A Brief History of the
Internet Advisory / Activities / Architecture Board
The origin of today’s IAB lies in the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB), which was created in 1979 by Vint Cerf, at that time program manager at DARPA, to advise him on technical issues. The ICCB was chaired by David Clark, MIT.
In September 1984, after the ICCB meeting held at RSRE in Malvern, UK, the ICCB was disbanded and replaced by the Internet Advisory Board (IAB). This change was initiated by Dave Clark and Barry Leiner, who had taken over management of the Internet research program at DARPA. The IAB consisted of the chairs of the newly-formed research task forces and Jon Postel (ISI), as RFC editor and “protocol czar”. The first set of chairs of the task forces were the members of the ICCB. The IAB was chaired by Dave Clark.
In 1984, there were 10 Research Task Forces [Braden 1998]:
Task force Chair Gateway Algorithms Dave Mills, Linkabit New End-to-End Service Bob Braden, UCLA Applications Arch. and Requirements Bob Thomas, BBN Privacy Steve Kent, BBN Security Ray McFarland, DoD Interoperability Rob Cole, UCL Robustness and Survivability Jim Mathis, SRI Autonomous Systems Dave Clark, MIT Tactical Internetting Dave Hartman, MITRE Testing and Evaluation Ed Cain, DCEC
In 1986 Dennis Perry, the program manager at DARPA, decided that DARPA should divide its efforts into the areas of Internet-related activities and distributed systems. The Internet area was to be coordinated through the Internet Activities Board, and the effort in distributed systems was coordinated through the “Distributed System Architecture Board” (DSAB), chaired by Doug Comer. Both the DSAB and the IAB used an organizational model where each member chaired a task force. [Comer 2002].
In May 1986, the IAB become the Internet Activities Board (RFC 985).
NSF also elected to support DARPA’s existing Internet organizational infrastructure, hierarchically arranged under the (then) Internet Activities Board (IAB). The public declaration of this choice was the joint authorship by the IAB’s Internet Engineering and Architecture Task Forces and by NSF’s Network Technical Advisory Group of RFC 985[May 1986] (Requirements for Internet Gateways), which formally ensured interoperability of DARPA’s and NSF’s pieces of the Internet.[A Brief History of the Internet]
During August 25-27, 1986, the IAB held the first TCP/IP Vendors Workshop in Monterey, California, in cooperation with DARPA. This event later became Interop.
Later, the Privacy task force became Privacy and Security, while Gateway Algorithms became GADS (Gateway Algorithms and Data Structures), which in turn was split into Internet Architecture (INARCH) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The first IETF meeting took place in 1986, with Mike Corrigan (Defense Data Network (DDN)) as the first IETF chair, followed by Phill Gross starting at the fourth meeting. (Working groups were formed in the 5th meeting in 1987; working groups were divided into areas starting at the 15th meeting in 1989.)
The first IETF meeting started out as GADS and ended as INENG/INARCH when Mike Corrigan arrived from the IAB meeting. Mike Corrigan moved to OSD (Office of Secretary of Defense) on October 1, 1986 (the beginning of the fiscal year) and Phill Gross took over at that point. INENG was intended to be a group of operators and its early make up revolved around DOD, NASA, DOE and NSF and their contractors and researchers. Phill Gross was at Mitre under contract to DDN (working for the DDN technical director, Mike Corrigan, then others) when he became chair.
In January 1989, there were the following task forces:
Task force Chair Internet Engineering Phill Gross, CNRI Internet Architecture Dave Mills, UDel Autonomous Networks Deborah Estrin, USC New End-to-End Services Bob Braden, UCLA User Interface Keith Lantz, Olivetti Research Privacy and Security Steve Kent, BBN Scientific Requirements Barry Leiner, RIACS
The IAB and the task forces were supported by an inter-agency committee of the US government, the FRICC, later to be come the FNC (Federal Networking Comittee).
