[ih] IETF relevance (was Memories of Flag Day?)

[vinton cerf]

I have only a brief moment to respond. The Arpanet, PRNET, SATNET, Internet
sequence gets its primary stability from the sole source funding of ARPA,
initially, and the pooling of resources from other DoD components using
Arpanet. Arpanet was managed by BBN initially (later under contract to DCA
vs ARPA). It really helped that the Internet development funding came from
a single source. Decision making was largely in the hands of the ARPA
program managers, well-informed by the people doing the work. In the
mid-1980s, ARPA, NSF, DOE and NASA collaborated through the Federal
Research Internet Coordinating Committee (FRICC) made up of program
managers from each agency. ESNET, NSINET and NSFNET joined Arpanet as
backbones of the Internet. Again, common purpose welded the effort into a
coherent whole. MERIT played a major role in the NSFNET development which
really elaborated on the multi-network aspect of Internet. MERIT had to
deal with scaling of the Internet to a dozen or more intermediate level
networks linked together through the NSFNET backbone. BGP came out of that
work and has scaled well - now needing more security from abuse/mistakes.

I think there was a common thread in all of this work: people who were
working on different aspects of the Internet and its constituent networks
really wanted this system to work. The goal was interoperability linking so
many different packet switched networks together. Even the Xerox PARC team,
whose work on PUP and later XNS was proprietary, did their best to give
hints to the Stanford development team (mostly me and my graduate students
during the 1974 campaign to specify TCP).

It also helped that commonality and interoperability were key desirable
properties of the Internet system. These were the metrics by which success
was measured.

That's all I have time for now - not sure this addresses your questions
squarely.

v


On Fri, Sep 1, 2023 at 2:14 PM Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
wrote:

> Thanks Vint!
>
> To follow up, if I might - since you were there from the beginning (I
> landed at MIT in 1971, just before Ray's first email, and saw how MIT
> adopted ARPANET technology, then got to BBN in 1985, just in time to help
> split off the DDN - the period leading up to the Flag Day is mostly
> anecdotal history for me)...
>
> I've long used the Internet as a model for how communities can approach
> infrastructure master planning - serving as the basis for our work at the
> Center for Civic Networking, running a growth planning exercise for
> Cambridge, and later, in our work with communities around municipal
> broadband.
>
> Now, I'm gearing up a new effort, focused on community-level crowdsourcing
> for major infrastructure overhaul (as is started to be mandated by
> electrification ordinances).  The simple notion being that of forming local
> working groups, to run grand-challenge like exercises, design charettes,
> crowd funding for projects like a complete infrastructure rebuild for a
> condo complex (like the one I'm living in, and serving on the board of).
> How to pull such groups together remains a black art - and insights from
> the original model are always helpful.
>
> In that context, might you share some pithy observations of significant
> events in the early life of the ARPANET & Internet - how various working
> groups came together in the days following Lick's initial posting to
> ARPA/IPTO.  Who did what, to whom, leading to a bunch of folks coming
> together into ad hoc & ongoing working groups of various sorts?  And, in
> particular, what conditions/events provided impetus, urgency, and built
> momentum?
>
> Thanks Very Much,
>
> Miles
>
>
>
> vinton cerf wrote:
>
> TCP/IP came out of work that Bob Kahn and I did along with my graduate
> students at Stanford. But the INWG (slightly more formal extension of NWG
> when it became IFIP WG 6.1) contributed in a highly collaborative fashion.
> So did UCL and BBN in early implementation phases of TCP and TCP/IP.
>
> I tend to associate NWG with Arpanet Host-Host Protocols (and application
> protocols)
> and IAB (later IETF) with TCP/IP and associated applications
>
> v
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 10:29 AM Miles Fidelman <
> mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
>
>> Well Vint might have a definitive voice on this.
>>
>> So... Vint,
>>
>> Would you consider TCP/IP to have been initiated by the NWG?
>>
>> What about SMTP - which originated as a late-night hack (that eventually
>> became SMTP)?  As I recall, that was initially announced via a postal mail
>> packet.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Miles
>>
>> vinton cerf wrote:
>>
>> +1
>> v
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 9:57 AM Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Well...
>>>
>>> The original suite of protocols for the Arpanet -- NCP, Telnet, FTP, et
>>> al
>>> -- were developed by the Network Working Group (NWG).  The NWG evolved
>>> over
>>> the years into the IETF.  The formal creation of the IETF was roughly
>>> mid-1980s.  The process of formally declaring a protocol a
>>> proposed/draft/(full) standard evolved over the years.  Depending on how
>>> precise you want to be about the existence of the IETF and the
>>> formalization of protocols, I think you can make the case either way.
>>> From
>>> my perspective, I would say the original suite of protocols did indeed
>>> originate in the (predecessor of) the IETF.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 12:48 PM Miles Fidelman via Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Traditionally, protocols have never "originated" with the IETF - they
>>> > become standardized, and maybe standards through the RFC process, under
>>> > the IETF aegis.  Right back to the original DoD Protocol Suite (did the
>>> > IETF even exist when the DDN Protocol Handbook was first printed?).
>>> >
>>> > Miles
>>> >
>>> > Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>>> > > On 29-Aug-23 05:52, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>> > >> Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
>>> > >>> On 8/24/2023 4:07 PM, John Klensin via Internet-history wrote:
>>> > >>>> Probably a larger fraction of applications work has come to the
>>> > >>>> IETF already half-developed and in search of refinement and
>>> > >>>> validation by
>>> > >>>> the community
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> I'm sure there are examples, but I can't think of an application
>>> > >>> protocol that was originated in the IETF over, say, the last 25
>>> years,
>>> > >>> that has seen widespread success.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> d/
>>> > >>>
>>> > >> Seems to me that HTTP remains under the IETF umbrella.
>>> > >
>>> > > But it did *not* originate in the IETF. It actually originated about
>>> > > 20 metres horizontally and 3 metres vertically from my office at
>>> CERN,
>>> > > more than a year before TimBL presented it at IETF 23 (I was wrong a
>>> few
>>> > > days ago to assert that IETF 26 was Tim's first attendance). The WWW
>>> BOF
>>> > > at IETF 26 was more than 2 years after HTTP was first deployed, to my
>>> > > personal knowledge.
>>> > >
>>> > >> Is it not the
>>> > >> RFC process, and IANA, that actually matter, in the scheme of
>>> things?
>>> > >
>>> > > In the case of HTTP, it was running code that long preceded both
>>> rough
>>> > > consensus and an RFC. I think this is completely normal and still the
>>> > > best method. Second best is code developed in parallel with the spec.
>>> > > Third best is OSI.
>>> > >
>>> > >     Brian
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>>> > In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>>> >
>>> > Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
>>> > Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
>>> > In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
>>> > nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Internet-history mailing list
>>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> >
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>>
>> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
>> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
>> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
>> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>>
>>
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>
>