VIII - Early Norwegian Internet Research Challenges
During its earliest stage, Lundh's research group consisted of his 2 graduate students and himself. By 1974 he was able to get Paal Spilling assigned to his group, Spilling had a PhD in nuclear physics and was interested in the networking project. Subsequently other qualified engineers were assigned by NDRE to the research group. Lundh describes the change Spilling's participation made in the NDRE research group. He writes (Lundh, Email, June 12, 2002)(19):
"Paal Spilling came to my group in 1994....I recruited him from
one of my colleague's group(s) at NDRE where he had become superfluous.
At that time I had good contact with people in PSP and INWG. I
participated in their meetings and knew Peter Kirstein. They were all
delighted that I finally got someone beside me. And - as I recall -
Peter offered to have him at UCL for a couple of months to give a
flying start, which was very good and useful indeed. Paal soon
got the whole networking business 'under his skin' and after that
participated together with me in all the meetings. He soon became
the main contributor to the networking effort at NDRE, for some time
being the only one who spent full time in it."
Lundh emphasizes that the continual invitation to the Norwegian
Telecommunications Administration Research Establishment (NTA-RE) to participate in the research led to "the free loan for experimental purposes of a spare channel in the INTELSAT IV satellite and a spare line between NDRE and the existing Scandinavian Satellite Earth Station at Tanum, Sweden. This permission was obtained in 1975 permitting the SIMP - Satellite IMP - to be installed at the Tanum Station in mid 1975. From then on SATNET had three ground stations permitting experiments involving contentious traffic situations. Mario Gerla in Leonard Kleinrock's group at UCLA was very active in the SATNET studies which eventually resulted in the CPODA-protocol for Contention Priority Oriented Demand Access."(Lundh) According to Lundh, other researchers in Norway were not eager to use the NORSAR TIP during the 1970s. But interest was expressed by the staff at NORSAR in utilizing the ARPANET as an alternative to the channel they had for exchanging seismic data with the US. Lundh notes that "Commercial traffic was prohibited in the Arpanet from the outset and that was still the rule as the network changed into the Internet. The network was an experimental facility supported for research purposes."(Lundh, 18)(20)
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