RFC 2441

RFC 2441: Working with Jon 💖

Okay bestie, this is RFC 2441, a tribute titled "Working with Jon," written by Danny Cohen of Myricom. It's an Informational doc from November 1998, and it doesn't obsolete or update anything. It was delivered at UCLA on October 30, 1998 🎀

Status of this Memo ✨

This memo gives info to the Internet community. It is NOT a spec for any Internet standard 🙈 Distribution is unlimited, so share it with everyone!

Copyright Notice 📜

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

Tribute 🧚

Okay so in 1973, after doing interactive flight simulation over the ARPAnet, Danny joined ISI and applied that experience to interactive speech over the ARPAnet. It's giving main character energy 💅

The communication requirements for realtime speech were unique (more like UDP than like TCP). That got Danny involved in the Network Working Group, and she started another project at ISI called "Internet Concepts" 🦋

In 1977, Steve Crocker, who was at ISI back then, told Danny that Jon was willing to join them, and that Jon would be a great addition to the Internet Concepts project. Steve was right on both counts 👑

Jon and Danny worked together from 1977 until 1993, when Danny left ISI. According to ISI's management, Jon worked for Danny for several years, and Danny worked for him for several years. But literally, they never worked for each other (or for ISI). They always worked together, to advance the technology they believed in 🫶 Over most of those 16 years they shared offices, and they always worked with each other, even when they were on totally different projects.

Jon was always the most pleasant to work with. He cared a ton about the project and about the people on the team. He was always full of great intentions and humor. Jon was always ready for mischief, one way or another, and he was always game to hack something 😭

When Danny worked on the MOSIS project in 1980, users submitted their VLSI designs to them by e-mail. Several defense contractors found getting access to the ARPAnet too complex, so the team suggested they use a commercial e-mail service, like TELEmail, instead 💜

Then they had the problem of getting all the e-mail systems to interoperate, since none of them was willing to interoperate with the others. Jon and Danny solved this during one long night of hacking 🌈 That hack later became the mail-tunnel behind the service known as "InterMail," which passed e-mail between various non-cooperating systems, including MCImail and IEEE's COMPmail.

Danny is sure Jon was so enthusiastic about working on it for two reasons:

• Interoperability among heterogeneous e-mail systems was their religion, with no tolerance for separatism 🔥
• They definitely were not supposed to do it 💀

Jon hated bureaucracy and silly rules, as Cary Thomas described so well. Too bad they lived in an environment with so many rules 🙄

They started Los-Nettos without lawyers and without formal contracts. Handshakes were good enough 🤝 At that time, several other regional networks were popping up around the country. Most of them were into expansion, glory, and fortune. Jon was only interested in getting the problem solved ✨

This was Jon's priority, both at work and in his life 🍓

Danny finds it funny to read in the papers that Jon was the director of IANA. Honestly? Jon was IANA 😤 Even more important, Jon was the corporate memory of the Internet, and also its corporate style and technical taste.

Jon was an authority without bureaucracy. No silly rules! His authority didn't come from any management structure. It came from his personality, his dedication, his deep understanding, and his demanding technical taste and style 👑

Jon set the standards for both the Internet standards and the Internet standardization process. He turned the RFCs into a central piece of standardization 🫶

You might read that Jon was the editor of the RFCs and think he just checked the grammar or the format. Nope, not even close. He did check those, but on top of that, as the corporate memory, Jon often told authors that earlier work had covered the same subject, and that their work would get better if they learned from it 🧠

For those in the audience who are either too young or too old to remember, let's recall some recent history:

The Internet protocols (mainly IP, TCP, UDP, FTP, Telnet, FTP, and even SNMP) were defined and documented in their RFCs. DoD adopted them and announced a date by which all DoD units would have to use TCP/IP. They even translated RFC791 from Jon's English into proper Militarese 🫠

But all the other countries (their governments and PTTs) joined the ISO wagon, the X.25 based suite of OSI protocols. The US government joined too and defined GOSIP. All the big computer companies, from IBM and DEC on down, announced their future plans to hop on the GOSIP bandwagon. DoD totally capitulated and denounced the "DoD unique protocols," and was looking for ways to forget all about them, spending millions of dollars on GOSIP and X.500 💸

On the Internet side, there was a very small group of young Davids going up against them. The OSI camp had its prestige, but we had working systems, a large community of devotees, and properly documented protocols that let the TCP/IP suite get integrated into every UNIX system, like every SUN workstation 💪

Because of the strict laws in Europe, their universities built an underground of Internet connections. You could get from California to the university in Rome, for example, by going over the Internet across the US to the east coast, then to the UK, then over some private lines to France, then to CERN in Switzerland, and from there to Rome. And you were breaking the laws of all those countries with every packet 😈

Meanwhile, in the states, Academia and the research communities never knew about GOSIP 🙈

The Internet, against all the conventional wisdom, grew without anyone being in charge, without central control, and without any central planning. Iconic 🌸

The war between the ISO and TCP/IP camps never happened. One camp turned out to be a no-show 😌

What made it all possible was the wise choice of what to standardize and what not to, along with the high quality of the standards in a series of living documents 📚

Our foundation and infrastructure of standards was the secret weapon that won the war. Jon created it, using the RFC mechanism that Steve Crocker started. Jon immediately realized how important it was, and that someone needed to act as the curator, and he volunteered 🫶

The lightning speed with which Microsoft joined the Internet wouldn't have been possible without the quality of the existing standards, which were so well documented 💻

During the transition from ARPA, through the NSF, to the commercial world, there was a point where the trivial funding needed to keep editing and distributing the RFCs smoothly was in doubt. The prospect of not having funds to run the operation was very real. Eventually the problem got solved, and the process didn't suffer any interruption 🎉

What most of the agencies and managers involved didn't know is that there was never any danger of interruption. Jon would have done it even with no external funding. If they didn't pay him to do it, he would have paid them to let him do it. For him it wasn't a job, it was a labor of love 💖

Jon never joined the PowerPoint generation. He always believed that the content was the only thing that matters. Handwritten slides were good enough. Color and logos were distractions, a necessary evil on certain occasions, but not the style of choice 🖍️

Jon defined quality by counting interesting ideas, not points per inch ✨

When fancy formatting crept into the Internet community, Jon resisted the temptation to allow fancy formats for RFCs. Instead, he insisted they be in ASCII, easy to e-mail, and guaranteed to be readable anywhere in the world. The instant availability and usability of RFCs mattered way more to him than how fancy they looked 💅

The Internet wasn't just a job for Jon. It was his hobby and his mission in life 🦋

We will miss Jon, who was the Internet's corporate memory, corporate style, and corporate taste. Danny will miss him even more as a colleague and a friend 😭🫶

In Summary:

• Jon was pleasant, fun/funny, and unselfish. He was full of mischief, adventure, humor, and caring. He was devoted to his work, to the Internet, and to the people who worked with him 💜
• It was great working together and having neighboring offices for 16 years 🌈
• Jon set the standards for the Internet standards ⭐
• Jon was the Internet's corporate memory, the corporate taste, and the corporate style 👑
• Jon was an authority without bureaucracy 🎀
• Jon was an Internet Missionary 🧚
• Jon was a great friend that Danny will miss forever 😭💖

Security Considerations 🔐

Security issues are not relevant to this Tribute. (Zero drama, all vibes ✨)

Author's Address 🖊️

Danny Cohen
Myricom

EMail: cohen@myri.com

Full Copyright Statement ⚖️

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved.

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