Early Unix Networking

Unix acquired networking capabilities quite early in its life. Already the very first versions had the ability to log in to the Bell Labs mainframe. At Bell Labs, Unix may also have picked up local networking capabilities through the experimental "Spider" network. However, the main break-through came in 1975 when a team at the University of Illinois added Arpanet connectivity to Unix. From there, Unix became intertwined with the development of the early Internet.

Systems in the archive

The TUHS archive contains the below early networking systems:

• 1975: NCP "Network" Unix (Grossman, Holmgren & Bunch)
• 1978: BBN Unix with experimental TCP/IP (Haverty & Mathis)
• 1979: BBN Unix with TCP/IP in C (Wingfield)
• 1981: 4.1BSD Unix with BBN's reference TCP/IP (Gurwitz)
• 1982: 4.1aBSD Unix with CSRG TCP/IP (Joy & Leffler)

Selected topics

The network systems in the archive give a nice view of how networking code on Unix developed in those formative years for both Unix and internetworking. Below are some pages that explore some of the evolutionary steps:

• a short history of network buffers in Unix
• evolution of the Unix network API
• design choices for the network stack
• the early history of email as implemented in C