Subject: Web Anniversary

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 08:18:52 +0200

I would like to wish the World Wide Web a happy 25th birthday! The last 25 years have truly demonstrated the power of open standards and the global Internet!

See our greetings at http://www.ietf.org/blog/2014/03/web-anniversary/ and join the W3C event at http://www.webat25.org/

Jari Arkko, IETF Chair

---

From: Huub van Helvoort <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:29:20 +0100

The IETF Chair wrote:

> I would like to wish the World Wide Web a happy 25th birthday! The
> last 25 years have truly demonstrated the power of open standards
 > and the global Internet!

It was actually a Dutchman who made the first international
connection on November 17, 1988 that enabled the start of the
world wide web...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Beertema

Met vriendelijke groet, Huub.

-- 
*****************************************************************
               请记住，你是独一无二的，就像其他每一个人一样

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:59:31 -0700 (PDT)

Nonsense. If the NSFnet was "a precursor to the Internet," then surely 
so was the ARPANET. I used the ARPANET from Norway in 1976, Norway was
indeed the second country (after the UK) to join the ARPANET. The 
"first international connection" was most certainly made long before
1988!

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
Home: +1 415-550-9427
Cell: +1 415-370-4628
Japan Docomo: +81 90 3337-9311
UK Orange: +44 7805 977889
E-mail: [email-masked]
URL: http://organdemo.info
Skype: organdemo

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:32:21 +0100

What Ole said.   For an idea of how big and internationally connected the internet was by early 1986 - call it 2.5 years earlier, take a look at pages 118 and 119 of the proceedings of the 2nd IETF.  

Mike

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 12, 2014, at 3:59 PM, Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:40:19 +0100

Indeed -- and I'd be pretty surprised too as I was in the UK at the time
and on 3 Nov 88 I remember reading all about the RTM worm & trying out
some pings & stuff from UCL NSS Gateway (which became nsfnet-relay for UK).

Then again, who cares? :-)

Olivier

---

From: Ofer Inbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:06:09 -0500

Seems odd that W3C picked the date of the submission
of a proposal document as the birthday to celebrate.
  -- Cos

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:35:56 -0400

--On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 14:29 +0100 Huub van Helvoort
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>... 

Independent of Piet's accomplishments (and they have been
considerable), that Wikipedia article is just nonsense.  

As others have pointed out, the first international connections
were to the UK and Norway, not The Netherlands.  The ccTLD
system was established at the "request" of the UK and the US and
UK ccTLDs were the first ones delegated.  Without digging
through old records, I don't remember who was third, but NO is a
more likely candidate than NL.

I really wish that we could somehow restore the spirit of a
collaborative effort, one with many cooperating contributors to
overall network effects rather than seeing people (or their
admirers) scrambling to claim to be first at some important
components of the network.  If the network and associated
technologies had not been rather well developed by the time the
web came along, it probably would have failed to get traction,
just as prior efforts that were not intrinsically less developed
did.  That doesn't make the web contributions and timing less
important, but our perspective should be broader.   In that same
light, I hope there is an appropriate commemoration in a bit
over a year of the publication of "As We May Think" paper and
wish we had done a better job of commemorating the first
appearances of the "Intergalactic Computer Network" and
"Contacts and Influence" ones.

    john

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:55:45 -0400

> of a proposal document as the birthday to celebrate.

They didn't

The PR people chose the date as 'a birthday to celebrate'. We have only
just finished the 20th anniversaries. Since there was a 5 year span from
the initial proposal to the launch of Mosaic and the first Web Conference
there is an anniversary almost every year:

Let n be an integer > 0

1989 + 5*n  First Proposal Document
1990 + 5*n  URIs and HTTP invented
1991 + 5*n  First Web server outside CERN
1992 + 5*n  First public demonstration at the CHEP'92 conference in Annecy
1993 + 5*n  The first Web conference, incorporation of W3C

We don't celebrate every Web Birthday, we just have five different dates
that are celebrated once every 5 years.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:05:05 -0400

> Then again, who cares? :-)

All those poor shmos who invested their kids college fund in BitCoin
because they have absolute confidence in an Internet currency backed by the
sole inventor of the Web (and there is a history of the Web book to prove
it), Marc Andressen.