The next reorganization was planned in Annapolis, Maryland in the summer of 1989. DARPA and the Internet were changing, and the DSAB and IAB were reorganized. Applications and distributed computing were folded into the IAB charter. [Comer 2002] The Annapolis meeting also established the IESG and IRSG, both appointed by the IAB. Some of the task forces became working groups, others research groups in the IRSG. [Braden 1998]
The 14th IETF meeting was held at Stanford University in July 1989. It marked a major change in the structure of the IETF universe. The IAB (then Internet Activities Board, now Internet Architecture Board), which until that time oversaw many “task forces,” changed its structure to leave only two: the IETF and the IRTF. The IRTF was tasked to consider long-term research problems in the Internet and a number of Task Forces were restructured as IRTF research groups. For example, the End-to-End Task Force became the IRTF’s End-to-End Research Group (E2E) and the Privacy & Security Task Force became the IRTF’s Privacy & Security Research Group (PSRG). The IETF also changed at that time. [RFC 3160]
After the Internet Society (ISOC) was formed in January, 1992, the IAB proposed to ISOC that the IAB’s activities should take place under the auspices of the Internet Society. During INET 1992 in Kobe, Japan [June], the ISOC trustees approved a new charter for the IAB to reflect the proposed relationship.” [RFC 3160]
As part of that reorganization, the Internet Activities Board was re-organized and re-named the Internet Architecture Board. The IESG and IETF assumed a larger and independent role in approving Internet standards.
During the last half of 1992, the relationship between the IAB and the IETF came under scrutiny through the first POISED Working Group which reallocated responsibilities for standards decision making and established the framework around which the current practices for populating IAB and IETF are conducted. The POISED Working Group presented its conclusions and recommendations to the Internet Society Board of Trustees in December 1992 and these were accepted as the working basis for the relationships among IAB, IESG, ISOC and IETF participants. Subsequently, RFC 1310 was prepared by the IETF in an attempt to codify these working principles [ RFC 2026 is the current version of this document, with further updates in RFC 3667, RFC 3668 and RFC 3932]. [ IETF and ISOC]
IAB Members
Unless otherwise noted, the terms of IAB members began in March or April of the year listed and ended in March or April of the year listed. The names below are listed by starting year. It is likely that several members from the early years of the IAB are missing. Uncertain dates are marked by ‘?’.
Member Organization (at time of service) From To Dave Clark MIT 1983 ? Vint Cerf Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) 1986 1993 Stephen Kent BBN 1983 1995 Bob Braden UCLA 1981 1994 Dave Mills Linkabit 1984? ? Bob Thomas BBN 1984? ? Ray McFarland U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 1984? ? Rob Cole UCL 1984? ? Jim Mathis SRI 1984? 1988 Dave Hartman Mitre 1984? ? Ed Cain Defense Communications Engineering Center (DCEC) (part of DCA) 1984? ? Doug Comer Purdue University 1986 1989 Lyman Chapin Data General, BBN 1989 1993 Hans-Werner Braun Merit,
