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Network Working Group                                           V. CerfRequest for Comments: 1607                             Internet SocietyCategory: Informational                                    1 April 1994A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURYStatus of this Memo   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of   this memo is unlimited.A NOTE TO THE READER   The letters below were discovered in September 1993 in a reverse   time-capsule apparently sent from 2023. The author of this paper   cannot vouch for the accuracy of the letter contents, but spectral   and radiation analysis are consistent with origin later than 2020. It   is not known what, if any, effect will arise if readers take actions   based on the future history contained in these documents.  I trust   you will be particularly careful with our collective futures!THE LETTERS   To: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   CC: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   From: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   Date: September 8, 2023 08:47.01 MT   Subject:  Hello from the Exobiology Lab!   Hi Jonathan!   I just wanted to let you know that I have settled in my new   offices at the Exobiology Lab at the Interplanetary Space   Exploration Agency's base here on Mars. The trip out was   uneventful and did let me get through an awful lot of   reading in preparation for my three year term here. There   is an excellent library of material here at the lab and   reasonable communications back home, thanks to the CommRing   satellites that were put up last year here. The transfer   rates are only a few terabits per second, but this is   usually adequate for the most part.   We've been doing some simulation work to test various   theories of bio-history on Mars and I have attached the   output of one of the more interesting runs. The results areCerf                                                            [Page 1]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   best viewed with a model VR-95HR/OS headset with the   peripheral glove adapter. I would recommend finding an   outdoor location if you activate the olfactory simulator   since some of the outputs are pretty rank! You'll notice   that atmospheric outgassing seriously interfered with any   potential complex life form development.   We tried a few runs to see what would happen if an   atmospheric confinement/replenishment system had been in   place, but the results are too speculative to be more than   entertaining at this point. There has been some serious   discussion of terra-forming options, but the economics are   still very unclear, as are the time-frames for realizing   any useful results.   I have also been trying out some new exercises to recover   from the effects of the long trip out. I've attached a   sample neuroscan clip which will give you some feeling for   the kinds of gymnastics that are possible in this gravity   field. My timing is still pretty lousy, but I hope it will   improve with practice.   I'd appreciate it very much if you could track down the   latest NanoConstructor ToolKit from MIT. I have need of   some lab gear which isn't available here and which would be   a lot easier to fabricate with the tool kit. The version I   have is NTK-R5 (2020) and I know there has been a lot added   since then.   Therese,   I wanted you to see the simulation runs, too. You may be   able to coax better results from the EXAFLOP array at CERN,   if you still have an account there. We're still limping   along with the 50 PFLOP system that Danny Hillis donated to   the agency a few years back.   The attached HD video clip shows the greenhouse efforts   here to grow grapes from the cuttings that were brought out   five years ago. We're still a long ways from '82   Beaucastel!   Gotta get ready for a sampling trip to Olympus Mons, so   will send this off for now.   Warmest regards,   DavidCerf                                                            [Page 2]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   From: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   Date: September 10, 2023 12:30:14 LT   Subject: Re: Hello from the Exobiology Lab!   David,   Many thanks for your note and all its news and interesting   data! Melanie and I are glad to know you are settled now   and back at work. We've been making heavy use of the new   darkside reflector telescope and, thanks to the new petabit   fiber links that were introduced last year, we have very   effective controls from Luna City. We've been able to run   some really interesting synthetic aperture observations by   linking the results from the darkside array and the Earth-   orbiting telescopes, giving us an effective diameter of   about 200,000 miles. I can hardly wait to see what we can   make of some of the most distant Quasars with this set-up.   We had quite a scare last month when Melanie complained of   a recurring vertigo. None of the usual treatments seemed to   help so a molecular-level brain bioscan was done. An   unexpectedly high level of localized neuro-transmitter   synthesis was discovered but has now been corrected by   auto-gene therapy.   As you requested, I have attached the latest   NanoConstructor ToolKit from MIT.  This version integrates   the Knowbot control subsystem which allows the NanoSystem   to be fully linked to the Internet for control, data   sharing and inter-system communication. By the way, the   Internet Society has negotiated a nice discount for nano-   fab services if you need something more elaborate than the   ISEA folks have available at XOB. I could put the   NanoSystem on the Solex Mars/Luna run and have it to you   pretty quickly.   Keep in touch!   Jon and Melanie   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Cerf                                                            [Page 3]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   To: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   CC: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   From: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   Date: September 10, 2023 12:30:14 UT   Subject: Re: Hello from the Exobiology Lab!   Bon Jour, David!   I am writing to you from the Hyatt Geosync where your email   was forwarded to me from INRIA. Louis and I are here   vacationing for two weeks. I have some time available and   will set up a simulation run on my EXAFLOP account. They   have the VR-95HR/OS headsets here for entertainment   purposes, but they will work fine for examining the results   of the simulation.   