100 Documents: Internet Protocol (1981)
In 1969, Jon Postel (1943-98) helped set up the first node on the ARPANET - the precursor to the modern Internet. For the next 20 years, he was involved in establishing the technical protocols that make the Internet work, and founding the Internet community.
In 1981, he wrote a 45-page technical document called “RFC:791″ (the Internet Protocol for short). It built on the work of Robert Kahn & Vinton Cerf (his fellow computer scientists). The Internet Engineering Task Force approved it as the Transfer Control Protocol (TCP/IP).
At this point, messages could already be sent from one computer to another, via a small network of linked computers. But this activity was originally intended to carry out only a limited set of activities. All the members of this network were involved in government work.
With Postel’s TCP/IP, the “Internet” was transformed into a big network containing smaller networks, which freely moved data around without changing/examining it, according to basic standards that made it function efficiently & gave it structure. Basically, the TCP/IP determines the way data is moved through a network. This new Internet was simpler to implement, subscribe to, and maintain.
Postel wrote: “In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behaviour, and liberal in its receiving behaviour.”
The new network was tested, and in November, Postel published a transition plan. The 400 ARPANET hosts would be migrated from the older NCP protocol, to the TCP/IP, and this would happen by January 1st, 1983 - they had just over a year to do it. After that, any hosts that hadn’t switched would be cut off. The transition went smoothly.
In 1998, Postel died. Tim Berners-Lee (the computer scientist who is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web) said, “Those of us who came into the Internet after its beginning inherited not only a wonderful idea and technology, but also a wonderful society, sets of values and ways of working which are only too rare elsewhere. Jon Postel stood at the centre of this, not only in his work - the service her performed as a public trust, but also for the things which, in doing that, he stood for. The concept that some things belong to everybody. Doing things because they are the right thing to do. Tolerance of different opinions - and so on - now known as the Internet culture. His death leaves us with a heavy responsibility to continue that tradition.”