Subject: [crackmonkey] Al Gore's "Internet History - A Retrospective"

From: Seth David Schoen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 20:39:39 -0800

White House                                                      Al Gore
Request for Comments: 3000                  Office of the Vice President
Category: Informational                                       April 1999

                        Internet History - A Retrospective

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
   does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Introduction

   It is a pleasure to witness the remarkable success and expansion of the
   Internet, which has led to economic growth, prosperity, and jobs for so
   many Americans.  The Internet has further helped bring the entire human
   family closer together, by expanding communications worldwide.  This
   Information Superhighway has helped businesses, schools, and communities
   find and share they information they critically need.  It is especially
   exciting to me, as one of the principal creators of the Internet, to see
   the expanded role of the Information Superhighway in society today.

   In March 1999, I happened to mention in a widely-cited interview that

        [d]uring my service in the United States Congress, I took the
        initiative in creating the Internet.[1]

   Many of my constituents, familiar with my work in social and environmental
   policy, were previously unaware of the nature of my technical contributions
   to the early Internet.  A number of them contacted me to ask for the details
   of my involvement.  I have therefore decided to produce the present
   memo as an outline of some of this history.  It is my pleasure to present
   it in the hope that it will be of some use to amateur Internet historians
   and other interested citizens.

   This paper provides historical recollections of the development of the
   Information Superhighway and (on a personal note) how I took the
   initiative in creating it.

Early History of the Internet

   The Internet first came into being during my term in the House, as a
   direct response to a bill co-sponsored by myself and a number of my
   colleagues with an interest in expanding the opportunities available
   to Americans with the creation of an Information Superhighway.

   With the assistance of a number of fine researchers in both the public
   and private sectors, I immediately set to work creating an architecture
   for the new network.  I came to realize that the new Information
   Superhighway would require a large number of standard protocols to allow
   computers to communicate with one another easily.  Therefore, with the
   advice of my colleagues in the House, I began by publishing the first
   draft of the Internet Protocol[2], the basic building block of the
   Internet.

   If you think of the Internet as a highway, my Internet Protocol is
   something like a chip of concrete or asphalt which is used to pave that
   highway.

   Since IP was useful only for getting low-level information from one place
   to another, which was not sufficient for all of the applications to which
   I anticipated my fellow Americans would desire to put this new technology,
   I also produced several companion protocols.

Gore                                                           [Page 1]

RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999

   I initially developed the Transmission Control Protocol[3], User Datagram
   Protocol[4], and Internet Control Message Protocol[5] in order to bring
   flexible session-level communications to American society.  These
   protocols serve as higher-level guidelines, like road markings or street
   signs on a highway, to provide a reliable and robust communications
   architecture for future generations.

Further Development of the Internet

   Late in my term as Representative from Tennessee, I developed a number of
   high-level applications on top of the TCP.  Recognizing the invaluable
   role e-mail could play in supporting education and commerce, I invented
   it and documented a protocol (the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol[6]) and
   an Internet standard format[7] for its transmission.

   Amidst a program of progressive social legislation, I ran a successful
   election campaign for the United States Senate, and was sworn in to
   this office in 1985.  As a Senator, I continued my efforts to develop
   and improve the Information Superhighway, creating increasingly
   sophisticated programs and protocols for dealing with the challenges
   facing a networked society.

   It rapidly became necessary, as a part of the growing Internet, to allow
   for the transfer of data files from place to place.  Almost immediately
   after the beginning of my first Senate term, my office began to receive
   a number of calls from concerned citizens from Tennessee and elsewhere,
   who argued that the future of America's youth might be severely
   handicapped unless the government acted quickly to guarantee a means of
   remote file copying.  My colleagues and I responded to such concerns
   with the File Transfer Protocol[8].

   During my Senate term, I was also instrumental in the development of the
   new Domain Name System ([9], [10], [11]).  I also worked to ensure that
   the e-mail systems I had invented only a few years before would receive
   the necessary guidance to stay modern and competitive.  My leadership
   resulted in a specification[12] which detailed the interaction between
   e-mail and the DNS, thus guaranteeing that U.S. industry would remain
   at the forefront of networking technology for years to come.

   I further improved e-mail facilities by creating the Multipurpose
   Internet Mail Extensions[13], which further expanded the power of
   electronic mail to carry more types of information of importance to
   my constituents.

Challenging Times for the Information Superhighway

   Late in my second term in the United States Senate, the Internet faced
   a number of significant challenges associated with its continued growth.
   I worked to build partnerships between the public and private sectors
   to help resolve these problems and keep the Information Superhighway
   available and useful for all Americans.

