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Fuzzball router

{{Short description|First routers on the internet}}

Fuzzball routers were the first modern routers on the Internet. They were DEC PDP-11 computers (usually LSI-11 personal workstations) loaded with the Fuzzball software written by David L. Mills (of the University of Delaware). The name "Fuzzball" was the colloquialism for Mills's routing software. The software evolved from the Distributed Computer Network (DCN) that started at the University of Maryland in 1973. It acquired the nickname sometime after it was rewritten in 1977.

Six Fuzzball routers provided the routing backbone of the first 56 kbit/s NSFNET, allowing the testing of many of the Internet's first protocols. It allowed the development of the first TCP/IP routing protocols, and the Network Time Protocol. They were the first routers to implement key refinements to TCP/IP such as variable-length subnet masks.

See also

References

{{reflist|refs=

{{cite IETF |title=DCN Local-Network Protocols |rfc=891 |sectionname= |section= |page= |last=Mills |first=D.L. |author-link=David L. Mills |date=December 1983 |publisher=IETF |access-date=7 December 2022 |doi=10.17487/RFC0891}}

{{cite book |chapter=Technical History of NTP |doi=10.1201/b10282-20 |title=Computer Network Time Synchronization: the Network Time Protocol on Earth and in Space |last1=Mills |first1=David L. |year=2010 |pages=377–396 |publisher=CRC Press |edition=2nd |doi-broken-date=2024-11-11 |isbn=978-1-4398-1463-5}}

{{cite book |doi=10.1145/1499799.1499874 |chapter=An overview of the distributed computer network |title=Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1976, national computer conference and exposition on - AFIPS '76 |year=1976 |last1=Mills |first1=David L. |pages=523–531 |s2cid=13375745 }}

{{cite book |first1=Carl |last1=Malamud |title=Exploring the Internet: a technical travelogue |chapter=Round 1: from INTEROP to IETF |publisher=Prentice Hall |isbn=0-13-296898-3 |year=1992 |page=88 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/exploringinterne00mala}}

{{cite web |url=https://nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/fuzzball.htm |title=Fuzzball: The Innovative Router |author= |website=The Internet: Changing the Way We Communicate |publisher=NSF |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202232837/https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/fuzzball.htm |archive-date=2 February 2017}}

{{cite conference |url=https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/database/papers/fuzz.pdf |last=Mills |first=D.L. |title=The Fuzzball|conference=ACM SIGCOMM 88 Symposium |location=Palo Alto, CA |date=August 1988 |pages=115–122}}

{{cite conference |url=https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/database/papers/bone.pdf |last1=Mills |first1=D.L. |first2=H.-W. |last2=Braun |title=The NSFNET Backbone Network |conference=ACM SIGCOMM 87 Symposium |location=Stoweflake, VT |date=August 1987 |pages=191–196}}

{{cite web |work=Presentation at the NSFNET Legacy event, 2007 |url=http://www.nsfnet-legacy.org/archives/02--Beginnings.pdf |pages=38–48 |title=The NSFnet Phase-I Backbone and The Fuzzball Router |author=David L. Mills |date=29 November 2007}}

{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pm4RgYV2w4YC&pg=PA679 |title=The TCP/IP guide: a comprehensive, illustrated Internet protocols reference |first1=Charles M. |last1=Kozierok |isbn=1-59327-047-X |year=2005 |publisher=No Starch Press |pages=679–681}}

{{cite book |title=OSPF: anatomy of an Internet routing protocol |first1=John T. |last1=Moy |page=20 |isbn=978-0-201-63472-3 |publisher=Addison-Wesley Professional |year=1998 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YXUWsqVhx60C&pg=PA20}}

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External links

  • [https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery10.html The Fuzzball], with photographs
  • [https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/resource.html Fuzzball source code], last update in 1992, 16 megabytes

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Category:American inventions

Category:Hardware routers

Category:History of telecommunications