The e + e ! W + W cross section is measured in a data sample collected by ALEPH at a mean centre{of{mass energy of 172.09 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity o f 10.65 pb 1 . Cross sections are given for the three topologies, fully leptonic, semi-leptonic and hadronic of a W-pair decay. Under the assumption that no other decay modes are present, the W-pair cross section is measured to be 11:7 1:2(stat:) 0:3(syst:) pb: The existence of the triple gauge boson vertex of the Standard Model is clearly preferred by the data. The decay branching ratio of the W boson into hadrons is measured to beB(W ! hadrons) = 67:7 3:1(stat:) 0:7(syst:) %, allowing a determination of the CKM matrix element jV cs j = 0 : 98 0:14(stat:) 0:03(syst:).