About the Book
Circuits, Packets, and Protocols tells the story of the engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, and visionaries who laid the groundwork and built the foundations of the Internet.
In the late 1960s, two American corporate behemoths were poised to dominate the rapidly converging industries of computing and communications—the computer giant, IBM, and the regulated telecommunications monopoly, AT&T. But in 1968, a key ruling by the Federal Communications Commission gave small businesses a doorway into an emerging market for communication devices that could transmit computer data over telephone lines. In the two decades that followed, an industry of networking technology emerged that would impact human history in profound and unfathomable ways. Circuits, Packets, and Protocols is a groundbreaking study of the men and women in the engineering labs, board rooms, and regulatory agencies whose decisions determined the evolution of our modern digital communication networks.
Unlike histories that glorify the dominant players with the benefit of hindsight, this is a history of a pivotal era as it happened. Drawing on more than 80 interviews recorded in 1988, the book features insights from now-famous individuals such as Paul Baran, JCR Licklider, Vint Cerf, Louis Pouzin, and Robert Metcalfe. Inspired by innovations from government-sponsored Cold War defense projects and the birth of the modern venture capital industry, these trailblazers and many others built the technologies and companies that became essential building blocks in the development of today's Internet. Many of the companies and products failed, even while they helped propel the industry forward at breakneck speed. Equal parts academic history and thrilling startup drama, Circuits, Packets, and Protocols gives the reader a vivid picture of what it was like to take part in one of the most exciting periods of technological advance in our time.
Table of Contents:
Prelude to Change: Data Communications, 1949–1968
Onset of Competition: Data Communications, 1968–1972
Packet Switching and ARPANET: Networking, 1959–1972
Market Order: Data Communications, 1973–1979
Protocol Confusion: Networking, 1972–1979
Emergence of Local Area Networks: Networking, 1976–1981
The Chaos of Competition: Networking, 1981–1982
The Need for Standards: Networking, 1975–1984
Market Order: Networking, 1983–1986
Adaptation of Wide Area Networks: Data Communications, 1979–1986
Market Consolidation: Data Communications and Networking, 1986–1988
Government Support for Internetworking, 1983–1988
The Emergence of Internetworking, 1985–1988
Conclusions
About the Author :
James L. Pelkey spent his career as an investor and executive, including terms as a general partner at Montgomery Securities, President of Sorcim Corporation and Digital Sound Corporation, and, after his retirement, Trustee and Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1968) and Harvard Business School (1970). He now lives in Maui, Hawai´i.
Andrew L. Russell is Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of technology, standardization, and innovation, including Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and co-author with Lee Vinsel of The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Disrupts the Work That Matters Most (Currency, 2020).
Loring G. Robbins is a freelance writer based in Maui, Hawai´i. Previously, he worked as an animator and animation director for several media startups in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Review :
A marvelous and
personal exploration of a poorly documented period in the history of data
communication! I lived through it and re-lived it in these interviews and
narrative.--Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer
Circuits, Packets,
& Protocols is full of revelations for me even though I was there. Never
had it explained so clearly how my distributed computing strategy was the wrong
one for 3Com in the 1980s.--Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Inventor
Circuits, Packets,
& Protocols is not all about "winners" but includes the story of "losers"
as well, and what can be learned from failures as well as successes. If you
wonder whether there was a one-time confluence of events that brought us to the
Digital Age, or a pattern we can learn from and pursue, this book will help you
decide.--Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler
The key technologies
that brought us our modern networked society--routers, packet switching,
multiplexers, Internet protocols--were all invented by people in the short
period between 1968 and 1988. James Pelkey interviewed these people at that
time and recorded their stories. This book is the result: a detailed and
up-close personal history of a world being born. Fascinating.--W. Brian Arthur
The Internet didn't
happen overnight. It was the product of a set of quiet and diverse engineering
efforts that took place over two decades long before the Internet became
America's digital Main St. Circuits, Packets, & Protocols tells that
story.--John Markoff
