[ih] capacity v bandwidth

[Steve Crocker]

I've been enjoying these remembrances of the IETF's growth.  Some years
earlier, before the IETF was created, the Arpanet protocols were developed
in the loosely organized Network Working Group (NWG).  The early NWG
meetings, Aug 1968 through early to mid 1969, started small and gradually
grew.  6-8 people at first and then 10 to 12, IIRC.  As the Arpanet
came into existence and more nodes were planned or committed, more people
showed up.  Also, once the Host-Host protocol (later renamed Network
Control Protocol) was defined, attention shifted to the "higher level"
protocols: Telnet and FTP.  I recall the moment I realized we needed two
parallel meetings.  I believe it happened during the SJCC conference in
Atlantic City in 1970.  I didn't keep records -- perhaps someone else did
-- but the numbers were huge ;). There were surely more than 20 people,
perhaps closer to 50.  We clearly needed some organization and structure...

Cheers,

Steve


On Tue, Jun 2, 2026 at 3:24 PM Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> The last IETF that was entirely in one room was IETF 6 @ BBN (and I'm not
> sure it was all one room).  It was a joint meeting with ANSI X3S3.3, which
> I remember as a series of plenary talks combined with very polite but
> pointed audience commentary about whether the Internet or OSI was leading
> the global networking charge.
>
> IETF 5 sought to create WGs, but with limited success.  One afternoon we
> split into two working groups: one on BGP issues and one on network
> management.  I turned out to be the only person in the network management
> meeting room:-).  At some point Milo Medin took pity on me and took me out
> onto the Moffat Field runway to watch a U2 take off (still a treasured
> memory).
>
> Craig
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2026 at 11:28 AM Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> >     > From: Barbara Denny
> >
> >     > I doubt it was discussed in a hallway. To me the early meetings
> were
> >     > more like a DARPA meeting ... Everyone was in one room as far as I
> > knew.
> >     > The number of people attending was not that high.
> >
> > IETF meetings very quickly became fairly sizeable. From the meeting list
> I
> > linked to earlier:
> >
> >   1st IETF      21 Attendees    January, 1986; San Diego
> >   2nd IETF      21 Attendees    April, 1986; Aberdeen
> >   3rd IETF      18 Attendees    July, 1986; Ann Arbor
> >   4th IETF      35 Attendees    October, 1986; Menlo Park
> >   5th IETF      35 Attendees    February, 1987; Moffett Field
> >   6th IETF      88 Attendees    April, 1987; Boston
> >   7th IETF      101 Attendees   July, 1987; McLean
> >   8th IETF      56 Attendees    November, 1987; Boulder
> >   9th IETF      82 Attendees    March, 1988; San Diego
> >   10th IETF     112 Attendees   June, 1988; Annapolis
> >   11th IETF     114 Attendees   October, 1988; Ann Arbor
> >   12th IETF     120 Attendees   January, 1989; Austin
> >   13th IETF     114 Attendees   April, 1989; Cocoa Beach
> >
> > With the timeframe that Brian deduced for the gateway/router change -
> > between
> > June 1988 and June 1989 - the initial growth had pretty clearly taken
> off.
> >
> > (The 7th, in McLean, was almost certainly the one where I remember Phill,
> > Dan
> > Lynch and I sitting in a bar at the end of the day chanting 'It's time to
> > get
> > real'; no doubt it being the first one with more than 100 attendees
> > contributedto that thinking.)
> >
> >         Noel
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