One of the things we found out about with the Web was that some people
cared a very great deal about getting credit and they were willing to spend
a great deal of money to take it from others. If you read the early press
stories on the Web you will find that most don't mention Tim at all.

---

From: Jaap Akkerhuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:36:57 +0100

Yup, it is. Piet is likely the first one say so.

There was actually an Arpanet (or Milnet?) link to the NL as well,
via TNO-FELS (if I remember correctly although it was not supposed
to be known). I remember myself occasionally dialing into the the
UCL IMP (or whatever it was).

What is significant about that day is that the CWI got connected
to the NSF net. The NSF net accepted the packets (and routes) from
CWI and since CWI was a central hub for lots of (uucp based) European
networks. Also for other networks directly connected to the CWI
with TCP/IP links this was a boost with some small restrictions.
CWI was permitted to connect to Internet but not allowed to be
connected "to any Eastern Block country in any way". Tja...

One might read Piet's own trip along memory lane at <www.godfatherof.nl>.
    
At the occasion of Piet's retirement in 2004 Rick Adams gave a talk
with as tittle "Trans-Atlantic Computer Networking BW (Before Web)"
<http://www.godfatherof.nl/media/rick-presnt.pdf> which an interesting
read as well.

	jaap

---

From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 19:28:28 +0000

Yep. Also, the connection to Holland only happened in December 1988, while INRIA in France was connected in July 1988...

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Ole Jacobsen
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2014 8:00 AM
To: Huub van Helvoort
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Web Anniversary

Nonsense. If the NSFnet was "a precursor to the Internet," then surely so was the ARPANET. I used the ARPANET from Norway in 1976, Norway was indeed the second country (after the UK) to join the ARPANET. The "first international connection" was most certainly made long before 1988!

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher
Home: +1 415-550-9427
Cell: +1 415-370-4628

On Wed, 12 Mar 2014, Huub van Helvoort wrote:

> It was actually a Dutchman who made the first international connection 
> on November 17, 1988 that enabled the start of the world wide web...
>

---

From: Francesco Fondelli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 23:26:14 +0100

I read from my scribbled computer science lecture notes: "CNUCE
(Centro Nazionale Universitario di Calcolo Elettronico) in Italy,
Pisa, was connected to ARPANET in April 1986...".  I think Italy was
the third country :-)

http://cng1.iet.unipi.it/wiki/index.php/Luciano_Lenzini
http://www.isti.cnr.it/about/cnuce_timeline.php

ciao
fra

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 06:37:33 +0700

Date:        Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:35:56 -0400
    From:        John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | As others have pointed out, the first international connections
  | were to the UK and Norway, not The Netherlands.

The UK and NO links were really arpanet links, not internet, and
were subject to all of the arpanet restrictions.  For example, I am
reasonably sure that mail from janet users to arpanet users did not
travel over the arpnet's UK link.  I suspect the same was true of Norway.

So, while it was technically true that there were those international
arpanet links, they (like all the private intra-company links, whether
they used IP or something else) don't really count as internet links.

I would certainly count the NL link (really, EU link, that happened to
terminate in Amsterdam) as the first international true internet link
(in that it connected other networks, not just an end system or two).

But wrt ccTLDs you're right, NL certainly wasn't first - excluding US
and UK (which were registered before registrations opened...) I think
the first was IL (and it would have been 1985 - before the 1986 reg
date cited for NL).    Ignoring UK, NL might well have been the first
European TLD registered though.

  | I really wish that we could somehow restore the spirit of a
  | collaborative effort, one with many cooperating contributors to

It would be good, but it is too big for that now, and includes all those
people whose primary interest is publicity (including politicians of
course) - for whom outlandish claims and self promotion are normal.

kre

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:07:04 -0700 (PDT)

> travel over the arpnet's UK link.  I suspect the same was true of Norway.

