RFC 2468

I REMEMBER IANA 🌸

Title block, bestie: this is RFC 2468, written by V. Cerf of MCI and dated October 1998. It's Informational 🦋, which means it shares info and is NOT a standard. The original doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so there's no drama there. The official date on it is October 17, 1998 🎀.

Status of This Memo 📜

okay so this memo is just here to give info to the Internet community 💖. It is not a standard of any kind, and anyone can pass it around freely with no limits 🌈.

Copyright Notice ©️

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

Remembrance 🕯️🌈

Okay, bestie, grab a tissue 😭. A long time ago, in a network, far far away, a great adventure happened! ✨

Out of the chaos of new ideas for communication, the experiments, the messy first designs, and the crucible of testing, a whole cornucopia of networks came to life 🍓. It all started with the ARPANET, and then an endless stream of networks kept popping up, and they eventually got linked together to become the Internet 🌐. Someone had to keep track of all the protocols, the identifiers, the networks, the addresses, and ultimately the names of every single thing in the networked universe 📚. And someone also had to keep track of all the info that erupted like volcanic force from the intensity of the debates, the discussions, and the nonstop invention that has kept going for 30 years 🌋. That someone was Jonathan B. Postel, our Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, friend, engineer, confidant, leader, icon, and now the first of the giants to leave our midst 🫶.

Jon, our beloved IANA, is gone. Even as I'm typing this, I still can't quite process it 💔. We almost lost him once before, in 1991 🥺. We all knew he was at risk, just like all of us are 🙈. But he was our rock, the foundation that every web search and email was built on 🪨. He was always there to mediate the random dispute, to remind us when our documentation didn't do justice to its subject, to make hard decisions look effortless, and to consult when careful thinking was needed 🧠. We will survive this loss, and we will remember 💜. He left a monumental legacy for all Internauts to contemplate 👑. Steadfast service for decades, moving when everyone else seemed frozen, always finding the right path through a complex minefield of technical and sometimes political obstacles 💣.

Jon and I went to the same high school, Van Nuys High, in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles 🏫. But we were in different classes, and I honestly didn't really know him back then 🙈. Our real meeting happened at UCLA, when we became part of a group of graduate students working for Professor Leonard Kleinrock on the ARPANET project 🎓. Steve Crocker was another Van Nuys kid on the team, and he led the development of the first host-host protocols for the ARPANET 🛠️. When Steve invented the idea of the Request for Comments series, Jon became the instant editor ✍️. When we needed to keep track of all the hosts and protocol identifiers, Jon volunteered to be the Numbers Czar, and later the IANA, once the Internet was in place 👑.

Jon was a founding member of the Internet Architecture Board, and he served continuously from its founding right up to the present 🏛️. He was the FIRST individual member of the Internet Society that I know of, because he and Steve Wolff raced to see who could fill out the application forms and make payment first, and Jon won 🏆. He served as a trustee of the Internet Society 🪪. He was the custodian of the .US domain, a founder of the Los Nettos Internet service, and, by the way, he managed the networking research division of USC Information Sciences Institute 🤓.

Jon loved the outdoors 🏔️. I know he used to enjoy backpacking in the high Sierras around Yosemite 🎒. Bearded and sandaled, Jon was our resident hippie-patriarch at UCLA 🧔. He was a private person, but he was fully capable of engaging photon torpedoes and going to battle stations in a good engineering argument 🚀. And he could be stubborn beyond all expectation 😤. I think he could have outwaited the Sphinx in a staring contest 🐪.

Jon inspired loyalty and steadfast devotion among his friends and colleagues 💖. For me, he personified the words "selfless service" 🫶. For nearly 30 years, Jon served us all, took very little in return, and sometimes even got abuse when he should have gotten our deepest appreciation 💔. It was especially gratifying at the last Internet Society meeting in Geneva, when Jon received the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union 🥈. That award is generally reserved for Heads of State, but I can't think of anyone more deserving of global recognition for his contributions 👑✨.

While it feels almost impossible to avoid a massive sense of loss, like a yawning gap opened up in our networked universe and swallowed our friend, I'm comforted when I think about what Jon has wrought 🌌. He leaves a legacy of edited documents that tell our collective Internet story, including the technical, the poetic, and the whimsical too 📖🧚. He completed the incorporation of a successor to his service as IANA, and he leaves a lasting legacy of service to the community in that role 🎀. His memory is rich and vibrant and won't fade from our collective consciousness 🌈. "What would Jon have done?" is what we'll all think as we wrestle, in the days ahead, with the problems Jon kept so well tamed for so many years 🤔.

There will almost surely be many memorials to Jon's monumental service to the Internet Community 🕊️. As current chairman of the Internet Society, I pledge to establish an award in Jon's name to recognize long-standing service to the community: the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award 🏅. It will be awarded to Jon posthumously as its first recipient 💜.

If Jon were here, I'm sure he'd urge us not to mourn his passing, but to celebrate his life and his contributions 🥹. He'd remind us that there's still a lot of work to be done, and that we now have the responsibility and the opportunity to do our part 💪. I doubt anyone could possibly duplicate his record, but it stands as a measure of one man's astonishing contribution to a community he knew and loved 🌸🫶.

Security Considerations 🔐

Security issues are not relevant to this Remembrance. No cap, this one's just a love letter 💌.

Author's Address 📮

Vinton G. Cerf MCI

EMail: vcerf@mci.net 💌

Full Copyright Statement ⚖️

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

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others. Derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it, or help with its implementation, may be prepared, copied, published, and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, as long as the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works 🎁. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or the references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations. The exceptions are: developing Internet standards, in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or translating it into languages other than English 🌍.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns ♾️.

This document and the information in it are provided on an "AS IS" basis, and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS, OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 🫶.