Short for
Internet Experiment Notes, a series of documents similar to
RFCs concerning the early experimental work in
TCP and IP. In 1977,
ARPA began organizing and financing a research project to build an Internet based on the work done by
Bob Kahn and
Vint Cerf in 1974. Led by the Internet Working Group, the project needed a way to share technical notes and created IENs so that they wouldn t be confused with
ARPANET s RFCs.