Initially, yes, but TCP/IP was introduced in 1983. We certainly had
connections between SATNET, UNINETT in Norway and networks on the 
other side of the Atlantic around that time. (I worked at NDRE and 
later at NTARE). The initial connection to Norway was at NORSAR, the
Norwegian Seismic Array, to measure all those frequent and strong
earthquakes we have in Norway --- not ;=)

> they used IP or something else) don't really count as internet links.

The claim was that the first international [Internet] link was created
by the Netherlands and happened in 1988, that's certainly not true. 
It's at least 5 years too late, and it wasn't the first anyway.

> (in that it connected other networks, not just an end system or two).

See above.

> European TLD registered though.

Of course UK should have been GB as per the ISO code, but Postel 
granted them an exception. Lots of good history to tell here, but
this is probably the wrong list :-)

Ole

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 07:38:49 +0000

I suggest forwarding much of this discussion to
the internet-history list to be captured.

http://www.postel.org/internet-history/

Lloyd Wood
http://about.me/lloydwood
________________________________________
From: ietf [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Ole Jacobsen [[email-masked]]
Sent: 13 March 2014 01:07
To: Robert Elz
Cc: John C Klensin; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Web Anniversary

See above.

Ole

---

From: Jaap Akkerhuis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:49:08 +0100

<kre>
    But wrt ccTLDs you're right, NL certainly wasn't first - excluding
    US and UK (which were registered before registrations opened...).

If I remember correctly, the UK was replaced by GB for a short time
(a week ?) but it got quickly reinstated for obvious reasons. There
were quite some complaints to put it mildly.

    I think the first was IL (and it would have been 1985 - before the
    1986 reg date cited for NL).

According to IANA, the creation date for IL is 1985-10-24 and for NL
1986-04-25. I think that some people claim that IL wasn't active for a
long time. I wouldn't know whether this was true and makes sense (and
really don't care who was first). As John says, was all just a
collaborative effort.

    Ignoring UK, NL might well have been the first
    European TLD registered though.

Very likely. After NL was registered, were often asked how to get a
ccTLD so we (actually, Doug P Kinston III from BRL who was on a
sabbatical at the CWI) created a "top level domain application kit"
which contained example documents. I have it still somewhere in an
archive.

      <klensin>

And don't forget the financial interest...

Anyway, this is probably not the right place to discuss history.

	jaap

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 11:06:04 +0100

> travel over the arpnet's UK link.  I suspect the same was true of Norway.

UK email followed a number of gateways to reach Internet, each
performing the required address inversion from NRS to Host/DNS. Amongst
the gateways was uk.ac.uk.cs.nss which performed address conversion and
which sent emails across the Atlantic via SatNet to ames.arc.nasa.gov

Kind regards,

Olivier

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:36:42 +0000

> Anyway, this is probably not the right place to discuss history.

But where to do so? Is there an IETF nostalgia list?

tim

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:38:17 +0000

Aha, thanks for that Lloyd.

---

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 13:30:49 -0700

On 3/12/2014 3:26 PM, Francesco Fondelli wrote:co
> http://www.isti.cnr.it/about/cnuce_timeline.php
Your lecture notes are incorrect, I believe. CNUCE got an Internet 
connection, not an
ARPAnet connection, in 1986.  That was 3 years after the ARPAnet went 
over from
NCP to TCP/IP.  Evidence: the 2nd URL in your message!

Another European site for early TCP/IP experimentation was DFVLR in Germany.
(By early, I mean between 1981 and 1885, I think.)
Their SATNET ground station was in Oberpfaffenhofen. The (original, 
ARPA-funded)
IAB met once in Oberpfaffnehofen during Oktoberfest. Horst Clausen was our
genial host.

  The early Internet sites in the UK, Norway, and Germany were a result 
of a NATO-fostered
research collaboration among defense-establishment labs in each of the 
countries. Vint
Cerf at ARPA ran the show.

