Network Control Program
The Network Control Program, canonically abbreviated to NCP (which people often, but incorrectly, think stands for 'Network Control Protocol'), is the transport protocol run between hosts connected to the ARPANET, prior to the introduction of TCP/IP.
Since then, many other networking software systems were also called NCP; the modern equivalent would be network stack.
NCP runs over the Host-to-IMP Protocol, and consists of two semi-separate protocols:
- Initial Connection Protocol (ICP)
- ARPANET Host-to-Host Protocol (AHHP)
- Jon Postel, "Official Initial Connection Protocol", June 1971, NIC #7101, UCLA-NMC (this does not seem to be online, but an early version, which is almost identical to the final version, can be found here)
- Alex McKenzie; Jon Postel "Host-to-Host Protocol for the ARPANET", October 1977, NIC #8246, Network Information Center