Router (computing)
History

The concepts of a switching node using software and an interface computer were first proposed by Donald Davies for the NPL network in 1966. The same idea was conceived by Wesley Clark the following year for use in the ARPANET, which were named Interface Message Processors (IMPs). The first interface computer was implemented at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom in early 1969, followed later that year by the IMPs at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah School of Computing in the United States. All were built with the Honeywell 516. These computers had fundamentally the same functionality as a router does today.

The idea for a router (called a gateway at the time) initially came about through an international group of computer networking researchers called the International Network Working Group (INWG). These gateway devices were different from most previous packet switching schemes in two ways. First, they connected dissimilar kinds of networks, such as serial lines and local area networks. Second, they were connectionless devices, which had no role in assuring that traffic was delivered reliably, leaving that function entirely to the hosts. This particular idea, the end-to-end principle, was pioneered in the CYCLADES network.

The idea was explored in more detail, with the intention to produce a prototype system as part of two contemporaneous programs. One was a program at Xerox PARC to explore new networking technologies, which produced the PARC Universal Packet system. Some time after early 1974, the first Xerox routers became operational. Due to corporate intellectual property concerns, it received little attention outside Xerox for years. The other was the DARPA -initiated program, which created the TCP/IP architecture in use today. The first true IP router was developed by Ginny Travers at BBN, as part of that DARPA-initiated effort, during 1975–1976. By the end of 1976, three PDP-11 -based routers were in service in the experimental prototype Internet. Mike Brecia, Ginny Travers, and Bob Hinden received the IEEE Internet Award for early IP routers in 2008.

The first multiprotocol routers were independently created by staff researchers at MIT and Stanford in 1981 and both were also based on PDP-11s. Stanford's router program was led by William Yeager and MIT's by Noel Chiappa. Virtually all networking now uses TCP/IP, but multiprotocol routers are still manufactured. They were important in the early stages of the growth of computer networking when protocols other than TCP/IP were in use. Modern routers that handle both IPv4 and IPv6 are multiprotocol but are simpler devices than ones processing AppleTalk, DECnet, IPX, and Xerox protocols.

From the mid-1970s and in the 1980s, general-purpose minicomputers served as routers. Modern high-speed routers are network processors or highly specialized computers with extra hardware acceleration added to speed both common routing functions, such as packet forwarding, and specialized functions such as IPsec encryption. There is substantial use of Linux and Unix software-based machines, running open source routing code, for research and other applications. The Cisco IOS operating system was independently designed. Major router operating systems, such as Junos and NX-OS, are extensively modified versions of Unix software.
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