Other People’s Lives – Kevin Broughan

How NZ connected to the internet – Part 1

 It all began in 1980 when my family and I spent a year of study leave from the University of Waikato at Cambridge University in the UK. This presented many challenges, especially since the Kiwi dollar was weak against the UK pound and university salaries quite low. However the academic result of the leave was great, with the Corn Exchange Computing lab providing several innovative software systems for doing mathematics like algebra and calculus, not just number crunching.

I was hooked. Alan Turing, with his deep insights, had shown that theorems and programs were fundamentally alike organisms, while living in different environments, and I returned to Waikato wanting to explore the consequences of this reality.

With my students we set about providing some software to make work in this area possible. In searching for tools I hooked up with Richard Fateman, a computer science prof at UC Berkeley and leader of a project with the grandious title “The representation and manipulation of mathematical knowledge”! I joined that project in 1984 and spent several profitable periods on the Berkeley campus. Along the corridor from my office in Evans Hall exciting things were happening with extensions being written to AT&T Unix by the Systems Development Project. These included protocols for things like TCP/IP, which are still being used as a fundamental part of the internet to this very day.

I returned to Waikato and discussed these developments with John Houlker, at that time a member of the computer services division. We met often, sharing a tea room and working in a building sited next to one another on the Waikato campus. He had long black hair and a keen interest in mathematics and physics, as well as computing. Information about the ether-networking of the Berkeley campus was also exchanged and inspired our own developments. For example the first piece of ethernet cable at Waikato was between the Computer Centre and my office, laid through a ditch dug by my students. In the normal NZ way no one hesitated to get their hands dirty.

As it happened, the mathematical work required Unix, and together John and I persuaded the University that it would be valuable to emulate that operating system under VAX/VMS, the University computer system of that time. Before too much longer the Eunice Unix emulator written by the Wollongong Group (but based in Silicon Valley) arrived and was implemented. Oh joy – it had all of the Berkeley extensions including those needed for TCP/IP.

Thus began a period of strenuous technical activity at Waikato with John leading the charge. It was to lead to NZ becoming part of the worldwide internet with the University of Waikato as the NZ hub. That part of the story has been well documented. See for example the book “Connecting the Clouds – The Internet in New Zealand’ by Keith Mathews.

Kevin Broughan

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Waikato University