Thursday, December 25, 2008

Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standard bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and leaders are volunteers, though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's.

BBN initially chose a rugged zed version of Honeywell's DDP-516 computer to build the first-generation IMP. The 516 was originally configured with 24 kB of core memory (expandable) and a 16 channel Direct Multiplex Control (DMC) direct memory access control unit. Custom interfaces were used to connect, via the DMC, to each of the hosts and modems. In addition to the lamps on the front panel of the 516 there was also a special set of 24 indicator lights to show the status of the IMP communication channels. Each IMP could support up to four local hosts and could communicate with up to six remote IMPs over leased lines.

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