>On January 1, 1983, in what is known as a "flag day", NCP was officially rendered obsolete when the ARPANET changed its core networking protocols from NCP to the more flexible and powerful TCP/IP protocol suite, marking the start of the modern Internet.
It's a bit of a shame this sort of thing is impossible now. There's so many billions of devices on the Internet now that there's no way to have a flag day for stuff like IPv4.
Well, IPv4 is not bad per se, and it can perfectly co-exist with IPv6. IPv6 has some technical benefits for the internet, but the internet isn't a worse place while IPv4 is still there.
IPv6 offers little to no benefit for the average internet user. For ISPs and telcos IPv6 isn't really attractive because they can't market it like other technologies (5G! 5G! 5G! look! we have 5G!).
None of my ISPs (home, office and mobile carrier) currently offer IPv6, which I am personally frustrated about, but I totally understand why they don't.
But IIRC there was an earlier flag date when all the TOPS-20 and TENEX systems switched to TCP/IP (somewhere in 1979-80?), and that was the real breath-holder for those of us dependent on (and responsible for) those systems at the time.
The first TCP/IP implementation for TENEX/TOPS-20 was kind of a dog (large and complex and slow, of course written in -10 assembler), but over time it got tuned quite a bit.
When I was at Imagen, a Stanford TeX project laser printer spin-off using the same SUN-1 boards as the first Sun workstations and Cisco routers, we hired Geoff Steckel. Geoff was a genius from the Dave Clark (co-inventor of TCP/IP) group at MIT. He wrote for Imagen a very small, tight, super-fast TCP/IP implementation in C, since he had quite a bit of practice at it in Dave's group.
For example, the ARPANET is net 10. That means there is a domain
called 10.IN-ADDR.ARPA. Within this domain there is a PTR RR at
51.0.0.10.IN-ADDR that points to the RRs for the host SRI-NIC.ARPA
(who's address is 10.0.0.51). Since the NIC is also on the MILNET
(Net 26, address 26.0.0.73), there is also a PTR RR at 73.0.0.26.IN-
ADDR.ARPA that points to the same RR's for SRI-NIC.ARPA. The format
of these special pointers is defined below along with the examples
for the NIC.
Title : Gateway To Net Ten
Original : Stairway To Heaven
Group : Led Zeppelin
Author : Mark Lottor <[email protected]>
GATEWAY TO NET TEN -- Mark Lottor
[Original words and music by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant]
There's a hacker who's sure all that's coax is fast
and he's buying a gateway to net ten.
When he gets it he'll know if the ports are all closed
with a SYN he can get what he sent for.
Ooh ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh
and he's buying a gateway to net ten.
There's an RFC on the wall but he wants to be sure
cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a note on the page there's a warning that says
sometimes all of our code is broken.
Don't ya know, it makes me wonder.
There's an error I get when I send to the net
and my packets are lost and retransmitting.
In my logs I have seen loops of mail thru the machine,
and the screams of those who are hacking.
Oooh, it makes me wonder.
And it's whispered that soon if we all fix and tune
then the packets will reach their destinations.
And a new day will dawn for hosts that stay long
and the telnets will echo quite faster.
Ohhhhh, it makes me wonder.
If there's a bustle in your cisco, don't be alarmed now
it's just a quick ping for the NIC machine.
Yes there are two paths you can route by, but in the long haul
there's still time to change the protocol.
Yowwww, it makes me wonder.
Your host is loaded and it will slow in case you don't know,
the unix's are asking you to join them.
Dear hacker, do you see the overflow, and did you know
your gateway is still under development.
And as we wind out more coax, and gateways slower than our hosts,
There goes a message we all know, it updates routes and wants to show
how everything still turns quite slow.
And if you listen very hard, the bits will come to you at last.
When all are ones and ones are all, to be a rubout and not a null.
And he's buying a gateway to net ten...
[+] [-] ancarda|6 years ago|reply
It's a bit of a shame this sort of thing is impossible now. There's so many billions of devices on the Internet now that there's no way to have a flag day for stuff like IPv4.
[+] [-] LeonM|6 years ago|reply
IPv6 offers little to no benefit for the average internet user. For ISPs and telcos IPv6 isn't really attractive because they can't market it like other technologies (5G! 5G! 5G! look! we have 5G!).
None of my ISPs (home, office and mobile carrier) currently offer IPv6, which I am personally frustrated about, but I totally understand why they don't.
[+] [-] im3w1l|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senectus1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpr|6 years ago|reply
The first TCP/IP implementation for TENEX/TOPS-20 was kind of a dog (large and complex and slow, of course written in -10 assembler), but over time it got tuned quite a bit.
When I was at Imagen, a Stanford TeX project laser printer spin-off using the same SUN-1 boards as the first Sun workstations and Cisco routers, we hired Geoff Steckel. Geoff was a genius from the Dave Clark (co-inventor of TCP/IP) group at MIT. He wrote for Imagen a very small, tight, super-fast TCP/IP implementation in C, since he had quite a bit of practice at it in Dave's group.
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply