Talk:Finger

Why Stanford?

I wonder why someone at Stanford invented it? They only had the one machine (I looked at an early ARPANET host table, and there was only one machine on the Stanford IMP, SAIL) - so no real internal need. (MIT, I can see the need; with AI, DM and ML.)

It started as a local tool to see logged-in users, their physical location, and the whereabouts of free terminals. The earliest version on record I find is this one: https://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[S,LES]1

I guess it was a short leap to provide this data over the network, although that was years later. SAIL didn't have a server at first. As of January 1978: "At this writing, only the following sites respond to a network FINGER: all MIT ITS sites (ai, mc, ml, dm), sri-kl, sri-ka, and office-1."

Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 18:48, 9 August 2023 (CEST)

On the other hand, the 1977 RFC implies SAIL did have a server, and I found FNGSER.MID[NET,MRC] from February 1978. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 19:17, 9 August 2023 (CEST)

Host tables

Speaking of ARPANET host tables, I now there are a few online, but a Web search couldn't find them (for the above). Any you know of, could we link to? Probably from ARPANET for the moment; I don't see any need for an ARPANET-host-table-specific at the moment. Jnc (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2023 (CEST)

There are surprisingly few host tables from the NCP era! My go-to resource is here: https://github.com/ttkzw/hosts.txt

There are more in the MIT and SAIL archives, but I gather they may not be official BBN control center files.

Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 18:48, 9 August 2023 (CEST)

Yes, I've had a hard time finding them in the past! I have a small number of versions squirreled away on my desk-top (they are useful research tools), but I don't think I made a note of where they came from, alas.

I wouldn't worry about whether they are official or not; the data is what's important. E.g. the MIT host tables had a long list of Chaosnet machines, which of course would not be in the BB+N ones. Jnc (talk) 19:40, 9 August 2023 (CEST)

The SAIL files called NAMES[NET,SYS] run from 1972 to 1978. Apparently HOSTS.TXT[NET,MRC] took it from there to 1982. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 20:07, 9 August 2023 (CEST)