NPL network

The NPL network, or NPL Data Communications Network, was a local area computer network operated by a team from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London that pioneered the concept of packet switching.

NPL network schematic

Internet history timeline

Early research and development: 1960–4 (1960–4): RAND networking concepts developed 1962–4 (1962–4): ARPA networking ideas 1965 (1965): NPL network concepts conceived 1966 (1966): Merit Network founded 1967 (1967): ARPANET planning begins 1967 (1967): Symposium on Operating Systems Principles 1969 (1969): NPL followed by the ARPANET carry their first packets 1970 (1970): Network Information Center (NIC) 1971 (1971): Tymnet switched-circuit network 1972 (1972): Merit Network's packet-switched network operational 1972 (1972): Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established 1973 (1973): CYCLADES network demonstrated 1973 (1973): PARC Universal Packet development begins 1974 (1974): Transmission Control Program specification published 1975 (1975): Telenet commercial packet-switched network 1976 (1976): X.25 protocol approved and deployed on public data networks 1978 (1978): Minitel introduced 1979 (1979): Internet Activities Board (IAB) 1980 (1980): USENET news using UUCP 1980 (1980): Ethernet standard introduced 1981 (1981): BITNET established Merging the networks and creating the Internet: 1981 (1981): Computer Science Network (CSNET) 1982 (1982): TCP/IP protocol suite formalized 1982 (1982): Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 1983 (1983): Domain Name System (DNS) 1983 (1983): MILNET split off from ARPANET 1984 (1984): OSI Reference Model released 1985 (1985): First .COM domain name registered 1986 (1986): NSFNET with 56 kbit/s links 1986 (1986): Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 1987 (1987): UUNET founded 1988 (1988): NSFNET upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s (T1) 1988 (1988): Morris worm 1988 (1988): Complete Internet protocol suite 1989 (1989): Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) 1989 (1989): PSINet founded, allows commercial traffic 1989 (1989): Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX East|FIXes) 1990 (1990): GOSIP (without TCP/IP) 1990 (1990): ARPANET decommissioned 1990 (1990): Advanced Network and Services (ANS) 1990 (1990): UUNET/Alternet allows commercial traffic 1990 (1990): Archie search engine 1991 (1991): Wide area information server (WAIS) 1991 (1991): Gopher 1991 (1991): Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) 1991 (1991): ANS CO+RE allows commercial traffic 1991 (1991): World Wide Web (WWW) 1992 (1992): NSFNET upgraded to 45 Mbit/s (T3) 1992 (1992): Internet Society (ISOC) established 1993 (1993): Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) 1993 (1993): InterNIC established 1993 (1993): AOL added USENET access 1993 (1993): Mosaic web browser released 1994 (1994): Full text web search engines 1994 (1994): North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) established Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: 1995 (1995): New Internet architecture with commercial ISPs connected at NAPs 1995 (1995): NSFNET decommissioned 1995 (1995): GOSIP updated to allow TCP/IP 1995 (1995): very high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) 1995 (1995): IPv6 proposed 1996 (1996): AOL changes pricing model from hourly to monthly 1998 (1998): Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 1999 (1999): IEEE 802.11b wireless networking 1999 (1999): Internet2/Abilene Network 1999 (1999): vBNS+ allows broader access 2000 (2000): Dot-com bubble bursts 2001 (2001): New top-level domain names activated 2001 (2001): Code Red I, Code Red II, and Nimda worms 2003 (2003): UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) phase I 2003 (2003): National LambdaRail founded 2004 (2004): UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) 2005 (2005): UN WSIS phase II 2006 (2006): First meeting of the Internet Governance Forum 2010 (2010): First internationalized country code top-level domains registered 2012 (2012): ICANN begins accepting applications for new generic top-level domain names 2013 (2013): Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation 2014 (2014): NetMundial international Internet governance proposal 2016 (2016): ICANN contract with U.S. Dept. of Commerce ends, IANA oversight passes to the global Internet community on October 1st Examples of Internet services: 1989 (1989): AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser 1990 (1990): IMDb Internet movie database 1994 (1994): Yahoo! web directory 1995 (1995): Amazon online retailer 1995 (1995): eBay online auction and shopping 1995 (1995): Craigslist classified advertisements 1995 (1995): AltaVista search engine 1996 (1996): Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail 1996 (1996): RankDex search engine 1997 (1997): Google Search 1997 (1997): Babel Fish automatic translation 1998 (1998): Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs) 1998 (1998): PayPal Internet payment system 1998 (1998): Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator 1999 (1999): 2ch Anonymous textboard 1999 (1999): i-mode mobile internet service 1999 (1999): Napster peer-to-peer file sharing 2000 (2000): Baidu search engine 2001 (2001): 2chan Anonymous imageboard 2001 (2001): BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing 2001 (2001): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2003 (2003): LinkedIn business networking 2003 (2003): Myspace social networking site 2003 (2003): Skype Internet voice calls 2003 (2003): iTunes Store 2003 (2003): 4chan Anonymous imageboard 2003 (2003): The Pirate Bay, torrent file host 2004 (2004): Facebook social networking site 2004 (2004): Podcast media file series 2004 (2004): Flickr image hosting 2005 (2005): YouTube video sharing 2005 (2005): Reddit link voting 2005 (2005): Google Earth virtual globe 2006 (2006): Twitter microblogging 2007 (2007): WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks 2007 (2007): Google Street View 2007 (2007): Kindle, e-reader and virtual bookshop 2008 (2008): Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) 2008 (2008): Dropbox cloud-based file hosting 2008 (2008): Encyclopedia of Life, a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species 2008 (2008): Spotify, a DRM-based music streaming service 2009 (2009): Bing search engine 2009 (2009): Google Docs, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service 2009 (2009): Kickstarter, a threshold pledge system 2009 (2009): Bitcoin, a digital currency 2010 (2010): Instagram, photo sharing and social networking 2011 (2011): Google+, social networking 2011 (2011): Snapchat, photo sharing 2012 (2012): Coursera, massive open online courses 2016 (2016): TikTok, video sharing and social networking

