RFC-271
by Darius Kazemi, September 28 2019
In 2019 I'm reading one RFC a day in chronological order starting from the very first one. More on this project here. There is a table of contents for all my RFC posts.
Reverting a change
RFC-271 is titled “IMP System Change Notification” and is authored by Bernie Cosell of BBN. It's dated January 3, 1972.
The technical content
A new version, 2514, of the IMP will be installed at each site in about ten days' time.
This new revision essentially reverts a change made in the previous version, 2513. Where 2513 increased the time a Host that has just connected to the network needs to wait before sending its first data packet from 30 to 40 seconds, this new version 2514 drops it back down to 30 like it was before.
Cosell reminds programmers at host sites that even though your computer needs to wait 30 seconds before sending data after connecting to the network, your computer also needs to immediately be able to receive data once connected.
There are other changes made in the 2514 version of the IMP but they're related to measurements being taken at BBN's Network Control Center and don't affect the programmers at host sites.
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About me
I'm Darius Kazemi. I'm an independent technologist and artist. I do a lot of work on the decentralized web with ActivityPub, including a Node.js reference implementation, an RSS-to-ActivityPub converter, and a fork of Mastodon, called Hometown. You can support my work via my Patreon.