M.A.D. Internet roots

[pynchonoid]

In "our" 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip
was less than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly
primitive next to the wonders of computer technology
circa 2003, most notably the internet, a development
that promises social control on a scale those quaint
old 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches
could only dream about. 
-Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_

--- Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Designed for control from its inception? 

MEMORANDUM
RM-3420-PR
AUGUST 1964

On Distributed Communications:
I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Network
Paul Baran

This research is sponsored by the United States Air
Force under Project RAND-Contract No. AF 49(638)-700
monitored by the Directorate of Development Plans,
Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development, Hq
USAF. Views or conclusions contained in this
Memorandum should not be interpreted as representing
the official opinion or policy of the United States
Air Force.

DDC AVAILABILITY NOTICE
Qualified requesters may obtain copies of this report
from the Defense Documentation Center (DDC).

Copyright (c) 1964

Preface
This Memorandum is one in a series of eleven RAND
Memoranda detailing the Distributed Adaptive Message
Block Network, a proposed digital data communications
system based on a distributed network concept. Various
items in the series deal with the concept in general
and with its specific features, results of
experimental modelings, engineering design
considerations, and background and future
implications.[1] 

The series, entitled On Distributed Communications, is
a part of The RAND Corporation's continuing program of
research under U.S. Air Force Project RAND, and is
related to research in the field of command and
control and in governmental and military planning and
policy making.

The present Memorandum, the first in the series,
introduces the system concept and outlines the
requirements for and design considerations of a
digital data communications system based on the
distributed concept, especially as regards
implications for such systems in the 1970s. In
particular, the Memorandum is directed toward
examining the use of redundancy as one means of
building communications systems to withstand heavy
enemy attacks.

While highly survivable and reliable communications
systems are of primary interest to those in the
military concerned with automating command and control
functions, the basic notions are also of interest to
communications systems planners and designers having
need to transmit digital data.

Various aspects of the concept as reported in this
Memorandum were presented before selected Air Force
audiences in the summer of 1961 in the form of a RAND
briefing (B-265), and contained in RAND Paper P-2626,
which this Memorandum supersedes.

Summary
This Memorandum briefly reviews the distributed
communications network concept and compares it to the
hierarchical or more centralized systems. The payoff
in terms of survivability for a distributed
configuration in the cases of enemy attacks directed
against nodes, links, or combinations of nodes and
links is demonstrated.

The requirements for a future all-digital-data
distributed network which provides common user service
for a wide range of users having different
requirements is considered. The use of a standard
format message block permits building relatively
simple switching mechanisms using an adaptive
store-and-forward routing policy to handle all forms
of digital data including "real-time" voice. This
network rapidly responds to changes in the network
status. Recent history of measured network traffic is
used to modify path selection. Simulation results are
shown to indicate that highly efficient routing can be
performed by local control without the necessity for
any central--and therefore vulnerable--control point.

[...] 

I. Introduction
Let us consider the synthesis of a communication
network which will allow several hundred major
communications stations to talk with one another after
an enemy attack. As a criterion of survivability we
elect to use the percentage of stations both surviving
the physical attack and remaining in electrical
connection with the largest single group of surviving
stations. [...]

II. Examination of a Distributed Network
Since destruction of a small number of nodes in a
decentralized network can destroy communications, the
properties, problems, and hopes of building
"distributed" communications networks are of paramount
interest.

[...] To bisect a 32-link network requires direction
of 288 weapons each with a probability of kill, pk =
0.5, or 160 with a pk = 0.7, to produce over an 0.9
probability of successfully bisecting the network. If
hidden alternative command is allowed, then the
largest single group would still have an expected
value of almost 50 per cent of the initial stations
surviving intact. If this raid misjudges complete
availability of weapons, or complete knowledge of all
links in the cross section, or the effects of the
weapons against each and every link, the raid fails.
The high risk of such raids against highly parallel
structures causes examination of alternative attack
policies. Consider the following uniform raid example.
Assume that 2,000 weapons are deployed against a
1000-station network. The stations are so spaced that
destruction of two stations with a single weapon is
unlikely. Divide the 2,000 weapons into two equal
1000-weapon salvos. Assume any probability of
destruction of a single node from a single weapon less
than 1.0; for example, 0.5. Each weapon on the first
salvo has a 0.5 probability of destroying its target.
But, each weapon of the second salvo has only a 0.25
probability, since one-half the targets have already
been destroyed. Thus, the uniform attack is felt to
represent a known worst-case configuration in the
following analysis.

Such worst-case attacks have been directed against an
18x18-array network model of 324 nodes with varying
probability of kill and redundancy level, with results
shown in Fig. 4. [...] We are primarily interested in
the additional system degradation caused by failure of
communications. Two key points are to be noticed in
the curves of Fig. 4. First, extremely survivable
networks can be built using a moderately low
redundancy of connectivity level. Redundancy levels on
the order of only three permit withstanding extremely
heavy level attacks with negligible additional loss to
communications. [...] The redundancy level required to
survive even very heavy attacks is not great--on the
order of only three or four times that of the minimum
span network. [...]

continues:
<http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/RM3420/>

...FYI, Rand's is one of three projects that
independently resulted in conceptualization of the
network that has evolved into today's Internet.









=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.org/>

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