Talk:Network Control Protocol

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Jnc in topic Terminology

Terminology edit

Moved this discussion from the article. ~KvnG 04:06, 29 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

(2) Please note, that in the world of Information Technology and Networking, a single term, or acronym, may very well have more then one totally different meaning, use, developer, designer, or function. Or may have mistaken interpretations. The Network Control Program is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Network Control Protocol, as in this reference below. This information is on this wikipedia page to help educate those who are still not sure about NCP in reference to the ARPANET or port numbers. The earliest RFC reference to the NCP acronym, explicitly defines NCP as Network Control Program. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc33 Page 4.

Some references, such as [Steven, W Richard. TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I. Reading, Massachusetts, USA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994. ISBN 0-201-63346-9(v.1). Page 15.], mistakenly refer to NCP as Network Control Protocol.

A recent discussion on the internet-history mailing list clarified that 'NCP' was in fact later expanded as 'Network Control Protocol' (originally it was an acronym for 'Network Control Program'); the meaning of 'NCP' shifted (in usage, not formally), and people (with Jon Postel in the lead) informally came up with a new 'expansion' (I guess this is sort of like a 'backronym', but in the other direction), 'Network Control Protocol', which was more accurate for the new use/meaning of 'NCP'. So it turns out people who expanded 'NCP' as 'Network Control Protocol' weren't really wrong after all. See also Talk:Network Control Protocol (ARPANET). Noel (talk) 11:03, 14 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Disambiguation edit

I'm going to turn this into a dab page, because having to explain on the PPP page that NCP might refer to 'Network Control Program' is just too big of a stretch. Noel (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2015 (UTC)Reply