   As IP address space began to appear scarce, I led an IETF Working
   Group charged with finding solutions to the problems associated with
   address scarcity.  I have always been a dedicated conservationist,
   convinced that it is essential for Americans to protect their limited
   natural resources; I drew on my experiences within the environmental
   movement to illustrate the need to conserve IP address space.  Though
   a few short-sighted elements within the business community initially
   resisted these conservations efforts, I was ultimately able to build
   a broad bi-partisan consensus and demonstrate to all concerned that

Gore                                                           [Page 2]

RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999

   protecting our IP address space for the benefit of future generations
   is in the interest of all Americans.

   I produced several concrete proposals to improve address space
   conservation, not least of which was Classless Inter-Domain Routing[14],
   which allowed ordinary Americans to make more efficient use of their IP
   address allocations.  It also allowed thousands of previously wasted IP
   addresses to be reclaimed and recycled.

   Toward the end of my second Senate term, I turned my legislative and
   technical efforts toward the developing market of dial-up Internet
   access, which was beginning to become a significant factor in the task
   of bringing access to the Information Superhighway to the public on a
   large scale.  My initial efforts yielded the Serial Line Internet
   Protocol[15], to which I later added the Point-to-Point Protocol[16].

   With the help of my friend and colleague Van Jacobsen, I created a
   collection of techniques for IP header compression[17] to alleviate the
   burden that full-scale uncompressed IP over a dialup link posed for the
   average American.

   Beginning during my second term as Senator, and continuing into my
   first term as Vice President, I also spearheaded the World Wide Web
   project, a new milestone in communications, which helped make the
   Information Superhighway more accessible to everyone.  Thanks to the
   combination of the Hypertext Transport Protocol[18] and Hypertext Markup
   Language[19], the World Wide Web was able to transform the way people
   across the nation made use of the Internet.

   Finally, I worked to address the concern that, with the growth of the
   Web and of large-scale commercial dial-up use, Internet routing was
   becoming unworkably complex, and needed to be handled in a more elegant,
   sophisticated, logical, and efficient manner.  Through a partnership
   between public and private sectors, I helped produce a pioneering early
   version of the Border Gateway Protocol, which set the stage for the
   current Border Gateway Protocol, Version 4[20], which I was eventually
   honored to co-author as Vice President.

The Clipper and Capstone Initiatives

   Over time, many of the users of the Internet began to express concerns
   about their privacy and the confidentiality of their communications.  In
   response to their concerns, the President and I developed a powerful and
   flexible architecture designed to, as the President put it,

        bring the Federal Government together with industry in a voluntary
        program to improve the security and privacy of ...  communications
        while meeting the legitimate needs of law enforcement.[21]

   The President and I noted that we had carefully considered a number of
   important factors.

        --   the privacy of our citizens, including the need to
             employ voice or data encryption for business purposes;

        --   the ability of authorized officials to access telephone
             calls and data, under proper court or other legal
             order, when necessary to protect our citizens;

        --   the effective and timely use of the most modern
             technology to build the National Information

Gore                                                           [Page 3]

RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999

             Infrastructure needed to promote economic growth and
             the competitiveness of American industry in the global
             marketplace; and

        --   the need of U.S. companies to manufacture and export
             high technology products.[21]

   We carefully considered the concerns raised by law enforcement and privacy
   advocacy groups, and discovered that the apparent conflicts between their
   opinions were illusory; in fact,

        both concerns can be, and in fact are, harmoniously balanced through a
        reasoned, balanced approach such as is proposed with the "Clipper
        Chip" and similar encryption techniques.[21]

   Our Administration additionally developed a sophisticated counterpart of
   Clipper for data communications, called Capstone.  Capstone is capable of
   directly protecting the Information Superhighway and Americans' private
   communications.  Despite occasional industry opposition, the Administration
   has remained committed to its fundamental principles of citizens' privacy
   and lawful law enforcement access, and believes, as an independent review
   found[22], that the encryption algorithms employed in Clipper and Capstone
   are secure and state-of-the-art.

   We are very proud of all that we have accomplished with Clipper and
   Capstone, which demonstrate the commitment of our Administration to
   improving Americans' privacy on the Information Superhighway.

The Development of the World Wide Web and Parental Advisories

   As noted above, the development of the World Wide Web (WWW) brought
   untold opportunities for the use of the Information Superhighway in
   all areas of American society.  Unfortunately, it also brought with it
   risks and challenges.  Since my design for the WWW included simple
   facilities for the transmission of pictures and diagrams, the WWW could
   also be used to transmit undesirable and inappropriate materials.

   My wife Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) has had a lifelong concern for the health,
   safety, and well-being of our children, and has long been a tireless
   advocate for parental notification and control of explicit Internet
   datagrams, which represent one of the greatest threats to the well-being of
   our children.  During my term as Vice President, Tipper and I learned that
   the widespread availability of explicit datagrams on the Internet was a
   subject of serious concern to parents and teachers all across our nation.

