Talk:Packet switching/OriginsArchive

Kleinrock vs Baran/Davies

Kleinrock's apparent campaign to claim sole credit (his pages nowhere mention Baran) as the inventor of packet switching - and thus the Internet - is really sad, because he did make really important contributions. Initally via his incredibly fundamental queuing theory work, and later via other major contributions - e.g. his almost as important work with Kamoun on hierarchical routing (now critical to the operation of today's Internet), he produced key work.

However, if you carefully read both his initial 1961 paper, and the later 1964 book of his PhD work, it nowhere talks of breaking a user's message up into segments which are sent separately through the network. Yes, in hindsight, it's so obvious it doesn't seem important - but at the time, it wasn't obvious. However, in engineering terms this is a critical innovation - it not only allows better sharing of communication medium (e.g. lower latency) but it's also absolutely necessary if you use an unreliable network (now considered the way to go, because of the simpler overall system design), because if you expect to send large user messages (e.g. large web pages), the larger the message, the higher the chance it will be damaged in transit.

And as to claims that Baran's work was published in obscure RAND reports, and not generally available, that's clearly incorrect because a summary paper was published in a major IEEE journal - also in 1964.

In short, although Kleinrock did make key contributions, it's really wrong to leave out others who also did - and it's really sad, because he doesn't need to elide others to claim a major chunk of the glory. Noel (talk) 16:02, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is now an extensive discussion of the issue in the article. See what you think.--Carl Hewitt 02:16, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

The best view I have been able to come up with is at ARPANET - oh, I see, you've totally changed that around too; I'm speaking of this version. I was planning on moving that material to Packet switching (see Talk:ARPANET), but never got around to it. I don't think it's a good idea at all to have the identical (lengthy) text in two articles, so I think we should ditch most of what's in the ARPANET article, and just refer to this in that one.

Also, the fine techical ins and outs of the debate about who gets credit are really not appropriate for the average general reader, who just wants to know what packet switching is; the debate over credit probably belong in a separate article, say Invention of packet switching. I'll do both of those in a bit.

Anyway, getting back to the question of who deserves credit, I think I explained my views fairly well above, but see also Talk:ARPANET#Leonard Kleinrock and User talk:Kim Meyrick#Kleinrock, where I discuss the issue at some modest length. Let me expand a bit on what I said above here (copying in some of the most important stuff I wrote other places).

Baran and Kleinrock share most of the credit: there is some overlap in what they did, but the area of overlap is a lot smaller than what each did that the other didn't to at all. So basically, modulo Davies (whose role I am not so clear on), I think all of the people I named in the ARPANET article (including Lick/Roberts, who made it happen) get a share of the credit, each contributing a specific and necessary facet.

The other point that's worth making is that Baran and Kleinrock get the headlines, with Robert behind, because they (independently) came up with their stuff in a vacuum. The later players were building on Baran and Kleinrock. (I need to study up on Davies' work before I can give a definite assessment of his credit, both as to what his contribution was, and how original it was. Ditto for Lick.)

Have you actually read Kleinrock's '61 book? As although queueing theory is all there, he's missing many key pieces of the engineering (e.g. he everywhere discusses passing entire messages, by which I mean in the user's semantics, through the network). If you look at Baran's stuff (again, have you read his stuff?), it's a complete system, with lots of theory, with a fair amount of theory (more in the redundancy than in the queueing, though).

I am wary of placing too much reliance on what people (such as Roberts) remember many years later; memory plays tricks. Contemporary documents would be better, if any could be located.

DARPA's own history of the ARPANet (see article) nowhere mentions Kleinrock's work as a source of inspiration - but does prominently cite Baran and Davies. I'm not about to radically alter the conclusion of DARPA's own in-house historians, who had acccess to DARPA's internal papers, plus interviews with all the principals there.

And since then Abbate's book has come out - I'll have to look at it and see what she thinks.

You also need to remember the way in which ideas osmose around. Baran's work started earlier, and he'd been giving talks on it for quite some time before the '64 IEEE paper. So it's quite possible that the concept had spread in a "word of mouth" fashion, without any paper trail.

