History
NCP provided connections and flow control between processes running on different ARPANET host computers. Application services, such as email and file transfer, were built on top of NCP, using it to handle connections to other host computers.
On the ARPANET, the protocols in the Physical Layer, the Data Link Layer, and the Network Layer used within the network were implemented on separate Interface Message Processors (IMPs). The host usually connected to an IMP using another kind of interface, with different physical, data link and network layer specifications. The IMP's capabilities were specified by the Host/IMP Protocol in BBN Report 1822.
Since lower protocol layers were provided by the IMP-host interface, NCP essentially provided a Transport Layer consisting of the ARPANET Host-to-Host Protocol (AHHP) and the Initial Connection Protocol (ICP). AHHP defined procedures to transmit a unidirectional, flow-controlled data stream between two hosts. The ICP defined the procedure for establishing a bidirectional pair of such streams between a pair of host processes. Application protocols (e.g., FTP) accessed network services through an interface to the top layer of the NCP, a forerunner to the Berkeley sockets interface.
Read more about this topic: Network Control Program
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)