Based on designs first conceived by Donald Davies in 1965, development work began in 1966. Construction began in 1968 and elements of the first version of the network, the Mark I, became operational in early 1969 then fully operational in January 1970. The Mark II version operated from 1973 until 1986. The NPL network was the first computer network to implement packet switching and NPL was the first to use high-speed links. Its original design, along with the innovations implemented in the ARPANET and the CYCLADES network, laid down the technical foundations of the modern Internet.

Origins

NPL network packet

In 1965, Donald Davies, who was later appointed to head of the NPL Division of Computer Science, proposed a commercial national data network in the United Kingdom based on packet switching in Proposal for the Development of a National Communications Service for On-line Data Processing. The following year, he refined his ideas in Proposal for the Development of a National Communications Service for OnLine Data Processing. The design was the first to describe the concept of an "interface computer", today known as a router.

A written version of the proposal entitled A digital communications network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals was presented by Roger Scantlebury at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967. The design involved transmitting signals (packets) across a network with a hierarchical structure. It was proposed that "local networks" be constructed with interface computers which had responsibility for multiplexing among a number of user systems (time-sharing computers and other users) and for communicating with "high level network". The latter would be constructed with "switching nodes" connected together with megabit rate circuits (T1 links, which run with a 1.544 Mbit/s line rate). In Scantlebury's report following the conference, he noted "It would appear that the ideas in the NPL paper at the moment are more advanced than any proposed in the USA".

Packet switching

The first theoretical foundation of packet switching was the work of Paul Baran, at RAND, in which data was transmitted in small chunks and routed independently by a method similar to store-and-forward techniques between intermediate networking nodes. Davies independently arrived at the same model in 1965 and named it packet switching. He chose the term "packet" after consulting with an NPL linguist because it was capable of being translated into languages other than English without compromise. In July 1968, NPL put on a demonstration of real and simulated networks at an event organised by the Real Time Club at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Davies gave the first public presentation of packet switching on 5 August 1968 at the IFIP Congress in Edinburgh.

