[ih] Users vs Hosts on ARPANET

[jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty)]

IIRC, in the beginning (early 70s), in order to be on the ARPAnet, you
had to be working on a research contract with ARPA.  You could connect
your computer to the ARPAnet to support the research, but management had
to guarantee that government resources were only being used to support
the government work.

"Research" was not limited to network R&D.  Since the goal was to use
ARPAnet as a means to share expensive resources (big computers, e.g.,
Illiac), people with permission to use those computers (scientists et
al) also had permission to use the ARPAnet to get to them, and to
interact with other researchers (Email, FTP).  The permission extended
to jobs that were ancillary to the research too - e.g., to deal with
accounting, administrative issues, etc.

I suspect the growth in number of users is pretty closely correlated to
the growth in email accounts, since that was the "killer app" du jour.
Maybe someone has some data on email...

/Jack Haverty
Point Arena, CA

On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 11:26 -0500, Craig Partridge wrote:
> > One thing I do know of are the so-called "ARPANET Directory" books, which
> > list many (but not _all_) people using the ARPANet. New versions came out
> > periodically (every year or two, perhaps?), and one can get some idea of
> > growth from them.
> 
> I thought the standard for getting into the ARPANET Directory was that you
> had a NIC handle and were in the NIC database.  Jake F. probably remembers
> far better than I do, but as I recall, this meant you fell into one of
> the following categories: (a) the official contact for an IP address; (b)
> the official contact for a host; (c) had a TAC account; or (d) were a contact
> for some IANA number (protocol, port, EGP AS)...
> 
> Even for BBN, I doubt more than 25% of us met that requirement but we were
> all on the 'Net.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Craig
>