[ih] Date of RFC 791 for celebration
John Day
jeanjour at comcast.net
Tue Mar 28 19:28:47 PST 2006
I thought INWG was IFIP WG6.1 The International Network Working Group.
I am thinking of something else?
John
At 21:27 -0500 2006/03/28, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>Michiel Leenaars (Michiel at staff.isoc.nl) is trying to find the exact
>birth-date of what we now call IPv4
>
>My sense is that if we could find out the exact date of the Internet Working
>Group (INWG) meeting at which they hashed out what looked basically like the
>eventual IPv4 (I think it was IP 3.1, if I have the version number right),
>that would be "the" birthdate.
>
>
>This, alas, predates me slightly, and I have the history somewhatl muddled in
>my head. Also, even more problematically, many of the relevant IEN's are not
>available online, which makes it difficult to research... Anyway, there were
>two major predecessor steps shortly before IP firmed up:
>
>- TCP and IP were split
>- Variable length addresses were removed, leaving fixed 4-byte addresses
>
>I am not 100% positive which happened first (or if they happened at the same
>time), although I have become fairly sure that the split happened first, with
>the removal of variable-length addresses later...
>
>And then there's the issue of version numbers: there are 2, 2.5, 3, 3.1 and
>4. What I hear is that 2.5 was a "implementation split", in which the unified
>single header remained, but the code was split into two. 3 was the first
>version that had the headers fully split (and included "protocol numbers" to
>identify which transport protocol was being used - see list below), but my
>guess is that it included variable-length addresses. I seem to recall that
>3.1 had the variable-length addresses removed, and 4 was an editorial cleanup
>of 3.1
>
>So:
>
>- Is that the right order for the split, and variable-length address
> removal?
>- Can we identify the version numbers (2.5, 3, 3.1, etc) which go with
> each version?
>- Can anyone identify the INWG meeting at which the latter happened?
>
>
>----
>
>
>Additional data:
>
>To help refresh memories, here's a list, from the minutes of the 15 August,
>'77 Internet Meeting Notes, of planned future INWG meetings. Ones which
>eventually seemed to happen (as evidenced by minutes in the IEN series) are
>marked with a '*', and the relevant IEN number (although I have no idea if
>they happened at the place listed):
>
> 15 Aug 77 - Internet meeting at ISI
> 13-14 Oct 77 - TCP meeting at SRI* [66]
> 3 Nov 77 - Internet meeting at BBN
> 30-31 Jan 78 - TCP meeting at ISI* [67]
> 3 Feb 78 - Internet meeting at UCLA* [22 - 1 Feb]
> 20-21 Apr 78 - TCP meeting at BBN
> 1- 2 May 78 - Internet meeting at UCL* [33]
> 13-14 Jul 78 - TCP meeting at PARC
> 2- 3 Aug 78 - Internet meeting at LL* [53]
> 12-13 Oct 78 - TCP meeting at LCS
> 2- 3 Nov 78 - Internet meeting at SRI
>
>and the following meetings for which IEN minutes (numbers in []'s) exist, but
>aren't in the above list, also occurred:
>
> 15-16 Jun 78 - TCP [68]
> 18-19 Sep 78 - TCP [69]
> 30-31 Oct 78 - Internet [63]
> 4 Dec 78 - TCP [70]
>
>Alas, none of these minutes are online. To further help jog memories, here are
>the listings for all the seemingly relevant early IEN's:
>
> 5 Cerf Mar-77 TCP Version 2 Specification
> 21 Cerf Jan-78 TCP 3 Specification
> 26 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposed New Internet Header Format
> 27 Cerf 14-Feb-78 A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format
> 28 Postel Feb-78 Draft Internetwork Protocol
> 40 Postel Jun-78 Specification of Internetwork
>Transmission Control Protocol
> - Version 4
> 41 Postel Jun-78 Internetwork Protocol Specification - Version 4
>
>and finally, some other stuff: RFC-750 contains the following numbers for
>protocol type (some extraneous ones deleted):
>
> Decimal Octal Format References
> ------- ----- ------ ----------
> 0 0 Reserved
> 1 1 raw internet [42]
> 2 2 TCP-3 [36]
> 5 5 TCP-3.1 [45]
> 6 6 TCP-4 [46]
>
>And there's also a table of IP header version numbers:
>
> Decimal Octal Version References
> ------- ----- ------- ----------
> 0 0 March 1977 version [35]
> 1 1 January 1978 version [36]
> 2 2 February 1978 version A [42]
> 3 3 February 1978 version B [43]
> 4 4 September 1978 version 4 [44]
>
> [35] Cerf, V. "Specification of Internet Transmission Control
> Program -- TCP (version 2)," March 1977.
> [36] Cerf, V. and J. Postel, "Specification of Internetwork
> Transmission Control Program -- TCP Version 3,"
> USC-Information Sciences Institute, January 1978.
>
> [42] Postel, J. "Draft Internetwork Protocol Specification --
> Version 2," USC-Information Sciences Institute, February 1978.
> [43] Cerf, V. "A Proposed New Internet Header Format," Advanced
> Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978.
> [44] Postel, J. "Internetwork Protocol Specification -- Version 4,"
> IEN-54, USC-Information Sciences Institute, September 1978.
> [45] Cerf, V. "A Proposal for TCP Version 3.1 Header Format,"
> Advanced Research Projects Agency, IEN 26, 14 February 1978.
> [46] Postel, J. "Specification of Internetwork Transmission Control
> Protocol -- Version 4," IEN-55, USC-Information Sciences
> Institute, September 1978.
>
>Note that both ref 43 and 45 claim to be IEN 26! The second should probably be
>IEN 27. ref 42 might be IEN 28.
>
>
>(I'm CC'ing this to the Internet-History list so that any responses will be
>archived for future historical use; apologies to anyone who gets two copies
>as a result.)
>
> Noel
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