AnInternet Experiment Note (IEN) is a sequentially numbered document in a series of technical publications issued by the participants of the early development work groups that created the precursors of the modernInternet.
AfterDARPA began the Internet program in earnest in 1977, the project members were in need of communication and documentation of their work in order to realize the concepts laid out byBob Kahn andVint Cerf some years before. TheRequest for Comments (RFC) series was considered the province of theARPANET project and the Network Working Group (NWG) which defined thenetwork protocols used on it. Thus, the members of the Internet project decided on publishing their own series of documents,Internet Experiment Notes, which were modeled after the RFCs.[1][2]
Jon Postel became the editor of the new series, in addition to his existing role of administering the long-standing RFC series. Between March 1977 and September 1982, 206 IENs were published. After that, with the plan to terminate support of theNetwork Control Protocol (NCP) on the ARPANET and switch toTCP/IP, the production of IENs was discontinued, and all further publication was conducted within the existing RFC system.[3][2]
The second, third and fourth versions of TCP, including the split into TCP/IP, were developed during the IEN work.[4][5][6] The "Final Report" of the "TCP Project", mentions some of the people involved, including groups from Stanford University, University College London, USC-ISI, MIT, BBN, NDRE, among others.[7]
Key networking principles, such as therobustness principle, were defined during the IEN work.[8]
Throughout the development of the Internet, its protocols and other aspects of its operation have been documented first in a series of documents called Internet Experiment Notes and, later, in a series of documents called Requests for Comment (RFCs).
IENs, or Internet Experiment Notes, were a shorter-running series of protocol documents modeled after RFCs that Postel edited from 1977 to 1982.
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