Once the initial sites were picked, representatives from each site gathered together to start talking about solving the technical problem of getting the hosts to communicate via protocols. The ARPA Completion report tells us about this beginning:
"To provide the hosts with a little impetus to work on the host-to-host problems. ARPA assigned Elmer Shapiro of SRI "to make something happen", a typically vague ARPA assignment. Shapiro called a meeting in the summer of 1968 which was attended by programmers from several of the first hosts to be connected to the network. Individuals who were present have said that it was clear from the meeting at that time, no one had even any clear notions of what the fundamental host-to-host issues might be." (AC Draft III-67 1.4.1.7)
Again, we see that this group, which came to be know as the Network Working Group (NWG), was exploring new territory. The first meeting took place several months before the first IMP was put together and they had to think from a blank slate. Throughout the existing recollections of the important developments the NWG produced, (especially RFC 1000) the reader is reminded that the thinking involved was totally original and thus thought-provoking. Steve Crocker remembers in the RFC Reference Guide (RFC 1000) that the first meeting was chaired by Elmer Shapiro, who initiated the conversation with a list of questions. (Crocker, 1993b) Also present were Steve Carr from University of Utah, Stephen Crocker from UCLA, Jeff Rulifson from SRI, and Ron Stoughton from UCSB. These attendees are the programmers referred to in the ARPANET Completion Report.
In the words of Steve Crocker, this was a seminal meeting. The attendees could only be but theoretical, as none of the lowest levels of communication had been developed yet. They needed a transport layer or low-level communications platform to be able to build upon. BBN did not deliver the first IMP until August 30, 1969. It was important to meet beforehand, as the NWG "imagined all sorts of possibilities." (Rfc1000) Only once their thought processes started could this working group actually develop anything. These fresh thoughts from fresh minds help to incubate new ideas. The ARPANET Completion Report properly acknowledges what this early group helped accomplished: " Their early thinking was at a very high level." (ARPA draft, III-67) A concrete decision of the first meeting was to continue holding meetings similar to the first one. This wound up setting the precedent of a holding exchange meetings at each of the sites.
Steve Crocker, describing the problems facing these networking pioneers, writes:
"With no specific service definition in place for what the IMPs were providing to the hosts, there wasn't any clear idea of what work the hosts had to do. Only later did we articulate the notion of building a layered set of protocols with general transport services on the bottom and multiple application- specific protocols on the top. More precisely, we understood quite early that we wanted quite a bit of generality, but we didn't have a clear idea how to achieve it. We struggled between a grand design and getting something working quickly." (Crocker,1993c)
The initial protocol development lead to DEL (Decode- Encode-Language) and NIL (Network Interchange Language). These languages were ahead of their time. The basic purpose was to form an on-the-fly description that would tell the receiving end how to understand the information that would be sent. However, these first set of meetings were extremely abstract as neither ARPA nor the universities had deemed any official charter. The lack of a charter allowed the group to think broadly and openly however.
BBN did submit details as to the host-IMP interface specifications from the IMP side. This information provided the group some definite starting points to build from. Soon after BBN provided more information, on Valentine's Day, 1969, members of the NWG, members of BBN and members of the Network Analysis Corporation (NAC) met for the first time. [The NAC was contracted by ARPA to "specify the topological design of the ARPANET and to analyze its cost, performance, and reliability characteristics. (ARPA not draft, III-30)] As all the parties had different priorities on mind, the meeting was a difficult one. BBN was interested in the lowest level of making a reliable connection. The programmers from the host sites were interested in getting the hosts to communicate with each either via various higher level programs. And BBN also did not turn out to be the "experts from the East" that Steve Crocker wrote the members of the NWG expected. He continues by writing in RFC 1000 that they constantly thought that "a professional crew would show up eventually to take over the problems we were dealing with."