In short, there's a good reason that both Katie Hafner (in her book) and I (in the ARPANet page) mentioned all the players, without explicitly allocating credit. It's not at all clear that we can really sort it out now, this far along. Now that I've had some years to ponder it, I think I would take the tack I outlined above: i) each did important work that was absolutely necessary, and ii) the stuff they did generally didn't overlap. In short, there was no one "inventor of packet switching". This is not just being nice, or avoiding a fight - trust me, if I thought person X deserved the lion's share of the credit, I'd say so. It's what I perceive to be the truth of the matter. Noel (talk) 05:12, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Where is DARPA's own history of the ARPANET? I agree that it is not the job of the encyclopedia to assign credit.--Carl Hewitt 16:55, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

It's listed in the "Further reading" section of the ARPANet article:

Arthur Norberg, Judy E. O'Neill, Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1982 (Johns Hopkins University, 1996)

The ARPANET is covered on pp. 153-196. Noel (talk) 07:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Why do you think that this history is officially endorsed by DARPA? Also is there an online version? Thanks.--Carl Hewitt 11:28, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Now that I look at it carefully, I'm not sure what its exact status is. An earlier version (A History of IPTO at DARPA, Charles Babbage Institute, 1992) by the same authors was written under a DoD contract. This current book seems to be a revised and extended version of that, but its official connections seem to be less formal, although I've seen it referred to as 'ARPA's official history' - you might want to see if the DARPA web site mentions it. The later version did have an advisory committee containing a variety of ARPA heavies (among others, Saul Amaral, Fano, Kahn, Lick, Newell, Uncapher, etc), as well as fairly full access to DARPA archives, etc.

So it's not an arms-length academic history, like Abbate's (Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, 1999) - although now that I look, it turns out she was a close associate of Norberg and O'Neill! So I doubt her history is that independent of theirs. I have no idea if either one is online - you could try poking around at CBI (their collection of oral history interviews is really cool). ABE has several copies of the later book available. Noel (talk) 20:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

PS: Now that I look at Abbate's book again, she has a lengthy section on Davies' work (I'd forgotten about that), so if you want to get a sense of what role he played, I'd suggest getting a copy of that. Noel (talk) 20:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

PS: You also might want to consult Wikipedia:No original research, which says to avoid a "novel narrative or historical interpretation". In other words, we can have fun reading the original papers, but really the only approach that fits Wikipedia policy is to pass on the opinions of historians who have published on this specific issue: i.e. Norberg-O'Neill/Hafner (and Abbate and Waldrop, if they address the issue; I'll check). If differing sources disagree, it's OK to either synthesize their views, or if that's not possible because they are diametrically opposed, one should mention both. Coming up with our own conclusions, based on our own research, is off the reservation. Noel (talk) 05:12, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, Abbate's book totally ignores Kleinrock, giving all the credit for packet switching to Baran and Davies: "PS was invented independently by two computer researchers" (pp. 8)! She also dug up an interesting quote from Kleinrock, about Baran: "I was well aware of his results. In fact, I quoted him in my own dissertation." (n. 37, pp. 226).

Not that I think that call is completely accurate - and other sources disagree with it! E.g. Waldrop's great bio of Lick (M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine) describes a process in which Roberts leaned heavily in the early planning stages (before hearing from Scantlebury/Davies) on Kleinrock, whom he'd gone to grad school with!

But even that is problematic: an abstract of Baran's '64 IEEE ToN paper had been published in IEEE Spectrum (circulation about 160,000 in those days) in August '64, so Baran's ideas had been circulated extremely widely years before, and who knows if there wasn't some subconcious memory of Baran's stuff factored into their pre-S/D work! Kleinrock's quote (above) definitely indicates that he was aware of Baran's work before this all, too.

So, with the various historians all over the map, it can be a bit trying! My personal opinion, as someone who i) has complete insight into the technical issues, and ii) has studied this extensively, is the one I laid out above: that a number of people each get credit for facets of the whole. (And of course although I can point to Hafner's book to support this, you will note that as a technical advisor she credits... me! So once again nothing is really independent! :-) Noel (talk) 20:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Non-issue

Hi - this is a non-issue, since only Kleinrock takes his position. I have read the work of Baran, Davies, and Kleinrock, and it is clear that Kleinrock's work was on digital switching of messages, and did not include the concept of the packet. I plan to update the page to show the correct attribution, unless their are strong objections on this page. Thanks, Reliablesources 21:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I plan to replace the section on controversy with the following unless there are strong objections on this page within a couple weeks.

