International Network Working Group

Set up in 1972 as an informal group to consider the technical issues involved in connecting different networks, its goal was to develop an international standard protocol for internetworking.

[3] At the International Conference on Computer Communication (ICCC) in Washington D.C. in October 1972, Vint Cerf was approved as INWG's Chair on Crocker's recommendation.

INWG became IFIP Working Group 1 under Technical Committee 6 (Data Communication) with the title "International Packet Switching for Computer Sharing" (WG6.1).

This standing, although informal, enabled the group to provide technical input on packet networking to CCITT and ISO.

[12] Pouzin updated his paper with A Proposal for Interconnecting Packet Switching Networks in March 1974 (INWG 60),[12] published two months later in May.

[23] Zimmerman and Elie circulated a Standard host-host protocol for heterogeneous computer networks in April 1974 (INWG 61).

Kahn and Cerf published a significantly updated and refined version of their proposal in May 1974, A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.

[25] It was updated in INWG 72/RFC 675 in December 1974 by Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, which introduced the term internet as a shorthand for internetwork.

[4] Derek Barber proposed an electronic mail protocol in 1979 in INWG 192 and implemented it on the European Informatics Network.

[11] Carl Sunshine, who had worked with Vint Cerf and Yogen Dalal at Stanford on the first TCP specification, subsequently served as INWG chair until 1987, when Harry Rudin took over.

[4] Nonetheless, issues with the Internet Protocol suite remain and alternatives have been proposed building on INWG ideas such as Recursive Internetwork Architecture.