[ih] Really old list archives
Jack Haverty
jack at 3kitty.org
Wed Jan 24 13:27:56 PST 2024
Yes, "unappealing" is a better characterization. I recall a discussion
at the time about the purpose of the name. Everyone on all sorts of
networking projects wanted to be at every meeting to keep up to date and
get their thoughts into the discussions. "Configuration Control" carried
the stench of bureaucracy and mindless paperwork, and that stench
successfully repelled people. It worked, and I don't recall any
bureaucracy or paperwork in the ICCB - which might partly explain the
lack of historical records. It was fun, and more important than we (I at
least) ever thought at the time. Thanks!
Vint - I didn't realize MCI was a bus company........
Jack
On 1/24/24 13:11, vinton cerf wrote:
> the ICCB was not so much secretive as my simply trying to keep it
> small and constrained to parties who were key to leading the Internet
> program. I chose the name of the group to be unappealing to most people.
>
> It would serve to keep most of these lead players aware of the scope
> of the program and status. This was Bob Kahn's solution to my being
> hit by a bus.
>
> v
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 3:50 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> 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
>
> --
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> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>
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