Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!mrc
From: mrc@milton.u.washington.edu (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: IP and Coloured Book Software in the UK
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.043649.21000@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Jun 91 04:36:49 GMT
References: <23676@shlump.lkg.dec.com> <PCG.91Jun20160421@aberdb.aber.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 32

In article <PCG.91Jun20160421@aberdb.aber.ac.uk> pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>Not so suddendly. Comer says that TCP/IP introduced to ARPAnet around
>1980, and that gradually sites started dropping NCP based services and
>using TCP/IP, until in 1983 nearlly all sites had converted. I guess
>that if you really wanted a cutoff date it would be hard to say;
>probably one could say it was when more than say 80% (but any percentage
>greater than 50% would probably do) of ARPAnet backbone traffic had
>become IP based. Somebody should have such statistics around...

How soon these young whippersnappers forget.  Perhaps sometime I
should dig out my "I SURVIVED THE TCP TRANSITION - JANUARY 1, 1983"
button.

I'll have to check my copy of Comer's book to see what he actually
said, but let me assure you that the transition from NCP to TCP was
done in a great rush, occupying virtually everybody's time 100% in the
year 1982.  *Nobody* was ready.

On January 1, DCA had the ARPANET IMP software modified so that they
would not pass NCP traffic.  There was a hue and cry, and thus for
several months afterwards a number of sites (both NCP-only and NCP/TCP
sites which needed to be able to talk to NCP-only sites) had "reclama"
to use NCP.

It was a major painful ordeal, and one that those who experienced it
are not eager to repeat.  You can tell who we are -- the old farts who
smirk knowingly when "ISO transition" gets mentioned.

IMHO, however, it is likely that if DCA didn't do this, that NCP would
still be the standard protocol.  Now that there is no single agency
(particularly a military agency used to using its teeth) that runs the
Internet, I doubt such a thing could be done again.