the "vluntary cooperation" part is correct.
See rfc954, note the DCA mandates for TAC and home directory access to
that
net. There were others.
The relevant (well, irrelevant actually, see below) paragraph in rfc954
reads
DCA requests that each individual with a directory on an ARPANET or
MILNET host, who is capable of passing traffic across the DoD
Internet, be registered in the NIC WHOIS Database. MILNET TAC users
must be registered in the database.
That looks to me like DCA requesting voluntary cooperation from users on
ARPANET. It doesn't even ask for registration from users on other networks
involved in the internet (was NFSnet in the game by October 1985, for
example?). Telling the people they actually controlled (MILNET TAC users)
that they must register isn't part of the cooperation to form the internet,
it's just keeping their own house in order (no doubt each participant had
its own rules for its own people). How many internet users had a home
directory on TAC? Pretty few, I think. The civilian research institutes,
universities, and defense contractors might be on ARPANET at that date, but
generally not on MILNET TAC.
Anyway, rfc954 is irrelevant to the point under discussion (whether the
internet was originally formed through voluntary cooperation) since it
post-dates the original formation of the internet by a good long time. You
might want to look at rfc812 instead (dates from some three and a half years
earlier) where there is only a request - no mandate, not even for TAC users.
Tom
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