While technically commercial use of the Internet for non-governmental
purposes was not supported in the 1980s, in practice it occurred. From
the mid-80s, I worked for a company that got Internet access through
MRNet, used that for commercial interaction with the government, and
also used it for other commercial and non-commercial purposes.
I think for the purposes of Stewart's original comment, the difference
someone drew between soft and hard control is important. The
government9s) clearly had soft control over the Internet for much of
that time. (It would be pretty foolish for me to argue with Mike over
that.) At the same time, the ISO OSI example was a case where the
government (and then other groups) tried to exercise harder control. And
it failed. Which aligns well with how hard it has been to get folks to
adopt IPv6, and yet we are making progress.
Yours,
Joel
On 2/26/2020 6:15 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
On 2/26/2020 5:29 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
On 26-Feb-20 23:28, Stewart Bryant wrote:
On 26 Feb 2020, at 09:56, tom petch <daedulus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:daedulus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On 26/02/2020 09:35, Stewart Bryant wrote:
Before my time, but was IPv4 designed before or after the Internet
was released from the government to the public?
It was never really a government project; it was a DARPA-funded R&D
project. And there are various good books about the early days. I
happen to like "Where wizards stay up late" by Katie Hafner and
Matthew Lyon, but there are others.
The TCP/IP split and IPv4 really date from about 1977, with the
cutover date being 1/1/1983. I'm sure the spec was available before
RFC791. It was still DARPA-funded then, of course.
Way before, if I understand your question aright.
I see the start of the public internet as April, 1995, when
commercial activity, over and above applying for NSF grants, was
permitted. This enabled ISPs as we now know them.
There were commercial operators before then, including outside the
USA. Also, .com originated before 1995, see RFC1591.
The two (.com and commercial operators) aren't really connected. From
83 to about the early 90s, access to the internet was permitted to
commercial companies only under the AUP - which spelled out acceptable
use and explicitly prohibited commercial use. A number of companies
involved in research and support of the internet (e.g. BBN who was
BBN.com from about '87 or so ), were permitted access to support
government programs, but not allowed to use it for their own
purposes. NSF's standing up of the various interconnect points, the
NSFNet, and a change in the routing to BGP allowed a commercial
internet to rise up at the edges and various nationally based internet
providers to interconnect.
(https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/nsfoutreach/htm/n50_z2/pages_z3/28_pg.htm
claims that the AUP was eased in '91).
IPv4? I date to RFC791, September 1981 although much of the
technology was fixed before then.
Tom Petch
My question was semi-rhetorical because I did not remember the exact
timing, but I think this conforms my suspicion that the key technical
decisions behind the Internet were made whilst it was under
government control.
IMHO it was never under government control; it was R&D paid for by the
US government, which is very different.
Nope - it was under government control. I remember approving at least a
few interconnections during my time at the DDN program office (85-89),
including a discussion with Vint that ended up getting MCIMail to be
able to transit the internet. I think Stewart is more correct than you.
Mike
There is a list for this, and it's not an IETF list:
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
Regards
Brian
