[ih] early competition and networking

[Greg Skinner]

On Apr 15, 2024, at 9:49 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> I only learned a tiny bit about OR by taking an undergraduate course long ago.  The science has evolved quite a lot since then - e.g., https://catalog.mit.edu/interdisciplinary/graduate-programs/operations-research/
> 
> OR is used to make analytical decisions for goals such as optimizing transportation "networks".   AFAIK, such analysis was never applied to our computer networks back in the 70s/80s or even now.   Maybe that was a mistake.
> 
> There's not a single solution.  There's many possible solutions. It's an engineering task (likely using OR) to design an appropriate solution for each situation.
> 
> Jack Haverty

JJ Garcia-Luna Aceves who incorporated concepts from OR into EIGRP (RFC 7868).  Some other SRI people did similar work.  Googling [site:datatracker.ietf.org “operations research"] and [site:datatracker.ietf.org "combinatorial optimization”] turned up a few RFCs and drafts, including RFC 5614, co-authored by Richard Ogier, also from SRI.

--gregbo