Davies' original ideas influenced other research around the world.Larry Roberts incorporated these concepts into the design for the ARPANET. The NPL network initially proposed a line speed of 768 kbit/s. Influenced by this, the planned line speed for ARPANET was upgraded from 2.4 kbit/s to 50 kbit/s and a similar packet format adopted.Louis Pouzin's CYCLADES project in France was also influenced by Davies' work. These networks laid down the technical foundations of the modern Internet.

Implementation and further research

Network development

Beginning in late 1966, Davies' tasked Derek Barber, his deputy, to establish a team to build a local-area network to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching. The team consisted of:

• Data communications and team leader: Roger Scantlebury
• Software: Peter Wilkinson (lead), John Laws, Carol Walsh, Keith Wilkinson (no relation) and Rex Haymes.
• Hardware: Keith Bartlett (lead), Les Pink, Patrick Woodroffe, Brian Aldous, Peter Carter, Peter Neale and a few others.

The team worked through 1967 to produce design concepts for a wide-area network and a local-area network to demonstrate the technology. Construction of the local-area network began in 1968 using a Honeywell 516 node. The NPL team liaised with Honeywell in the adaptation of the DDP516 input/output controller, and, the following year, the ARPANET chose the same computer to serve as Interface Message Processors (IMPs).

Elements of the first version of the network, Mark I NPL Network, became operational in early 1969 (before the ARPANET installed its first node). The network was fully operational in January 1970. The local-area NPL network followed by the wide-area ARPANET in the United States were the first two computer networks that implemented packet switching. The network used high-speed links, the first computer network to do so.

The NPL network was later interconnected with other networks, including the Post Office Experimental Packet Switched Service (EPSS) and the European Informatics Network (EIN) in 1976.

In 1976, 12 computers and 75 terminal devices were attached, and more were added. The network remained in operation until 1986.

Protocol development

NPL network model

The first use of the term protocol in a modern data-commutations context occurs in a memorandum entitled A Protocol for Use in the NPL Data Communications Network written by Roger Scantlebury and Keith Bartlett in April 1967. A further publication by Bartlett in 1968 introduced the concept of an alternating bit protocol (later used by the ARPANET and the EIN) and described the need for three levels of data transmission, roughly corresponding to the lower levels of the seven-layer OSI model that emerged a decade later.

The Mark II version, which operated from 1973, used such a "layered" protocol architecture.

The NPL team also introduced the idea of protocol verification. Protocol verification was discussed in the November 1978 special edition of the Proceedings of the IEEE on packet switching.

Simulation studies

The NPL team also carried out simulation work on the performance of wide-area packet networks, studying datagrams and network congestion. This work was carried out to investigate networks of a size capable of providing data communications facilities to most of the U.K.

Davies proposed an adaptive method of congestion control that he called isarithmic.

Internetworking

The NPL network was a testbed for internetworking research throughout the 1970s. Davies, Scantlebury and Barber were active members of the International Network Working Group (INWG) formed in 1972.Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn acknowledged Davies and Scantlebury in their 1974 paper A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication, which DARPA developed into the Internet protocol suite used in the modern Internet.

Barber was appointed director of the European COST 11 project and played a leading part in the European Informatics Network (EIN). Scantlebury led the UK technical contribution, reporting directly to Donald Davies. The EIN protocol helped to launch the INWG and X.25 protocols. INWG proposed an international end to end protocol in 1975/6, although this was not widely adopted. Barber became the chair of INWG in 1976. He proposed and implemented a mail protocol for EIN.

NPL investigated the "basic dilemma" involved in internetworking; that is, a common host protocol would require restructuring existing networks if they were not designed to use the same protocol. NPL connected with the European Informatics Network by translating between two different host protocols while the NPL connection to the Post Office Experimental Packet Switched Service used a common host protocol in both networks. This work confirmed establishing a common host protocol would be more reliable and efficient.

Davies and Barber published Communication networks for computers in 1973 and Computer networks and their protocols in 1979. They spoke at the Data Communications Symposium in 1975 about the "battle for access standards" between datagrams and virtual circuits, with Barber saying the "lack of standard access interfaces for emerging public packet-switched communication networks is creating 'some kind of monster' for users". For a long period of time, the network engineering community was polarized over the implementation of competing protocol suites, commonly known as the Protocol Wars. It was unclear which type of protocol would result in the best and most robust computer networks.

