and Cyclades accomplished, they were never actually part of the internet, but really prototypes of different aspects of the Internet. ARPANET was the first to implement TCP/IP, and therefore became the actual first node on the Internet itself, and so was really its main progenitor. It is more apt to talk about Cyclades and Mark 1 in the history section, or the history of the Internet article, than the opening paragrah for ARPANET.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrono85 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: First packet switched network

message: This section was removed, wondered why?
* The removal happened some weeks ago thru an anonymous edit and was followed by a bunch of vandalism. Probably the removal was vandalism too.
Now it is back. Anyway. Please check this section "Scenario", an episode of the U.S. television sitcom Benson (season 6, episode 20—dated February 1985), was the first incidence of a popular TV show directly referencing the Internet or its progenitors. The show includes a scene in which the ARPANET is accessed."Scenario", Benson, Season 6, Episode 132 of 158, American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions, 22 February 1985
I asume that Riptide was earlier because they are receiving information via a satelite connection in the pilot premiered on January 3, 1984. Unfourtunately I have only found a German version of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEEvTWoDdoo). The time codes are 0:56:18 - 0:56:22 but mainly 0:57:18 - 0:57:52.--P. Adamik (talk) 12:51, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: References in film and media

message: This is an intermediate state. Eventually the stuff about the invention of packet switching is going to get moved to the packet switching page (just as some of this was moved here from the History of the Internet page), and more about the history of the ARPANet is going to get added here, as I have time to write it.. This is an improvement on what used to be here, though. Noel 08:07, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Intermediate state

message: Not sure where to put this (from November 21 and 1969):
:The first ARPANET link is established.
--mav 05:54, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: I've expanded it. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: First ARPANET link

message: I'm not sure about the nearby material that says they were connected "using modems": I think the link speeds were of the order of 56k, and the modems of that era were not even remotely near that speed (think 1200 bps): the links were more probably DS0 leased lines. -- The Anome 09:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, "modem" is right - that's a generic term for a device ("modulator - demodulator") that transforms a signal in one form (in this case, a bit stream) into another form (analog signals in this case). The ARPANet modems were provided by ATT; BBN's hardware only included the high-speed serial interfaces. The lines were indeed leased special high-bandwidth lines (but I don't think the concept "DS0" existed back then), again, provided by AT&T. Noel 20:24, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: PS: When I said "high-bandwidth", I meant it in the technical sense (i.e. high band-pass), not as a synonym for "high bit rate" (although of course with the former it's easy to provide the latter). Noel 21:10, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: I simply don't know the details of how AT+T provided the bandwidth. It may well have been a breakout of a T1 line. I have looked through everything I have, and nothing says anything about it. I do know (from the BBN proposal, in response to the original ARPA ARPANET RFP) that the interface between the IMP and modem was two wires in each direction - a data line and a clock line. So I guess the bit recovery was done by the AT+T gear - maybe, because for all I know AT+T just carried those two signals through from one end to the other, mostly unchanged, and didn't do clock recovery at the far end of each link. Turning the bit stream into packets (framing - i.e. figuring out where the byte boundaries was, and then turning the byte stream into packets) was done by the BBN hardware in the IMPs. The AT+T "modems" (they didn't do everything we now think of modems as doing) were huge - at MIT (which had two AT+T lines early on, when I first became responsible for the IMPs at MIT, and a third later on) the AT+T gear was in a giant rack (about 6' high, and 2.5' square, which was mostly full of stuff). My guess would be that the bandwidth was provided in different ways, at different times and on different links, but that is just a guess. Sorry I can't help more - that's all I know and/or can find out. Noel (talk) 04:38, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Data rate 

message: Well, there are a zillion links to Wesley Clark, and almost certainly all of them mean the general. So although I'd like to make it a disambig page, and then have separate pages for the general and the computer scientist, it's probably too much work to be worth it. If I can figure out the computer scientist's middle name, we can put his page under that (or. more likely, his
initial), with a note somewhere on the main Wesley Clark page to refer to it. Noel 17:04, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the MIT Wesley Clark you wish to disambiguate is Wesley A. Clark, as referenced here: Participants in the LINC Evaluation Program -- Tracy 10:25, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Oooh, thanks for dredging that up! Noel (talk) 12:00, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Wesley Clark