Thanks - Reliablesources 15:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

"Packet switching was first discovered by Paul Baran in the early 1960's, and then independently a few years later by Donald Davies. Leonard Kleinrock conducted early research in the related field of message switching at about the same time, and helped build the world's first packet switching network, the ARPANET.

"Baran first developed the concept of packet switching during his research for the US Air Force into survivable communications networks, first presented as briefing B-265 in 1961, and then as a series of eleven papers titled On Distributed Communications in 1964. Baran's extensive study described a detailed architecture for a large-scale, distributed, survivable communications network, and was widely influenctial. Baran talked to Bob Taylor and J.C.R. Licklider at the IPTO about the work, and it subsequently helped influence Lawrence Roberts to adopt the technology for the ARPANET.

"In one of several similar coincidences in the history of science, Baran's packet switching work was similar to that performed independently a few years later by Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K. In 1965, Davies developed the concept of packet switched networks and proposed development of a U.K. wide packet network. He gave a talk on the proposal in 1966, after which a person from the Ministry of Defence told him about Baran's work. Davies met Lawrence Roberts at the 1967 ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles.

"Interestingly, Davies had chosen some of the same parameters for his network design as Baran, such as a packet size of 1024 bits. The name "packet switching" itself was taken from Davies work. [1]"

I'm reverting this. You've escentialy re-written the page to give Baran sole credit. There is no consensus on that opinion, and it would be representing a Point Of View to state it. While your argument against Licklider is compelling, I fail to see why you chose Baran as sole origin and reduced Davies to 'similar coincidence'. I've edited the previous page to clarify that there the principle origin of Packet Switching is unclear, and that Kleinrock's contribution was only on a partial system. --Barberio 12:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This is a very, very important issue. That Baran and Davies invented packet switching is verifiable historical fact. Therefore it is greatly inappropriate for Wikipedia to be propagating any other description that is not true. We need to correct this record - accurate scientific attribution is a bedrock of scientific progress. Therefore I'm adding the update back, under the following well-thought out rationale, and encourage you to read the rest of this page, the following information points, and contact me on my Talk page or by email to discuss before you make any further changes:

(1) I posted the edit on the talk page first and invited comment for several weeks without objection, so it would have been better for you to contact me to clear up your concerns before reverting this hard work.

(2) This issue was settled with the investigative story by Katie Hafner in the New York Times published Nov 8, 2001 that stated "Until Dr. Kleinrock began making his case prominently, two others -- Donald Davies, a British expert on computer security, and Paul Baran, formerly of the RAND Corporation -- were widely recognized as packet switching's inventors", as well as "Throughout the early 1990's, when asked, Dr. Roberts pointed to his own work, as well as the work of Mr. Baran and Dr. Davies, as the major influences on his thinking when he designed the network. It wasn't until Dr. Kleinrock began to lobby for recognition that Dr. Roberts changed his mind and not only began citing Dr. Kleinrock's work but also took up his friend's cause.".

(3) This article was followed by a definitive letter to the New York Times editor published Nov 22 from none other than Robert Taylor, the giant that headed the IPTO, created the ARPANET program, and picked Lawrence Roberts as the program manager, in which he provided the authoritative conclusion: "Over these past 35 years, most of us have believed that packet switching was independently invented by Donald Davies in England and Paul Baran in the United States -- and most of us still do! But in 1996, two of us, Leonard Kleinrock and Larry Roberts, began claiming that Kleinrock invented this technology. Authors who have interviewed dozens of Arpanet pioneers know very well that the Kleinrock-Roberts claims are not believed. You should have said so."

(4) Indeed all books written about the Internet by professional historians do credit Baran and Davies as co-inventors.

(5) The technical distinction is simple. Kleinrock researched what is known in the field as "digital messaging", where each communication line is still used for only one communication at a time. The key innovation of "packet switching" is the division of messages into separate packets that can then take different routes and mix with packets from different messages (interlaced) on the same line at the same time.