I have been taking time to do some research on the   development of the Interplanetary Internet and have found   some rather interesting results. I guess this counts as a   kind of paleo-networking effort, since some of the early   days reach back to the 1960s. It's hard to believe that   anyone even knew what a computer network was back then!   Did you know that the original work on Internet was   intended for military network use? One would never guess it   from the current state of affairs, but a lot of the   original packet switching work on ARPANET was done under   the sponsorship of something called the Advanced Research   Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense back in   1968. During the 1970s, a number of packet networks were   built by ARPA and others (including work by the predecessor   to INRIA, IRIA, which developed a packet network called   CIGALE on which the CYCLADES network operating system was   built).  There was also work done by the French PTT on an   experimental system called RCP that later became a   commercial system called TRANSPAC. Some seminal work was   done in the mid-late 1960s in England at the National   Physical Laboratory on a single node switch that apparently   served as the first local area network! It's very hard to   believe that this all happened over 50 years ago.   A radio-based network was developed in the same 1960s/early   1970s time period called ALOHANET which featured use of a   randomly-shared radio channel. This idea was later realized   on a coaxial cable at XEROX PARC and called Ethernet. By   1978, the Internet research effort had produced 4 versions   of a set of protocols called "TCP/IP" (Transmission ControlCerf                                                            [Page 4]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   Protocol/Internet Protocol"). These were used in   conjunction with devices called gateways, back then, but   which became known as "routers". The gateways connected   packet networks to each other.  The combination of gateways   and TCP/IP software was implemented on a lot of different   operating systems, especially something called UNIX. There   was enough confidence in the resulting implementations that   all the computers on the ARPANET and any networks linked to   the ARPANET by gateways were required to switch over to use   TCP/IP at the beginning of 1983. For many historians, 1983   marks the start of global Internet growth although it had   its origins in the research effort started at Stanford   University in 1973, ten years earlier.   I am going to read more about this and, if you are   interested, I can report on what happened after 1983.   I will leave any simulation results from the EXAFLOP runs   in the private access directory in the CERN TERAFLEX   archive.  It will be accessible using the JIT-ticket I have   attached, protected with your public key.   Au revoir, mon ami, ThereseCerf                                                            [Page 5]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   CC: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   CC: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   From: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   Date: September 10, 2023 17:26:35 MT   Subject: Internet History   Dear Therese,   I am so glad you have had a chance to take a short   vacation; you and Louis work too hard! I changed the   subject line to reflect the new thread this discussion   seems to be leading in. It sounds as if the whole system   started pretty small. How did it ever get to the size it is   now?   David   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   CC: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   From: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   Date: September 11, 2023 09:45:26 LT   Subject: Re: Internet History   Hello everyone! I have been following the discussion with   great interest. I seem to remember that there was an effort   to connect what people thought were "super computers" back   in the mid-1980's and that had something to do with the way   in which the system evolved. Therese, did your research   tell you anything about that?   JonCerf                                                            [Page 6]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   CC: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   From: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   Date: September 12, 2023 16:05:02 UT   Subject: Re: Internet History   Jon,   Yes, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) set up 5   super computer centers around the US and also provided some   seed funding for what they called "intermediate level"   packet networks which were, in turn, connected to a   national backbone network they called "NSFNET." The   intermediate level nets connected the user community   networks (mostly in research labs and universities at that   time) to the backbone to which the super computer sites   were linked. According to my notes, NSF planned to reduce   funding for the various networking activities over time on   the presumption that they could become self-sustaining.   Many of the intermediate level networks sought to create a   larger market by turning to industry, which NSF permitted.   There was a rapid growth in the equipment market during the   last half of the 1980s, for routers (the new name for   gateways), work stations, network servers, and local area   networks.  The penetration of the equipment market led to a   new market in commercial Internet services. Some of the   intermediate networks became commercial services, joining   others that were created to meet a growing demand for   Internet access.   By mid-1993, the system had grown to include over 15,000   networks, world-wide, and over 2 million computers. They   must have thought this was a pretty big system, back then.   Actually, it was, at the time, the largest collection of   networks and computers ever interconnected. Looking back   from our perspective, though, this sounds like a very   modest beginning, doesn't it? Nobody knew, at the time,   just how many users there were, but the system was doubling   annually and that attracted a lot of attention in many   different quarters.   There was an interesting report produced by the US National   Academy of Science about something they calledCerf                                                            [Page 7]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   "Collaboratories" which was intended to convey the idea   that people and computers could carry out various kinds of   collaborative work if they had the right kinds of networks   to link their computer systems and the right kinds of   applications to deal with distributed applications. Of   course, we take that sort of thing for granted now, but it   was new and often complicated 30 years ago.   