Email

Derek Barber proposed an electronic mail protocol in 1979 in INWG 192 and implemented it on the EIN. This was referenced by Jon Postel in his early work on Internet email, published in the Internet Experiment Note series.

Network security

Davies' later research at NPL focused on data security for computer networks.

Legacy

The concepts of packet switching, high-speed routers, layered communication protocols, hierarchical computer networks, and the essence of the end-to-end principle that were researched and developed at the NPL became fundamental to data communication in modern computer networks including the Internet.

Beyond NPL, and the designs of Paul Baran at RAND, DARPA was the most important institutional force, creating the ARPANET, the first wide-area packet-switched network, to which many other network designs at the time were compared or replicated. The ARPANET's routing, flow control, software design and network control were developed independently by the IMP team working for Bolt Beranek & Newman. The CYCLADES network designed by Louis Pouzin at the IRIA in France built on the work of Donald Davies and pioneered important improvements to the ARPANET design.

Moreover, in the view of some, the research and development of internetworking, and TCP/IP in particular (which was sponsored by DARPA), marks the true beginnings of the Internet. The adoption of TCP/IP and the early governance of the Internet were also fostered by DARPA.

NPL sponsors a gallery, opened in 2009, about the "Technology of the Internet" at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

See also

• Coloured Book protocols
• History of the Internet
• Internet in the United Kingdom
• JANET
• UK Post Office Telecommunications and later British Telecommunications
  • Packet Switch Stream
  • International Packet Switched Service
• Telecommunications in the United Kingdom

