Fuzzball router

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The Fuzzball Router is a router that was used as an Internet gateway , service host and in the early days of the Internet ( ARPANET , NSFNET of the NSF = National Science Foundation). The software was written by David L. Mills, University of Delaware, and he is also considered the developer of the Fuzzball Router. The name Fuzzball comes from the also named software with which the development was started. The hardware is a PDP-11 , a 16-bit computer popular in the 1970s .

The software on which the Fuzzball is based was developed at the University of Edinburgh in 1971. During the 1970s, the original software was rebuilt to allow links to various networks, including ARPANET and SATNET. In the years that followed, the fuzzball was also used for experiments with new Internet protocols and new network technologies.

David L. Mills' Fuzzball includes programs for developing, testing, and evaluating network protocols . It also already supports the complete TCP / IP protocol. Some of the then existing Internet protocols such as Telnet , FTP (data transfer), DNS , SMTP or EGP were used and tested for the first time with the Fuzzball Router.

The system is divided into two processes : supervisor and user. The user process emulates an environment in which the system and user programs run, while the supervisor process supports terminal access and network interfaces. The different processes communicate with each other with 16-byte messages. An important part of the software is a logic clock that clocks at 1000 Hz and is used for synchronization with other systems.

use

The fuzzball was used as an Internet gateway, for example as a connection between local networks (university network) and the ARPANET. One of the early gateways that also used the PDP-11 as a hardware component was a product from BBN . However, this had problems with an overhead when changing context and therefore only came to around 30 packets per second. The fuzzball, on the other hand, could be optimized to the point where it could manage more than 400 packets per second. Routing algorithms were also tested with the fuzzball at that time , and the contribution of the fuzzball to EGP is also important in this context.

The Fuzzball Router was also used in the course of the DARPA- SATNET project on 5 Intelsat stations in the USA and Europe. The router was used to collect statistical data and generate traffic, and it also helped to familiarize oneself with SATNET technology. In 1979 the router was used at the Joint Computer Conference for experiments, including real-time voice conferencing and image broadcasting.

One of the first commercial applications of the TCP / IP protocol was the INTELPOST network. Started in 1981, this linked cities in the US, Canada, Europe and South America. The Fuzzball software was also used here, especially for the implementation of the TCP / IP protocol.

The router became known through its use from 1986 to 1988 in the NSFNET Phase-1 of the National Science Foundation. The NSF chose products from Cisco, Proteon and others and the Fuzzball Router for the latter. The decisive factor was the speed, the fuzzball was 30 times faster than the BBN ARPANET gateway at the time. Six routers were used in the NSF centers where the supercomputers were located, and these formed a network, connected via 56 kb / s lines. Nearby university campuses also joined this network; the network was therefore often overloaded.

Numerous experiments were carried out with the fuzzball, which were involved in the development of Internet protocols that are still used today. Falling prices for hardware technologies as well as the fact that numerous developers have worked on the fuzzball and the portability of it is suffering as a result, meant that the fuzzball was no longer attractive to other technologies (such as Unix- based workstations).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mills, DL, and H.-W. Brown. The NSFNET Backbone Network. Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 87 Symposium (Stoweflake VT, August 1987), 191-196 PDF
  2. ↑ Fuzzball: The Innovative Router ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nsf.gov
  3. ↑ Mills, DL The Fuzzball. Proc. ACM SIGCOMM 88 Symposium (Palo Alto CA, Aug 1988), 115-122. PDF
  4. ↑ Presentation on NSFNET Legacy, 2007. Pages 38–48. 'The NSFnet Phase-I Backbone and The Fuzzball Router' - David L. Mills. November 29, 2007. PDF
  5. ^ Carl Malamud: Exploring the Internet: a technical travelogue . Prentice Hall, 1992, ISBN 0-13-296898-3 , p. 88.

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