Gathering Information for the Network Solutions Book
4 Comments Published by Dr. Beyster September 24th, 2008 in Network Solutions.We’re coming to the end of the most enjoyable trip to Washington. The purpose of the trip was to collect information on Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) — how it operated — and the dynamic environment of the Internet in its early days. The book we’re working on will go from the very beginning, up through SAIC’s tenure, to the turnover to VeriSign. There are many people we need to talk to about the creation of the Internet, and we did some of those interviews while we were there, including Jay Killeen, George Strawn, Gabe Battista, Bob Korzeniewski, Phil Sbarbaro, Steve Lukasik, and Jonathan Emery. On Wednesday afternoon we drove to Rockville, Maryland, to visit the Venter Institute. We got the grand tour of the ocean sampling and biomedical work they are doing. They have ambitious plans to continue to see if they can develop a synthetic cell — essentially, artificial life. They are reasonably close to meeting this objective. All in all a very productive week. If you have any interesting stories about your role in the early days of the Internet, please post them here.
– Bob
Bob,
Sometime in the 1976=77 timeframe, under a contract SAIC (Rosslyn) had with the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) at DARPA, I was the “Principal Investigator” on a Task to develop a Plan for the Transition of the Management of the ARPA Network from DARPA to the Defense Communications Agency (DCA). This was a time when the ARPA Network was in its infancy, but had proven to be a successful approach for the transmission of messages and data to and from mostly Universities and a few military installations across the country and ready to be transferred from DARPA. The task involved discussions with IPTO at DARPA and DCA, trips to BBN in Cambridge, MA and 2-3 operational sites. The duration of the task was about six months and resulted in a fairly substantial manual with a schedule and list of tasks to guide DARPA, DCA and supporting elements such as BBN in the transition.
I am away from my home base for the next few days but when we return, I will try to locate some specific information on dates, etc.
Good luck on this new endeavor.
Charlie Stringfellow
Hi, it’s Shashi from Network Solutions. I look forward to the release. Will there be a book party? Let me know if we can help.
Thanks,
Shashi
Shashi: Thank you for your offer of help. We will be in touch. – Bob
Charlie: We would like to talk with you in the very near future about the transition of the ARPANET from DARPA to the DCA and then to NSF. – Bob