[ih] IENs

Wed Apr 16 04:33:43 PDT 2025

I think they were distributed by SRI-NIC.
v

On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 7:48 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hmmm.  I just searched for "IEN 1" on the 'net and found IENs, starting
> with #1 in July 1977, listed today at rfc-editor.org - although the
> early ones I checked sometimes said "not available" or "contact author
> for a copy".
>
> Some of the very early IENs (1-20 or so) I don't think I ever saw until
> today.   Of course we didn't have the Web or Search Engines in 1977 so
> maybe I just never encountered them.  The Internet really has changed
> the world and how we access information.
>
> Other documentation of that era had limited distribution.  I recall a
> lot of QTRs capturing the work on Internet projects were distributed
> within the group that did the work as well as a small collection of
> government recipients at ARPA, DCA, and a few others.
>
> For example, the Packet Radio work at BBN was done in a different
> Division from the one I was in, and their documents and ours didn't get
> widely distributed across the boundary.  I knew Packet Radio was
> happening in the other building at BBN, but not much of the details.  If
> you asked a friend you could probably get a copy of a report or borrow
> one and copy it.   But it didn't come automatically.   I suspect the
> researchers in the other Division had a similar experience with our work.
>
> It was probably possible, but more difficult, to get a copy of documents
> from other members of the research community (MIT, UCLA, USC, NDRE, SRI,
> RSRE, UCL, Linkabit, UDel, Collins, etc.), but only if you knew the
> document existed.   Same for other related corporate activities, e.g.,
> at PARC, Novell, etc.   Everything, especially documents with any
> graphics, pretty much travelled on paper then.
>
> I don't remember ever having an encounter involving "your contract will
> be cancelled".
>
> But there was significant concern in the computing world at the time
> over trade secrets and competitive advantage.  For example, when I
> agreed to work on implementing TCP for Unix, I had to sign some NDA
> document agreeing not to disclose anything about the internal design or
> mechanisms used within the Unix kernel, which ATT was protecting as a
> work product of Bell Labs.    I somehow found a document from University
> of Woolongong that described the basic structure of the Unix kernel,
> which really helped in implementing TCP.  I guessed Australia was out of
> reach of the corporate lawyers.
>
> Someone in the government also told me once, long ago, that documents
> got loaded into DTIC only if someone in the government on the original
> distribution list made the explicit effort to send that document to DTIC
> for archiving.  That probably explains why only some of the documents,
> even ones that I remember writing, are in DTIC today.   I've tried
> searching on DTIC for early documents of Packet Radio, SATNET, and
> others but was mostly unsuccessful. Perhaps I just haven't found the
> right search term yet.
>
> I can't recall - circa 1977 were IENs available on SRI-NIC like RFCs and
> other such core documents were at that time?  If not, anybody remember
> why not?  Perhaps SRI-NIC just wasn't on the distribution list?
>
> /Jack
>
> On 4/15/25 14:51, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> > who ever that DARPA official might have been, it was NOT me.
> >
> > v
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >>   Folks,
> >>
> >> IENs are available to everyone these days, but back at the time they
> were
> >> being written they were on a strictly-enforced limited distribution.
> For
> >> example, a DARPA official told one PI at BBN that his contract would be
> >> cancelled if the IEN's he received leaked into the possession of
> another PI
> >> at BBN. Therefore it is not surprising that IEN's were rarely
> referenced by
> >> other documents.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Alex
> >>
> >> On Monday, April 14, 2025 at 07:22:39 PM EDT, Greg Skinner via
> >> Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Apr 12, 2025, at 11:33 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>> The 1980s era of The Internet was explicitly a time of research and the
> >> "Internet Experiment".    We tried to reflect that in the documents of
> the
> >> day, such as RFC793.
> >>> The general principle was that the "on the wire" formats and meanings
> >> were standardized, so that any implementation of TCP could communicate
> with
> >> any other implementation.  Everything else was at best Recommendations.
> >>> However, there were a lot of unanswered questions, such as the best way
> >> to deal with network errors such as dropped, duplicated, or mangled
> >> datagrams - such as discussed in IEN69.
> >>> To enable research into different techniques, the specific algorithms
> for
> >> TCP functions such as retransmission timers and strategies were
> explicitly
> >> *not* standardized.    That encouraged experimentation with different
> kinds
> >> of network environments and different ideas about how to cope with
> errors.
> >> It also permitted implementations of TCP with different goals.  An
> >> implementer might pursue algorithms which minimized the load on their
> >> computer system.  Or load on the network.  Or rapidity of
> implementation.
> >> Or suitability for the specific user environment involved.  Or ...
> >>> No one in 1981 had any significant experience with real-world TCP
> >> networks and their behavior under heavy loads.  The ARPANET was the
> basic
> >> wide-area network in use as the substrate for The Internet, and the
> ARPANET
> >> provided only a reliable byte-stream service that made greatly
> simplified
> >> TCP's task.
> >>> IEN 177 says that the RSRE algorithm is the "current best procedure"
> and
> >> "will be included in the next ... specification".  I remember talking
> with
> >> Jon and others about this.  My recollection is that such an algorithm
> might
> >> be included as a "best practice" recommendation, not as a mandatory
> part of
> >> the standard.  In 1981 we simply didn't know enough to nail down an
> >> algorithm and there were lots of other outstanding unresolved issues
> that
> >> might be related (such as Type Of Service, Policy Routing, etc.).
> >>> In 1981, The Internet was still very much an Experiment, but being
> pulled
> >> forward by its adoption as a DoD Standard, and later to be rocketed
> forward
> >> by its adoption in non-military networking.  I think many of those
> research
> >> questions were never answered.  I recall we even at one point we even
> >> opined that The Internet would be fine as long as we kept enough
> capacity
> >> in the circuits and switches to avoid overloads, while the research
> >> continued, seeking the "right" answers.
> >>> Jack Haverty
> >> OK, that seems reasonable.  I did a little more digging, and found that
> IEN
> >> 50 provides some “glue” by comparing some retransmission algorithms,
> using
> >> simulations and analytical techniques to arrive at some conclusions. [1]
> >> It seems unfortunate to me that some of these IENs couldn’t have been
> >> included as references in RFC 793.  But as far as supporting (higher
> packet
> >> loss) military networking went, some of these concerns (in theory) could
> >> have been addressed in MIL-STD-1778 [2].  Does anyone know why they
> >> weren’t? The US DoD sent people to those Internet Meetings from the late
> >> 1970s and early 1980s, so (in theory) they had enough information to
> >> incorporate any additional requirements into the military standard for
> TCP.
> >>
> >> --gregbo
> >>
> >> [1]https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/scanned/ien50.pdf
> >> [2]http://everyspec.com/MIL-STD/MIL-STD-1700-1799/MIL-STD-1778_6676/
> >>
> >> --
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> >>
>
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