The International Network Working Group (INWG) was a group of prominent computer science researchers in the 1970s who studied and developed standards and protocols for interconnection of computer networks. Set up in 1972 as an informal group to consider the technical issues involved in connecting different networks, its goal was to develop an international standard protocol for internetworking. INWG became a subcommittee of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) the following year. Concepts developed by members of the group contributed to the Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication proposed by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1974 and the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) that emerged later.
History
Founding and IFIP affiliation The International Network Working Group was formed by Steve Crocker, Louis Pouzin, Donald Davies, and Peter Kirstein in June 1972 in Paris at a networking conference organised by Pouzin. Crocker saw that it would be useful to have an international version of the Network Working Group, which developed the Network Control Program for the ARPANET. At the International Conference on Computer Communication (ICCC) in Washington D.C. in October 1972, Vint Cerf was approved as INWG's Chair on Crocker's recommendation. The group included American researchers representing the ARPANET and the Merit network, the French CYCLADES and RCP networks, and British teams working on the NPL network, EPSS, and European Informatics Network. During early 1973, Pouzin arranged affiliation with the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). INWG became IFIP Working Group 1 under Technical Committee 6 (Data Communication) with the title "International Packet Switching for Computer Sharing" (WG6.1). This standing, although informal, enabled the group to provide technical input on packet networking to CCITT and ISO. Its purpose was to study and develop "international standard protocols for internetworking". INWG published a series numbered notes, some of which were also RfCs.
Gateways/routers The idea for a router (called a gateway at the time) was initially described in "INWG Note 1", a report written in October 1972 by Donald Davies (NPL, UK), P. Shanks (Post Office, UK), Frank Heart (BBN, US), B. Barker (BBN, US), Rémi Després (PTT, France), V. Detwiler (UBC, Canada) and O. Riml (Bell-Northern Research, Canada). These gateway devices were different from most previous packet switching schemes in two ways. First, they connected dissimilar kinds of networks, such as serial lines and local area networks. Second, they were connectionless devices, which had no role in assuring that traffic was delivered reliably, leaving that function entirely to the hosts. This particular idea, the end-to-end principle, had been pioneered in the CYCLADES network.
Proposal for an international end-to-end protocol A second sub-group considered host-to-host protocol requirements. This group consisted of Barry Wessler (ARPA, US), Vint Cerf (Stanford University, US), Kjell Samuelson (Stockholm University), Derek Barber (NPL, UK), C.D. Shephard (Deptartment of Communications, Canada), Louis Pouzin (IRIA, France), Brian Sexton (NPL, UK), William Clipsham (UK), Keith Sandum, Alex McKenzie (BBN, US), and Jeremy Tucker (Logica, UK). In their initial report in October 1972, they listed existing protocols for various networks that they planned to review, including the "Walden Message-Switching Protocol, ARPA H-H Protocol, NPL High-Level Protocol, CYCLADES Protocol, SPSS Protocol, etc." INWG met in New York in June 1973. Attendees included Cerf, Bob Kahn, Alex McKenzie, Bob Metcalfe, Roger Scantlebury, John Shoch and Hubert Zimmermann, among others. They discussed a first draft of an International Transmission Protocol (ITP). Zimmermann and Metcalfe dominated the discussions; Zimmermann had been working with Pouzin on the CYCLADES network while Metclafe, Shoch and others at Xerox PARC had been developing the idea of Ethernet and the PARC Universal Packet (PUP) for internetworking. Notes from the meetings were recorded by Cerf and McKenzie, which was circulated after the meeting (INWG 28). There was a follow-up meeting in July. Gerard LeLann and G. Grossman made contributions after the June meeting. Building on this work, in September 1973, Kahn and Cerf presented a paper, Host and Process Level Protocols for Internetwork Communication, at the next INWG meeting at the University of Sussex in England (INWG 39). Their ideas were refined further in long discussions with Davies, Scantlebury, Pouzin and Zimmerman. Pouzin circulated a paper on Interconnection of Packet Switching Networks in October 1973 (INWG 42), in which he introduced the term catenet for an interconnected network. Zimmerman and Michel Elie wrote a Proposed Standard Host-Host Protocol for Heterogenous Computer Networks: Transport Protocol in December 1973 (INWG 43). Pouzin updated his paper with A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet Switching Networks in March 1974 (INWG 60), published two months later in May. Zimmerman and Elie circulated a Standard host-host protocol for heterogeneous computer networks in April 1974 (INWG 61). Pouzin published An integrated approach to network protocols in May 1975.
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