  Bob Braden

---

From: Robert Kahn <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:26:55 -0400

Folks,

The spirit of Bob Braden's reply is accurate in responding to the 
earlier postings.

However, I thought it useful to clarify some of the details.

1. CNUCE was the Italian participant in the packet satellite experiment 
(SATNET). SATNET demonstrated packet switching over a shared satellite 
channel and enabled connectivity between the US and multiple countries 
in Europe in lieu of using the earlier ARPANET links to Norway, England 
(and briefly to) Germany. The Italian earth station was installed at 
Fucino sometime in the very early 1980s, I believe. This enabled the an 
early Internet connection to Italy. The lead researcher at CNUCE in Pisa 
was Luciano Lenzini.

2. The German SATNET earth station was installed in Raisting, Germany in 
the very late 1970s. There were two German participants in those early 
Internet efforts. DFVLR (the German equivalent of NASA) which was in 
Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, and IABG which was in Munich.
The lead researchers were Hans Dodel at DFVLR and Horst Clausen at IABG. 
The German defense ministry was also involved to some extent.

3. There were separate arrangements made by DARPA with each of the 
organizations. NATO may have been involved, but did not play a leading role.

4. The first SATNET node was installed in the US in 1975 at the existing 
ground station in Etam, W.VA. The first European SATNET node was 
installed in the UK at about the same time, the second a few years later 
in Norway (via a ground station in Tanum, Sweden), then the third in 
Germany and the fourth in Italy.

5. Vint and I were both at DARPA at the time and both actively involved 
along with Col. David Russell who did the early program planning.

Bob

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 14:36:48 -0700

On 3/12/2014 7:59 AM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> If the NSFnet was "a precursor to the Internet,"

Forgive the distraction from the primary and entertaining controversy, 
but it is best not to let the above phrasing stand, since NSFNet was not 
a 'precursor'.

NSFNet was an (important) extension to the already-existing Internet.

Better still is that among its various contributions to Internet growth 
was that it provided a second, recognized backbone, forcing the 
development of BGP, which permits multiple independent backbones.  As 
such it moved away from a monopolistic backbone model.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 14:42:08 -0700

> But where to do so? Is there an IETF nostalgia list?

Consider:

    http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history

    http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/nethistory

d/

---

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:13:00 -0400

> Better still is that among its various contributions to Internet growth
was that it provided a second, recognized backbone, forcing the development
of BGP, which permits multiple independent backbones.  As such it moved
away from a monopolistic backbone model.

Well, first it led to non-hierarchical routing, when we introduced
potential loops (and HP disappeared from the ARPAnet briefly, until we
realized what we had done). BGP was needed later when the AS-level topology
became even more complex.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:33:33 -0400

> became even more complex.
It was the pictures of cats that made people want to use it.

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 20:51:45 -0400

> It was the pictures of cats that made people want to use it.

You mean the Mt. Xinu calendar with the cat herder?

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:26:55 -0700

Bob

> Their SATNET ground station was in Oberpfaffenhofen. The (original, ARPA-funded)

I still remember that meeting in Oberpfaffnehofen.  We stayed at Herrsching on the Ammersee.

Bob

---

From: Geoff Mulligan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 21:26:29 -0600

And let us not forget the Defense Data Network as another IP backbone.

Geoff

On 03/14/2014 03:36 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> but it is best not to let the above phrasing stand, since NSFNet was 
> not a 'precursor'.
>
> Better still is that among its various contributions to Internet 
> growth was that it provided a second, recognized backbone, forcing the

---

From: Lou Berger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 10:06:22 -0400

On 3/14/2014 5:42 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> development of BGP, which permits multiple independent backbones.
While BGP certainly came out of NSFTNET, if memory serves, there were 5
"backbone" networks interconnected at FIX-East when it went it in, circa
1988.  And that it was the addition of the 2nd FIX, FIX-West, that
really demonstrated the need for something better than EGP.  (I was
working on 1 of the 5, the Wideband SATNET,  at the time and had to deal
with technical issues for it's IP/ST Gateways.)    

