Editing Fuzzball router

{{Short description|First routers on the internet}}
'''Fuzzball routers''' were the first modern [[router (computing)|router]]s on the [[Internet]].<ref name=Malamud/> They were [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]] [[PDP-11]] computers (usually [[LSI-11]] personal workstations) loaded with the Fuzzball software written by [[David L. Mills]] (of the [[University of Delaware]]).<ref name=NSF/><ref name="thefuzz"/> 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.<ref name=thefuzz/><ref name=DCN/> It acquired the nickname sometime after it was rewritten in 1977.<ref name=thefuzz/>

Six Fuzzball routers provided the routing backbone of the first 56&nbsp;kbit/s [[NSFNET]],<ref name=nsfnet/><ref name=legacy/> allowing the testing of many of the [[Internet]]'s first protocols.<ref name=RFC819/> It allowed the development of the first TCP/IP routing protocols,<ref name=tcpip/> and the [[Network Time Protocol]].<ref name=NTP/> They were the first routers to implement key refinements to TCP/IP such as variable-length [[subnet mask]]s.<ref name=ospf/>

==See also==

* [[Interface Message Processor]]

==References==
{{reflist|refs=
<ref name=RFC819>{{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=[[Internet Engineering Task Force|IETF]] |access-date=7 December 2022 |doi=10.17487/RFC0891}}</ref>
<ref name=NTP>{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=DCN>{{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 }}</ref>
<ref name=Malamud>{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=NSF>{{cite web |url=https://nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/fuzzball.htm |title=Fuzzball: The Innovative Router |author=<!--Not stated--> |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}}</ref>
<ref name="thefuzz">{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=nsfnet>{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=legacy>{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=tcpip>{{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}}</ref>
<ref name=ospf>{{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}}</ref>
}}

==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

{{compu-network-stub}}

[[Category:American inventions]]
[[Category:Hardware routers]]
[[Category:History of telecommunications]]