Re: I think we missed something important when FTP was shut off.

["[e-mail]" <[e-mail]>]

On Tuesday, 23 August 2022 at 16:03:18 GMT+10, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Obviously, random average “standards bodies” may not want to keep transparent history.

> I’m absolutely sure that we (IETF) want to be better than that average.


Oh, absolutely, Carsten, but we often fall short.

Just to see if I could, I tried to retrieve a particular IETF proceeding historical record. I had the advantage of personal interest and a lot of foreknowledge here, in actually knowing that this existed and what I was looking for... I'm sure there are other, better, more significant, examples of loss in proceedings, but I don't know of them offhand - because they're lost.

So.... Other than throwing away information on ftp, an example of IETF history loss that springs to my mind has to be having two separate teams getting the Interplanetary Internet tested in space, and then two separate IRTF research group chairs both forgetting to submit the minutes and slides to IETF 73 to get those two presentations mentioning that on the record. So, I'm going to use that here as an example of loss and degradation and decay of the IETF meeting records, and some of the difficulties of figuring out what happened after the fact.


https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/73/agenda/DTNRG.html
It's not linked to in the main proceedings, so it's unlikely to be found.

The Wayback Machine doesn't have those slides indexed, because, apart from links to other dead servers, there was also a .ppt/.pptx link vs actual-filename issue on all filenames -- and that's likely much more common across IETF meeting proceedings as a workflow problem. Couldn't get that fixed, or minutes addressed, at the time...


Was there audio of the session, or what we said? yes, but...

https://www.ietf.org/audio/ietf73/ietf73-ch7-thur-am.mp3 
https://web.archive.org/web/20150123022716/https://www.ietf.org/audio/ietf73/ietf73-ch7-thur-am.mp3

(try 40 min in) since the original IETF website location is apparently now passworded, I can't listen to it. (and wasn't there a login prompt on http://www.ietf.org at some point? No idea how to login to listen to old meeting audio sessions.)

The Wayback Machine is a public good we all take for granted, but do always archive your own copies of things you consider important!

http://lloydwood.users.sourceforge.net/Personal/L.Wood/publications/internet-drafts/draft-irtf-dtnrg-bundle-checksum/ietf-73-dtnrg-wood-reliability-nov-2008.pdf

But, my working through any of this depends heavily on knowing what I'm looking for in advance, in detail.

I can attempt to conclude from this single example that if you're determined enough, you can keep track of what interests you, and even follow the work you did and where it went, and another fifteen years from now I might even stumble across this mailing list post as a reminder of it all. Whether it will actually still all make sense is a question I can't answer.

But that doesn't necessarily help others who come along later, who are starting from less, and trying to navigate what is still available and presented to them.

best

Lloyd Wood
[e-mail]


Ancient history, mists of time, claims that are hard to believe... the orbital Internet? I'm starting to understand why some people think that the Apollo moon landings were faked.