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INTERNET
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... |
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