I am going to try to find out how they dealt with the   problem of explosive growth.   Louis and I will be leaving shortly for a three-day   excursion to the new vari-grav habitat but I will let you   know what I find out about the 1990s period in Internet   history when we get back.   Therese   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   CC: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   From: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   Date: September 13, 2023 10:34:05 LT   Subject: Re: Internet History   Therese,   I sent a few Knowbot programs out looking for Internet   background and found an interesting archive at the Postel   Historical Institute in Pacific Palisades, California.   These folks have an incredible collection of old documents,   some of them actually still on paper, dating as far back as   1962! This stuff gets addicting after a while.   Postel apparently edited a series of reports called   "Request for Comments" or "RFC" for short. These seem to be   one of the principal means by which the technology of the   Internet has been documented, and also, as nearly as I can   tell, a lot of its culture. The Institute also has a   phenomenal archive of electronic mail going back to about   1970 (do you believe it? Email from over 50 years ago!). I   don't have time to set up a really good automatic analysis   of the contents, but I did leave a couple of Knowbots   running to find things related to growth, scaling, andCerf                                                            [Page 8]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   increased capacity of the Internet.   It turns out that the technical committee called the   Internet Engineering Task Force was very pre-occupied in   the 1991-1994 period with the whole problem of   accommodating exponential growth in the size of the   Internet. They had a bunch of different options for re-   placing the then-existing IP layer with something that   could support a larger address space. There were a lot of   arguments about how soon they would run out of addresses   and a lot of uncertainty about how much functionality to   add on while solving the primary growth problem. Some folks   thought the scaling problem was so critical that it should   take priority while others thought there was still some   time and that new functionality would help motivate the   massive effort needed to replace the then-current version 4   IP.   As it happens, they were able to achieve multiple   objectives, as we now know. They found a way to increase   the space for identifying logical end-points in the system   as well increasing the address space needed to identify   physical end-points. That gave them a hook on which to base   the mobile, dynamic addressing capability that we now rely   on so heavily in the Internet. According to the notes I   have seen, they were also experimenting with new kinds of   applications that required different kinds of service than   the usual "best efforts" they were able to obtain from the   conventional router systems.   I found an absolutely hilarious "packet video clip" in one   of the archives. It's a black-and-white, 6 frame per second   shot of some guy taking off his coat, shirt and tie at one   of the engineering committee meetings. His T-shirt says "IP   on everything" which must have been some kind of slogan for   Internet expansion back then. Right at the end, some big   bearded guy comes up and stuffs some paper money in the   other guy's waistband. Apparently, there are quite a few   other archives of the early packet video squirreled away at   the PHI. I can't believe how primitive all this stuff   looks. I have attached a sample for you to enjoy. They   didn't have TDV back then, so you can't move the point of   view around the room or anything. You just have to watch   the figures move jerkily across the screen.   You can dig into this stuff if you send a Knowbot program   to concierge@phi.pacpal.ca.us. This Postel character must   have never thrown anything away!!Cerf                                                            [Page 9]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   Jon   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   CC: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   CC: "Troisema" <rm1023@geosync.hyatt.com>   From: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   Date: September 15, 2023 07:55:45 UT   Subject: Re: Internet History   Jon,   thanks for the pointer. I pulled up a lot of very useful   material from PHI. You're right, they did manage to solve a   lot of problems at once with the new IP. Once they got the   bugs out of the prototype implementations, it spread very   quickly from the transit service companies outward towards   all the host computers in the system. I also discovered   that they were doing research on primitive gigabit-per-   second networks at that same general time. They had been   relying on unbelievably slow transmission systems around   100 megabits-per-second and below. Can you imagine how long   it would take to send a typical 3DV image at those glacial   speeds?   According to the notes I found, a lot of the wide-area   system was moved over to operate on top of something they   called Asynchronous Transfer Mode Cell Switching or ATM for   short. Towards the end of the decade, they managed to get   end to end transfer rates on the order of a gigabyte per   second which was fairly respectable, given the technology   they had at the time. Of course, the telecommunications   business had been turned totally upside down in the process   of getting to that point.   It used to be the case that broadcast and cable television,   telephone and publishing were different businesses. In some   countries, television and telephone were monopolies   operated by the government or operated in the private   sector with government regulation. That started changing   drastically as the 1990s unfolded, especially in the United   States where telephone companies bought cable companies,   publishers owned various communication companies and it got   to be very hard to figure out just what kind of company itCerf                                                           [Page 10]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   was that should or could be regulated. There grew up an   amazing number of competing ways to deliver information in   digital form. The same company might offer a variety of   information and communication services.   