[ih] Really old list archives

[Jack Haverty]

I spelunked through some of my old notebooks (paper being the only known 
archival storage even now).   I found my notes from the first ICCB 
meeting, where Vint explained what the group would do and listed a bunch 
of problems that needed work.   In addition to architectural issues 
(like what does a host have to do, how will types of service be handled, 
etc.) there was also a focus on the "January 1983" Internet, and how to 
get rid of NCP and replace it with TCP throughout the Arpanet.

I'm going to go through more of the notes and try to reconstruct some 
history of the ICCB, why it was so secretive, what it did, and how it 
evolved as Vint decided to leave ARPA.   I'll post that to this list.   
There's a lot of acronyms in my notes that need to be explained, once I 
remember what they mean (anyone know what NAAP was?)

Meanwhile...

The ICCB was formed and had its first meeting on September 21, 1981 held 
at University College London just prior to the quarterly meeting of the 
"Internet Project" which typically had its fall meeting in Europe.  I've 
uploaded to Google Drive the first page of my notes.  It should be (if I 
got it right...) accessible to all at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C5Q3b8vK_90l2rQvgieI58l6UKfM3CX8/view?usp=sharing

That page starts with the pragmatics of the new ICCB group, e.g., meet 
4x a year.  Then it lists "Problems" on the newly-formed ICCB's to-do 
list.  These fell into two broad categories: 1) architectural issues 
needing research and 2) short-term pragmatic requirements such as the 
upcoming NCP->TCP transition and making the Internet a reliable 
operational service.

As far as I remember, there wasn't any "ICCB" mailing list or archive.  
We all just kept our own address list using our mail apps.  The group 
was very small - perhaps 10 people or so.  I haven't yet found any 
"attendance list" but I'll keep looking.  I do remember some of the 
members that I'm sure of - Vint, Jon Postel, Dave Clark, and myself.  
Others that I *think* were on the ICCB at the time were Bob Braden, Dave 
Mills, Jim Mathis, Ed Cain, and Ray McFarland.

To avoid confusion now... there was another group formed at the same 
time called the "ICB" - International Cooperation Board.  Its membership 
included some of the ICCB members plus members from outside the US, 
e.g., John Laws (RSRE) and Peter Kirstein (UCL) and perhaps also Paal 
Spilling (NDRE/NTARE).   I don't remember much about the ICB; I wasn't 
on it.   I think Peter Kirstein was the Chair.

The ICCB continued meeting a day before each Internet quarterly meeting, 
with a changing (and growing) list of problems to be worked on.  At the 
September 1982 meeting held at DFVLR outside Munich, Vint announced he 
was leaving ARPA to join MCI.

More spelunking to do.... I'll post more when I decipher my ancient 
hieroglyphics.

Jack Haverty

On 1/23/24 10:01, Noel Chiappa via Internet-history wrote:
> {Trying to catch up...}
>
>      > From: Greg Skinner
>
>      > There is a file in the ietf-ftp directory called 1990-all that contains
>      > ietf list messages from 1990.
>
> That is better than nothing (considering that the Web-accessible archive only
> starts in 1992), but it's still leaves a _enormous_ hole: the 1st IETF (21
> attendees; held jointly held with the first InArc meeting, IIRC) was in
> January, 1986 - so there's over 4 years of IETF list emails still not
> available.
>
> I would guess that there's not one place that they'd all be available? (If
> CNRI had a log file of list traffic, would they still have it accessible -
> and if they had backups, do they still exist?)
>
> We should get some historian started on trying to track them all down - who
> would be a likely target to take that monumental search on? The CHM?
>
>
> And I'd still like to find the name of the list that was used before the ietf
> list existed (the name is a start; finding any of its archives will be an
> even bigger search). Would it have been at DARPA? I'd guess not - but where
> else? ISI, SRI or BBN?
>
> Pretty amazing that so much of the early history has been lost. At least Jon
> did all the minutes, available as IENs.
>
> 	Noel

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 665 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20240124/c002796b/attachment.asc>