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Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?

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Re: Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?

#61

Post by jmiserez »

unmole wrote: post #26
jmiserez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s super-annoying to read an RFC and not know about the newer updates or that it has been superseded altogether. And source code that mentions RFC 822 when it’s been superseded twice. Unfortunately the old RFCs are never updated with links to the newer ones. However, I just saw that rfc-editor.org actually lists these links between them, e.g. https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2822 has links to both 822 and to 5322…

All RFC's have links to Obsoleted by and Updated by sections in HTML format where applicable. For example: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822

Ah, great! Too bad Google doesn’t seem to know about it. Searching for “rfc 2822” doesn’t find it and only shows me https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt

Re: Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?

#63

Post by aphextron »

no_protocol wrote: post #8

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet By Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684832674 -- I read the Audiobook version of this book. It presents a narrative of the development of the very early stages of the internet. I enjoyed it. I think it would also have been fine in print or ebook formats. It is not too long and seems to present the events in a mostly linear fashion. You'll…

> "Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today [1998], twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net."

The scale of the web today is truly staggering. The entirety of Yahoo era internet users would be a single celebrity's Twitter followers now. It's no wonder things felt so much more intimate and real back then. It really was a qualitatively different time and place.

Re: Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?

#67

Post by westoncb »

alankay wrote: post #57

The best all around book about the ARPA/Parc research community is Mitchell Waldrop's "The Dream Machine". Covers pretty much everything pretty much outstandingly.

I'd second this. I'm about halfway through the book right now and still being blown away. It's sort of like the version of 'Hackers' more appropriate to the version of me that has 14 more years engineering, design, and business experience (than when I originally read and loved Hackers, I mean). It's very in depth and interesting, and it's crazy to me that it's not a better known book.

(That said, I'm just getting into the more internet-focused section at the moment, so I can't speak too much to that part specifically.)

Re: Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?

#69

Post by WalterGR »

aphextron wrote: post #63
no_protocol wrote: post #8

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet By Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684832674 -- I read the Audiobook version of this book. It presents a narrative of the development of the very early stages of the internet. I enjoyed it. I think it would also have been fine in print or ebook formats. It is not too long and seems to present the events in a mostly linear fashion. You'll…

> "Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today [1998], twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net." The scale of the web today is truly staggering. The entirety of Yahoo era internet users would be a single celebrity's Twitter followers now. It's no wonder things felt so much more intimate and real back then. It really was a qualitatively different time and place.

twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net."

Facebook alone has two orders of magnitude (2 billion) more users than 1998 had in its entirety.

Crazy.

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