Summary

  • RFC 1166 listed network numbers and autonomous systems in July 1990. It marked independent IP networks with an asterisk before the number and directed their administrators to seek separate permission to interconnect with the Internet.
  • Its totals counted 4,210 network numbers assigned for the ARPA-Internet and DDN-Internet, and 18,781 allocated for Internet and independent uses. The two tables describe different populations in one dated register.

The most powerful character in a 182-page directory may have occupied one printer column. RFC 1166, compiled by Sue Kirkpatrick, Mary Stahl and Mimi Recker, was the Internet's July 1990 list of assigned network numbers and gateway autonomous systems. It came with a Hostmaster's postal address, telephone number and mailbox at the DDN Network Information Center. For a register full of machines, the way to settle a current entry still ended with a person you could call.

The original register offered more than a parade of numbers. Every registered network or autonomous system carried a responsible contact and a network mailbox. Bracketed references connected entries to documents and NIC Handles. If an engineer's mailbox had changed, the directory pointed to WHOIS/NICNAME or the Hostmaster for an update. The printed page could tell you where a number stood in July; the live contact channel handled the fact that people and networks kept moving.

On page five, the editors explained their alphabet. R signified research, D defense, G non-defense government and C commercial. Then came the small extra mark. The book assigned numbers to networks already connected to the research and operational Internet, and also to independent networks using IP, usually commercial. An asterisk before the number identified the latter. One Class A entry read C*3.rrr.rrr.rrr for GE-INTERNET: a commercial classification and an independent-network marker in a few characters. The star did much more work than the typewriter needed to print it.

Administrators of independent networks had to apply separately for permission to interconnect. The register also instructed operators to leave those networks out of the working tables of Internet hosts and gateways. Number assignment solved a uniqueness problem: which identifier would this network use? Interconnection raised an operational and policy question: which shared path would carry it? RFC 1166 kept both decisions visible in the same book without folding one into the other.

The two totals on page 101 made the distinction impossible to ignore. The table headed “Assigned for the ARPA-Internet and the DDN-Internet” counted 4,210 network numbers: 29 Class A, 1,209 Class B and 2,972 Class C. A broader table, “Allocated for Internet and Independent Uses,” counted 18,781: 34 Class A, 2,533 Class B and 16,214 Class C. The commercial rows were 253 in the narrower table and 10,264 in the broader one. Those numbers came from the same July 1990 pages, yet answered different questions. The little asterisk was a warning against pretending the second total meant that every network could already use the first table's doors.

The book carried another piece of operating discipline. When a network changed its assigned number, the old one could stay in the list temporarily, labeled T, with -TEMP added to its name. The editor did not erase history the moment a number changed; transition left a trace readers could reconcile. A registry useful to operators needs to show how an old identifier relates to a new one, especially while the surrounding network is still catching up.

Autonomous system numbers occupied their own chapter. The register described the 16-bit field used by the Exterior Gateway Protocol to identify groups of gateways and gave names and contacts for the registered values. That table supplied a separate kind of identifier. It sat beside the network-number catalogue because an engineer needed both, and because a contactable record was part of making the numbers usable.

RFC 1166 called itself a status report and expected periodic updates. Its editors knew a paper list had a shelf life, hence the Hostmaster and WHOIS route. The striking historical fact is that the editors made the border legible while the book was fresh: a number could be allocated to an independent IP network, a contact could be named, and a separate interconnection decision still lay ahead. In 1990, the Internet printed that difference as an asterisk. One keystroke spared a great deal of imaginary connectivity.