With regard to the Internet, it was possible to reach it   through mobile digital radio, satellite, conventional wire   line access (quaintly called "dial-up") using Integrated   Services Digital Networking, specially-designed modems,   special data services on television cable, and new fiber-   based services that eventually made it even into   residential settings. All the bulletin board systems got   connected to the Internet and surprised everyone, including   themselves, when the linkage created a new kind of   publishing environment in which authors took direct re-   sponsibility for making their work accessible.   Interestingly, this didn't do away either with the need for   traditional publishers, who filter and evaluate material   prior to publication, nor for a continuing interest in   paper and CD-ROM. As display technology got better and more   portable, though, paper became much more of a specialty   item. Most documents were published on-line or on high-   density digital storage media.  The basic publishing   process retained a heavy emphasis on editorial selection,   but the mechanics shifted largely in the direction of the   author - with help from experts in layout and   accessibility. Of course, it helped to have a universal   reference numbering plan which allowed authors to register   documents in permanent archives. References could be made   to these from any other on-line context and the documents   retrieved readily, possiblyat some cost for copying rights.   By the end of the decade, "multimedia" was no longer a   buzz-word but a normal way of preparing and presenting   information. One unexpected angle: multimedia had been   thought to be confined to presentation in visual and   audible forms for human consumption, but it turned out that   including computers as senders and recipients of these   messages allowed them to use the digital email medium as an   enabling technology for deferred, inter-computer   interaction.   Just based on what I have been reading, one of the toughest   technical problems was finding good standards to represent   all these different modalities. Copyright questions, which   had been thought to be what they called "show-stoppers,"   turned out to be susceptible to largely-established caseCerf                                                           [Page 11]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   law. Abusing access to digital information was impeded in   large degree by wrapping publications in software shields,   but in the end, abuses were still possible and abusers were   prosecuted.   On the policy side, there was a strong need to apply   cryptography for authentication and for privacy. This was a   big struggle for many governments, including ours here in   France,  where there are very strong views and laws on this   subject, but ultimately, the need for commonality on a   global basis outweighed many of the considerations that   inhibited the use of this valuable technology.   Well, that takes us up to about 20 years ago, which still   seems a far cry from our current state of technology. With   over a billion computers in the system and most of the   populations of information-intensive countries fully   linked, some of the more technically-astute back at the   turn of the millennium may have had some inkling of what   was in store for the next two decades.   Therese   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-   To: "Therese Troisema" <ttroisema@inria.fr>   CC: "Jonathan Bradel" <jbradel@astro.luna.edu>   From: "David Kenter" <dkenter@xob.isea.mr>   Date: September 17, 2023 06:43:13 MT   Subject: Re: Internet History   Therese and Jon,   This is really fascinating! I found some more material,   thanks to the Internet Society, which summarizes the   technical developments over the last 20 years. Apparently   one of the key events was the development of all-optical   transmission, switching and computing in a cost-effective   way.  For a long time, this technology involved rather   bulky equipment - some of the early 3DV clips from 2000-   2005 showed rooms full of gear required to steer beams   around. A very interesting combination of fiber optics and   three-dimensional electro-optical integrated circuits   collapsed a lot of this to sizes more like what we are   accustomed to today. Using pico- and femto- molecular   fabrication methods, it has been possible to build very   compact, extremely high speed computing and communicationCerf                                                           [Page 12]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994   devices.   I guess those guys at Xerox PARC who imagined that there   might be hundreds of millions of computers in the world,   hundreds or even thousands of them for each person, would   be pleased to see how clear their vision was. The only   really bad thing, as I see it, is that those guys who were   trying to figure out how to deal with Internet expansion   really blew it when they picked a measly 64 bit address   space. I hear we are running really tight again. I wonder   why they didn't have enough sense just to allocate at least   1024 bits to make sure we'd have enough room for the   obvious applications we can see we want, now?   David   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Final Comments   The letters end here, so we are left to speculate about many of the   loose ends not tied up in this informal exchange. Obviously, our   current struggles ultimately will be resolved and a very different,   information-intensive world will evolve from the present. There are a   great many policy, technical and economic questions that remain to be   answered to guide our progress towards the environment described in   part in these messages. It will be an interesting two or three   decades ahead!Cerf                                                           [Page 13]

RFC 1607              A View from the 21st Century          1 April 1994Security Considerations   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.Author's Address   Vinton Cerf   President, Internet Society   12020 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 270   Reston, VA 22091   EMail: +1 703 648 9888   Fax: +1 703 648 9887   EMail: vcerf@isoc.org   or   Vinton Cerf   Sr. VP Data Architecture   MCI Data Services Division   2100 Reston Parkway, Room 6001   Reston, VA 22091   Phone: +1 703 715 7432   Fax: +1 703 715 7436   EMail: vinton_cerf@mcimail.comCerf                                                           [Page 14]