The “L” and “O” from the word “LOGIN” had been transmitted successfully in their packets; but that “G”, wrapped in its own packet, caused the death of that nascent packet network setup. Even today, software crashes, that’s a solid fact; but this historic crash, is exactly that — historic.
Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept.
What’s the use of a protocol if you don’t have software to speak it.
Berkeley’s Unix (or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD as its variants are known) is now the basis of every iPhone, iPad and Mac laptops software in existence. Android’s and Chromebooks come from a different lineage; but still hold those BSD methodologies as the fundamental basis of all their networking software.
The hardware interfaces, the protocols and the software that implemented the protocols were the tangible engineering products of that early work. Equally important was the social fabric and culture that we created. We knew the system would evolve, so we envisioned an open and evolving architecture.
Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
— Samuel Johnson