Fuzzball routers were the first modern
routers on the
Internet.
[ They were DEC ]PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
computers (usually LSI-11 personal workstations) loaded with the Fuzzball software written by David L. Mills
David L. Mills (born June 3, 1938) is an American computer engineer and Internet pioneer.
Education
Mills earned his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1971. While at Michigan he worked on the ARPA ...
(of the University of Delaware).colloquialism
Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom norm ...
for Mills's routing software. The software evolved from the Distributed Computer Network (DCN) that started at the University of Maryland in 1973.[ It acquired the nickname sometime after it was rewritten in 1977.][
Six Fuzzball routers provided the routing backbone of the first 56 kbit/s NSFNET,][ allowing the testing of many of the Internet's first protocols.][ It allowed the development of the first TCP/IP routing protocols,][ and the ]Network Time Protocol
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable- latency data networks. In operation since before 1985, NTP is one of the oldest Internet protocols in c ...
.[ They were the first routers to implement key refinements to TCP/IP such as variable-length subnet masks.][
]
See also
* Interface Message Processor
References
External links
The Fuzzball
with photographs
last update in 1992, 16 megabytes
{{compu-network-stub
American inventions
Hardware routers
History of telecommunications