I can provide the full NY times articles described above and any other information desired to anyone that requests it on my talk page. It is true that this "controversy" has been most unfortunate. And since it should not have happened in the first place, I understand that it may be difficult to accept the change now back to the truth. But we owe history the truth, and especially Wikipedia owes the history of the Internet on which it rides the truth. So it is important that we correct this. Please contact me if you have any other concerns. Reliablesources 16:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

My dispute is that your article version Does Not say that Mr. Baran and Dr. Davies simultaniously developed packet switching, and that Kleinrock made early but partial research into the ideas. It gives sole credit to Baran, mentioned Davies as 'intresting coincidence', and excluded Kleinrock's message queue contributions all together. I'm not going to revert again to give you a chance to re-write your contribution to adress this. I am going to use the 'totaly-disputed' tag to mark this section. If you don't adress these issues, then I'll revert some time later. --Barberio 02:00, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I made edits to address your concerns within the bounds of the truth. Pls see the page. I have noted that both Baran and Davies discovered the concept independently, and gave Kleinrock the maximum credit possible - work on "message switching" and help with the ARPANET. I don't see how I can make any other edits and stick to the documented, historical, factual truth on this matter. I hope this meets your concerns. Reliablesources 12:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Your language still makes an unaceptable POV selection of a 'first discovery'. It is explicitly not our place to decide who was first in a disputed and unclear situation, especialy in this case where all involved take pains to call it a simultanious development. Please re-write this section to fix this fundamental problem. Also, use of the term 'discovery' for an invention of method is inapropriate. --Barberio 20:15, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I have invested even more effort, and done a general clarification of the entire section. I cannot do more without straying from the truth. My reasoning is below. I hope this meets your concerns and that we can close this issue.

(1) We both want the objective facts of the history, as opposed to a subjective point of view: Baran discovered and published the concept in 1961, and Davies discovered and published the concept in 1965. A gentleman's gentleman, Davies himself never had a problem acknowledging that Baran was first by four years, was always one of Baran's biggest supporters, and clearest analysts of Kleinrock's claims, and has been so very clearly in print. However, since these facts are apparent in the subsequent paragraphs, I have removed the word "first" in the first sentence associated with Baran's discovery to attempt to do what I can to address your concern.

(2) Wrt the word "discover", I use it because I believe it is a much more inclusive term. Nobody invented the circle, several people discovered it. Pythagoras did not invent his theorem, he discovered a reality already present in the universe. Much like Zorkenias did on planet Zork a billion years earlier. In any case, while this is metaphysically fascinating, please allow me the liberty of choosing this word in a work that took some effort to build. Reliablesources 17:35, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

This discussion is moot. After examination of the original sources it became apparent the new text was a slightly altered lift of text from http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_packet_inv.htm, and is a clear copyvio. I'm reverting this again. --Barberio 10:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I am the author of LivingInternet.com, and have contributed this rewritten text to Wikipedia. There is no copyright issue. Please act in a community oriented fashion, and do not revert my work again without discussion. If the well-documented facts of the case do not convinuce you, we need to escalate this. Reliablesources 14:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The revision based upon the previous text [[2]] not only provided all the factual information you revision provided, but did so in a NPOV manner, and provided substantial quotes to ilustrate that there is a dispute over the issue. Yours glosses over any concern of a dispute to present a single POV. I suggest you aquaint yourself with WP:NPOV. If there is contraversy on an origin, then we report the contraversy, we should not, and must not, pick out one side without overwhelming concensus. There is also an issue with circular citation. It is not appropriate to cite yourself to note your own opinion. --User:Barberio 16:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue here is completely fact-based. There is no controversy over Kleinrock's role, as the NY Times article reported, and no less than Bob Taylor himself responded, as per my notes painstakingly added above. With respect to the dates and roles of Baran and Davies attribution, I have also outlined the facts above in some detail, and put them in the article. Further, as I also noted in my response to you above, Davies himself never had any issue with the facts - he published a paper posthumously to set the record straight and, as an academic gentleman, fully acknowledges Baran's prior publication (see me for more info if needed). Rather than continuing to criticize my hard work, it would be much more constructive for you to acknowledge that this is a valuable contribution, responding to this Talk page with many noting the travesty of pretending there was a controversy when there is not. Wikipedia must not be party to ongoing perpetuation of this untruth, and I will continue to work hard to ensure it does so given the importance of this issue. For the fourth time, I would appreciate it if you would remove the disputed tag and close this issue. Thanks. Reliablesources 22:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

