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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] The provenance of the phrase "Sniffing the glue that holds t

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 14:56:02 -0400
On Apr 6, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Richard Sharpe wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> Someone is asserting that I first said that back in June 02, 2001 and
> 17:43:08+0900.
> 
> Certainly there is an email thred to that effetc from back then, but
> my recollection is that I saw it somewhere else and simply repeated
> it.
> 
> Does anyone know where it first came from? Was it already on the
> Ethereal web site back then already?

I found an April 18, 2001 e-mail in which I said to some friends:

> And then there's the motto of the Ethereal packet analyzer:
> 
> 	http://www.ethereal.com/
> 
> "Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together".

so it antedates June 2, 2001.

I think it was on the Web site back then and that I was quoting the Web site.

That's the oldest thing I can find in my mailbox.

The Wayback Machine's first snapshot that contains that phrase is, perhaps not surprisingly, April 1, 2001 (although the previous snapshot was almost a month before that, so it's not as if it proves it was added April 1):

	http://web.archive.org/web/20010401173540/http://www.ethereal.com/

and an April 5 snapshot also has it:

	http://web.archive.org/web/20010405042028/http://www.ethereal.com/

Gerald, did you originally replace "A network protocol analyzer":

	http://web.archive.org/web/20010302055617/http://www.ethereal.com/

with "Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together" as an April Fools' prank, and decide to keep it there?