[ih] History from 1960s to 2025

[Craig Partridge]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 4:18 PM Brian E Carpenter <
brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> Craig,
>
> That's very interesting. A few questions:
>
> 1. When exactly were I-Ds invented? (I know that it was no later than
> September 1989, see #3 below.)
>

Phill Gross announced them to IETF in January 1989 (IETF 13 proceedings,
introduction).


>
> 2. Is it true to say that the de facto standard tool for producing early
> I-Ds was nroff?
>

Yes, Jon Postel had an nroff to RFC format script which we all used.


>
> (In 1994 when I wrote my first I-D, somebody -- very likely Scott Bradner
> -- sent me an nroff template, and I went on using it until XML2RFC first
> appeared.)
>
> 3. Who invented the formal expiry for I-Ds?
>

I believe it was Phill Gross, in one of Phill's standard ways of solving a
problem, which is, once he established that people wanted I-Ds to expire
(so they couldn't be cited as active standards) he talked with a bunch of
folks and came up with a compromise number.  In his January '89 memo it was
6 months. (Someone must have pushed hard to make it 3 months in RFC1120,
only to realize that Phill's initial sense of the solution was right).
Originally, I-Ds were to be discarded from the I-D repository (the idea
being they were ephemeral -- that ended after folks realized that proving
the WG came up with idea III on date DDD to pre-empt patent claims was
important).


>
> (It was first documented in RFC 1120 (Sept 1989) as far as I can tell,
> except that it was 3 months then, updated to "3-6 months" in RFC 1160, and
> codified as 6 months in RFC 1310.)
>
> Incidentally, I think that RFC 1120 must have been the first RFC that
> documented the IETF standards process in any way.
>

Sounds likely!