You have continued to ignore the issue I have repetedly raised with you. The article as presented fails to hold a Neutral Point of View. Picking out Baran as the 'first to discover' packet switching is a clear selection of one POV over others. The phrasing you replaced *did* state all the facts, and also stated peoples opinions, and stated the dominant POV that it is viewed as simultanious invention. Omiting the discussion on this, including representations of the various opinions on the matter, is a removing valid information from the article. This is unbalenced reporting, and not in the spirit of Wikipedia. The content tag will remain, and if not corrected, the section may be reverted or edited. --Barberio 23:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no POV in facts. Baran discovered it in 1961, Davies in 1965. According to the standards of academic credit going back centuries, that is a four year difference. Neither of them disputes this fact. You are the only one that appears to hold a POV on this. It appears to based on little other than an apparent wish to strike my edits, without any facts behind your argument. This is my fifth time repeating the same points, and further effort without any corresponding movement from you is not warranted. The facts I have contributed are from the historical record, and backed by the NY Times, Baran, Davies, Taylor, and every historian that has published on the issue. If you do not remove the disputed tag within a couple days, I will escalate this to protect the truth and the reputation of Wikipedia. Reliablesources 17:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Please try to understand that while it may well be true, if there is a contraversy beyond simple misconception then we have to report that contraversy. The articly version you saw fit to strike contained quotes in support of these views. As a simple matter of NPOV and comprehensivness, we must report these opinions. The reader, after being presented these opinions and supporting facts, can come to their own conclusions.

"Wikipedia uses the neutral point-of-view, which means we strive for articles that advocate no single point of view. Sometimes this requires representing multiple points of view; presenting each point of view accurately; providing context for any given point of view, so that readers understand whose view the point represents; and presenting no one point of view as 'the truth' or 'the best view.' It means citing verifiable, authoritative sources whenever possible, especially on controversial topics. When a conflict arises as to which version is the most neutral, declare a cool-down period and tag the article as disputed; hammer out details on the talk page and follow dispute resolution." (WP:5P)