message: Ah, the joys of people adding stuff to articles piece-meal. At ARPANET#Initial ARPANET deployment it says:
: the first message ever sent over the ARPANET; it took place at 22:30PM on October 29, 1969.
and then later on it says:
: The first ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between an IMP at UCLA and another at SRI's 
So how could a message have been sent on Oct 29 when the first link allegedly wasn't there until November 21? Alas, I don't have the time right now to ressarch this: can someone else straighten this out? Noel (talk) 00:41, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I see this is still an open question. I'll see if I can figure it out; I need to read to to swap in the protocol development stuff to flesh out that section (everything else is looking pretty good, now). Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Date clash

message: According to :
: All who I have heard from agree that 50kb was the speed. There were experiments with a 230.4kb service but the concerns were with the economics of renting the  lines and the overall computing capacity of the IMPs.
I know Mike Brescia well, he's a very careful engineer, so I would take his data as fairly definitive. I have left mention of the 230KB speed in the article, but said it was not much used due to cost/computing concerns. Noel (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Link speed

message: It might be good to move this section to Internet history or perhaps start a new one on "ARPANET history" so that ARPANET could just be about the actual nature of the network without all the history.--Carl Hewitt 05:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, some of the history was previously in the article on packet switching until it was consolidated in ARPANET.  Maybe the packet switching article should just be about the technology and we should start a new article on the history of packet switching?--Carl Hewitt 16:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  packet switching is currently small enougth that it can take an expansion of its history there, I don't see a need for a seperate article yet. Moving the section. --John R. Barberio  talk, contribs  09:39, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversy over invention of packet switching 

message: I removed this quote from Larry Roberts:
: Roberts' wrote in his Inernet Chronology that "Although the UK work convinced Roberts to use higher speed lines (50 KB) and to use the word packet, the Rand work had no significant impact on the ARPANET plans and Internet history."
because it frankly conflicts with other things he said, at other times and other places. E.g.:
: I got this huge collection of reports back at the office, which were sitting around the ARPA office, and suddenly I learned how to route packets. So we talked to Paul and used all of his concepts (Norberg/O'Neill pp. 166)
: ''
which is completely 180 degrees away from the first quote!
I don't know for sure what's going on with him. I speculate that in part he's trying to buttress the role of Kleinrock (with whom he had shared an office at MIT, so they were/are old friends, and who has been on a campaign to try and claim credit for packet switching); in part, he also seems irritated (rightfully) at the common myth that "the ARPANET was created to survive a nuclear war". But in any event, with that level of self-contradiction, I don't think one can take anything he says (especially in recent years) as gospel. Noel (talk) 05:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Roberts and credit

message: BTW, that Baran interview (a few pages on) has some interesting thoughts on attribution, which I reproduce here because they are so incredibly apt:
: My experience with innovations is that everything has a predecessor event or events. ... The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral. Over the course of several hundred years: new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, 'I built a cathedral.' Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, 'Well, who built the cathedral?' Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.
: Too often history tends to be lazy and give credit to the planner and to the funder of the cathedral. Maybe we should take the care to avoid the simplifications and say, 'Okay, this person did this or did that, and that person did so and so.' No single person can do it all, or ever does it all. But we are lazy and tend to give all the credit to a single person most closely identified with an activity and forget all the others who really made it all possible.
Having been there myself :-), I an in absolute, perfect agreement with these sentiments. Noel (talk) 15:43, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A wise point

message: Davies found out about Baran's work from a MoD official after a presentation he gave at NPL in March, 1966. Source: Norberg/O'Neill, pp. 161. Noel (talk) 09:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting factoid

message: I added a bit about Mr. Herzfeld's statement on the impetus for ARPAnet. However, I have a hard time seeing where to put the links I used as reference. I admit ignorance of the protocol for citation (e.g., what I should make a note (named reference?), and what deserves simply an external link. Therefore, I will give them here, and anyone interested in polishing my contribution, please do, with my thanks.
I took the quote from an article at about.com. For credentials on Mr. Herzfeld, I looked to his entry at the staff pages of Potomac Institute.
:That's kind of dangerous.  Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.  For how to actually find good sources, see Wikipedia:How to write a great article. --Coolcaesar 20:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charles Herzfeld, Citation 

message: I deleted "YOU SUCK" someone put in the middle of the article. I am a newbie to Wiki, but I think it was the user 207.63.191.20. Can some1 ban him if its true pls. Gavin 00:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More vandalism 

message: The section on the growth of the network has:
"By 1981, the number of hosts had grown to 213, with a new host being added approximately every twenty days."
and a few lines later
"In 1984, the U.S. military portion of the ARPANet was broken off as a separate network, the MILNET. Prior to this there were 113 nodes on the ARPANet."
Which is confusing if not contradictory. Can anyone shed any light? Citations would help.
--Philbarker 16:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think "node" means IMP, and each IMP connected to several nodes. After TCP/IP, each port could even be a router with thousands of hosts behind. Need to clarify. W Nowicki (talk) 00:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Growth? 

message: :...the switching nodes and network links were not highly reliable, even without any nuclear attacks.
+1 to whoever wrote this gem of a phrase.  May it remain on Wikipedia for ever.  Tempshill (talk) 18:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gem of a phrase 

message: what do we call arpanet today?
--69.38.215.226 (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The internet. --UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  what do we call arpanet today 

message: The article text says "disassembling data into datagraphs, then gather [sic] these as packets" but never explains what a datagraph is. Apart from the bad grammar, the sentence is confusing as I can find no reference to the word "datagraph" (other than as meaning a graph plotted from a set of data, or as a trade name). The closest I can find is "datagram" but that has a very specific meaning within the context of the User Datagram Protocol which is analogous to the term "packet" within the context of the Transmission Control Protocol, so I don't think that is what the original poster meant. Any clues, anyone? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 03:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Datagraphs? 

message: Would the Growth of the network chapter be more readable if the information was presented as a table of dates and corresponding IMP amounts? --84.249.164.59 (talk) 01:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: Does anybody have a source or more information about the thousands of connections that were opened up when the initial 4-node network was deployed?  The linked reference [5] does not seem to mention it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomScrace (talk • contribs) 00:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple connections anomaly 

message: The lead doesn't explain very clearly who used the network and for what. I think this is essential information that should be included in the lead summary. 86.133.247.170 (talk) 02:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry to take a year and a half, but I agree the lead section needs work. In particular, it says the network was "created" at MIT and DARPA, which does not match any source. The sources say the contractor was BBN and DARPA (then ARPA, sigh) provided the funding. Now certainly given the "revolving door" it turns out BBN is down the street from MIT and many people were MIT alums, and the program manager was also from MIT. But the first nodes were in California, so very misleading. Needs to set context in the lead, not delve into details pushing one Alma Mater. W Nowicki (talk) 00:28, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead section

message: The lead paragraph says that the ARPAnet was developed by DARPA. Only, DARPA didn’t exist at that time. It was formed to take over ARPA when the CIA no longer wanted to fund it. DoD didn’t want to fund it either, but was essentially forced into it by an uproar from the participating sites. Apologies if this has already been discussed.Objective3000 (talk) 15:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure where you got your info, but it does not seem accurate. See DARPA for the chronology. With only half-sarcasm mode: the same agency was called "ARPA" when they wanted to get money from Democrats (congress or president) but needed to have the word "Defense" in their agency to get money from Republicans. The name switched back and forth twice. In 1975, however, the ARPANET was run by DCA, not DARPA as it became "operational". That needs to be clarified. W Nowicki (talk) 22:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  DARPA/ARPA 

message: On first glance of the article, seeing the diagram "ARPANET LOGICAL MAP, March 1977" made me think ARPANET was started in 1977 which I knew was wrong. The internet is full of earlier diagrams with one dated "April 1971". Would anyone have a problem if I replaced the 1977 diagram with the 1971 diagram? Neilrieck (talk) 14:37, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think having both would be interesting.Objective3000 (talk) 13:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we change the 1977 picture to one from 1971? 

message: Found Website with an archive: http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/ --79.232.76.150 (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The ARPANET Dialogues 

message: Hello,
During the late 80's and early 90's when I was eleven years old, using a dialup modem connected to Tymnet, I switched over from Tymnet to Telnet, and hanging around a government chatroom, a government employee gave me a text message that stated, the outdial number he gave me was to Arpanet, and that I will be it's first user. I connected to Arpanet with this outdial number he gave me and it said on the screen...
(something like)
Arpanet. "Operation Red Sand" Government Property and Copyright(r)All Rights Reserved.
Login:
Password:
But, I noticed something wrong as if it was not connected at the back to anything, as if it were a splash page.
I do not think there was a valid answer to the login and password question.
Can you add me as the first user of Arpanet? maybe, the first user of the Internet evolution? 
My name is Ken Pochinko, username: Miley Lindsey password: arpanet
70.181.249.210 (talk) 12:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: "late 80's and early 90's" is pretty vague and sort of late to be the first user, since the ARPANET was first used in 1969. Do you have any third party sources that can be used to verify your claim? Without that or something like that, it will be hard to add you to this article as "the first user of the ARPANET".  Jeff Ogden (talk) 22:49, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  First User of Arpanet 

