[ih] capacity v bandwidth

Tue Jun 2 15:43:17 PDT 2026

Yes, it's interesting to fill in gaps in the History.  I'm wondering 
about the evolution of the ICCB/IAB over the years.  I was on the ICCB 
from its inception until mid-1983, but don't know anything about its 
later history as the IAB.

Through 1983, the ICCB was focussed on planning and prioritizing work 
towards the "January 1983" Internet, tasked to be one capable of 
handling heavy loads.  It wasn't just technical issues, although there 
were plenty of those.  Some had to be addressed before 1983 to create an 
operational Internet as a service, while others were classed as ongoing 
research topics since there was no consensus on any particular solution 
but lots of ideas to pursue.

Most of the ICCB members were leading various Internet-related projects 
in their respective organizations, and would leave quarterly ICCB 
meetings with appropriate "marching orders" for their projects.

But several of the ICCB members at that time were from other parts of 
the US DoD (not ARPA where Vint was), and likely dealt also with 
administrative or political tasks, such as getting TCP to become a DoD 
Standard, causing NBS/NIST certification procedures for TCP to be 
created so thaat government contractors and auditors could verify that 
they had implemented TCP, orchestrating the NCP/TCP cutover to occur on 
ARPANET, and undoubtedly many other non-technical activities that had to 
happen for the Internet to grow and expand and become a reliable 
communications service.

My impression is that the role of the ICCB changed significantly over 
the years after it became the IAB, and its focus evolved to become 
almost purely technical.  But I don't know much at all about that part 
of the History.

Anybody remember more?

/Jack Haverty

On 6/2/26 13:43, 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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