   Tipper devoted herself for several years to the remarkably challenging task
   of crafting solutions to these problems which would protect our children
   and at the same time respect Americans' rights to freedom of speech.  I was
   extremely proud of Tipper's work and what resulted from it.  She was
   instrumental in the development of the Platform for Internet Content
   Selection[23], a neutral, flexible, W3C-endorsed architecture for allowing
   parents to make responsible choices about the kinds of material their
   children could access over the Internet.
 
   Tipper further showed the strength of her character by defending her
   efforts in the face of numerous criticisms.  When critics claimed that
   PICS facilitated automated censorship and would be used by oppressive
   regimes to infringe on the human rights of their subjects, my wife
   staunchly defended her efforts.  I stood behind her and gave her my
   strongest possible support, and, in time, the charges that PICS
   facilitated censorship and violations of the Universal Declaration of

Gore                                                           [Page 4]

RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999

   Human Rights were soundly rebuffed by the W3C:

       Some people argue that unrestricted access to information is a
       fundamental human rights question that transcends national
       sovereignty.  W3C has not adopted that position. [...] W3C leaves this
       question to the political and legal processes of each country.[24]

   It is a remarkable credit to Tipper that she was willing to defend the
   principle that access to information is not a human rights question, but
   is more properly a narrow technical and parental control issue, at a
   time when this point of view was the subject of considerable controversy.
   I am extremely proud of her efforts on both advocacy and technical fronts,
   which have managed to secure a considerable voluntary consensus in the
   media industry in favor of parental advisory labels.

   At about the same time that Tipper was developing PICS, I consulted
   with those Senators and Representatives who seemed especially dedicated
   to the cause of protecting our children, and encouraged them to take
   further action toward these ends.  The result was the bipartisan
   Communications Decency Act of 1996, which enjoyed wide support throughout
   the nation.  Regrettably, the CDA was overturned by the Supreme Court in
   1997[25].  This Court decision, however, has made Tipper's work all the more
   essential in assuring that parents retain control over the information
   their children obtain.

Internet in the Balance

   In 1992, during my first Vice Presidential election campaign, I published
   my book _Internet in the Balance: Internetworking and the Human
   Spirit_[26].  I believe that this book provides an excellent overview of
   the history of the Internet and the roles played by myself and by my
   colleagues in its formation.
 
   _Internet in the Balance_ expressed my concerns as a lifelong Internet
   activist about the future of the Internet.  I described the latest
   scientific findings concerning the health and sustainability of the
   Internet, as well as some of the threats industrial society, if left
   unchecked, could pose to the long-term sustainability of the Internet, and
   so to our childrens' future.  _Internet in the Balance_ addresses the need
   for partnerships between the public and private sectors in maintaining the
   health and well-being of the Internet for ourselves and our children as
   we move into the twenty-first century.

   As Vice President, I have important duties as an elected representative of
   the people of the United States.  As a technologist, I have obligations to
   the survival of the delicate technical systems that make up the Internet.
   I believe that these two interests are fundamentally harmonious, and I
   have endeavoured in my time as Vice President to balance these two
   interests, and especially to demonstrate the important connection between
   the well-being of the Internet and the well-being of the United States.
 
   As an expression of my continuing dedication to the important challenge
   of shaping the future of Internetworking, I took time during my term as
   Vice President to produce the definitive standard for a new "Next
   Generation" Internet Protocol, which will serve the needs of the next
   generation of Americans as they continue to rely on the Information
   Superhighway in all areas of their lives.  My "Next Generation" Internet
   Protocol, defined in RFC 2460[27], includes 128-bit addressing, as well as
   other architectural improvements, and paves the way for an upgrade to a
   new, multi-lane Information Superhighway.

Gore                                                           [Page 5]

RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999
  
Conclusion

   As we look toward the dawn of the twenty-first century, Americans have
   much to be proud of in the Internet.  We can continue to hope that
   the Information Superhighway will deliver valuable educational information
   to future generations of schoolchildren, stimulate commerce, and keep
   ordinary Americans in contact with their government.

   I am honored to have been a part of the development of the Information
   Superhighway.

Acknowledgments

   The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of his wife, Tipper
   Gore, as well as that of William Jefferson Clinton, President of the
   United States, in the preparation of this document and the completion of
   the work described herein.

   Portions of this work were funded by the DoD's Advanced Research Projects
   Agency and by the National Science Foundation, although I cannot recall
   which portions at this time.