References

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6. Roberts, Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The evolution of packet switching" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 66 (11): 1307–13. doi:10.1109/PROC.1978.11141. S2CID 26876676. Both Paul Baran and Donald Davies in their original papers anticipated the use of T1 trunks
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22. "Computer Pioneers - Donald W. Davies". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 20 February 2020. In 1965, Davies pioneered new concepts for computer communications in a form to which he gave the name "packet switching." ... The design of the ARPA network (ArpaNet) was entirely changed to adopt this technique.; "A Flaw In The Design". The Washington Post. 30 May 2015. The Internet was born of a big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran. ... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation's top universities.
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61. "Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Vinton Cerf". National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution. 24 April 1990. Retrieved 23 September 2019. Roger Scantlebury was one of the major players. And Donald Davies who ran, at least he was superintendent of the information systems division or something like that. I absolutely had a lot of interaction with NPL at the time. They in fact came to the ICCC 72 and they had been coming to previous meetings of what is now called Datacomm. Its first incarnation was a long title having to do with the analysis and optimization of computer communication networks, or something like that. This started in late 1969, I think, was when the first meeting happened in Pine Hill, Georgia. I didn't go to that one, but I went to the next one that was at Stanford, I think. That's where I met Scantlebury, I believe, for the first time. Then I had a lot more interaction with him. I would come to the UK fairly regularly, partly for IFIP or INWG reasons
62. Davies, Shanks, Heart, Barker, Despres, Detwiler and Riml, "Report of Subgroup 1 on Communication System", INWG Note No. 1.
63. Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.113.7384. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
64. Barber, D L. (1975). "Cost project 11". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review. 5 (3): 12–15. doi:10.1145/1015667.1015669. S2CID 28994436.
65. Scantlebury, Roger (1986). "X.25 - past, present and future". In Stokes, A. V. (ed.). Communications Standards: State of the Art Report. Pergamon. pp. 203–216. ISBN 978-1-4831-6093-1.
66. "EIN (European Informatics Network)". Computer History Museum. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
67. Hardy, Daniel; Malleus, Guy (2002). Networks: Internet, Telephony, Multimedia: Convergences and Complementarities. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 505. ISBN 978-3-540-00559-9.
68. Derek Barber. "The Origins of Packet Switching". Computer Resurrection Issue 5. Retrieved 5 June 2024. I actually set up the first meeting between John Wedlake of the British Post Office and [Rémi Després] of the French PTT which led to X25. There was a problem about virtual calls in EIN, so I called this meeting and that actually did in the end lead to X25.
69. Cerf, V.; McKenzie, A; Scantlebury, R; Zimmermann, H (1976). "Proposal for an international end to end protocol". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review. 6: 63–89. doi:10.1145/1015828.1015832. S2CID 36954091.
70. Scantlebury, Roger (25 June 2013). "Internet pioneers airbrushed from history". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
71. Scantlebury, Roger (8 January 2010). "How we nearly invented the internet in the UK". New Scientist. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
72. Barber, D. L. A. and Laws, J. (February 1979). “A basic mail scheme for EIN,” International Network Working Group (INWG), Note no. 192.
73. Abbate, Janet (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-262-51115-5.
74. "Donald Davies". thocp.net. Archived from the original on 5 November 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2012; "Donald Davies". internethalloffame.org.
75. Davies, Donald Watts; Barber, Derek L. A. (1973), Communication networks for computers, Computing and Information Processing, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 9780471198741
76. Davies, Donald Watts (1979). Computer networks and their protocols. Internet Archive. Chichester, [Eng.]; New York : Wiley. pp. 456–477. ISBN 9780471997504.
77. Frank, Ronald A. (22 October 1975). "Battle for Access Standards Has Two Sides". Computerworld. IDG Enterprise: 17–18.
78. Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (26 April 2010). A History of International Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
79. Barber, D., and J. Laws, "A Basic Mail Scheme for EIN," INWG 192, February 1979.
80. IEN 85.
81. Davies, D. W.; Price, W. L. (1984), Security for computer networks: an introduction to data security in teleprocessing and electronic funds transfer, New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0471921370
82. Yates, David M. (1997). Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory 1945-1995. National Museum of Science and Industry. pp. 132–4. ISBN 978-0-901805-94-2. Davies's invention of packet switching and design of computer communication networks ... were a cornerstone of the development which led to the Internet
83. Abbate 1999, p. 3 "The manager of the ARPANET project, Lawrence Roberts, assembled a large team of computer scientists ... and he drew on the ideas of network experimenters in the United States and the United Kingdom. Cerf and Kahn also enlisted the help of computer scientists from England, France and the United States" harvnb error: no target: CITEREFAbbate1999 (help)
84. "Alan Turing and the Ace computer". BBC. 5 February 2010. Retrieved 13 February 2024. Does that mean Britain invented the internet? "Yes and no," said Mr Scantlebury. "Certainly the underlying technology of the internet, which is packet switching, we did invent."
85. "How the Brits invented packet switching and made the internet possible". www.computerweekly.com. Archived from the original on 31 August 2012. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
86. "The British invented much of the Internet". ZDNET. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
87. "A Flaw in the Design". The Washington Post. 30 May 2015. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2020. The Internet was born of a big idea: Messages could be chopped into chunks, sent through a network in a series of transmissions, then reassembled by destination computers quickly and efficiently. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran. ... The most important institutional force ... was the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... as ARPA began work on a groundbreaking computer network, the agency recruited scientists affiliated with the nation's top universities.
88. Roberts, Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The evolution of packet switching" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 66 (11): 1307–13. doi:10.1109/PROC.1978.11141. S2CID 26876676. Significant aspects of the network's internal operation, such as routing, flow control, software design, and network control were developed by a BBN team consisting of Frank Heart, Robert Kahn, Severo Omstein, William Crowther, and David Walden
89. F.E. Froehlich, A. Kent (1990). The Froehlich/Kent Encyclopedia of Telecommunications: Volume 1 - Access Charges in the U.S.A. to Basics of Digital Communications. CRC Press. p. 344. ISBN 0824729005. Although there was considerable technical interchange between the NPL group and those who designed and implemented the ARPANET, the NPL Data Network effort appears to have had little fundamental impact on the design of ARPANET. Such major aspects of the NPL Data Network design as the standard network interface, the routing algorithm, and the software structure of the switching node were largely ignored by the ARPANET designers. There is no doubt, however, that in many less fundamental ways the NPL Data Network had and effect on the design and evolution of the ARPANET.
90. Russell, Andrew L.; Schafer, Valérie (2014). "In the Shadow of ARPANET and Internet: Louis Pouzin and the Cyclades Network in the 1970s". Technology and Culture. 55 (4): 893–894. doi:10.1353/tech.2014.0096. ISSN 0040-165X. JSTOR 24468474.
91. Bennett, Richard (September 2009). "Designed for Change: End-to-End Arguments, Internet Innovation, and the Net Neutrality Debate" (PDF). Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. pp. 7, 11. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
92. "The Computer History Museum, SRI International, and BBN Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of First ARPANET Transmission, Precursor to Today's Internet". SRI International. 27 October 2009. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 25 September 2017. But the ARPANET itself had now become an island, with no links to the other networks that had sprung up. By the early 1970s, researchers in France, the UK, and the U.S. began developing ways of connecting networks to each other, a process known as internetworking.
93. "BT ad gets into a muddle about the internet's origins". BBC. 15 February 2016. Retrieved 25 September 2017. Although University College London subsequently helped test the networking protocols that gave rise to what we now recognise as the internet, much of the original work on them had been carried out at Stanford. "While Donald Davies and his team at the National Physical Laboratory can lay claim to having developed packet-switching that enabled the technological infrastructure of the internet, Vint Cerf and a number of Americans were the driving forces behind the Arpanet that became the internet," commented Prof Martin Campbell-Kelly, a trustee at The National Museum of Computing.
94. by Vinton Cerf, as told to Bernard Aboba (1993). "How the Internet Came to Be". Archived from the original on 26 September 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017. We began doing concurrent implementations at Stanford, BBN, and University College London. So effort at developing the Internet protocols was international from the beginning.

