ISOC Internet Standards Programs
An Important Documentary Internet Milestone
Vint Cerf
October 2006
In September 1981 three documents that were important to the history of the Internet were published by the RFC Editor: RFC 791, 792 and 793. These documented, respectively, the Internet Protocol, the Internet Control Message Protocol and the Transmission Control Protocol or IP, ICMP and TCP.
In 2006, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of these documents and recognize that with their publication, the stage was set for the operational birth of the Internet as we know it. It was about that time that it was decided that by January 1, 1983, all host computers on all the networks operated under the auspices of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would be required to implement these three protocols and to support applications such as TELNET, FILE TRANSFER and electronic mail (using the Simple Mail Transport Protocol or SMTP). At the time these functions were supported on the ARPANET using the Network Control Protocol (NCP) and versions of TELNET, FTP and email transport suited to the ARPANET’s services. Hosts on the Packet Satellite network and the Packet Radio network were already using versions of IP, ICMP and TCP and application layer gateways to interoperate with the bulk of the ARPANET hosts.
There are, of course, many other important milestones in the history of the Internet, so we will certainly recognize and celebrate them as their anniversaries recur. For example, the first document published about the concept of the Internet was presented in the IEEE Transactions on Communications in May, 1974 and the first full TCP specification was published in December 1974 as RFC 675. And, of course, there is the January 1, 1983 date whose 25th anniversary we will celebrate in January 2008.
In the meantime, we recognize, this year, the 25th anniversary of three key documents that summarized the state of our knowledge of Internet basic protocols as we moved towards the formal initial operation of the Internet as we know it. That this process has been the work of many hands is without question one of the most important observations and causes for celebration. The Internet continues to evolve and it is the receptive nature of its design and the collaborative nature of its technical specification that has allowed so many applications to find support. The community that supports the Internet and the society that is growing up around its use illustrate in a fundamental way, the rich and unlimited creativity of the human spirit. That’s something we should celebrate every day, not only on special anniversaries in the history of the Internet.
