[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 52, Issue 4

[Bob Braden]

>>> On a website recently I saw a reference to the IANA pre-dating the
>>> Domain Name System -- that is, incredibly, that it was created in the
>>> early to mid 70s, when of course the DNS arrived in the early 80s
>>> following the ARPAnet split, and its original job was numbering and
>>> protocols only.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any material relating to the pre-naming existence of
>>> the IANA and its acquisition of naming related functions?
>>>
>>>
>>>
Yes.

I would agree that RFC 204 was the first published manifestation of Jon 
Postel's self-appointed
role of registering protocol parameters for the ARPAnet (and later the 
Internet). Of course, he
could not be the  IANA before there was an Internet... he would have 
been called the AANA?
Jon started writing down numeric values in a notebook, probably more 
than a year before
RFC 204.  Steve Crocker would probably recall.

Bob Braden