The History of ihnp4 and The Growth of the Email Network

Gary J. Murakami

Chicago Electronic Mail Conference - September 24, 1988

Index

  1. Mail Foundations
  2. Mail History
  3. Early UNIX mail at Bell Laboratories
  4. UCB Mail and ARPANET
  5. AT&T Corporate Electronic Mail Project (post)
  6. ihnp4 and Action Central
  7. Netnews and USENET
  8. HoneyDanBer UUCP
  9. Domains and sendmail
  10. Pathalias
  11. Mapping and Routing
  12. Other email developments
  13. ihnp4 configuration
  14. ihnp4 statistics
  15. Other experiments at ihnp4
  16. ihnp4 R.I.P. (addendum)
  17. Email Vision
  18. Addendum

Mail Foundations 

1700 B.C.
Job 9:25
"Now my days are swifter than a post;
they flee away, they see no good."
500 B.C.
Cyrus of Persia, Herodotus
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night
stays these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds ..."
posts - "posta" (Italian)
posts one day's journey apart

Mail History 

1672
Francis Lovelace, governor of New York
New York City to Boston, monthly letters by horseback
Boston Post Road -> U.S. Highway 1
1680
London, William Dockwra
charge, 1 english penny
1692
First national postal system for the American colonies
1753
Ben Franklin, appointed postmaster for Philadelphia
deputy postmaster general for all the colonies
1775
Postal system established by the Continental Congress
Ben Franklin, head
1792
Post Office established by the U.S. Congress 20 February
1794
U.S. letter carriers authorized
paid two-cents for every letter delivered to a business firm
1798
Portland, ME to Savannah, GA, 40 days
-> 1839, 8 days
1825
U.S. Post Office Department officially sanctioned
Congress authorizes delivery of mail to private homes
carriers paid by addressees
1836
Rowland Hill, flat rate, penny paid by sender
receiver previously charged by distance
1839
A pony express, East coast to St. Louis
12 mph, 3x charge
1847
Stamps in the U.S.
1858
Street mailboxes
1860
The Pony Express, St. Joseph, MO to Sacremento, CA, 2000 miles, 190 stations
started April 3, 1860, ended October 1861 because of telegraph lines
fastest trip - 7 days 17 hours
$5 -> $1/ounce
1861
Free city delivery, postal money orders
Montgomery Blair, postmaster general under Abraham Lincoln
1862
First railway post office in the U.S.
1864 - Mail sorted on train
1953
Air Mail service started
1955
Certified mail service established
1971
U.S. Postal Service
independent service with new name June 30

Early UNIX mail at Bell Laboratories 

1979
mail
UNIX V7, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
uucp - UNIX to UNIX copy

UNIX PWB (Programmers Work Bench)
usend - IBM RJE network
nusend - NSC HYPERChannel (1982)

1979
uucp - UNIX to UNIX copy
Dave Nowitz, Mike Lesk
A Dial-Up Network of UNIX Systems
in UNIX Programmer's Manual, Seventh Ed., 1979

transport - uuxqt rmail
queueing - /usr/spool/uucp

UCB Mail and ARPANET 

1982
SMTP
RFC821 - J. Postel, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, 08/01/1982. (Obsoletes RFC788)
1982
UCB Mail, delivermail
Kurt Schoens (Berkeley Mail)
RFC822 - D. Crocker, Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages, 08/13/1982. (Obsoletes RFC0733) (Updated by RFC1327, RFC0987)

AT&T Corporate Electronic Mail Project 

1982

opr -mail - email --> paper mail
Gary J. Murakami
print paper mail, delivery to office via interoffice mail
1982
post "name server" research
Mike Lesk, Ruby Jane Elliot
address email by people names
1982
Corporate Electronic Mail project (post)
Bell Labs Networking (Div 452)- Gary Murakami, G. S. Lakshman, John Bagley; management: Reid Watts, Harold M. Jackson, III
Bell Labs Telecommunications (Div 774)- Steve Griesmer, Theresa Restaino, Sylva Berry; management: John Whipple, Ken Welton
computer originated mail to all recpients

post (production version 1.0, etc.) distributed via exptools

ihnp4 and Action Central 

Gary J. Murakami <ihnp4!gjm>
1982
ihnp4 installed
1982
Historical UUCP meeting, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, 4/82
1982
Action Central - Bell Labs UNIX Registry

Netnews and USENET 

1980
Bell Labs Free Press - email mailing list
1982
netnews
1983
USENET (netnews network)

HoneyDanBer UUCP 

1983

HDB UUCP
connection improvements
queues - directory per host
uuxqt - per host performance, security
Permissions - improved security
lockfiles - improved (PID in lockfile)

DBM indexed Systems file

Domains and sendmail 

1983
domains, gateways, other networks
RFC882 - P. Mockapetris, Domain names - Concepts and facilities, 11/01/1983. (Updated by RFC0973)
ARPANET, CSNET (ucbvax, seismo)
BITNET
1983
sendmail
Eric Allman, SENDMAIL - An Internetwork Mail Router,
in UNIX Programmer's Manual, 4.2 Berkeley Software Distribution, 1983
configuration - rewriting production language

complex, incomprehensible

1983
ihnp4 email nameserver
Gary Murakami

Pathalias 

1984
pathalias - email route generator
Peter Honeyman, Steve Bellovin, PATHALIAS or The Care and Feeding of Relative Addresses

paths host!user -> path!host!user
domains host.domain!user domain!user

arpa .gov, .csnet

ulysses .homer.att.com(0)
media media:path

NET-DK = { ihnp4 ... }

via-dk NET-DK(DEDICATED+HIGH)

ihnp4 via-dk:(0)

