[ih] The origin of variable length packets

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

    > From: Dave Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com>

    > I can't look up what ARPA's call for bids (RFQ) to develop the ARPANET
    > IMP's specified.
    > ...
    > .. the packet-subnet of IMPs broke these messages into about 1,000 bit
    > packets with the last packet in a message being possibly being shorter
    > than a full 1,000 bits.

I'm also too lazy to go check the RFQ or the BBN proposal, but I did look at
the Heart et al paper, and although it doesn't _explicitly_ say that the IMPs
used shorter packets, and give the details on how, there are a lot of things
that implicitly say so, e.g.:

"a line fully loaded with short packets will require more computation than a
line with all long packets ... a line will typically carr a variety of
different length packets" (pg. 564)

	Noel