Computer History Museum

Celebrating 50 Years of the ALOHA System and the Future of Networking

ALOHAnet kicked off wireless packet networking at a fundamental level, leading to today’s mobile data, Wi-Fi, and more. Its random-access ALOHA protocol made it practical for multiple digital devices to share a radio channel; various offshoots remain widely used today across wireless domains including mobile telephony and data, RFID tagging, satellite networks, Wi-Fi, and many more. Those protocols also inspired the design of wired Ethernet for local area networking. Started in the late 1960s by Norm Abramson and Frank Kuo at the University of Hawaii, ALOHAnet was funded by tbd and DARPA. The practical purpose was to connect computers campuses on different islands in Hawaii’s higher education system. But the groups fundamental research was a kind of Big Bang for wireless networking in general. ALOHAnet started up at the beginning of the 1970s, not long after the first connection over the ARPAnet. This all day conference marked the 50th anniversary of ALOHAnet. Besides Abramson and Kuo and several of their students, including co-organizer JJ. Garcia Luna-Aceves, it featured major pioneers of a number of other areas in wireless networking from the 1970s to today. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf of DARPA gave a historical overview. Their work on and funding support for the 1973 Packet Radio Network and Satellite Network inspired their better-known work on TCP/IP.

Item Details

Date
2020-01-24 (Made)
Type
Moving Image
Catalogue number
102792095
Organization
Computer History Museum (Publisher)
People
Ram Chandran (Speaker)
Erol Gelenbe (Speaker)
Vinton G. Cerf (Speaker)
Donald Nielson (Speaker)
Richard Binder (Speaker)
Fouad Tobagi (Speaker)
Bob Kahn (Speaker)
Frank Kuo (Speaker)
Norman Abramson (Speaker)
Ian Akyildiz (Speaker)
Stefano Basagni (Speaker)
Elizabeth Belding (Speaker)
Marcelo Carvalho (Speaker)
Marc Weber (Speaker)
Luigi Fratta (Speaker)
James Freebersyser (Speaker)
J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves (Speaker)
Monisha Ghosh (Speaker)
Dan Javorsek (Speaker)
Brennon Morioka (Speaker)
Katia Obraczka (Speaker)
Kathyayani Srikanteswara (Speaker)
Bishal Thapa (Speaker)
Alexander Wolf (Speaker)
Category
Talk
Format
MOV
Credit line
University of California, Santa Cruz
Place of publication
North America/USA/CA/Santa Cruz
Language
English
Acquisition number
X9332.2021