Forwarded-> [craig at aland.bbn.com: Re: [ih] IETF as a Pentagon thing]

[Hans-Werner Braun]

I am not on any of these lists, someone forwarded that to me.

The below is not quite correct. Dave Mills chaired the GADS (Gateways
and Data Structures Task Force). The INENG (engineering) and INARC
(architecture) task forces were spinoffs of the GADS. INENG was
lateron renamed to IETF. Mike Corrigan was the first engineering
task force chair. I think Phil Gross was his assistant, and lateron
became the task force chair. Dave Mills ran the architecture task
force.

  What was more interesting was that when the NSFNET community needed a
  forum in which to discuss engineering aspects of IP networks, the IETF
  (which, like all Internet task forces at the time was a closed group)
  decided to open its doors to all comers.

That is not correct. We had own fora and could have easily created
more. I was under the gun from NSF to leverage more between the
ARPAnet and NSFNET, as the ARPAnet was still considered critical
Internet infrastructure then. Among them was tight interconnections
(instead of just connecting to IMPs I wanted to connect to the
mailbridges, as that seemed architecturally better (and I did not
want the NSFNET have to buffer all the packets that IMP inflow
control kept outside when the ARPAnet was highly congested (I
remember 75 second round trip delay on occasion), hence the
discussions with Milo Medin (then NASA), and Mike St.Johns (then
DCA or whatever it was called back then), and later either Tony
Hain or Jim Leighton (both then DOE/LLNL) in what resulted in the
FEBAs, which then DoD insisted to rename to FIX, which then were
followed up by CIX, NAP, and other critters like that). Among them
was also more interactions with the then existing Internet
Establishment (IAB and its task forces). That resulted in my
organizing the Pentagon meeting to get Mike Corrigan to agree to
open the engineering task force to NSFNET people. Mike agreed. Mike
St.Johns was at the meeting, as was Scott Brim (then Cornell/NSFNET).
I do not recall whether Phil Gross was at that meeting, but he may
well have been. Over time it turned out that the IETF was a great
facilitator to the evolution of the Internet, including the NSFNET
component (though I do remember cases were it made things much
worse (e.g., BGP, CIDR), but I guess that happens with consensus
based standardization groups).

----- Forwarded message from Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com> -----

To: "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" <rms46 at vlsm.org>
cc: MILIS Internet History <internet-history at postel.org>
Subject: Re: [ih] IETF as a Pentagon thing 
From: Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 11:43:34 -0500


If I remember my history right (and it has been a while), the IETF was
a spinoff of the INARCH task force (chaired by Dave Mills of UDEL), and
the fact that IETF had as its first chair someone from the military did
*not* mean IETF was run by the Pentagon.

What was more interesting was that when the NSFNET community needed a
forum in which to discuss engineering aspects of IP networks, the IETF
(which, like all Internet task forces at the time was a closed group)
decided to open its doors to all comers.  That happened sometime in 1987
as I recall (before the IETF meeting @ NASA Ames in Mountain View).
At about the same time, Corrigan stepped down and Phill Gross became
IETF chair.

Craig

In message <3BC6B0A5.455D98E6 at vlsm.org>, "Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" writes:

>Hello:
>
>I am just curious about the transition of IETF to become 
>an "independent entity" from the USG, especially Pentagon.
>
>As in 1988, in a thread discussing "Running out of Internet 
>addresses?", Vint Cerf (ISI) "informed" Jon Postel (ISI)
>that:
>  "I sure hope so - several IETF working groups are 
>   addressing aspects of this problem. It is conceivable 
>   that a restructuring of the Class C address space, 
>   combined with an area routing strategy might relieve 
>   some of the scaling problems. I don't want to second 
>   guess the IETF teams, though."
>How/what was the IETF in 1988?
>
>Hans-Werner Braun wrote in 1992, 
>  "[...] I remember that I (and may be others) had a bit 
>   of a hard time to convince the IETF to allow the NSFNET 
>   constituents to be represented. It finally resulted 
>   in a small group of people meeting with Mike Corrigan 
>   in the Pentagon to discuss the issue to allow for the 
>   broadening of the INENG/IETF. [...]"
>
>It is not clear when, but I guess it was around 1986-1988.
>
>
>regards,
>
>-- 
>Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim - VLSM-TJT - http://rms46.vlsm.org
>-- Yuk santap MieKocok XP bersama... OSLinux /bin/LaTeX --
>

-----End of forwarded message-----