Roger Anthony Scantlebury (born August 1936) is a British computer scientist who worked at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and later at Logica.
Scantlebury participated in pioneering work to develop packet switching and associated communication protocols at the NPL in the late 1960s. He proposed the use of the technology in the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, at the inaugural Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967. During the 1970s, he was an active member of the International Network Working Group through which he contributed to concepts used in the Internet protocol suite.
Roger Scantlebury was born in Ealing in 1936.
Scantlebury worked at the National Physical Laboratory in south-west London, in collaboration with the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC). His early work was on the Automatic Computing Engine and English Electric DEUCE computers. [1]
Following this he worked with Donald Davies on his pioneering packet switching concepts. Scantlebury is one of the first people to describe the term protocol in a modern data-communications context in an April 1967 memorandum entitled "A Protocol for Use in the NPL Data Communications Network" written with Keith Bartlett. [2] [3] [4] In October 1967, he attended the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in the United States, where he gave an exposition of packet-switching, developed at NPL (and referenced the work of Paul Baran). [5] [6] [7] Also attending the conference was Larry Roberts, [8] from the ARPA; this was the first time that Larry Roberts had heard of packet switching. [9] Scantlebury persuaded Roberts and other American engineers to incorporate the concept into the design for the ARPANET. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
Subsequently he worked on development of the NPL Data Communications Network, [3] publishing many research papers pioneering the development of packet-switched computer networks. [16] [17] He was seconded to the Post Office Telecommunications in 1969, participating in a data communications study and supervising four data communications-related research contracts. [18] This research team developed the alternating bit protocol (ABP). [19] [20]
Along with Donald Davies and Derek Barber he participated in the International Networking Working Group (INWG) from 1972, initially chaired by Vint Cerf. [21] [22] He was acknowledged by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", [23] and he co-authored the standard agreed by the INWG in 1975, "Proposal for an international end to end protocol". [24]
Later, as head of the data networks group within the Computer Science Division, he was responsible for the UK technical contribution to the European Informatics Network, a datagram network linking CERN, the French research centre INRIA and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. [1] [25] [26]
Scantlebury joined Logica in 1977 in their Communications Division, [1] where he worked on the CCITT ( ITU-T) X.25 protocol and with the formation of the Euronet, a virtual circuit network using X.25. [27] [28] He moved to the Finance Division in 1981. [1]
In the early 2000s, he worked for Integra SP. [29]
Scantlebury married Christine Appleby in 1958 in Middlesex; they had two sons in 1961 and 1966, and a daughter in 1963. He lives in Esher.
He was influential in persuading NPL to sponsor a gallery about "Technology of the Internet" at The National Museum of Computing, which opened in 2009. [30]
As Kahn recalls: ... Paul Baran's contributions ... If you look at what he wrote, he was talking about switches that were low-cost electronics. The idea of putting powerful computers in these locations hadn't quite occurred to him as being cost effective. So the idea of computer switches was missing. The whole notion of protocols didn't exist at that time. And the idea of computer-to-computer communications was really a secondary concern.
[Scantlebury said] We referenced Baran's paper in our 1967 Gatlinburg ACM paper. You will find it in the References. Therefore I am sure that we introduced Baran's work to Larry (and hence the BBN guys).
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they lacked one vital ingredient. Since none of them had heard of Paul Baran they had no serious idea of how to make the system work. And it took an English outfit to tell them. ... Larry Roberts paper was the first public presentation of the ARPANET concept as conceived with the aid of Wesley Clark ... Looking at it now, Roberts paper seems extraordinarily, well, vague.
Scantlebury and his companions from the NPL group were happy to sit up with Roberts all that night, sharing technical details and arguing over the finer points.
the ARPA network is being implemented using existing telegraphic techniques simply because the type of network we describe does not exist. It appears that the ideas in the NPL paper at this moment are more advanced than any proposed in the USA
Roger actually convinced Larry that what he was talking about was all wrong and that the way that NPL were proposing to do it was right. I've got some notes that say that first Larry was sceptical but several of the others there sided with Roger and eventually Larry was overwhelmed by the numbers.
Larry Roberts presented a paper on early ideas for what was to become ARPAnet. This was based on a store-and-forward method for entire messages, but as a result of that meeting the NPL work helped to convince Roberts that packet switching was the way forward.
Perhaps the only historical difference that would have occurred if DARPA had switched to the INWG 96 protocol is that rather than Cerf and Kahn being routinely cited as "fathers of the Internet," maybe Cerf, Scantlebury, Zimmermann, and I would have been.
