[ih] The history of "This" 0.0.0.0/8 network?

[Michael Greenwald]

On 2019-02-12 15:04, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 2/12/2019 12:37 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote:
>> If you want to know about NCP, see RFC # 6529.  The NCP spec was not
>> originally an RFC, since it was a specification, not a "request" for
>> comments.
> 
> Lots of early RFCs were specifications.  FTP and Telnet, for example.
> And NCP was developed by the same community, wasn't it?
> 
> And there are 3 sub-100 RFCs talking about NCP.  So it's interesting 
> the
> the protocol itself didn't make it into the series back then.

The NCP protocol spec was always available in the Arpanet Protocol 
Handbook,
which collected protocol specifications equally from both RFC's and 
NIC's.
I am pretty sure NCP was a NIC. I am sure it was in the protocol
handbook.
The Arpanet Protocol Handbook was available in every office I sat in at 
MIT
in those days, so the relevant NICs and RFCs seemed equally available.
So I didn't feel that it not existing in an RFC form was a lack in any
way. NIC vs. RFC didn't make much difference to me, then.
I imagined that NICs were more "finished" and more "official" than RFCs, 
and
also NICs seemed to apply to the ARPA net, and RFC's to the Internet. 
Perhaps
this is just a reflection of my ignorance.

That said, although NCP was easily available, I believe the 1822 spec 
(Host-Imp
protocol) was *not* as easily available (it was also a much bigger 
specification
[if I am remembering correctly] than any other protocol I came across 
back then
--- maybe that's the reason it wasn't included). The Host-Host protocol 
was, I
think, in the protocol handbook. I can't remember why I needed the 1822 
spec,
but I remember it as the one thing I had trouble getting my hands on.

> 
> Methinks there might be something interesting to explore, to improve 
> the
> general sense of activities amongst that community back then.  (I do 
> not
> for a moment expect this to have a political aspect, but suspect there
> might be some group dynamic to understand, or just plain happenstance.)
> 
> d/

Totally a guess here:
I don't think anything surprising or interesting occurred with this.
I think the NICs were just older and more established than the RFCs, and
because they were older and not directly relevant to the IP/TCP effort 
they
didn't get copied around online, so were less likely to survive.

Take everything above with a big grain of salt. At that time (late 70's) 
I
was working on IP and TCP as an MIT undergraduate, so quite possibly I
had a very narrow view of what was going on.