
NCP, the Predecessor of TCP/IP - turrini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program
======
ancarda
>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.

~~~
LeonM
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.

~~~
ancarda
Don't those arguments apply to NCP too? i.e. You need 2 ports rather than 1,
and there's probably other disadvantages, but that doesn't affect the average
Internet user much.

~~~
LeonM
Computers had much less resources back then, and NCP had reached it's limits
in terms of scalability. Running both TCP and NCP would have hindered progress
and innovation. So the decision to outright deprecate NCP was necessary to
keep scaling the network up.

Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress, and with the high bandwidth
available nowadays the minor overhead improvements of IPv6 will be barely
noticeable for the average user. Also keep in mind that the average internet
user back in 1983 were a bit different from today ;-)

edit: typo

~~~
pm7
> Keeping IPv4 alive today doesn't hinder progress

Because many users/services have only IPv4, practically all services and ISP
have to provide IPv4 and do not have to provide IPv6. If we could agree to
kill IPv4 at specific date, we could have truly IPv6 Internet years ago.

~~~
sedatk
And in return we would have harder to remember IP addresses. Nothing a user
would drool about.

~~~
pm7
User should not use IP addresses. This is what we have DNS and mDNS for. In
special cases, like local router if mDNS is unavailable, IPv6 address is even
easier than IPv4 (compare "FE80::1" to "192.168.0.1").

Anyway, it's not like it's a choice unless you want to restrict who deserves
public IP and who doesn't, because we do not have enough IPv4 for everyone.

~~~
WorldMaker
Most average users don't notice IP addresses and would have no idea if their
system is using IPv4 or IPv6 in ordinary day-to-day life, so long as it works.
Statistically it's average home users that are already using IPv6-first if not
IPv6-only and ISP/Carrier-Grade NAT6TO4 (most mobile networks, and a plurality
of home networks), where it's increasingly Enterprises and certain types of
power users holding on to IPv4 addresses that seem to be the biggest hold outs
on IPv6.

------
cpr
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.

------
DonHopkins
[https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt](https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1033.txt)

    
    
       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.
    

[http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4](http://textfiles.rolz.org/humor/COMPUTER/computersongs-1.4)

    
    
        Title    : Gateway To Net Ten
        Original : Stairway To Heaven
        Group    : Led Zeppelin
        Author   : Mark Lottor <mkl@nisc.sri.com>
    
        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...