The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
It was a seminal meeting
Roger Anthony Scantlebury (born August 1936) is a British computer scientist who worked at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and later at Logica.
Scantlebury participated in pioneering work to develop packet switching and associated communication protocols at the NPL in the late 1960s. He proposed the use of the technology in the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, at the inaugural Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in 1967. During the 1970s, he was an active member of the International Network Working Group through which he contributed to concepts used in the Internet protocol suite.
Roger Scantlebury was born in Ealing in 1936.
Scantlebury worked at the National Physical Laboratory in south-west London, in collaboration with the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC). His early work was on the Automatic Computing Engine and English Electric DEUCE computers. [1]
Following this he worked with Donald Davies on his pioneering packet switching concepts. Scantlebury is one of the first people to describe the term protocol in a modern data-communications context in an April 1967 memorandum entitled "A Protocol for Use in the NPL Data Communications Network" written with Keith Bartlett. [2] [3] [4] In October 1967, he attended the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in the United States, where he gave an exposition of packet-switching, developed at NPL (and referenced the work of Paul Baran). [5] [6] [7] Also attending the conference was Larry Roberts, [8] from the ARPA; this was the first time that Larry Roberts had heard of packet switching. [9] Scantlebury persuaded Roberts and other American engineers to incorporate the concept into the design for the ARPANET. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
Subsequently he worked on development of the NPL Data Communications Network, [3] publishing many research papers pioneering the development of packet-switched computer networks. [16] [17] He was seconded to the Post Office Telecommunications in 1969, participating in a data communications study and supervising four data communications-related research contracts. [18] This research team developed the alternating bit protocol (ABP). [19] [20]
Along with Donald Davies and Derek Barber he participated in the International Networking Working Group (INWG) from 1972, initially chaired by Vint Cerf. [21] [22] He was acknowledged by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", [23] and he co-authored the standard agreed by the INWG in 1975, "Proposal for an international end to end protocol". [24]
Later, as head of the data networks group within the Computer Science Division, he was responsible for the UK technical contribution to the European Informatics Network, a datagram network linking CERN, the French research centre INRIA and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. [1] [25] [26]
Scantlebury joined Logica in 1977 in their Communications Division, [1] where he worked on the CCITT ( ITU-T) X.25 protocol and with the formation of the Euronet, a virtual circuit network using X.25. [27] [28] He moved to the Finance Division in 1981. [1]
In the early 2000s, he worked for Integra SP. [29]
Scantlebury married Christine Appleby in 1958 in Middlesex; they had two sons in 1961 and 1966, and a daughter in 1963. He lives in Esher.
He was influential in persuading NPL to sponsor a gallery about "Technology of the Internet" at The National Museum of Computing, which opened in 2009. [30]
As Kahn recalls: ... Paul Baran's contributions ... If you look at what he wrote, he was talking about switches that were low-cost electronics. The idea of putting powerful computers in these locations hadn't quite occurred to him as being cost effective. So the idea of computer switches was missing. The whole notion of protocols didn't exist at that time. And the idea of computer-to-computer communications was really a secondary concern.
[Scantlebury said] We referenced Baran's paper in our 1967 Gatlinburg ACM paper. You will find it in the References. Therefore I am sure that we introduced Baran's work to Larry (and hence the BBN guys).
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
they lacked one vital ingredient. Since none of them had heard of Paul Baran they had no serious idea of how to make the system work. And it took an English outfit to tell them. ... Larry Roberts paper was the first public presentation of the ARPANET concept as conceived with the aid of Wesley Clark ... Looking at it now, Roberts paper seems extraordinarily, well, vague.
Scantlebury and his companions from the NPL group were happy to sit up with Roberts all that night, sharing technical details and arguing over the finer points.
the ARPA network is being implemented using existing telegraphic techniques simply because the type of network we describe does not exist. It appears that the ideas in the NPL paper at this moment are more advanced than any proposed in the USA
Roger actually convinced Larry that what he was talking about was all wrong and that the way that NPL were proposing to do it was right. I've got some notes that say that first Larry was sceptical but several of the others there sided with Roger and eventually Larry was overwhelmed by the numbers.
Larry Roberts presented a paper on early ideas for what was to become ARPAnet. This was based on a store-and-forward method for entire messages, but as a result of that meeting the NPL work helped to convince Roberts that packet switching was the way forward.
Perhaps the only historical difference that would have occurred if DARPA had switched to the INWG 96 protocol is that rather than Cerf and Kahn being routinely cited as "fathers of the Internet," maybe Cerf, Scantlebury, Zimmermann, and I would have been.
The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
It was a seminal meeting