NCP, the Predecessor of TCP/IP

It's a bit of a shame this sort of thing is impossible now. There's so many billions of devices on the Internet now that there's no way to have a flag day for stuff like IPv4.

The first TCP/IP implementation for TENEX/TOPS-20 was kind of a dog (large and complex and slow, of course written in -10 assembler), but over time it got tuned quite a bit.

When I was at Imagen, a Stanford TeX project laser printer spin-off using the same SUN-1 boards as the first Sun workstations and Cisco routers, we hired Geoff Steckel. Geoff was a genius from the Dave Clark (co-inventor of TCP/IP) group at MIT. He wrote for Imagen a very small, tight, super-fast TCP/IP implementation in C, since he had quite a bit of practice at it in Dave's group.

   For example, the ARPANET is net 10.  That means there is a domain
   called 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA.  Within this domain there is a PTR RR at
   51.0.0.10.IN-ADDR that points to the RRs for the host SRI-NIC.ARPA
   (who's address is 10.0.0.51).  Since the NIC is also on the MILNET
   (Net 26, address 26.0.0.73), there is also a PTR RR at 73.0.0.26.IN-
   ADDR.ARPA that points to the same RR's for SRI-NIC.ARPA.  The format
   of these special pointers is defined below along with the examples
   for the NIC.

    Title    : Gateway To Net Ten
    Original : Stairway To Heaven
    Group    : Led Zeppelin
    Author   : Mark Lottor <mkl@nisc.sri.com>

    GATEWAY TO NET TEN    -- Mark Lottor

    [Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant]

    There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast
    and he's buying a gateway to net ten.
    When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed
    with a SYN he can get what he sent for.

    Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh
    and he's buying a gateway to net ten.

    There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure
    cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
    In a note on the page there's a warning that says
    sometimes all of our code is broken.

    Don't ya know, it makes me wonder.

    There's an error I get when I send to the net
    and my packets are lost and retransmitting.
    In my logs I have seen loops of mail thru the machine,
    and the screams of those who are hacking.

    Oooh, it makes me wonder.

    And it's whispered that soon if we all fix and tune
    then the packets will reach their destinations.
    And a new day will dawn for hosts that stay long
    and the telnets will echo quite faster.

    Ohhhhh, it makes me wonder.

    If there's a bustle in your cisco, don't be alarmed now
    it's just a quick ping for the NIC machine.
    Yes there are two paths you can route by, but in the long haul
    there's still time to change the protocol.

    Yowwww, it makes me wonder.

    Your host is loaded and it will slow in case you don't know,
    the unix's are asking you to join them.
    Dear hacker, do you see the overflow, and did you know
    your gateway is still under development.

    And as we wind out more coax, and gateways slower than our hosts,
    There goes a message we all know, it updates routes and wants to show
    how everything still turns quite slow.
    And if you listen very hard, the bits will come to you at last.
    When all are ones and ones are all, to be a rubout and not a null.

    And he's buying a gateway to net ten...