--Barberio 19:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is the problem: the facts I have detailed in my previous posts show that there is no controversy to report. On the Davies/Baran issue, no-one anywhere, including Davies himself, has ever disputed Baran's 4 year prior invention. If needed, I'll dig up a quote from Davies himself giving Baran first due -- he said so in print. So that is all facts and no dissenters, so that issue is closed. On the Kleinrock claims, since those have been proven untrue as I detailed in my earlier posts, to report the issue at all would be to report that Kleinrock unfairly claimed credit, without anyone besides his best friend Roberts to half-ways back him up, and then the claim was conclusively shown to have been false. Why bother? As reported by others on this talk page, the guy was human, and made great contributions in other areas. Why make a point of his over-reaching in this area? I'd rather just give him credit where his credit is due, and move on. If that makes sense, pls remove the tag. I believe that I have made great efforts to address your concerns as best as possible, and hope if you reread the post you will agree. If you have remaining concerns, pls don't respond in general (need to report a controversy, maintain a NPOV) and get specific: what specific word, phrase, sentence, or fact in the post do you still have issue with? Thanks. Reliablesources 15:53, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, it is a requirment of the POV and comprehensive reporting policy of wikipedia that we should not remove the Kleinrock claim. If there was a claim to origin by Kleinrock, we should discuss it in the article. By extension, we should report the opinion held by many that this is a case of simultanious development. The original version of the article did this, your version does not. Those are the same specific issues I have raised with your version throughout this discussion, and you have not yet addressed beyond saying 'But my version is the Truth'. --Barberio 19:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I will assume the Davies issue is closed. If you sill have any concerns on Davies, let me know and I will provide a quote directly from Davies from one of his papers giving Baran first due according to the four year difference. So we are down to Kleinrock's claim. Simply because Kleinrock made a claim, universally proven false, does not mean it should validated by Wikipedia. It is not supported by anyone else. For example, I claim I invented the concept of Love, but would understand if someone struck that from the page on Love -- no-one else supports my claim. If we are to include anything on Kleinrock, it would have to be the following: "Kleinrock later claimed to have also invented packet switching. However, investigation showed his claims to be false. His work was limited to digital message switching without the key concept of the packet, and he is supported by no-one else in his claim other than his best friend Larry Roberts." The point here is that, in the academic world, false claim to credit is a very serious ethical lapse. To include the Kleinrock claim would also require that this lapse be explicitly pointed out. Why bother? People are human. Let Kleinrock get the credit for the significant work that he did do, and move on. Does that make sense? Reliablesources 11:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Please try to realise the diference between reporting the issue, and validating the issue. We should report all major opinions, in a neutral manner. We should do likewise for Davies, Baran and Klienrock. Please note, that Davies's own opinon should still be reported neutraly. The previous version of the article did this, the current one does not. --Barberio 12:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, we need to take this one issue at a time in order to resolve it. Let's start with the Baran / Davies issue. The question is did Baran invent the concept "first" according to accepted academic tradition, followed by a later independent development by Davies? Or was it somehow a "simultaneous" development, even though separated by several years? I believe the following quotes settle this issue: here is what Davies himself wrote in a paper written shortly before his untimely passing, and later published posthumously at his request: "There is a good degree of consensus about this early history among those who have written at length in well-researched books... This asserts that packet switching had two independent beginnings, with Paul Baran and Donald Davies, the present author. Briefly, the first description of packet switching is attributed to Paul Baran... Independently, starting from a different motivation, the author of this paper arrived at a striking similar digital communication system. My first three notes for private circulation were written in late 1965...". The facts on this simply shout too loudly to be ignored. There is consensus and no dispute on this issue, including by the parties themselves. Baran and Davies were in fact good friends. My posting fairly, objectively, and without any subjective POV whatsoever reports the facts with the actual dates, titles, and document numbers. Please read it again and let me know if you can now agree. Then let's focus on the Kleinrock issue, once this is resolved. Reliablesources 01:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Operative term there was "This asserts that packet switching had two independent beginnings, with Paul Baran and Donald Davies", which is a pretty clear phrase. It grants dual origin to Baran and Davies.

Now, I've given you plenty of time to adress the following clear and specific issues,

1. Failure to report on View that Kleinrock contributed significantly to Packet Switching development. Even if he did not provide a full theory, he still provided some of the escential underpinning. This should be reported.
2. Isolating a single POV to present, in that Baran deserves sole invention credit. Something that even your own quotes fail to completly justify.
3. Failing to properly cite. Citing your self in an unvetted website to support your own writing is not acceptable. It does Wikipedia no favours at all to send someone, as a reference cite, to a site that simply shows you coppied your own opinion vertabim.

Since you've had time to adress these issues, but havent done so, I'm going to revert.

Barberio, please act in a community manner. This is the third time you have reverted good work. Before we turn to ensuring the facts are presented, here are the insurmountable problems with the work you cite, and why it cannot be fixed and must not be allowed to left stand. Please keep an open mind the maximum extent possible: I have no other concern here than the truth.

1. The paragraph you quote from the first citation was written by Kleinrock, and the second and third citations are from his partner in this unethical and unsupported claim for unfair credit, Larry Roberts. This is the most unbalanced, unfair assault on well documented and investigated truth since... the last time something this bad happened.

2. The quotes you have substituted do exactly what you claim is improper in my posting... but much worse. Please read it again. It gives clear, unshared, first credit to Kleinrock. I mean, my goodness, the first quote you have posted applies the word "first" to Kleinrock twice in the very first sentence. Talk about unfair, to both Baran and Davies.

As documented in my earlier posting, the Kleinrock and Robert's claims have been proven to be untrue. There is no fudging this -- either you thought of the packet or you did not. Kleinrock didn't. It cannot be allowed to stand, and particularly as a sole claim. However, to meet your concerns, I will add the word independently to Baran and Davies, as you requested in your post, because you are exactly correct, I agree, and have always agreed. Whenever someone invents something after someone else, the first question you ask was: was it independently. This one was. The difference is: Kleinrock cannot claim any of this credit just because he (+Roberts) says so. Really, Taylor's email to the NY Times I posted above put kleinrock's claim to bed. So please accept yet another of my edits wrt Davies to try and meet your concerns.