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)1990? 1994 Anthony Lauck DEC 1990 1994 Barry Leiner RIACS, Advanced Decision Systems (ADS), University Space Research Association (USRA) 1990? 1994 Keith Lantz Olivetti Research 1989 ? Deborah Estrin USC 1989 ? Dan Lynch Interop 1990? 1994 Jon Postel USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) 1990? 1993 Elise Gerich Merit 1993 1997 Jun Murai WIDE 1993 1995 Yakov Rekhter IBM Research 1993 1997 John Romkey ELF Communications 1993 1995 Dave Sincoskie Bellcore 1993 1995 Mike St Johns ARPA 1993 1995 Phill Gross CNRI 1994 1996 Christian Huitema INRIA 1991 1996 Robert Elz University of Melbourne 1994 1998 Brian Carpenter IBM 1994 2002 Lixia Zhang Xerox PARC 1994 1996 UCLA 2005 2009 Steve Crocker USC 1994 1996 J. Allard Microsoft 1995 1997 Robert Moskowitz Chrysler 1995 1999 Erik Huizer SURFnet 1995 1999 Chris Weider Microsoft 1995 1997 Steve Bellovin AT&T 1996 2002 Jon Crowcroft UCL,
Cambridge1996 2002 John Klensin MCI,
MCI Worldcom,
AT&T1996 2002 Radia Perlman Sun Microsystems 1996 1998 Steve Deering Cisco 1997 2002 Tony Hain Microsoft 1997 2001 Cyndi Jung 3Com 1997 1999 Charlie Perkins Sun 1997 1999 Ned Freed Innosoft 1998 2000 Tim Howes Netscape 1998 2000 Harald Alvestrand Cisco 1999 2001 Ran Atkinson Extreme Networks 1999 2003 Rob Austein Integrated Systems, Internetshare, Grunchweather Associates,
Internet Systems Consortium1999 2005 Geoff Huston Telstra,
APNIC1999 2005 Henning Schulzrinne Columbia University 2000 2002 Leslie Daigle ThinkingCat Enterprises,
Verisign,
Cisco,
Internet Society2000 2008 Fred Baker Cisco 2001 2003 Sally Floyd ACIRI,
ICIR2001 2005 Ted Hardie Nominum,
Qualcomm2002 2003 Charlie Kaufman IBM,
Microsoft2002 2004 James Kempf NTT 2002 2004 Eric Rescorla RTFM 2002 2008 Mike St Johns Network Associates, Nominum 2002 2004 Bernard Aboba Microsoft 2003 2007 Jun-ichiro Itojun Hagino IIJ 2003 2005 Mark Handley ICIR,
UCL2003 2005 Patrik Fältström Cisco 2003 2006 Bob Hinden Nokia 2004 2006 Pete Resnick Qualcomm 2004 2006 Jonathan Rosenberg dynamicsoft,
Cisco2004 2006 Loa Andersson Acreo 2005 2009 Kurtis Lindqvist Netnod 2005 2009 David Meyer Cisco / University of Oregon 2005 2007 Pekka Nikander Ericsson / Helsinki University of Technology 2005 2006 David Oran Cisco 2006 2010 Olaf Kolkman NLnet Labs 2006 2012 Kevin Fall Intel 2006 2008 Elwyn Davies Folly Consulting 2006 2008 Dave Thaler Microsoft 2006 2017 Barry Leiba IBM 2007 2009 Danny McPherson Arbor Networks, Verisign 2007 2013 Gonzalo Camarillo Ericsson 2008 2010 Stuart Cheshire Apple 2008 2010 Gregory Lebovitz Juniper 2008 2010 Andrew Malis Verizon 2008 2010 Marcelo Bagnulo University Carlos III of Madrid 2009 2011 Vijay Gill 2009 2010 John Klensin Independent 2009 2011 Jon Peterson Neustar 2009 2013 Bernard Aboba Microsoft 2010 2014 Ross Callon Juniper 2010 2014 Spencer Dawkins Huawei 2010 2013 Andrei Robachevsky RIPE / ISOC 2010 2012 Hannes Tschofenig Nokia Siemens Networks 2010 2014 Alissa Cooper Center for Democracy and Technology 2011 2014 Joel Halpern Ericsson 2011 2015 David Kessens Nokia Siemens Networks 2011 2013 Jari Arkko Ericsson 2012 2013 Marc Blanchet Viagenie 