Re: WORTH READING How the Internet got its rules

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: April 8, 2009 12:37:12 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] WORTH READING    How the Internet got its rules

Crocker argued that what was successful was the RFC's and the  
collection of people who made and collaborated via them.

The IETF has been a short-term host of that process, which goes back  
before the formal IETF.  John Day knows that well, because he and I  
worked on the Internet before Dave Clark and others worked on the  
Internet, during its formative stages, and both John's work and mine  
were done largely via the RFC process Steve cites.

In fact the RFC's began with the ARPANET, and quickly transcended that  
important, but relatively small, experiment with packet networking.   
What the RFC's show is that a good collaborative and collective  
process is incredibly valuable in creating an innovative community,  
and sustaining its creativity.

What was remarkably missing from the RFC process was the kind of non- 
constructive sniping that happens on this email list and many others.   
The IP list would probably not give us a good design for any  
communications system that could change the world.  Of course that is  
not its purpose.


David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Rodney Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
> Date: April 7, 2009 6:22:05 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re:      How the Internet got its rules
>
>
> On Apr 8, 2009, at 5:40 AM, David Farber wrote:
>
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > From: John Day <jeanjour () comcast net>
> > Date: April 7, 2009 4:00:33 PM EDT
> > To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
> > Subject: [IP] Re:     How the Internet got its rules
> >
> > This topic has been brought up before.  Please list the successes  
> > of the IETF?  SNMP?  IPv6?
> >
> > It generally turns out that the major ones you are thinking of were  
> > done before there was an IETF.
>
> Dave, I hate to pick a fight with someone I don't know, but arguing  
> that the IETF is not successful seems little short of deliberately  
> curmudgeonly.  It is, perhaps, the best standards organization in  
> the history of standards organizations.
>
> The very first IETF was January 16-17, 1986; the minutes are  
> online.  You will find names such as "Hinden" and "Lixia Zhang" and  
> "Mike St. Johns" and "Steve Deering" and "David Clark" in that set  
> of minutes, discussing the deployment of the BBN Butterflys and the  
> "Host-Gateway Protocol".  At that point very little about the  
> Internet as we think of it was anything like its current form; IETF  
> 1 corresponded roughly to the publication of RFC 971, by Annette  
> DeSchon (who had the office next to mine for a while).
>
> If you think that the "success" of the Internet is FTP, telnet and  
> ASCII-only SMTP, then yes, those predate the IETF.  The TCP header  
> format may not have changed since then, but nothing else about TCP  
> has remained the same; recall that this was *BEFORE* the Internet  
> congestive collapse and Van Jacobson's congestion avoidance were  
> widely understood.
>
> If you're a fan of, oh, say, the Border Gateway Protocol (1989), the  
> Hypertext Transport Protocol (RFC was 1996), Japanese email (1993,  
> by Jun Murai), CIDR (1993), and approximately one googol of other  
> standards or specifications and practices, then perhaps you ought to  
> be willing to at least acknowledge the role of the IETF.
>
> You can argue that most of the innovation happened outside of the  
> IETF itself, and that would be both true, AND the DESIRED behavior.   
> Bring a good idea, and the IETF will help work out the kinks (the  
> last 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the time, after all) and  
> communicate the results to the people who need them.
>
> ...my opinions only, as being the person I know best :-).  I've been  
> around the Internet as a system manager, developer, and researcher  
> longer than just about anyone I know who has yet to actually appear  
> in person at an IETF (23 years now), and I can claim little  
> influence over it (except perhaps some of the experiments that led  
> to iSCSI, and some modest development work that helped improve  
> connection of GPRS&3G phones to packet-switched networks), but my  
> admiration for the technical work of the folks who have made the Net  
> Work for the last four decades is unbounded.  (Not that that stops  
> me from tweaking them when they need it, or from trying to beat Paul  
> Mockapetris at bridge (no chance at poker!).)
>
>        --Rod
>
>
>
>
>
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