Wrt your concern about the reference to the site LivingInternet.com which I maintain, it is the only site on the net that has been reviewed by Baran, Kleinrock, Roberts, and many others who helped build the Internet, and includes many of their quotes on the site linked on the home page. It is a unique reasearch archive of some value, and an appropriate reference for this material. However, I will not further digress and discuss this until we resolve the original issues about the existing post, and what really needs to be said about what really happened wrt Davies and Kleinrock.

Respectfully, Reliablesources 21:13, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

'Living Internet' is still a third hand source, and not of great utility. Please cite your original sources, not your own site. (I also note that Wikipedia itself has also been reviewed by various early developers of the internet.)

Reporting a Quote is not the same as Accepting that Quote. Something I have repetedly attempted to explain. The version you removed did take pains to explain that Kleinrock's work could not be viewed as a full packet switching method.

I've also uncovered some further factual errors that needed correction in your version, in reference to Baran's initial publications. --Barberio 11:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Your view of LivingInternet.com as "not of great utility" is not shared by the people that actually built the Internet, and contributed to the site. The material comes from the developers of the Internet itself. For example, Baran personally reviewed and provided corrections to the page on his contributions, and similarly for Kleinrock, Roberts, Cerf, and many others. Once again, please see their quotes endorsing the site, linked from the home page, to put this question to rest. You can also review my academic qualifications on the About page of the site. Wrt to your dispute of Baran's study as "exhaustive", I'll let that go, but challenge you to actually read that massive study as I have and come to any other conclusion. Now, let's please move on with our lives.

Respectfully, Reliablesources 11:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not a matter of how much praise and endorsment you have. You site could very well be a usefull text that does accurarly reflect history, thats not the issue. It's that your site is, at best, a Secondary source but mostly appear to be a Tertiary source. Tertiary sources are of low utility as references, and I refer you to Wikipedia:Cite_sources and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources.

It is a Wikipedia Guideline that Personal websites and blogs may never be used as secondary sources, this is due to a need for a verifiable trail of evidence. I'm going to have to be brutaly honest, and say that Living Internet does not pass the bar as an academic reference text rather than a personal website. There would need to be significant changes made to the way your site cites its own sources, for us to be able to consider using it as a secondary source. And even then, there is little reason to cite it when most of the relevent primary sources are available. --Barberio 17:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

In the interests of community harmony, I haven't added back the link you deleted, even though it is the only known integrated research on the net that synthesizes the history with the actual facts, names, titles, and dates, and references to primary sources. Someone else is welcome to add the link back if they think it justified. While we have now strayed a far range from the facts about packet switching, I must point out the errors in your gratuitous comments about the Living Internet site. The briefest read of the site and the very Wikipedia pages you cite clearly indicate it is a secondary source.

[a] Think of it this way. The Living Internet site is a book, in fact the first book-length work published specifically for the web. It is the work of a credentialed academician over ten years of written interviews and research, published a year before Wikipedia. It just happens it is published for free on the net. Six years later, as you know, other than Wikipedia, unfortunately that still remains the rare exception in the publishing world.

[b] The comments from Internet inventors linked from the home page are specifically about the book’s accuracy. Objectively, one might think that would constitute about the highest validation possible, from the primary sources themselves. Have you actually read their comments?

[c] The book includes hundreds of edits and comments from those primary sources and many other inventors of the net. That is why they publicly vouch for its accuracy. Some inventors of the net have even contributed original material.

[d] It is the most heavily referenced work about the Internet, on the web or off. It includes thousands of links to primary and related sources directly embedded in the text itself. Again, have you actually looked at the site?

[e] Despite your negative judgment, it has been included as a reference for "Internet history" by Vinton Cerf in one of the Internet RFC's itself, RFC 3271. He also often adds it as a reference to the end of his slide presentations.

[f] It is referenced by DMOZ as one of only two sites in the top "Internet" category, along with the W3C.

[g] For several years it has been the first site returned by Yahoo for a search on the word "Internet", no changes, clearly a decision by their organization.

You do not have to agree with all of this. I'll move on if you will.

Respectfully, Reliablesources 01:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)