“Coloured Book” Protocols

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Before TCP/IP became dominant, academic institutions in the UK were
connected via JANET, using their own “Coloured Book” protocol stack
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols>.

Do any of these documents still exist? It would be cool to scan them and
contribute them to Bitsavers ...

[Theo]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Before TCP/IP became dominant, academic institutions in the UK were
connected via JANET, using their own “Coloured Book” protocol stack
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols>.
Do any of these documents still exist? It would be cool to scan them and
contribute them to Bitsavers ...

I don't think Bitsavers takes submissions, but archive.org will.

I had a dig around and didn't manage to find online copies. This article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0169755288900293
(maybe paywall? the paper isn't very interesting anyway)
has references for the coloured books, as follows:

"[1] CCITT, Data Communication Networks, Services and
Facilities, Terminal Equipment and Interfaces Recom-
mendation X.25, 1980.
[2] A Network Independent Transport Service, SG3/CP(80)2,
Study Group 3 of British Telecom PSS User Forum, 1980.
[3] Character Terminal Protocols on PSS (Revision 1),
SG3/CP(81)6, Study Group 3 of British Telecom PSS User
Forum, 1981.
[4] Simple Screen Management Protocol, JNT, 1985.
[5] A. Network Independent File Transfer Protocol, FTP-B(80),
High Level Protocol Group, as revised by the File Transfer
Protocol Implementors' Group of the Data Communica-
tion Protocols Unit, 1981.
[6] A Network Independent Job Transfer and Manipulation
Protocol, DCPU/JTMP(81), The JTMP Working Party of
the Data Communications Protocols Unit, 1981.
[7] S.E. Kille, JNT Mail Protocol (Revision 1), Department of
Computer Science, University College, London, 1984.
[8] Transition to OSI Standards, Final Report of the Academic
Community OSI Transition Group, 1987.
[9] G. Neufeld, J. Demco, B. Hilpert and R. Sample, EAN: An
X.400 Message System, Proc. 2nd International Symposium
on Computer Message Systems, IFIP, Washington, DC
(1985).
References [2]-[8] are available from JNT, c / o Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OXll 0QX,
United Kingdom."

I think:
[2] = yellow book
[3] = green book
[4] = fawn book
[5] = blue book
[6] = red book
[7] = grey book

This retrospective has a good outline of the timeline:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080528040321/http://www.uknof.com/uknof7/Reid-History.pdf


I did some searching around the British Library, Cambridge University Libary
and UCL Library and didn't find much. Cambridge has [5] (not borrowable):
https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21375077320003606

There are various papers discussing the transition from JNT protocols (JNT
= 'joint network team' which are the people who ran JANET = 'joint
academic network') to the OSI model in the mid/late 80s, eg [8] above.


There's some discussion of the book protocols, mostly in terms of
interfacing with the Internet, in the late-70s/early-80s IENs:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/ien/ien-index.html

In particular C.J.Bennett is involved with FTP (IEN59) and yellow book
transport (IEN153/154/155) and I think IEN169 by Bennett might be a sketch
of blue book mail.

P.F.Linington is a name that comes up a lot in the 1980s discussions of the
protocols, and it seems he's still around at Kent (retired):
https://research.kent.ac.uk/programming-languages-systems/person/peter-linington/
Could be worth emailing, or perhaps Bob of this parish might have a contact?

Theo

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

I don't think Bitsavers takes submissions ...

No? Where does their stuff come from, then?

[John Levine]

Post by Theo

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Before TCP/IP became dominant, academic institutions in the UK were
connected via JANET, using their own “Coloured Book” protocol stack
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols>.
Do any of these documents still exist? It would be cool to scan them and
contribute them to Bitsavers ...

I don't think Bitsavers takes submissions, but archive.org will.

They do, but as it says near the bottom of the home peage, it's
basically one guy and he has a large backlog of stuff to scan,
I sent him some manuals for stuff like the 360/44 to fill gaps
in the collection.

[Dennis Boone]

Post by Theo
I don't think Bitsavers takes submissions, but archive.org will.

At this point, Al avoids taking paper, but he'll often take a properly
scanned manual, see the site for details of his preferred forms.

De

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Dennis Boone

Post by Theo
I don't think Bitsavers takes submissions, but archive.org will.

At this point, Al avoids taking paper, but he'll often take a properly
scanned manual ...

Yeah it makes sense he would want contributors to do the scanning and send
him the results. Somehow I automatically assumed that was what was meant.
Also, they don’t have to give up their precious paper originals,
either. ;)

[Bob Eager]

Post by Theo

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Before TCP/IP became dominant, academic institutions in the UK were
connected via JANET, using their own “Coloured Book” protocol stack
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloured_Book_protocols>.
Do any of these documents still exist? It would be cool to scan them
and contribute them to Bitsavers ...

I would imagine that some university library has it in its archives. Mine
doesn't, though.

I was involved in using these protocols quite a bit, but never had to
implement them. The operating system we used at the time was a bit niche:

https://emas.bobeager.uk

We didn't use all of them, but ...

Post by Theo
[2] A Network Independent Transport Service, SG3/CP(80)2,
Study Group 3 of British Telecom PSS User Forum, 1980.

Yellow book. This was implemented on our multiple Cambridge Rings. We
eventually moved to TCP/IP on Ethernet, of course.

Post by Theo
[3] Character Terminal Protocols on PSS (Revision 1),
SG3/CP(81)6, Study Group 3 of British Telecom PSS User Forum, 1981.

Green Book. This, of course. We built our own PADs.

Post by Theo
[5] A. Network Independent File Transfer Protocol, FTP-B(80),
High Level Protocol Group, as revised by the File Transfer Protocol
Implementors' Group of the Data Communica-
tion Protocols Unit, 1981.

Blue Book. We used this a lot, but far more unwieldy that FTP/IP.

Post by Theo
[7] S.E. Kille, JNT Mail Protocol (Revision 1), Department of Computer
Science, University College, London, 1984.

Grey Book. This was a bit of a disaster. I remember going to a meeting to
discuss this, and the powers that be insisted that email addresses should
be of the form:

***@com.example.subdomain

despite all the implementors present protesting. It caused all sorts of

Post by Theo
[2] = yellow book [3] = green book [4] = fawn book [5] = blue book [6] =
red book [7] = grey book

Didn't use all of them, but the colours are correct.

Post by Theo
P.F.Linington is a name that comes up a lot in the 1980s discussions of
https://research.kent.ac.uk/programming-languages-systems/person/peter-

linington/

Post by Theo
Could be worth emailing, or perhaps Bob of this parish might have a contact?

I doubt he has anything, but teh quoted form of hos name, at kent.ac.uk,
will probably get to him (unlike me, he has emeritus status and should
have retained the email address after the Great Email Fiasco at Kent).

These days, Peter is working on nickel delay lines for things such as the
EDSAC replica.