References

   [1] Gore, A., televised interview with Wolf Blitzer, Late Edition Primetime,
       Cable News Network, March 9, 1999.
   [2] Gore, A., "Internet Protocol", RFC 791, House of Representatives,
       September 1981.
   [3] Gore, A., "Transmission Control Protocol", RFC 793, House of
       Representatives, September 1981.
   [4] Gore, A., "User Datagram Protocol", RFC 768, House of Representatives,
       September 1980.
   [5] Gore, A., "Internet Control Message Protocol", RFC 792, House of
       Representatives, April 1990.
   [6] Gore, A., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 821, House of
       Representatives, August 1982.
   [7] Gore, A., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages",
       RFC 822, House of Representatives, August 1982.
   [8] Gore, A., "File Transfer Protocol", RFC 959, United States Senate,
       October 1985.
   [9] Gore, A., "Domain Administrators Operations Guide", RFC 1033, United
       States Senate, November 1987.
  [10] Gore, A., "Domain Names: Concepts and Facilities", RFC 1034, United
       States Senate, November 1987.
  [11] Gore, A., "Domain Names: Implementation and Specification", RFC 1035,
       United States Senate, November 1987.
  [12] Gore, A., "Mail Routing and the Domain System", RFC 974, United States
       Senate, January 1986.
  [13] Gore, A., "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions: Part One, Mechanisms
       for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies",
       RFC 1521, United States Senate, September 1993.  RFC 1521 has been
       complemented and augmented by a number of subsequent works by many
       of my friends and colleagues.
  [14] Gore, A., "An Architecture for IP Address Allocation with CIDR", RFC
       1518, United States Senate, September 1993.
  [15] Gore, A., "A Nonstandard for Transmission of IP Datagrams over Serial
       Lines: SLIP", United States Senate, June 1988.  I chose to call this
       protocol a "nonstandard" because of the realization that it was, at
       best, a stop-gap measure, and that the American people ultimately
       deserved a more complete, functional, and general serial-line
       encapsulation protocol.  This I ultimately produced in PPP[16].

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RFC 3000          Internet History - A Retrospective          April 1999
  
  [16] Gore, A., "The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)", RFC 1661, United States
       Senate, July 1994.
  [17] Gore, A., and Jacobsen, V., "Compressing TCP/IP Headers for Low-Speed
       Serial Links", RFC 1144, United States Senate and Lawrence Berkeley
       National Laboratory, February 1990.
  [18] Gore, A., Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and Frystyk, H., "Hypertext
       Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, Office of the Vice
       President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of
       California at Irvine, May 1996.  The Office of the Vice President
       has been working closely with the W3C to produce the current W3C
       HTTP/1.1 recommendation.
  [19] Gore, A., Berners-Lee, T., and Connolly, D., "Hypertext Markup
       Language - 2.0", RFC 1866, Office of the Vice President and
       Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 1995.  The Office of
       the Vice President has been working closely with the W3C to produce
       the current W3C HTML 4.0 recommendation.
  [20] Gore, A., Rechter, Y., and Li, T., "A Border Gateway Protocol 4
       (BGP-4)", RFC 1771, Office of the Vice President, IBM Corp., and
       Cisco Systems, March 1995.
  [21] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Statement, April 16,
       1993.
  [22] Brickell, E. F., Denning, D. E., Kent, S. T., Maher, D. P., and
       Tuchman, W., "SKIPJACK Review: Interim Report", July 28, 1993.
  [23] Gore, M. E., "Platform for Internet Content Selection, Version 1.1":
       "Rating Services and Rating Systems (and their Machine Readable
       Descriptions)", "PICS Label Distribution Label Syntax and Communication
       Protocols", "PICSRules 1.1", and "PICS Signed Labels (DSig) 1.0
       Specification", W3C Recommendations, October 1996.
  [24] Resnick, P., "PICS, Censorship, and Intellectual Freedom Frequently
       Asked Questions", January 26, 1998.
  [25] United States Supreme Court, _Reno, Attorney General of the United
       States, et al., v. American Civil Liberties Union, et al._  521 U.S.
       ___ (1997), case no. 96-511.  Appeal from the United States District
       Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
  [26] Gore, A., _Internet in the Balance: Internetworking and the Human
       Spirit_, Houghton Mifflin 1992.
  [27] Gore, A., "Internet Protocol, Version 6: Specification", RFC 2460,
       Office of the Vice President, December 1998.

Security Considerations

   Security considerations are not addressed in this memo.

Author's Address

    Albert Gore
    The White House
    Office of the Vice President
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
    Washington, DC 20500

    Phone: (202)456-1414
    E-mail: [email-masked]

Gore                                                           [Page 7]


-- 
              Seth David Schoen / [email-masked]
He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do."  And they
said, "Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the
nations." (1 Sam 8)  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/   http://www.loyalty.org/
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