Text below this point is copied from source documents and is to be incorporated in the rewrite above or intentionally rejected
The first IETF meeting was held in January 1986 at Linkabit in San Diego, with 21 attendees. The 4th IETF, held at SRI in Menlo Park in October 1986, was the first that equipment vendors attended. The concept of Working Groups was introduced at the 5th IETF meeting at the NASA Ames Research Center in California in February 1987. The 7th IETF, held at MITRE in McLean, Virginia, in July 1987, was the first meeting with more than 100 attendees.
After the Internet Society (ISOC) was formed in January 1992, the IAB proposed to ISOC that the IAB's activities should take place under the auspices of the Internet Society. During INET92 in Kobe, Japan, the ISOC Trustees approved a new charter for the IAB to reflect the proposed relationship.
"RFC" originally stood for Request for Comments, and this name (used since 1969, before the IETF existed) expresses something important: the Internet is a constantly changing technical system, and any document that we write today may need to be updated tomorrow. One way to look at the IETF is as the group of people who work together to improve the technology of the Internet on a daily basis.