[ih] Really old list archives

[Greg Skinner]

On Jan 24, 2024, at 12:49 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

Hmmm …

The link I posted a few days ago to the email sent by KLH (Ken Harrenstien) to namedroppers was an initial recipient list, including an entry for iccb at bbn-unix, and a comment.  See below:

Namedroppers:
*<NAMSER>NAMEDROPPERS.MAIL,
KLH at SRI-NIC,
ROODE at SRI-NIC,
MILLER at SRI-NIC,
DYER at SRI-NIC,
JOSE at SRI-NIC,
FEINLER at SRI-NIC,
CHERNIKOFF at SRI-TSC,
ZSU at SRI-TSC,
!I believe ICCB includes Clark and Postel and some others!
iccb at bbn-unix,
mockapetris at isif,
kirton at isif,
cak at purdue,
mo at lbl-csam,
eric at berkeley,
Taft at PARC-MAXC,
dpk at brl-bmd,
G.UCBCMSA=SPGGGM at Berkeley,
steve%UCL-CS at USC-ISID,
/usr/haverty/journals/namedroppers*@bbnq

Even if iccb at bbn-unix wasn’t a more structured list (like some of others of that time period such as the tcp-ip list with wider distributions, digests, etc.), it could have been an alias, which means it could have appeared in email headers as an addressee.  So I googled for iccb at bbn-unix, and a Slashdot thread from 1994 popped up about a Today Show “What’s the Internet” segment.  [1] [2] John Nagle contributed to that thread with some email he sent in 1983 about a TOPS-20 TCP bug to several addresses, including iccb at bbn-unix.arpa.

I hope old lists from that time period (iccb, etc.) can be found, to see what people discussed.  I’m particularly interested in any exchanges John Nagle might have had with others (such as Dave Mills) on those lists about Internet congestion.

—gregbo

[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/1825243/whats-the-internet-on-1994s-today-show
[2] https://youtu.be/eAV2Gjkhztg