message: I was working for the Department of Defense in R&D support in the 1980's.  We were told specifically that ARPAnet (aka DARPAnet) was developed as an interconnected web to provide for continuous computer connectivity in the event of a hostile nuclear strike.  Either someone was lying then, or someone is lying now.  Unfortunately, I do not have any documentation to verify what I was told by my superiors, but perhaps some research is in order?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.124.92.254 (talk) 15:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, please feel free to do research and add details with sources. An obvious explanation is that motivations behind such a long-term project are not so clear-cut. For example, anyone who has worked in the government research sector knows the careful dance. If one wants to get money from Republicans, put "Defense" in your name and say it is needed to protect America from its enemies. To get money from Democrats, take "Defense" out of your name and say it is needed to promote social justice (or save the environment). So certainly to the Reagan administration I can imagine which justification was used, and which to the congress of the other party. This is not meant to be negative; in fact, there is a basis of truth. The Rand Baran research was indeed done to plan for a survivable military network, and the ARPANET was seen as more reliable and cost-effective than the Autodin project, which led to MILNET etc. That quote is a bit misleading, since the Rand study was not totally "unrelated". This and the previous section should do more paraphrasing with citations from reliable sources instead of quoting web pages verbatim perhaps. The DARPA article does mention the name changes, but we need to be careful to avoid using personal anecdotes. W Nowicki (talk) 17:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

text: See the discussion below.  Clearly nuclear war was one consideration.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Miconception of design goals 

message: During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!
* http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/Internet35.htm
** In Douglas Engelbart on 2011-03-17 15:19:18, 404 Not Found
** In History of the University of California, Los Angeles on 2011-04-01 02:07:59, 404 Not Found
** In ARPANET on 2011-06-20 00:57:15, 404 Not Found
--JeffGBot (talk) 00:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link 

message: I have been studying history of computing for twenty years now, and have read a lot about the origins of Internet.  But throughout all these years, some key aspect was always missing, as if everybody forgot to talk about it - so I decided to start talking about it right now.  Arpanet, the predecessor of Internet, was a military project - so how, and why, did it go from military project to university project intended for public service?  Re-reading this article today I learnt that Arpanet, even tough being a military project, was developed by universities from its very start - but so many unanswered questions remain.  Did the Arpanet initial funding from the military (and the CIA too, as I read today from this article and talk) stop, and if so why?  I read a professor stating "Arpanet was a failed military project".  Was it really deemed a failure by the US DoD?  Afterwards, had the universities complete freedom to carry on the project on its own, and if so why there was no secrecy over a former military project, or was it over some parts the universities had to do without?  How did happen this "military give away project to universities" thing?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ignacio.Agulló (talk • contribs) 16:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing a key point: going from military project to university project 

message: I just watched said movie.  No ARPANET references.  I'm removing the line. 64.142.28.55 (talk) 23:43, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes has no ARPANET references 

message: Wings Over The Gulf (Discovery Channel) describes Iraq as having had an "Internet-ted radar system [or network]". I am not a military person, but I think the implication is that Iraq's radar network was intended to survive partial destruction. Maybe it has something to do with the now obvious rumor that "The Internet was intended to survive nuclear war".  Could a military person elaborate on (a) the concept of radar networks and (b) the Internet-Nuclear War hoax? Chris-marsh-usa (talk) 02:17, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is an Internet-ted Radar System? Possibly Related to Internet Nuclear War Hoax? 

message: has twice removed the second conjunction from the following sentence, rendering it grammatically incorrect in American English, the language of this article:
Packet switching was based on concepts and designs by Americans Leonard Kleinrock and Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory. (emphasis mine. reference removed)
His rationale for doing so is that a conjunction only goes at the end of the sentence, but as can be seen, the sentence has three at various points in the sentence, joining elements of various clauses.  To remove the bold-faced and creates a problem with the first modifier in the final clause because only Kleinrock and Baran are Americans.  To be clear the modifier applies to them, their names are joined by and in the first sub clause, thus limiting the description American to them.  The second modifier, British, applies to Donald Davies.  Without the limiting conjunction, the modifier American would apply to all of the names the series, as separation by commas would suggest.  That leaves us with: Americans Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, British scientist Donald Davies and Lawrence Roberts, thus creating a new nationality:  American British, since both modifiers are now applied to Davies and Roberts.  
In other words, to be grammatically correct and accurate, the conjunction between the first two must stay.  Hopefully this will prevent an endless edit war over grammatical minutia.  --Drmargi (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor grammar issue 

message: "The ARPANET was an early packet-switching network and the first network to implement the Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, which became the technical foundation of the Internet." it sez here.
 