Craig

>
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 26-Dec-25 09:19, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> > Hey Matt:
> >
> > Your note brought up a flood of memories about creating the
> Internet-Draft
> > series.  I don't think I've seen a history of the series and its
> creation,
> > so I thought I'd dump my memories -- combined with some fact checking in
> > IETF reports.
> >
> > Very quickly in the IETF's development, it became clear that it was
> > generating a large number of *interim* technical documents.  E.g. before
> > each IETF meeting, a WG would typically produce a "latest draft" of
> > whatever specification(s) it was working on, so they could be discussed.
> > People wanted those drafts in a central spot, rather than just mailed to
> a
> > WG, so they could figure out which WG meetings were the highest priority
> to
> > attend during the IETF week.  Also, some documents were becoming big
> (100s
> > of pages), an issue in a time of small disks which limited the size of
> > emails.  So, it became clear a document series/repository/something else
> > was needed.
> >
> > As I recall, the initial ideas bounced around were to use the RFC series
> or
> > revive IENs (Internet Engineering Notes so a logical series for the
> > Internet Enginering Task Force).  Both were swiftly shot down.  Jon
> Postel
> > and Joyce Reynolds did not want to place a flood of often partial-drafts
> of
> > technical specs into the RFC series, nor deal with the tight timeframes
> > (e.g. dozens of specs that all had to be published showing up a week
> before
> > IETF meetings). For whatever reason, IENs were also declared off limits.
> >
> > So Phill Gross, as chair of IETF, created a document series called IDEAS
> > (announced at IETF 8 in NCAR in late 1987).  This produced pushback [my
> > recollection here].  People wanted the IETF drafts to be ephemeral (fear
> > that people would start claiming conformance to IDEA ### rather than
> RFCs,
> > etc) and various other issues (which I only recall vaguely -- one issue,
> I
> > believe, was the IAB was concerned this had the potential to end-run RFCs
> > [see Note]).  As I recall, intellectual property issues were barely
> touched
> > on. People realized things were being invented in WG meetings, but
> > documenting them for posterity was not yet uppermost in folks' thoughts
> --
> > thus the notion IETF documents could be ephemeral and would expire.
> >
> > As late as IETF 11 (Ann Arbor, late 1988), there was still no document
> > series in place -- IDEAS were sorta there (about a dozen ever existed),
> but
> > not quite.  I note that Karen Bowers, a no nonsense, ex-military (?)
> person
> > was brought in to manage many aspects of IETF including its documents
> > around the time of IETF 11.  The fact that a year had passed and there
> was
> > still no solution tells you the level of background discussions about how
> > to create the needed document series.  Indeed, the cover note in IETF 11
> > says, essentially, if you want to figure out where a WG is on its
> drafting
> > of spec, contact Karen (!?!?!).  Remembering Karen's attitude on ad-hoc
> > processes, I suspect she put some pressure on Phill and others to find a
> > better answer ASAP.
> >
> > Then at IETF 12 (January 1989) the Internet-Drafts series was announced.
> > It has many of the elements of today's series; standard names, expiration
> > after 6 months, draft plastered all over the document, in a form that can
> > easily become an RFC.
> >
> > Craig
> >
> > Note re: RFCs.  It is worth remembering that just as IETF was spinning up
> > (and the workload was quite big -- IETF 11's proceedings lists 10 active
> > specs for things like Host Requirements, the first MIB, PPP, OSPF and an
> > EGP successor) the RFC series was sputtering.  It produced about 25 RFCs
> in
> > 1986 and a similar number in 1987.  It was clear the IETF was going to
> more
> > than double that annual total -- in other words, IETF product would soon
> > dominate the RFC series. The IAB (and Jon P) wanted to retain control of
> > RFCs and protocols deemed part of the Internet architecture.  This
> created
> > a potential dilemma - if the IETF created its own document series, so
> RFCs
> > only saw final versions of specifications, that met Jon's need to not
> > publish ephemeral stuff, but raised the possibility that the IETF could
> > weaponize its document series to undermine RFCs if specs did not mature
> to
> > RFC status after IETF felt they were ready.
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 9:58 AM Matt Mathis via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >> One key development (that predates me, so I can't provide details) was
> the
> >> codification (and evolution) of the Internet Draft and RFC processes.
>   I
> >> believe that finding the right balance between ease of contribution,
> >> permanence and implied or explicit (non)authority, embodied by the use
> of
> >> the name "Request For Comments" was as important as any individual
> >> technical detail.   The publication process substantially inspired the
> >> culture of the IETF (or perhaps vice-versa), which is what enabled
> >> collaborative engineering between nominally competing organizations.
> >>
> >> As far as I know RFCs were the first ever self published archival
> series of
> >> documents.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> --MM--
> >> Evil is defined by mortals who think they know "The Truth" and use
> force to
> >> apply it to others.
> >> -------------------------------------------
> >> Matt Mathis  (Email is best)
> >> Home & mobile: 412-654-7529 please leave a message if you must call.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, Dec 20, 2025 at 6:09 PM Karl Auerbach via Internet-history <
> >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> On 12/18/25 12:21 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> >>>> And some of us thought, it was the continuation of building a
> >>> resource-sharing network.  ;-)
> >>>
> >>> In the mid 1980's I spent a year or more at the Livermore Labs working
> >>> on the MFE (magnetic confinement fusion energy) project. (Playing
> tennis
> >>> with a multi-million degree ball of plasma as the ball was kinda fun.)
> >>>
> >>> I wasn't involved in the networking part but I certainly overheard a
> lot
> >>> of expressed desire to share not only our simulations and measurements
> >>> (we had a couple of seriously-gigantic fusion vessels across the road
> >>> from my office) as well as our boatload of Cray machines and data
> >>> libraries.
> >>>
> >>> The folks at the labs were pretty good a jury rigging things and it is
> >>> my understanding that they created some duct-tape-and-bailing-wire
> >>> systems to do that kind of sharing.
> >>>
> >>> Also, in the 1970's when I was at SDC I heard many tales about the Q7
> >>> and Q32 computers, and the desire to time share the latter among
> >>> research institutions.  But I have no real memory of what was said in
> >>> those tales.
> >>>
> >>>       --karl--
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
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> >>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
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> >
> >
>


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