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

Fri Apr 8 20:14:55 PDT 2011

Jon Postel worked at SRI from Sep. 23, 1974 to Mar. 11, 1977.  He was in charge of socket numbers (what eventually became Assigned Numbers) while he was at SRI while the NIC maintained the host tables.  When Jon left SRI to join ISI, the Assigned Numbers list grew extensibly and was a more formal effort maintained by Jon and Joyce Reynolds at ISI.  In 1987 Assigned Numbers maintenance was transferred back to SRI as part of the NIC project where it remained until 1991 when the NIC project at SRI ended.  I do not recall the use of the term IANA until after Jon left SRI.  Perhaps Joyce Reynolds can clarify the origin of IANA so it is correct in Wikipedia.  

Regards,

Jake Feinler 
On Apr 8, 2011, at 12:00 PM, internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: Very early days of the IANA (Harald Alvestrand)
>   2. Re: Very early days of the IANA (Craig Simon)
>   3. Re: Very early days of the IANA (Eric Gade)
>   4. Re: Very early days of the IANA (Nigel Roberts)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:12:06 +0200
> From: Harald Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Very early days of the IANA
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <4D9F09A6.3020107 at alvestrand.no>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 03/01/11 16:07, Craig Simon wrote:
>> RFC 204 "Sockets in use" struck me as the threshold event in Postel's 
>> role as IANA, well before the name was in use. RFC 1174 figures highly 
>> in the declaration of IANAs's status.
>> 
>> I covered that at length in my Ph.D. dissertation, which I recently 
>> discovered is now on Scribd at http://www.scribd.com/doc/45142013/ .
> I went through the RFC series looking for IANA in order to get the 
> timeline correct on Wikipedia. First mention of the term "IANA" occurs 
> in RFC 1069 (1990).
> 
> RFC 433 was the first output from the registration function I could find.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority
>> 
>> Craig Simon
>> 
>> On 3/1/11 9:19 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote:
>>> 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?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:53:08 -0400
> From: Craig Simon <cls at rkey.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Very early days of the IANA
> To: Harald Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no>,
> 	internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <4D9F2154.5000208 at rkey.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Pointing out the earliest institutional reference to IANA in print is 
> problematic since RFC 1069 lists a publication date of February 1989, 
> while RFC 1083, though later in sequence, indicates publication in 
> December 1988 and refers to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, but 
> not the IANA acronym. Tedious stuff.
> 
> The Wikipedia entry does list one of the most important RFCs in that 
> history... RFC 349 from May 1972, which starts, "I propose that there be 
> a czar (me ?) who hands out official socket numbers for use by standard 
> protocols"
> 
> IN RFC 433 (December 1972) he confidently announces himself as "The czar 
> of socket numbers."
> 
> In practice, outright czarship gave way as Joyce Reynolds took on 
> greater responsibility, and that evidently happened well before the term 
> IANA appeared in print.
> 
> Craig Simon
> 
>> I went through the RFC series looking for IANA in order to get the
>> timeline correct on Wikipedia. First mention of the term "IANA" occurs
>> in RFC 1069 (1990).
>> 
>> RFC 433 was the first output from the registration function I could find.
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority
>>> 
>>> Craig Simon
>>> 
>>> On 3/1/11 9:19 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote:
>>>> 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?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 16:24:11 +0100
> From: Eric Gade <eric.gade at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Very early days of the IANA
> To: cls at rkey.com
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <BANLkTingNVz9v0zWexS635QYiN-hnXbyxQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Just as an aside on the 'czar' language, I've come across a very early hard
> copy draft of domain requirements (from 1982) where 'czar of domains' is
> crossed out by hand and replaced with 'registrar of domains'
> 
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Craig Simon <cls at rkey.com> wrote:
> 
>> Pointing out the earliest institutional reference to IANA in print is
>> problematic since RFC 1069 lists a publication date of February 1989, while
>> RFC 1083, though later in sequence, indicates publication in December 1988
>> and refers to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, but not the IANA
>> acronym. Tedious stuff.
>> 
>> The Wikipedia entry does list one of the most important RFCs in that
>> history... RFC 349 from May 1972, which starts, "I propose that there be a
>> czar (me ?) who hands out official socket numbers for use by standard
>> protocols"
>> 
>> IN RFC 433 (December 1972) he confidently announces himself as "The czar of
>> socket numbers."
>> 
>> In practice, outright czarship gave way as Joyce Reynolds took on greater
>> responsibility, and that evidently happened well before the term IANA
>> appeared in print.
>> 
>> Craig Simon
>> 
>> 
>> I went through the RFC series looking for IANA in order to get the
>>> timeline correct on Wikipedia. First mention of the term "IANA" occurs
>>> in RFC 1069 (1990).
>>> 
>>> RFC 433 was the first output from the registration function I could find.
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Craig Simon
>>>> 
>>>> On 3/1/11 9:19 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 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?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Eric
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:12:31 +0100
> From: "Nigel Roberts" <nigel at channelisles.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Very early days of the IANA
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <4D9F33EF.8050402 at channelisles.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> At some point, after August 1996 but probably before 1998, the 
> http://www.isi.edu/iana web page (this was before HTTP V1.1 eliminated 
> the need for one IP per website) stated that 'the IANA is chartered by 
> the Internet Society'.
> 
> Does anyone have any further information on this?
> 
> 
> On 04/08/2011 03:53 PM, Craig Simon wrote:
>> Pointing out the earliest institutional reference to IANA in print is
>> problematic since RFC 1069 lists a publication date of February 1989,
>> while RFC 1083, though later in sequence, indicates publication in
>> December 1988 and refers to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, but
>> not the IANA acronym. Tedious stuff.
>> 
>> The Wikipedia entry does list one of the most important RFCs in that
>> history... RFC 349 from May 1972, which starts, "I propose that there be
>> a czar (me ?) who hands out official socket numbers for use by standard
>> protocols"
>> 
>> IN RFC 433 (December 1972) he confidently announces himself as "The czar
>> of socket numbers."
>> 
>> In practice, outright czarship gave way as Joyce Reynolds took on
>> greater responsibility, and that evidently happened well before the term
>> IANA appeared in print.
>> 
>> Craig Simon
>> 
>>> I went through the RFC series looking for IANA in order to get the
>>> timeline correct on Wikipedia. First mention of the term "IANA" occurs
>>> in RFC 1069 (1990).
>>> 
>>> RFC 433 was the first output from the registration function I could find.
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority
>>>> 
>>>> Craig Simon
>>>> 
>>>> On 3/1/11 9:19 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote:
>>>>> 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?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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> End of internet-history Digest, Vol 52, Issue 4
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