2012 2016 Russ Housley Vigil Security 2013 2017 Eliot Lear Cisco 2013 2015 Xing Li Tsinghua University/CERNET Center 2013 2015 Andrew Sullivan Dyn, Inc 2013 2017 Erik Nordmark Cisco Systems, Arista, Zededa 2013 2020 Mary Barnes Independent 2014 2016 Ted Hardie 2014 2020 Joe Hildebrand Cisco, Mozilla 2014 2018 Brian Trammell ETH Zurich, Google 2014 2020 Ralph Droms Cisco, Independent 2015 2017 Robert Sparks Oracle, Independent 2015 2019 Suzanne Woolf Independent 2015 2019 Lee Howard Time Warner Cable, Independent 2016 2018 Martin Thomson Mozilla 2016 2020 Jari Arkko Ericsson 2017 present (*) Gabriel Montenegro Microsoft 2017 2019 Mark Nottingham Akamai Technologies, Fastly 2017 present (*) Jeff Tantsura Futurewei, Nuage Networks, Apstra 2017 present (*) Christian Huitema Independent 2018 2020 Melinda Shore Fastly 2018 2020 Stephen Farrell Trinity College Dublin 2019 present (*) Wes Hardaker USC/ISI 2019 present (*) Zhenbin Li Huawei 2019 present (*) Ben Campbell Independent Consultant 2020 present (***) Cullen Jennings Cisco Systems 2020 present (***) Mirja Kühlewind Ericsson 2020 present (***) Jared Mauch Akamai Technologies 2020 present (***) Tommy Pauly Apple 2020 present (***) Jiankang Yao CNNIC China Internet Network Information Center 2020 present (***)
- * Term ends 2021
- *** Term ends 2022
IAB Chairs
| Member | Organization (at time of service) | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dave Clark | MIT | 1981 | July 1989 |
| Vint Cerf | CNRI | July 1989 | July 1991 |
| Lyman Chapin | Data General, BBN | July 1991 | March 1993 |
| Christian Huitema | INRIA | March 1993 | July 1995 |
| Brian Carpenter | IBM | July 1995 | March 2000 |
| John Klensin | AT&T | March 2000 | March 2002 |
| Leslie Daigle | Verisign, Cisco | March 2002 | March 2007 |
| Olaf Kolkman | NLNetlabs | March 2007 | March 2011 |
| Bernard Aboba | Microsoft | March 2011 | March 2013 |
| Russ Housley | Vigil Security | March 2013 | March 2015 |
| Andrew Sullivan | Dyn, Inc. | March 2015 | March 2017 |
| Ted Hardie | March 2017 | March 2020 | |
| Mirja Kühlewind | Ericsson | March 2020 | Present |
IAB Ex-Officio and Liaison Members
IETF Chair (Full Member, with a couple exceptions)
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Mike Corrigan (*) | 1986 | 1987 |
| Phill Gross (*) | 1988 | 1993 |
| Paul Mockapetris | 1994 | 1995 |
| Fred Baker | 1996 | 2000 |
| Harald Alvestrand | 2001 | 2005 |
| Brian Carpenter | 2005 | 2007 |
| Russ Housley | 2007 | 2013 |
| Jari Arkko | 2013 | 2017 |
| Alissa Cooper | 2017 | present |
(*) Note: Prior to 1993, the IETF chair was appointed by the IAB and served on the IAB as a regular member.
IRTF Chair (Ex-Officio)
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Dave Clark (*) | 1989 | March 1992 |
| Jon Postel (*) | March 1992 | February 1995 |
| Abel Weinrib | February 1995 | September 1999 |
| Erik Huizer | September 1999 | December 2001 |
| Vern Paxson | December 2001 | March 2005 |
| Aaron Falk | March 2005 | March 2011 |
| Lars Eggert | March 2011 | March 2017 |
| Allison Mankin | March 2017 | March 2019 |
| Colin Perkins | March 2019 | Present |
(*) Note: Prior to 1993, the IRTF chair was appointed by the IAB and served on the IAB as a regular member.
