One Page Papers

Internet & networking · 1985

RFC 968: ‘Twas the Night Before Start-up

Vint Cerf

Request for Comments 968 · December 1985

Network Working Group · MCI

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Vint Cerf, 1985
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English

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  • Network Working Group · Request for Comments: 968 · V. Cerf, MCI · December 1985
  • Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
  • doi:10.17487/RFC0968
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Edition

RFC Editor plain-text edition, complete. The heading block and the status of the memo are set as the header of the poster, the title with the quotation marks of its line in the RFC; page headers and footers are left out, including the running title of page 2; the lines of the poem keep their breaks and their indentation.

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License notice: “Distribution of this memo is unlimited.”

RFC 968 itself carries no copyright notice. The RFC Editor also states: “All RFCs may be freely reproduced and translated (unmodified).” (https://www.rfc-editor.org/faq/)

Status of this Memo. This memo discusses problems that arise and debugging techniques used in bringing a new network into operation. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

DISCUSSION#

Twas the night before start-up and all through the net,
not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
he’d conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
and scrutinized each for its potential harm.
On LAPB, on OSI, X.25!
TCP, SNA, V.35!
His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
no bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
he entered a patch and the net came up fine!
The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
and turned to explain why the system had died.
I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
an off-by-one index had done it again...

Vint Cerf
December 1985