The History of ihnp4 and The Growth of the Email Network

Index Mail Foundations Mail History Early UNIX mail at Bell Laboratories UCB Mail and ARPANET AT&T Corporate Electronic Mail Project (post) ihnp4 and Action Central Netnews and USENET HoneyDanBer UUCP Domains and sendmail Pathalias Mapping and Routing Other email developments ihnp4 configuration ihnp4 statistics Other experiments at ihnp4 ihnp4 R.I.P. (addendum) Email Vision 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

• Mail(1 UCB)/mailx user agent - Alan Hastings
• sendmail delivery agent
• opr -mail printing agent
• lla Low-Level Access DBMS (included software demand-paging before paging was available in the OS)

ihnp4 and Action Central 

Gary J. Murakami <ihnp4!gjm>

1982

ihnp4 installed

• "Indian Hill", AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL
• ihnp4 = Indian Hill Network Processor 4

1982

Historical UUCP meeting, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, 4/82

• HoneyDanBer initiated
• Action Central announced

1982

Action Central - Bell Labs UNIX Registry

• centralized UUCP information
• conventions for Dialcodes
• eliminate ihnp4 hourly "prank" phone calls
• e.g. localize "chicago 9=" or "chicago 9=1312"
• AT&T internal machines fully connected
• $10,000,000 savings/year

Netnews and USENET 

1980

Bell Labs Free Press - email mailing list

1982

netnews

• UNC - A news; Mark Horton - Bnews
• ihnss, Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL
• batching, DBM indexed history

1983

USENET (netnews network)

• backbone organized
• increased UUCP load
• large queues, slow large directory search
• execution bottleneck
• very long mail paths for replies

HoneyDanBer UUCP 

1983

HDB UUCP

• Peter Honeyman <allegra!honey>
• Dave Nowitz <attunix!dan>
• Brian Redman <harpo!ber>

connection improvements

queues - directory per host

uuxqt - per host performance, security

Permissions - improved security

lockfiles - improved (PID in lockfile)

DBM indexed Systems file

• Larry Auton <clyde!lda>

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

• domain routing
• transport interface
• route optimization
• aliases
• SMTP
• queueing

complex, incomprehensible

1983

ihnp4 email nameserver
Gary Murakami

• nameserver extension/escape to sendmail
• email to AT&T employees via ihnp4!first.m.lastname using post for nameserver

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

• commercial email service, paper mail
• UUCP compatible, inter-networked

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 ..."