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From: PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU (Michael Padlipsky)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Can of worms revisited
Message-ID: <8709241442.AA16268@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 24-Sep-87 10:20:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8709241442.AA16268
Posted: Thu Sep 24 10:20:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 16:50:48 EDT
References: <[A.ISI.EDU]23-Sep-87.13:18:15.CERF>
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Vint--

Shades of the October, 1971 Network Working Group meeting!  Not positive
you were there (seem to think so, but Early Middle Age does funny things
to the memory, as we saw the other week in re the "But My NCP Costs
$500 a Day..." RFC), so for the List's benefit at least and maybe
yours as well, the relevant incident was that at one point Larry
Roberts said that ARPA's intention was eventually to be charging
30 cents a kilo-packet and Frank Heart called out "Don't you mean 30
cents a mega-bit?"; Larry replied that he really maent 30 cents a
kilo-packet and there was a small round of applause from those of us
whose Hosts were line-at-a-time rather than character-at-a-time by
nature.  (For the benefit of non-oldtimers, Larry was head of ARPA's
Information Processing Techniques [or Technology--but I always got
confused over that even before EMA] Office at the time [a/k/a Our
Sponsor] and Frank was either still a Division Head at BBN or maybe
already a VP [I think the former, but ...].)

It sure sounds to me as if the time has finally come when we really
have to deal with the Remote Controlled Echoing issue, in light of
the apparent return of the point of view which holds that it doesn't
matter whether you've got one word or several pages in the metaphorical
envelope, it still requires a metaphorical stamp.  As you know
(but as I'm not sure it's proper to go into detail about on the List),
I'm not in a position to volunteer to head up an ad hoc working
group on RCTE (T for Terminal, as I recall) at present, but I'd
certainly urge somebody to step forward and I'd be glad to offer
whatever help I'm in a position to offfer when it gets going, or
even, if it makes the pot sweeter, to offer to stay out of it
entirely, if that's what it takes to get a volunteer.  If Dave
Clark is watching, perhaps he'd like to do the convening, or
mabye it's within the purview of one of the existing task forces,
but in any event it does seem that if there's a clear and present
danger of having to pay per character for all the character-at-a-time
transmissions it's incumbent on us to decrease the number of
those transmissions.

cheers, map
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