A step of incredible importance and openness occurred as a result from a "particularly delightful" meeting that took place a month later in Utah. (RFC1000) The participants decided it was time to start recording their meetings in a consistent fashion. What resulted was a set of informal notes titled "Request for Comments." Steve Crocker writes about their formation:
"I remember having great fear that we would offend whomever the official protocol designers were, and I spent a sleepless night composing humble words for our notes. The basic ground rules were that anyone could say anything and that nothing was official. And to emphasize the point, I labeled the notes "Request for Comments." I never dreamed these notes would distributed through the very medium we were discussing in these notes. Talk about Sorcerer's Apprentice!" (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg 3, 1987)
Crocker replaced Shapiro as the Chairman of the NWG after the initial meeting. He describes how they wrestled with creation of the host-host protocols:
"Over the spring and summer of 1969 we grappled with the detailed problems of protocol design. Although we had a vision of the vast potential for intercomputer communication, designing usable protocols was another matter. A custom hardware interface and custom intrusion into the operating system was going to be required for anything we designed, and we anticipated serious difficulty at each of the sites. We looked for existing abstractions to use. It would have been convenient if we could have made the network simply look like a tape drive to each host, but we knew that wouldn't do." (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg. 3)
The first two IMPs were delivered to UCLA (number 1) and SRI (Number 2). Once two IMPs existed, the NWG had to implement a working protocol. This first set of host protocols included a remote login for interactive use (telnet), and a way to copy files between remote hosts (FTP). Crocker writes:
"In particular, only asymmetric, user-server relationships were supported. In December 1969, we met with Larry Roberts in Utah, [and he] made it abundantly clear that our first step was not big enough, and we went back to the drawing board. Over the next few months we designed a symmetric host-host protocol, and we defined an abstract implementation of the protocol known as the Network Control Program. ("NCP" later came to be used as the name for the protocol, but it originally meant the program within the operating system that managed connections. The protocol itself was known blandly only as the host-host protocol.) Along with the basic host-host protocol, we also envisioned a hierarchy of protocols, with Telnet, FTP and some splinter protocols as the first examples. If we had only consulted the ancient mystics, we would have seen immediately that seven layers were required." (RFC 1000, pg 4)
After Robert's guidance, the Network Working Group went forward in developing the protocols necessary to make the network viable. The group swelled in attendance as more and more sites connected to the ARPANET. The group became large enough (around 100 people) that one meeting was held in conjunction with the 1971 Spring Joint Computer Conference in Atlantic City. A major test of the NWG's work came in October 1971, when a meeting was held at MIT. Crocker continues the story,
"[A] major protocol "fly-off" - Representatives from each site were on hand, and everyone tried to log in to everyone else's site. With the exception of one site that was completely down, the matrix was almost completely filled in, and we had reached a major milestone in connectivity." (Crocker, RFC 1000, pg. 4)
The NCP was created as what was called the "host to host protocol." Explaining why this was important, the authors of the ARPA draft write:
"The problem is to design a host protocol which is sufficiently powerful for the kinds of communication that will occur and yet can be implemented in all of the various different host computer systems. The initial approach taken involved an entity called a "Network Control Program" which would typically reside in the executive of a host, such that processes within a host would communicate with the network through this Network Control Program. The primary function of the NCP is to establish connections, break connections, switch connections, and control flow. A layered approach was taken such that more complex procedures (such as File Transfer Procedures) were built on top of similar procedures in the host Network Control Program." (Arpa draft, II-24)
As the ARPANET grew, the number of Users bypassed the number of developers. This signaled the success of these networking pioneers. Steve Crocker appointed Alex McKenize and Jon Postel to replace him as Chairmen of the Network Working Group. The Completion Report details how this role changed:
"McKenzie and Postel interpreted their task to be one of codification and coordination primarily, and after a few more spurts of activity the protocol definition process settled for the most part into a status of a maintenance effort." (ARPA draft,III-69)
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) was a management body which lent funding to academic computer scientists. ARPA's smart management sense paved the way for these scientists to create the ARPANET. BBN helped via developing the packet switching techniques most suitable to passing a wide variety of information. However, the most important development was that of the "Request for Comments" documentation.