However, for the next fifteen years, the NWG continued to exist as a relatively small and confined group for DARPA researchers to exchange ideas and announce specifications for DARPA’s own closed research network that were published as RFCs. As time went on, subgroups emerged for treating data management, network graphics, mail, and various new protocols. By March 1971, they consisted of DARPA researchers at seven private companies and seven university researcher ensembles. RFCs evolved over the past 50 years to become the IETF’s principal product consisting of specifications for a broad variety of network protocols, applications for what it describes as a “the Internet pervasive global construct.” The loose ensemble led by Steve Crocker called themselves the “Network Working Group” (NWG) that included researchers at two private companies and two universities plus the head of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) Program Manager. What is now known as the IETF began its existence as an informal group among ARPA network researchers with a document known as Request for Comments (RFC 1) distributed on 7 April 1969. The objective is rather to encourage further analysis and understanding of the IETF’s constituents how those constituents have evolved and encourage a dialogue on how its organizational attributes and processes might evolve going forward to best serve those constituents and the global marketplace. ![]() Links to the source IETF proceedings and RFCs are provided throughout to allow readers to access original material. ![]() The intent here is not to provide an authoritative history of the IETF-which is unusually complex and highly dependent on observer perspective. As the IETF continues to evolve to accommodate change, understanding the past constituent adaptive history is helpful in providing increased diversity and effective inclusivity of new sectors and participants as it faces these new developments. These participatory patterns reflect the perceived usefulness of the IETF to its constituents in a continually changing technology and marketplace ecosystem where the costs of supporting someone to participate meaningfully are both significant and increasingly competitive vis-a-vis other standards bodies. It attempts to explore key questions like-who were the IETF constituents-the parties who expended the considerable money and resources to participate in the meetings and reflected in the participant registration pattern in the graph below. This article describes, through an analysis of the IETF’s own meeting records, a history of the evolution of the participants in the organization that reflects adaptation to the ever-changing technologies, marketplace, and diversity of participants. Beginning as a kind of distributed think tank among network researchers in 1969, it evolved to become one of the world’s most influential standards bodies. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a collaborative body that has developed internetworking specifications for more than five decades, successfully shaping the global marketplace of digital network equipment and services. Bob Kahn should also receive praise for the success of the IETF. More than any other person, he deserves credit for the IETF’s formation and early success. ![]() Author note: Thanks is due to Vint Cerf, who provided additional detail and comment, although not necessarily joining all the views presented.
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