I associate this "the technical foundation" stuff very much with the public relations department of MCI, puffing up that company's own importance after they acquired Vint Cert ("Cerf," obviously, but I love "Cert" as a Freudian slip!) as a director or senior officer.  (Somebody please correct me on which it was.)
 
MCI's pioneering, to my mind, deserves most kudos not for TCP/IP, but for their microwave line between St. Louis and Chicago, which both demonstrated it, and a lot of other good engineering, no doubt, but also cleared out the legalistic underbrush in Washington, and made it clear to the world that the age of copper wire was over.  (Some fashion designer at the time was trying to make us all wear green suits, but I have only ever seen two. One was on the MCI lobbyist who visited my office in the Rayburn House Office Building in 1968 or '69, and the other on a Secret Service man I almost bumped into when President Nixon passed me on his way to the Senate Dining Room about that time. They, the suits, not the lobbyist and the security guy, then vanished without a trace, and upscale polyester was the rag trade's next inane try.)
 
The fact is the Internet was perking along quite nicely, i.e. it had its foundations in place, with all those bang-bang-bang addresses, before the excellent Cerf came along and eased expansion with his development of TCP/IP/.
 
TCP/IP was useful, and is today necessary, but it's the ceiling of the first floor, or maybe the floor of the mezzanine.
 
It's not any foundation.
 
David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 11:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  TCP/IP Again Called "Foundation."  MCI Propaganda? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on ARPANET. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/6CyxHpfIR?url=http://www.norsar.no/norsar/about-us/History/Internet/ to http://www.norsar.no/norsar/about-us/History/Internet/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060506003539/http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html to http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120419173051/http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/history/arpamaps/ to http://som.csudh.edu/cis/lpress/history/arpamaps/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:04, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I suppose it doesn't matter much, but there is at least one error in the 1977 ARPANET image in the infobox. Rutgers had a PDP-10 followed by a DEC-20 on the net. They never had a PDP-11; although they later had a VAX-11, not connected to the IMP. O3000 (talk) 12:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the Rutgers IMP - but the "Rutgers" is merely a name for the IMP, it was actually owned by DCA. DCA made the decisions on what hosts were connected to each IMP - and one PDP-11 that's connected to that IMP is, according to a copy of the Hosts file from 1977, host 3/46, "NUSC", a PDP-11/40 running ELF, front-ending a Univac 1108. NUSC probably stands for "Naval Underwater Systems Center" or Command. According to the Hosts file, "UPENN" was also connected to that IMP (host 1/46); the file doesn't say what kind of machine, but according to the map, apparently another PDP-11. You'll notice both of them have a little 'v' in a corner; that means they were both 'Very Distant Hosts', a way to connect up over a phone line that allowed the host to be a long way from the IMP. Noel (talk) 00:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Seems unlikely. I was head of systems and communications at Rutgers when the IMP was installed. But then, even if my memory was perfect, I'm not an RS.:) O3000 (talk) 14:35, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

text: Hey, don't take my word for it: you can find a 1977 copy of the Hosts.Txt file at the end of this, with the non-Rutgers hosts on that IMP listed there. You can find confirmation of the meaning of the "v" legend here: the small "v" represents a Very Distant Host (VDH) interface to the IMP. If you want to know more about VDH interfaces, find a later copy of BBN Report 1822. Noel (talk) 00:11, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARPANET Images 

message: This article could really do a better job of explaining the relation of ARPENET to the modern internet. Some sources describe “the internet” as direct descendent of ARPENET while other suggest it was created as a separate network that operated alongside ARPENET for a short while but using technologies first developed and tried out in mass on ARPENET and that for a time they where operating in parallel before the last bits of ARPENET where shut down. So exactly what is the deal?  Was the modern internet  essentially what was once ARPENET but now under a different name or did they both exist in parallel at one time, with ARPENET only contributing packet-switching technology to the internet but with both being technically separate networks?  Notcharliechaplin (talk) 03:51, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARPANET’s relation to the modern internet 

