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The Coloured Book protocols were a set of communication protocols for computer networks developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. These protocols were designed to enable communication and data exchange between different computer systems and networks. The name originated with each protocol being identified by the colour of the cover of its specification document. The protocols were in use until the 1990s when the Internet protocol suite came into widespread use.

History

In the mid-1970s, the British Post Office Telecommunications division (BPO-T) worked with the academic community in the United Kingdom and the computer industry to develop a set of standards to enable interoperability among different computer systems based on the X.25 protocol suite for packet-switched wide area network (WAN) communication. First defined in 1975, the standards evolved through experience developing protocols for the NPL network in the late 1960s and the Experimental Packet Switched Service in the early 1970s.

The Coloured Book protocols were used on SERCnet from 1980, and SWUCN from 1982, both of which became part of the JANET academic network from 1984. The protocols were influential in the development of computer networks, particularly in the UK, gained some acceptance internationally as the first complete X.25 standard, and gave the UK "several years lead over other countries".

From late 1991, Internet protocols were adopted on the Janet network instead; they were operated simultaneously for a while, until X.25 support was phased out entirely in August 1997.

Protocols

The standards were defined in several documents, each addressing different aspects of computer network communication. They were identified by the colour of the cover:

Pink Book

The Pink Book defined protocols for transport over Ethernet. The protocol was basically X.25 level 3 running over LLC2.

Orange Book

The Orange Book defined protocols for transport over local networks using the Cambridge Ring (computer network).

Yellow Book

The Yellow Book defined the Yellow Book Transport Service (YBTS) protocol, also known as Network Independent Transport Service (NITS), which was mainly run over X.25. It was developed by the Data Communications Protocols Unit of the Department of Industry in the late 1970s. It could also run over TCP. The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol was extended to allow running over NITS.

The Yellow Book Transport Service was somewhat misnamed, as it does not fulfill the Transport role in the OSI 7-layer model. It really occupies the top of the Network layer, making up for X.25's lack of NSAP addressing at the time, which did not appear until the X.25 (1980) revision, and was not available in implementations for some years afterward. YBTS used source routing addressing between YBTS nodes—there was no global addressing scheme at that time.

Green Book

The Green Book defined two protocols to connect terminals across a network: an early version of what became Triple-X PAD running over X.25, and the TS29 protocol modelled on Triple-X PAD, but running over YBTS. It was developed by Post Office Telecommunications. These protocols are similar in functionality to TELNET.

Fawn Book

The Fawn Book defined the Simple Screen Management Protocol (SSMP)

Blue Book

The Blue Book defined the Network-Independent File Transfer Protocol (NIFTP), analogous to Internet FTP, running over YBTS. Unlike Internet FTP, NIFTP was intended for batch mode rather than interactive usage.

Grey Book

The Grey Book defined protocols for e-mail transfer (not file transfer as is sometimes claimed), running over Blue Book FTP.

Red Book

The Red Book defined the Job Transfer and Manipulation Protocol (JTMP), a mechanism for jobs to be transferred from one computer to another, and for the output to be returned to the originating (or another) computer, running over Blue Book FTP.

Legacy

Over time, as technology evolved, many of the concepts and principles from the Coloured Book Protocols were integrated into broader international standards. They remain an important part of the history and evolution of computer networking, showcasing an early effort to establish standards and protocols for efficient and reliable communication between computers. One famous quirk of Coloured Book was that components of hostnames used reverse domain name notation as compared to the Internet standard. For example, an address might be user@UK.AC.HATFIELD.STAR instead of user@star.hatfield.ac.uk.

See also

• Internet in the United Kingdom § History
• Protocol Wars

References

1. ^ Davies, Howard; Bressan, Beatrice (2010-04-26). A History of International Research Networking: The People who Made it Happen. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-3-527-32710-2.
2. Naughton, John (2015). A Brief History of the Future. Orion. ISBN 978-1-4746-0277-8.
3. Cambell-Kelly, Martin (1987). "Data Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (1965-1975)". Annals of the History of Computing. 9 (3/4): 221-247.
4. Smith, Ed; Miller, Chris; Norton, Jim (2017). "Packet Switching: The first steps on the road to the information society". National Physical Laboratory.
5. Kirstein, Peter T. (2009). "The early history of packet switching in the UK". IEEE Communications Magazine. 47 (2): 18–26. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2009.4785372. S2CID 34735326.
6. Kirstein, P.T. (1999). "Early experiences with the Arpanet and Internet in the United Kingdom". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 21 (1): 38–44. doi:10.1109/85.759368. S2CID 1558618.
7. ^ "6th UK Network Operators' Forum Meeting Agenda". www.uknof.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2007-06-21. Retrieved 2020-02-12. See "15:00 Starting the Commercial Internet in the UK (Peter Houlder)"
8. "Computing Service History - BUCS - History and Archive - University Wiki". wiki.bath.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
9. Rutter, Dorian (2005). From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995 (PDF) (Computer Science thesis). The University of Warwick.
10. Powell, Kit (1980-07-01). "Evolution of networks using standard protocols". Computer Communications. 3 (3): 117–122. doi:10.1016/0140-3664(80)90069-9. ISSN 0140-3664.
11. ^ Earnshaw, Rae; Vince, John (2007-09-20). Digital Convergence - Libraries of the Future. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-84628-903-3.
12. "FLAGSHIP". Central Computing Department Newsletter (12). January 1991. Archived from the original on 2020-02-13. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
13. "FLAGSHIP". Central Computing Department Newsletter (16). September 1991. Archived from the original on 2020-02-13. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
14. "Janet(UK) Quarterly Report to the Janet Community: July 1997 to September 1997". Janet webarchive. 1997. Archived from the original on February 16, 2012.
15. C. J. Bennett (12 August 1980). "The Yellow Book Transport Service: Principles and Status". rfc-editor.org.
16. Jon Postel (August 1982). Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. IETF. sec. C. doi:10.17487/RFC0821. RFC 821.
17. Mansell, Robin; Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet Interdepartmental Programme in Media and Communications Robin (2002). Inside the Communication Revolution: Evolving Patterns of Social and Technical Interaction. Oxford University Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-19-829656-0.
18. Reid, Jim (2007-04-03). "The Good Old Days: Networking in UK Academia ~25 Years Ago" (PDF). UKNOF7. Manchester. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-28. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
19. The "Hidden" Prehistory of European Research Networking. Trafford Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4669-3935-6.

Sources

• Rutter, Dorian (2005). From Diversity to Convergence: British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995 (PDF) (Computer Science thesis). The University of Warwick.

• A Dictionary of Computing. Oxford University Press, 2004, s.v. "coloured book"

External links

• alt.folklore.computers: "What is the British Grey Book protocol?"
• Janet website

• History of computing in the United Kingdom
• Network protocols
• Wide area networks
• X.25