TCP and Internet Meetings

The TCP and Internet Meetings were a series of in-person meetings which were a key part of the development of the TCP and IP protocols in the 1977-1980 time period. (At the start of that development, there was of course no separate IP protocol; its functionality was part of TCP in the early versions of TCP, TCP 1 and TCP 2.) The concepts embodied in TCP/IP had been previously elucidated in the International Network Working Group (INWG) earlier in the 1970s, but other than a few individuals who were involved with both, there were no connections between the two. Although covered very poorly in current 'histories of the Internet', these meetings were an incredibly important (nay, vital) stage of its early development.

There was not, as far as we can tell, a formal name for either the group which met (although it was sometimes called the 'Internet Working Group'), or for this series of meetings. The attendees were essentially all DARPA contractors working on DARPA's internetworking project - although that itself was, "circa 1977, actually an informal collection of separate ARPA [formal] projects", not a formal TCP/IP project.

(They included the "Packet Radio Network (PRNET), which was building wireless networks with mobility ..; SATNET, which was building trans-Atlantic networking by satellite; WBNET (WideBand NETwork) was building a 'high bandwidth' (3 Mb/sec) satellite network spanning the continental US. .. The 'Gateway Project' was building a device to attach to a PRNET and pass TCP traffic across the boundaries as an initial experiment in the new Cerf/Kahn concept of TCP", to demonstrate how to tie together all the new networking technologies which were being experimented with by DARPA. MIT-LCS, another attendee, had a DARPA contract to investigate an early LAN, a token ring network.)

"Each of these groups had its own set of contractors working on that project, using what was available at the time to collaborate and communicate, e.g., meetings and email across the ARPANET."

The location rotated between various DARPA contractors who were working on the project; they were almost all held in the USA initially, with occasional meetings in Europe towards the end. They were notionally divided into separate 'TCP Meetings' and 'Internet Meetings', but in reality, each meeting would consider issues with both protocols. It is also not clear why 'Internet' was used as a name on early meetings, before IP existed as a separate protocol; the name probably came from the project's goal, to produce a working internet.

These meetings were the precursor to the meetings of the later IETF, which continue to this day.

Meeting dates and location

Although poorly covered in histories, we do have very good records of what transpired at these meetings; minutes for each were produced, mostly by Jon Postel, and released in the IEN document series. The minutes all included a list of all of the attendees at that meeting. Most meetings were part of the TCP and Internet meetings series, but there were a few additional ad hoc meetings on specialized topics. A fairly complete list of the meetings (in temporal order) is:

Date	Location	Type	Documented in
12 March 1977	DARPA	TCP	IEN-64
14-15 July 1977	MIT-LCS	TCP	IEN-65
15 August 1977	ISI	Internet	IEN-3
13-14 October 1977	SRI	TCP	IEN-66
30-31 January 1978	ISI	TCP	IEN-67
1 February 1978	ISI	Internet	IEN-22
1-2 May 1978	UCL	Internet	IEN-33 (not online)
15-16 June 1978	MIT-LCS	TCP	IEN-68
2-4 August 1978	Lincoln Labs	Internet	IEN-53
18-19 September 1978	SRI	TCP	IEN-69
17 October 1978	BBN	Gateways	IEN-60
30-31 October 1978	SRI	Internet	IEN-63
4 December 1978	ARPA	Internet	IEN-70
25-26 January 1979	ISI	Internet	IEN-76
29 January 1979	ISI	TCP	IEN-77
12 March 1979	BBN	Fault Isolation	IEN-104
8-11 May 1979	BBN	Internet	IEN-106
10-13 September 1979	UCL	Internet	IEN-121
4-6 February	SRI	Internet	IEN-134
14-15 May 1980	MIT-LCS	Internet	IEN-145
7-9 October 1980	RSRE	Internet	IEN-160
28-30 January 1981	ISI	Internet	IEN-175

See also

• CYCLADES
• TCP and IP bake offs

Further reading

Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999 - this stage is covered briefly on pp. 128-133

External links

• Correct name for early TCP/IP working group? - an email message from Jack Haverty, one of the early participants, giving an overview (NB: contains some errors, especially in the chronologically later sections)
• Internet-history Digest, Vol 62, Issue 12 - another email message, from John Shoch, another early participant (again, from memory, and beware of errors in human memory)

Minutes (in meeting date order):

• Minutes of TCP Meeting, March 12, 1977, Washington, D.C. (IEN-64)
• TCP Meeting Notes - 14 & 15 July 1977 (IEN-65)
• INTERNET Meeting Notes 15 August 1977 (IEN 3)
• TCP Meeting Notes - 13 & 14 October 1977 (IEN-66)
• TCP Meeting Notes 30 & 31 January 1978 (IEN-67)
• Meeting Notes - 1 February 1978 (IEN-22)
• TCP Meeting Notes - 15 & 16 June 1978 (IEN-68)
• Meeting Notes - 2,3&4 August 1978 (IEN-53)
• TCP Meeting Notes - 18 & 19 September 1978 (IEN 69)
• Boston Area Meeting of the Internet Working Group to Discuss Interactions With Gateways (IEN-60)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 30 & 31 October 1978 (IEN-63)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 4 December 1978 (IEN-70)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 25&26 January 1979 (IEN-76)
• TCP Meeting Notes - 29 January 1979 (IEN-77)
• Minutes of the Fault Isolation Meeting (IEN-104)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 8, 9, 10 & 11 May 1979 (IEN-106)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 10, 11, 12 & 13 September 1979 (IEN-121)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 4, 5, & 6 February 1980 (IEN-134)
• Internet Meeting Notes - 14 & 15 May 1980 (IEN-145)
• Internet Meeting Notes -- 7-8-9 October 1980 (IEN-160)
• Internet Meeting Notes -- 28-29-30 January 1981 (IEN-175)