1 00:00:00,012 --> 00:00:03,053 So I hope you got from that, that it wasn't trivial. 2 00:00:03,053 --> 00:00:07,339 It wasn't like somebody just walked out, and said, hey make a network. 3 00:00:07,339 --> 00:00:10,068 I mean, there were forces, powerful forces. 4 00:00:10,068 --> 00:00:13,536 The telecom lobbyists that did not want this to happen. 5 00:00:13,536 --> 00:00:17,803 And we will, we will see these telecom obvious a couple times. 6 00:00:17,804 --> 00:00:22,723 As we progress through this lecture. So Larry Smarr and folks that made the 7 00:00:22,723 --> 00:00:28,069 supercomputers convinced congress to authorized the, the giving of a grant to 8 00:00:28,069 --> 00:00:31,648 build the National Science Foundation's network. 9 00:00:31,648 --> 00:00:36,228 It was going to use the TCPIP protocol that the ARPANET had built. 10 00:00:36,228 --> 00:00:40,810 It was supposed to be inclusive, at least for a research academics. 11 00:00:40,810 --> 00:00:45,508 And it was, you know, research universities would, we want to get them 12 00:00:45,508 --> 00:00:48,539 connected. And so our story now leads from the 13 00:00:48,539 --> 00:00:53,765 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to my university, the University of 14 00:00:53,765 --> 00:00:57,112 Michigan. Now, if you take a look at this, ARPANET 15 00:00:57,112 --> 00:01:00,768 picture that was sort of right before, well it's 1972. 16 00:01:00,768 --> 00:01:05,903 But if you look at all of the ARPANET pictures there is a glaring omission, from 17 00:01:05,903 --> 00:01:09,079 my perspective. Glaring omission on all of these. 18 00:01:09,079 --> 00:01:13,451 I wonder, why aren't we there?' Well, there's a very good reason why the 19 00:01:13,451 --> 00:01:17,262 University of Michigan is not on any of the ARPANET pictures. 20 00:01:17,262 --> 00:01:19,929 And that's because we build our own network. 21 00:01:19,929 --> 00:01:24,695 We build a network using leased lines, a three-node network between Michigan State 22 00:01:24,695 --> 00:01:28,631 University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. 23 00:01:28,631 --> 00:01:31,193 We were sharing each other's compute resources. 24 00:01:31,193 --> 00:01:33,958 We were using each other's computers interactively. 25 00:01:33,958 --> 00:01:38,213 We were playing online multi-user games. We called them adventure, they were all 26 00:01:38,213 --> 00:01:40,921 based on text. But they were great fun, and they were 27 00:01:40,921 --> 00:01:44,355 great community building. We had chat forums, he had all kinds of 28 00:01:44,355 --> 00:01:48,636 things, and we used each other's software. It was, it was a cool little world. 29 00:01:48,636 --> 00:01:52,536 And the ARPANET wasn't seen by many as all that significant. 30 00:01:52,536 --> 00:01:57,299 It was kind of an experiment, right. It was a research project, and we were a 31 00:01:57,299 --> 00:02:01,621 research, we were production. Merit was production and ARPANET was 32 00:02:01,621 --> 00:02:03,826 research. So there you go, right. 33 00:02:03,826 --> 00:02:08,466 So there was a lot of these like nascent networks out there, early days. 34 00:02:08,466 --> 00:02:13,765 And so the University of Michigan sort of never really was significantly involved in 35 00:02:13,765 --> 00:02:17,289 the ARPANET work. But the University of Michigan, being a 36 00:02:17,289 --> 00:02:20,789 big university, did want to get a supercomputer center. 37 00:02:20,789 --> 00:02:25,832 And because of some strategic blunders, as Doug Van Houweling will soon explain to 38 00:02:25,832 --> 00:02:28,937 you, Michigan didn't get a supercomputer center. 39 00:02:28,937 --> 00:02:33,542 And so the idea was, is we would do what it was going to take to get the network, 40 00:02:33,542 --> 00:02:37,849 because that might be more fun. So Doug Van Houweling at the time was the 41 00:02:37,849 --> 00:02:42,259 chief information officer at the University of Michigan, having recently 42 00:02:42,259 --> 00:02:47,013 arrived from Carnegie-Mellon University. And he was also the chief of the Merit 43 00:02:47,013 --> 00:02:50,448 Network, the network that connected our three schools. 44 00:02:50,448 --> 00:02:55,690 And so they figured that once they didn't get a supercomputer center, they better 45 00:02:55,690 --> 00:02:59,480 really pull out the stops so that they would get the NSF net. 46 00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:04,350 And of course they did get the NSF net and Doug Van Houweling was the principal 47 00:03:04,350 --> 00:03:07,418 investigator for the NSF net starting in 1988. 48 00:03:07,418 --> 00:03:12,494 So, let's let Doug Van Houweling talk to, tell you the story and I'll be back in a 49 00:03:12,494 --> 00:03:13,074 moment.