RFC 28

Time Standards

📅 published January 1970, from ietf

RFC 28: TIME STANDARDS 🎀✨

Okay bestie, this one is a tiny, adorable piece of networking history 🦋 It's from 1970, way before the modern Internet was a thing, and it was written by Bill English of SRI (the Stanford Research Institute). It's an RFC in the Network Working Group series, dated 13 January 1970. 💖

So what's it about? The author's team is about to install a relatively accurate real-time clock on their system 🕰️ and he's asking the group for comments on network time standards for things like delay measurement. The goal is to decide how good the clock should be. Main character energy: "we need a good clock, what do you all think?" 💅

The distribution list at the end is basically the guest list of the early ARPANET crew 👑: A. Bhushan (MIT), S. Carr (Utah), G. Cole (SDS), S. Crocker (UCLA), K. Fry (MITRE), J. Heafner (RAND), B. Kahn (BB&N), T. O'Sullivan (Raytheon), L. Roberts (ARPA), P. Rovner (LL), and R. Stoughton (UCSB). Iconic cast 🌈

Here's the whole note, word for word, since it's short and sweet 🍓

We are about to install a relatively accurate real-time clock on our
system.  I would like any comments relative to Network time standards
for such things as delay measurement so we can decide how good our clock
should be.

Distribution (the people who got the memo 📬):

  • A. Bhushan, MIT
  • S. Carr, Utah
  • G. Cole, SDS
  • S. Crocker, UCLA
  • K. Fry, MITRE
  • J. Heafner, RAND
  • B. Kahn, BB&N
  • T. O'Sullivan, Raytheon
  • L. Roberts, ARPA
  • P. Rovner, LL
  • R. Stoughton, UCSB

Honestly the vibe is so pure: one clock, one question, a whole network of people invited to weigh in 🫶 ngl, that's how good protocol design starts 🧚

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