Fun_People Archive
4 Nov
Another successful demo!

Date: Thu,  4 Nov 93 16:49:01 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: Another successful demo!

 From: vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU!bostic (Keith Bostic)

The following is a report on a high-tech demo that occurred
at the White House on October 21. 1993.

> (True)
> 
> The Internet Multicasting Service was scheduled to demonstrate 
> Internet mail etc. on the White House lawn yesterday (October 21,
> 1993) but at the last minute was told there would be no electrical
> power available.  Making the best of it, Carl Malamud said:
> 
> "We're pleased to announce that the White House demonstration
> we were planning, though slightly changed in execution from
> our original goals, made a form of technical history.  Though
> our project proposal was approved for Internet connectivity,
> some slight logistical misunderstandings resulted in a
> decision by White House staff that no power would be available
> to any of the vendors, making operation of our computers a real
> challenge.
> 
> We went ahead and made sure that our configuration would work
> both with and without power in our facilities and at other
> remote sites.  The system worked beautifully but, due to the
> no-power requirement, during our actual installation we reverted
> to Plan B and installed the world's first Powerless LAN (pLAN).
> 
> We're pleased to report that this pLAN worked and implementation
> was flawless.  The boxes sat on the table and were able to
> do everything you would expect out of a computer with the power
> switched off.  At this level of functionality, we successfully
> demonstrated interoperability between machines from Sun Microsystems,
> Persoft, Intel, Hewlett Packard, and many other leading firms
> in the computer and communications industries."

© 1993 Peter Langston