Mapping and Routing 

1984
UUCP Mapping Project - pathalias input
Mark Horton, Karen Summers-Horton, and B. Kercheval, Proposal for a UUCP/USENET Registry Host, in Proc. Summer USENIX Conference, Salt Lake City, 1984
1985
transport addresses
RFC882 - M. Horton, UUCP mail interchange format standard, 02/01/1986. (Updated by RFC1137)
UUCP Project
unambiguous
e.g. host!domain!user
1985
smail
Mark Horton
"simple" domain routing/delivery agent
1985
upas
Dave Presotto, Upas - A Simpler Approach to Network Mail, in Proc.Summer USENIX Conference, Portland, 1985
routing/delivery agent
regular expressions

Other email developments 

1983
Netword - ECOM (U.S. Post Office)
email -> paper mail
defunct
1985
pathparse
Peter Honeyman, Pat Parseghian, A Parser for Electronic Mail Addresses, in Proc. Winter USENIX Conference, Dallas, 1985
disambiguate problematic routes
e.g. down!bruce@asburypark
1986

ATTMAIL
MCI MAIL (not UUCP compatible)
1987
NNTP - Netnews Transfer Protocol
1987
C News - efficient batch processing
1987
UUPC - UUCP for PCs
increased growth of the UUCP network

ihnp4 configuration 

hardware (approximate)
AT&T 3B20S computer system, 1MIP
16 dialin modems (8 external/8 internal)
2 dialout ACUs
16 Datakit(R) TY lines (in/out) 19.2Kbps
1 Datakit multiplexed host interface 8Mbps
dialout modem pools
1 RJE link 19.2Kbps
1 NSC HYPERChannel interface 50Mbps
software
post, Mail
HoneyDanBer uucp
DBM indexed Systems file - Larry Auton <clyde!lda>
sendmail
local domain handling
AT&T routing optimization
name server escape
path/media routing
post name server - e.g., ihnp4!gary.j.murakami
make - autoconfig
addresses
path ihnp4!system!user
domain ihnp4!host.domain!user
name ihnp4!gary.j.murakami

ihnp4 statistics 

capacity
    50 MB/day UUCP traffic
    50 MB/day (n)usend traffic
    O(100) host queues/day
    O(1000) jobs-messages/day
netnews neighbors
    67 news
    55 att              (4 non-ih)
     3 backbone         (1 att)
     7 chi
     1 other            (stolaf)
email neighbors
    By company
     2486 all
     1870 att
      536 ext

    By network
       57 nsc           (50Mbps NSC HYPERchannel)
     1233 dk            (8Mbps Datakit VCS)
      432 asp           (19.2Kbps RJE)
     1279 cor           (1200bps CORNET POTS)
     1815 acu           (1200bps POTS)

    Other
     1302 nac           (Action Central registered)
    16274 paths         (pathalias paths)

Other experiments at ihnp4 

1985
UUCP Transport Level Interface
network library interface (e.g., NETEX, TLI)
1985
distributed UUCP
Portable Distributed Unix (PDU) network file system
ihnp1, MYNAME=ihnp4 - Datakit mux interface
mkdir, uudemon.hour rmdir problems (SVR3 mkdir system call fix)

ihnp4 R.I.P. (addendum) 

Article 2746 of comp.mail.uucp:
From: murakami@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: ihnp4 historical info, RIP
Message-ID: <6000002@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 89 18:39:00 GMT

ihnp4 was powered down in Feb. 1989.  To some people, this represents
the end of a chapter of computer history when email pioneers provided
electronic mail with free and friendly service (liberty and justice?)
for all.

There is some thought of donating ihnp4 to the computer museum in Boston.
At the request of Doug Price (postmaster, att), I am posting the following
outline of a previous talk on ihnp4 and email (speech and puns not included).
Hopefully this includes some useful information and bits of interesting
history.

I was glad to play a part in improving electronic mail.  "Hello" and
"so long" to the many friends that I've met on this adventure, and thanks
for all the fish.

Gary J. Murakami
AT&T postmaster emeritus

Email Vision 

networks
UUCP persistence - UUPC on micros
internet - expanded, FDDI
global fabric - COLAN, ISDN
minimize store and forward hops
email software
smail/pathalias
upas/pathalias
addresses
bang persistence
some progress toward domains
commercial services
UUNET
attmail
news
centralize
commercial BBS (e.g., well)
single news server
network file system
continued growth
scaling problems

Addendum 

1997 Post Alumni Dinner, March 21, Basking Ridge, NJ

"Neither UUCP nor domains nor sendmail
nor X.400 nor MIME nor browsers
nor tri-vestiture nor gloom of wintel
stays these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds ..."


NoBell Home - gjm - updated 1/4/2004