Lou

BTW this discussion triggered my reading of RFC898 -- A really
interesting bit of Internet history there....

---

From: John Scudder <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 14:57:53 +0000

On Mar 16, 2014, at 10:07 AM, "Lou Berger" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> And that it was the addition of the 2nd FIX, FIX-West, that
> really demonstrated the need for something better than EGP.

IIRC SURANet had done that prior to the advent of FIX-West. 

--John

---

From: Francesco Fondelli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 09:12:20 +0100

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Bob Braden <[email-masked]> wrote:
[cut]
> That was 3 years after the ARPAnet went over from

Yes, I should have noticed the date is after the migration; Internet
connection is the correct term.  Thank you.  I also would like to
thank Robert Kahn for the very interesting details!  This thread gave
me the opportunity to read for the first time (part of) 1822 e NCP.
Fascinating.

While I was looking for historical information about pre-Internet
European packet networking experiments (unfortunately only very
fragmented information) I found the 2006 Laudatio of Prof. Luciano
Lenzini for Dr. Cerf and Dr. Kahn (the CNUCE connection is one of the
main topic).  I hope someone appreciates this as much as I do:

http://www.unipi.it/ateneo/comunica/cerimonie/honoris/laudatiolenzini.htm_cvt.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUAlhdCOBjA (Italian dubbed, sorry)

ciao
fra

---

From: "Gregg L. DesElms" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 23:58:38 -0700

When you reply to one of these email list things, *DO* *NOT* *CHANGE* *THE*"
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Most subscribers to the IETF (and most other) list(s) need for everything
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personal conversation that it's perfectly okay to have on the list, but
it's labeled in my inbox in a way that keeps me from being able to tell,
any longer, that it's part of IETF; and so it's goofing me up.

Either go entirely personal, between yourselves, directly; or please find
the "Subject:" field contents of the original IETF message that got you
started in this little conversation, and then and put it back into the
"Subject:" field of these conversation messages of yours, with "Re:" in
front of it so it will be appropriately labeled in list members' inboxes!

Thank you.

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---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Mar 2014 16:08:22 -0000

>field. ...

You might consider getting a better mail client.  There are plenty
that can thread on References: and other headers.  

I find it more annoying that threads drift and end up having nothing
to do with the unchanged subject line.  The message I was replying to
is a classic example.

R's,
John

PS: I'm a total troglodyte so I pipe my list mail into a local news
server and use trn.  Works great, mostly.

---

From: Ofer Inbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:52:16 -0500

> When you reply to one of these email list things, *DO* *NOT* *CHANGE* *THE*"

Please do change the Subject field when the actual subject of
conversation has shifted.  It's bad email etiquette to have all of the
subthreads of a long thread labelled with the same subject text even
when they're discussing different things.  It makes it hard to
identify when the various topics of conversation branched off and
which branch correspondes to which discussion.  Subject lines are
there to help us identify the subjects of the threads.

> Most subscribers to the IETF (and most other) list(s) need for
> everything received from said list(s) to be appropriately labeled in

I suspect that's not true for "most" subscribers to the IETF list,
though we don't have email client statistics so I don't know if I'm
right (or if you're right).  However, please do avoid using hobbled
email clients that can't follow threads using the appropriate headers
(In-Reply-To: and References:) intended for threading.  Most email
clients can do it.  Or, if you insist on using a deficient client
that can't follow threads properly, at least don't try to dumb down
the email use of the rest of the list to work with it at the expense
email functionality that's useful for others.
  -- Cos

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:01:31 -0400

> email functionality that's useful for others.

If you are using a deficient client that doesn't understand the
References: and In-Reply-To: mail headers, please do feel free to file
Feedback and bug reports with your e-mail provider that you would like
them to support this feature.

Whether it is a crippled MUA, or a crippled web-based e-mail service,
they won't change unless they get demands from their customers/users
to provide this feature.

					- Ted