[ih] OSI and alternate realiv

[Bob Purvy]

Interesting. My own reading had them horrified at all the things people
were doing that they'd never intended, e.g. dating sites, organizing
student protests, etc. I saw one in 1989. Even then, it was pretty nice.

On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 2:00 AM Johan Helsingius via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I mostly share your views on PTT:s, but in the case of Minitel, France
> Telecom would actually have done much more with it, but was stopped
> by strong government lobbying by the traditional publishing industry
> (who feared the loss of small ads).
>
>         Julf
>
>
> On 16/03/2024 23:17, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
> > Even when they actually *had* the future up and running, they spurned it:
> >
> > Minitel. It caught on, the French loved it, and the PTT still failed to
> > capitalize on it.
> >
> > With friends like PTTs, OSI didn't need any enemies.
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 10:25 AM John Day via Internet-history <
> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Yes, the PTTs had no idea what was coming.  As late as the late 1980s, I
> >> had people telling me that the amount of data traffic would never exceed
> >> the amount voice traffic. (!!) You could only wonder what they were
> >> smoking!  ;-)
> >>
> >> Also, recent delving into the old papers makes it clear the degree to
> >> which the PTTs thwarted the development of comparable networks in
> Europe,
> >> e.g., EIN and EURONET.
> >>
> >>> On Mar 15, 2024, at 11:45, Daniele Bovio via Internet-history <
> >> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> David,
> >>> One of the major problems at the time was that the PTTs planned to
> charge
> >>> the X.25 traffic by volume, and this would have slowed down the
> >> development
> >>> of applications enormously, as nobody could have afforded to send
> images,
> >>> sound and videos over the network at an affordable price.
> >>> The other issue was that X.25 was limited to E1/DS1 (2Mb), and that
> was a
> >>> severe limitation.
> >>> Of course prices would have decreased for packet switched networks as
> >> well
> >>> after the monopolies fell for good at the end of the 90, and probably
> >> some
> >>> other X. would have been invented to overcome the E1 limitation of
> X.25,
> >> but
> >>> I believe it would have been an uphill road all the way.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers
> >>>
> >>> Daniele
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Internet-history [mailto:
> internet-history-bounces at elists.isoc.org]
> >> On
> >>> Behalf Of David Sitman via Internet-history
> >>> Sent: Friday, March 15, 2024 12:19 PM
> >>> To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> >>> Subject: [ih] OSI and alternate reality
> >>>
> >>> In my talk at the EARN 40th Anniversary Conference in Athens in April I
> >>> would like to speculate a bit about what the world would be like today
> if
> >>> OSI had won the "Protocol Wars".
> >>> In 1986, it was a foregone conclusion that EARN would migrate to OSI in
> >> the
> >>> near future. However, when I began my international activity in 1991,
> OSI
> >>> was discussed as a promise that had gone largely unfulfilled and EARN
> >>> members were actively supporting TCP/IP networks. It seemed obvious why
> >>> TCP/IP had prevailed.
> >>> Would we have seen the same rapid and universal adoption of computer
> >>> networking with OSI? Could the Web have flourished? Would address space
> >> and
> >>> security issues be alleviated? Would "OSI on Everything" have become a
> >> meme?
> >>> I would be very grateful for any thoughts about this.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> David Sitman
> >>> --
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> >>>
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> >>
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