V- US and Norwegian Collaboration is Arranged
While these negotiations between UCL and IPTO were ongoing, IPTO invited Norwegian researchers to collaborate on resource sharing network research. After an invitation to the Norwegian Telecommunications Administration (NTA) did not generate interest, the IPTO extended an invitation to the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE, "Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt").
NDRE welcomed the proposed collaboration. According to Yngvar Lundh, one of the Internet pioneers in Norway, NDRE's interest in basic computing and networking research was the reason for the Norwegian collaboration with IPTO.(10)
On September 18, 1972, Larry Roberts and Robert (Bob) Kahn visited Norway, meeting with Lundh, then a research engineer at NDRE, Finn Lied, the director of NDRE, and Karl Holberg, the research superintendent of the NDRE electronics department. (Lundh, Email, April 24, 2002) Lundh had met Roberts several years earlier during Lundh's sabbatical in 1958-9 as a visiting researcher. He was at MIT’s Electronics
Systems Lab when Roberts was a graduate student finishing up his PhD. They were both using the TX-0.(11)
Lundh recalls that the meeting with the visitors from IPTO was held in Oslo at a civilian research administrative office at the Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Also at the meeting were representatives from other Norwegian organizations. (Lundh, Email, April 26, 2002.) In a history in Norwegian of the role of Norway in early Internet development, Gisle Hannemyr writes that Lundh saw the collaboration with IPTO as "an opportunity to further advance data communication research in Norway."(Hannemyr)
Roberts and Kahn invited NDRE to collaborate and recommended they send researchers to the first International Computer Communications Conference (ICCC'72) planned for October 1972 in Washington, DC. There was to be a demonstration of the resource sharing packet switching network that was being developed in the US. Describing the importance of this event, Donald Davies writes:
“The meeting at the Washington Hilton in 1972 was quite the most
important and influential conference I have ever attended....I arrived
at the Hilton Hotel early to see what was happening and met an extraordinary
scene. On a podium was 'Terminal IMP' or TIP...joined to the existing ARPA network,
surrounded by many terminal devices of all kinds.
The astounding thing was a crowd of young, enthusiastic researchers who
were rushing around or huddled in earnest discussions trying to get
everything to work. Listening to their conversation we heard all that
we had been trying to promote for the previous 5 years being talked
about as self-evident -- a new and strange experience. Most of all,
one had the impression of a great amount of intellectual effort now
being applied to computer networking, which must grow in importance.
It was a complete turn-around, seemingly in one day, though in fact it
was the enormous efforts of the ARPA team that achieved this demonstration
and caused the revolutionary change in thinking about networks.
It completely changed attitudes to computer communications. Yet, many
of the ideas it fostered had been talked about for five years or more.
What happened in Washington was that people could now see these ideas
in the form of practical achievements. They could get a glimpse of the
intellectual impact that networks were destined to produce.”
Donald W. Davies, "Early Thoughts on Computer Communications"
Lundh writes that he attended the ICCC conference on October 25 and 26, 1972. While at the demonstration, he was invited to attend a meeting with other networking researchers from around the world held after the ICCC'72 at the Comsat Corporation (at L'Enfant Plaza). He writes that this meeting "may well have been the first Internet meeting."(Lundh, Email April 26, 2002) This was also the meeting where the International Network Working Group(INWG) was created. Lundh reports that at the meeting at Comsat, "The discussion(s) were in rather general terms as I recall, and mainly clarifying reasons for establishing a net of nets where each individual net would use the best low level protocol for utilizing the respective transmission. He estimates that there were 10-15 people there that day. Certainly Bob Kahn and most likely Dick Binder from BBN." (Lundh, Email, June 24, 2002) Kirstein notes that he was there. Cerf adds that he was there, along with Steve Crocker from ARPA, Louis Pouzin, Gesualdo Lemoli, Roger Scantlebury and perhaps Donald Davies. Also Kirstein presented a paper at the ICCC'72 conference.(12)
Although the research proposed by IPTO was new to him, Lundh found "the ideas interesting and accepted the invitation to participate in the development." (Lundh, Email, April 9, 2002) To actively participate in the research, he built "a small group of researchers which became one of ten groups which took part in basic Internet research during a ten year period from 1972." (Lundh, Email, April 9, 2002) He was frustrated, however, trying to muster resources and was hoping for some assistance from ARPA. But he also realized that it was difficult for IPTO to help fund the Norwegian researchers. (Lundh, Email, July 12, 2002)
Lundh reports, "I had no financial support in the beginning, but I formalized a small 'job' called 'Radio Data Systems-RADA' at NDRE with the purpose (of) fitting in with ARPA's resource sharing (research)." In the beginning of the collaboration, Lundh had to support the travel and the research he did in his spare time with
other projects he was working on. For the first few years, he recalls, he had help from two graduate students whose thesis work he was supervising.
The ARPANET TIP was not put at NDRE which was in a military area with restricted, and thus, limited access. Instead it was placed in NORSAR's building which was on the other side of the fence from NDRE. Lundh explains that "seismic array technology or test detection was not NDRE's reason for placing the NDRE TIP at NORSAR.(13) It was a practical arrangement for us, and probably a convenient arrangement for ARPA too." (Lundh, Email, April 18, 2002) The TIP at NORSAR was thus at a civilian facility, providing access for more widespread Norwegian participation
in networking research and facilitating academic collaboration in networking.(Lundh, Email, April 18, 2002)
A problem the Norwegian group faced, according to Lundh, was that it was difficult to build a research team given the lack of funding. "It was hard to convince Norwegian financing sources of the importance of computer networking," Lundh writes.(Lundh, 18) He was excited by the concept of resource sharing. "My reasons for wanting to participate," he explains, "were that I intuitively thought the
possibilities of resource sharing were fantastic." Lundh elaborates, "I saw 'resource sharing' as (providing-ed) interesting possibilities in several 'dimensions', resources being expensive programs, special data, ideas, people with various interests and capabilities, etc." (Lundh, Email, July 12, 2002) Despite these funding difficulties, the Norwegian research group made an important contribution to the development of TCP/IP and the Internet.
|