Further reading

• Abbate, Janet (2000), Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, ISBN 9780262511155
• Campbell-Kelly, Martin (1987). "Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (1965-1975)". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 9 (3): 221–247. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1987.10023. S2CID 8172150.
• Hafner, Katie; Lyon, Matthew (1996). Where wizards stay up late : the origins of the Internet. New York : Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-81201-4.

Primary sources

• Davies, D. W. (10 November 1965), Remote On-line Data Processing and Its Communication Needs, Private papers.
• Davies, D. W. (16 November 1965), Further Speculations on Data Transmission, Private papers.
• Davies, D. W. (15 December 1965), Proposal for the Development of a National Communications Service for OnLine Data Processing, Private papers.
• Davies, D. W. (June 1966), Proposal for a Digital Communication Network (PDF), Private papers.
• Davies, D.W. (February 1967), A Store-and-Forward Communication Network for Real-Time Computers and their Peripherals. PO Colloquium on Message Switching.
• Scantlebury, R. A.; K. A. Bartlett (February 1967). An NPL Data Communications Network Based on the Plessey XL12 Computer. Private papers.
• Scantlebury, R. A.; Bartlett, K. A. (April 1967), A Protocol for Use in the NPL Data Communications Network, Private papers.
• Davies, D.W. (July 1967) Some Design Aspects of a Communication Network for Rapid-Response Computers. Computer Technology Conference.
• Davies, D. W.; Bartlett, K. A.; Scantlebury, R. A.; Wilkinson, P. T. (October 1967). A digital communications network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals. ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles.
• Scantlebury, R. A.; Wilkinson, P.T. (1971). The design of a switching system to allow remote access to computer services by other computers and terminal devices. Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Problems in the Optimization of Data Communications Systems. pp. 160–167.
• Barber, D. L. A. (1972). Winkler, S (ed.). "The European computer network project". Computer Communications: Impacts and Implications. Washington, D.C.: 192–200.
• Scantlebury, R. A.; Wilkinson, P.T. (1974). The National Physical Laboratory Data Communications Network. Proceedings of the 2nd ICCC 74. pp. 223–228.

External links

• "Publications and Conference Papers - Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory". Jisc Archives Hub.
• NPL Data Communications Network NPL video, 1970s
• Government loses way in computer networks New Scientist, 1975
• The Story of Packet Switching Interview with Roger Scantlebury, Peter Wilkinson, Keith Bartlett, and Brian Aldous, 2011
• The birth of the Internet in the UK Google video featuring Roger Scantlebury, Peter Wilkinson, Peter Kirstein and Vint Cerf, 2013