[ih] Re: internet-history Digest, Vol 2, Issue 4

[Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan]

I have observed that the network research community from the 70s also 
created their own smaller sets of series to supplement the RFCs.  
Unfortunately, most of these series are not online (possibly because 
they didn't have an RFC-editor like role?).  However, those documents 
are mostly available to the researcher who physically visits the 
archives in whatever university archive (or museum) it happens to 
reside in.  (See online status at the bottom of this mail)

For a short list of document series from the 70s besides the RFCs see 
the list at the bottom of this mail.

Just as the IETF creates working groups, so did the ARPAnet and 
Internet researchers.
I assume that the phenomenon is very natural (fractal-like?):  that 
once a small community project grows to a certain size, that 
researchers like to create additional series that are distributed to 
just their small working group... with occasional publicizing in the 
larger community (e.g. RFC619 Network Measurement Note 18, or RFC 569 
Network Using Note 1).

What's interesting to me is that today's IETF working groups use 
internet-drafts, mail archives, and "additional web pages" to 
supplement any RFCs that the working group generates.
1) Unfortunately, the links to the mail archives and web pages of
    recently concluded working groups are not all archived on the
    ietf server; and thus even an attempt to keep them has failed.
    (Plus, we already know that the internet-drafts are not archived...
    no need to discuss this here....)
2) The concept of an ordered (numbered) series is not used by the IETF
    working groups, except for the version # of a protocol
    internet-draft in development.  University Tech Reports do use the
    numbered series...and good news here: the CS tech reports are
    archived by the community.

So, to expand on Bob's point:
* the network research community has to at least find a
   mechanism and archival home for design discussions that
   are not in tech reports or workshop/conference proceedings
   (such as old ietf working group mail and internet-drafts).
* I wonder if the "numbered series" would even work anymore...
   (I assume that it could work in an individual working group).
   The beauty of a numbered series, is that some "editor" decided
   that it was relevant to the working group and gave it an archival #,
   date, and location for others to access, even if it was also in a
   tech report or conference paper.
* I think that a network research professional society web server
   could be an ideal home for all for online materials, but that
   would need to be ratified/supported by the entire "international"
   community...

thanks, Chris

PS: here's a list of just some of the 70's small series that 
supplemented the RFCs (this list does not include the network research 
outside of Arpanet and Internet specific protocols):

IENs  Internet Experiment Notes, 1977-78 design of TCP (then TCP/IP)
INWGs (whose official title started off as International Packet
       Network Working Group)...they had experiment series,
       general series, etc)

and specific project documents, such as the:
"M.I.T. Lab. for Computer Science Network Implementation Notes"  (i.e. 
a "tech report"?)

And then there are the working groups that created their own series.... 
  Note, that the following were in Postel's papers, so that's why the 
community has access to these:
Network Measurement Notes 1-28 (1972-1974, then disbanded)
Network Graphics Group Notes (1-10); 1973-74
User Interest Group (USING) Notes 5-8, 11, 13; 1973-74
USERS working group Notes 1-2.  1973?

PS2: The IENs will hopefully soon be online, and some INWGs are online. 
  I expect to put some of the others online from the Postel Archives.

On Sep 23, 2004, at 1:27 PM, Bob Braden wrote:
>
> I would like to make a comment about this discussion of ARPAnet 
> history.
> We pioneers who were there at the time have at best hazy memories of
> what happened when.  The only reliable record from those days is
> the RFC series.  If it was written down, it is still preserved.
> What was not written down was largely lost.
>
> Twenty years from now, Internet historians will be asking about
> what happened to the Internet in the 1990s and early 21st century.
> (Where) is it being written down?
>
> Bob Braden
>
Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan (cey at postel.org)
Postel Visiting Scholar; USC/ISI (8/16 to 12/15/2004)
+1 310 448 9152   (fax +1 310 448 9300)
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001
Marina del Rey, CA, 90292-6695
Permanent contact info:  www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/