RFC Editor Liaison
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Jon Postel | 1998 | |
| Joyce Reynolds | 1999 | 2006 |
| Sandy Ginoza | 2006 | 2010 |
| Glenn Kowack | 2010 | 2011 |
| Olaf Kolkman | 2011 | 2012 |
| Heather Flanagan | 2012 | 2019 |
| John Levine | 2020 | present |
ISOC Liaison
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Larry Landweber | 1995 | 1996 |
| Don Heath | 1996 | 2000 |
| Lynn St Amour | 2000 | 2011 |
| Mat Ford | 2011 | 2018 |
| Karen O’Donoghue | 2018 | present |
IESG Liaison to the IAB
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Bob Hinden | June 1993 | March 1994 |
| Allison Mankin | July 1995 | March 1997 |
| Keith Moore | August 1997 | March 2000 |
| Randy Bush | March 2000 | August 2001 |
| Erik Nordmark | August 2001 | May 2003 |
| Bert Wijnen | May 2003 | March 2006 |
| Ted Hardie | March 2006 | June 2006 |
| Dan Romascanu | June 2006 | March 2007 |
| Mark Townsley | March 2007 | July 2008 |
| Lars Eggert | July 2008 | July 2009 |
| Ron Bonica | July 2009 | March 2011 |
| Sean Turner | March 2011 | March 2012 |
| Robert Sparks | March 2012 | March 2013 |
| Barry Leiba | March 2013 | March 2014 |
| Alissa Cooper | March 2014 | February 2015 |
| Alia Atlas | February 2015 | May 2016 |
| Suresh Krishnan | May 2016 | March 2017 |
| Kathleen Moriarty | March 2017 | March 2018 |
| Deborah Brungard | March 2018 | March 2019 |
| Mirja Kühlewind | March 2019 | March 2020 |
| Alvaro Retana | March 2020 | present |
Executive Director (Ex-Officio)
| From | To | |
|---|---|---|
| Bob Braden | 1983 | 1994 |
| Abel Weinrib | 1994 | March 2001 |
| Leslie Daigle (*) | March 2001 | March 2002 |
| Geoff Huston (*) | March 2002 | March 2005 |
| Rich Draves | April 2005 | March 2006 |
| Phil Roberts | April 2006 | April 2007 |
| Joe Abley | April 2007 | March 2008 |
| Dow Street | March 2008 | March 2012 |
| Mary Barnes | March 2012 | March 2014 |
| Ted Hardie (*) | March 2015 | March 2017 |
(*) Serving IAB Member and Executive Director.
IAB Liaison to the IESG
Two IAB members serve as liaison to the IESG, namely the IAB chair (ex-officio) and another designated members. The designated liaisons have been:
Member From To Lyman Chapin July 1991 March 1993 Christian Huitema March 1993 May 1993 Yakov Rekhter May 1993 March 1996 Robert Elz March 1996 April 1998 John Klensin April 1998 August 1998 Charlie Perkins August 1998 March 1999 Steve Deering (backup) August 1998 March 1999 Ned Freed March 1999 March 2000 Steve Bellovin April 2000 March 2002 Rob Austein March 2002 March 2005 David Meyer March 2005 March 2007 Loa Andersson March 2007 March 2009 Dave Oran March 2009 March 2010 Danny McPherson March 2010 September 2010 Hannes Tschofenig September 2010 September 2011 Joel Halpern September 2011 March 2014 Mary Barnes March 2014 March 2015 Brian Trammell February 2015 May 2016 Robert Sparks May 2016 March 2017 Suzanne Woolf March 2017 March 2018 Jeff Tantsura March 2018 March 2019 Wes Hardaker March 2019 present
Links
Sources
The information in this document was derived from:
-
- RFC 985: Requirements for Internet Gateways — Draft (May 1986)
- RFC 1120: The Internet Activities Board (September 1989)
- RFC 1160: The Internet Activities Board (May 1990)
- RFC 1336: Who’s Who in the Internet: Biographies of IAB, IESG and IRSG Members (May 1992)
- RFC 1601: The Charter of the IAB (March 1994)
- RFC 3160: The Tao of the IETF (August 2001)
- Internet Society, Board of Trustees List of Resolutions (starting 1993)
- IAB meeting minutes (1990-)
- IESG meeting minutes (1991-)
- Bob Braden, “The End-to-end Research Group – Internet Philosophers and ‘Physicists'”, Presentation to the IETF plenary, March 1998.
- Bob Braden, “Overview of the IETF”, Presentation to ETSI Workshop on VoIP, Sophia-Antipolis, France, June 1999.
- A Brief History of the Internet
- Personal Communication from Professor Douglas Comer, September 2002
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement and thanks to Henning Schulzrinne, who edited the original version of this document.
Information used to assemble this document has been compiled and provided by Geoff Huston, Steve Deering, Brian Carpenter, Bob Braden, Allison Mankin, Michael St Johns, Henning Schulzrinne and Doug Comer.
Corrections and Additions
Please send corrections and additions to the IAB Executive Administrative Manager.