---
tags: [ARPANET, networks, computer-history]
created: Friday, October 25, 2024
---

# c8173d17_TIMPs

After the initial ARPANET was complete, the next major milestone was to enable
access to the network regardless of one's proximity to a host node with an IMP
connection.

The idea was to allow a computer to access resources on another computer
directly without connecting to a host first. This connective computer would
connect to an IMP directly (but still transparently) as a 'dumb terminal' as
with time-sharing and would not be a fully-fledged computing device. These
devices would be called _Terminal_ Information Processors (TIMPs) for this
reason.

The development of TIMPs makes it clearer that the host machines on the ARPANET
were not just connection and transmission nodes for their own purpose, they were
loci for other non-host computers to gain access to an IMP, and thereby, the
broader network. In other words computers would connect to a host which
sustained a connection to an IMP.
