[ih] Baran and arbitrary reliability from arbitrarily unreliable components

[jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>

    > Actually, ARPA apparently did worry about some details 

It's clear if you read the DARPA RFQ that they had put an enormous amount of
thought/design into the network before the RFQ went out; the RFQ is very
detailed (although some changes were made as BBN actually implemented the
network).

In addition to the books I already mentioned, one of the best sources I know
of for detail about the creation of the ARPANet is probably Katie Hafner's
book, "Where Wizards Stay up Late". I know she went to an enormous amount of
trouble to research it, including many, many interviews.

(Alas, for a variety of reasons the resulting book did not match other great
histories of technology - her publisher pushed for a more 'popular' treatment
- but her research materials, including interviews, were all deposited in an
academic institution; I think the University of Texas.)

Looking quickly, the best secondary source for detail on the work at DARPA
just before the RFQ went out appears to be Hafner, although none have a great
deal of detail on that phase of the work (inside DARPA, creating the RFQ).

     Noel