message: Interesting bit at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49842681 which includes a couple of early maps: one hand-drawn by Larry Roberts dated (by the BBC) 1969, and another undated but apparently preceding the ones used in this article. These are credited Getty but presumably also exist in the public domain.
The latter map is divided into East Coast (Mitre, Burroughs, Harvard, BBN, MIT and Lincoln), West Coast (Rand, SDC, UCLA, Stanford, Ames, SRI and UCSB) and other (Utah, Illinois, Case and Carnegie) sites, and every site is served by at least two connections. MarkMLl (talk) 07:23, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  BBC article 

message: I'm not sure DARPA contracting with BBN to add TCP/IP qualifies as a commercial partnership - the Department of Defense contracts with commercial entities for a number of reasons.
If the intent here is to discuss commercial adoption of TCP/IP, as per Internet protocol suite#Adoption, that's the commercial adoption of TCP/IP for non-ARPANET use.  As that section indicates, it wasn't just the BBN BSD stack. Guy Harris (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the suggestion Guy, I linked to that section in the article. Whizz40 (talk) 09:33, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commercial partnerships 

message: You can time-share a computer - mainframe or otherwise - by directly attaching terminals to the computer; that doesn't require packet switching or even circuit switching.  You can also have dial-up access, which just requires circuit switching on the plain old telephone service network.
In addition, time-sharing normally referred to conversational access, of the sort that, on the ARPANET, was provided by Telnet.  The ARPANET also supported FTP and email.
(And, of the four initial machines on the ARPANET, only the IBM System/360 Model 75 is generally considered a "mainframe".  The SDS 940 could be considered a midicomputer, and the SDS Sigma 7 could either be considered a minicomputer or perhaps an early supermini; the PDP-10 might be considered a mainframe, but it was generally thought of as a different type of machine from an IBM mainframe.) Guy Harris (talk) 08:30, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, thanks for clarifying. Whizz40 (talk) 08:34, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Always thought of the PDP-10 as a midicomputer. Even the later Dec-20 I didn't think of as a mainframe, although some called it such. SDS-940 definitely mini. I thought of the SDS/Xerox Sigma series as mainframes, as they used the IBM instruction set, like the RCA Spectra series. RAX was a little used timesharing system on the System/360. Pre-system/360, there was Quiktran on the IBM 7040/7044. Of course there were earlier timesharing efforts. I'm getting old. O3000 (talk) 10:41, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Time-sharing]] of [[mainframe computer]]s didn't require the ARPANET 

message: 1st to use TCP/IP? It's my understanding that testing was simultaneous with SATNET, and full adoption was done by others before arpanet? Satnet went over in early 82, ARPNET in Jan 83 (officially, defacto dec 82)...86.142.118.35 (talk) 23:12, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll change the lede to read ARPANET was one of the first to adopt TCP/IP. Whizz40 (talk) 04:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious claim in lede 

message: Hey all,
Even though it is undoubted and actually referenced that e-mail has grown very quickly in ARPANET traffic since its inception, this actual figure seems unreferenced and even considered as dubious in a recent discussion of the History of computing "SIGCIS" mailing list. References 9 and 84 do not actually state that figure at all and should refer to the previous sentence. I am thus witching the references to the previous sentence,removing the dubious claim, replacing it with a similar, but unquantified, phrasing, adding a valid reference to it. Feel free to discuss it here. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 23:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite right. I handled a node and I wouldn't be surprised at the stat. But, I've never seen any actual published stats. O3000 (talk) 00:03, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Here is a link to the discussion on the SIGCIS mailing list  as a ref Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 00:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "By 1973, e-mail constituted 75% of the ARPANET traffic" as a dubious claim 

message: For editors looking to improve or update this article and seeking reliable sources for ARPANET history, I've recently learned of two historical documents from or about DARPA that have been made available online:
* A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade - published in April 1981 and prepared for DARPA by BBN.
* DARPA Technical Accomplishments - A Historical Review of Selected DARPA Projects, Volume 1 - published in February 1990 by the Institute for Defense Analyses. The ARPANET text begins on page 20-1 which is page 243 of the PDF. (Note that this document covers a wide range of other DARPA projects and so may be useful for improving the history of those Wikipedia articles, too.)
I don't currently have time myself to see if these sources can help improve this article, but I thought I would leave them here in case other editors do have the time. - Dyork (talk) 12:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two new sources for ARPANET history