[ih] capacity v bandwidth

[Brian E Carpenter]

> before the IETF was created, the Arpanet protocols were developed
> in the loosely organized Network Working Group (NWG)

Which still survives as a ghost in some quite recent Internet-Drafts
that still use an old (nroff?) template. See the first line in
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-klensin-std-numbers-03

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 03-Jun-26 08:43, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> 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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>>
>> --
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> 
>