Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!tcp-ip From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip Subject: Re: MILNET/ARPANET performance Message-ID: <7614@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Thu, 30-May-85 17:33:46 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7614 Posted: Thu May 30 17:33:46 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 31-May-85 06:11:14 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 35 From: Ron Natalie The goal of the MILNET/ARPANET gateways is to interconnect the two nets. These are the only authorized ways of getting packets between hosts on the MILNET side of the DDN backbone to hosts on the ARPANET side. The reason they are called mail bridges is hopefully obsolete. Originally certain paranoid elements in DOD thought that those experimental people on the ARPANET were going to do something to their network, so after spending years having an internetwork system developed, they decided that they were going to partition the two halves, with the exception of mail. These gateways were going to be a kludge that examined the TCP port number to allow only Mail packets to go through. Most people have probably realized that this idea is not great. Especially those of us on the MILNET side who need to talk to the rest of the world. It is apparent with a little thought that it is a whole lot easier to make a nuisance out of yourself with mail than anything else, therefore the blocking gateways would not help. My personal view is that the gateways remain full IP gateways and in the case of problem or national emergency someone at the NOC presses the "destruct gateways" button and partitions the net. I don't think that the TACs are loading down the gateways. TAC's aren't that efficient, they just don't make that many packets. The prime TAC loads are the silly people who are using KERMIT through them, but most of these people stay on their own side of the chasm. The big load, as always is mail. The fact that these gateways are pretty much the same as they were two years ago, and the net load has increased dramatically is a significant factor. In addition, every since the EGP cutover, they don't route as efficiently as they used to. In addition, the entire ARPANET/MILNET IMP complex is getting in trouble. More and more traffic is being pumped through it but the trunk capacity is not being increased as rapidly. -Ron