[ih] One man's view of Internet history

[Bob Braden]

  *> My own sense at the time was that OSI was effectively already dead and that 
  *> the IAB decision was the final attempt to salvage something from it.

Dave,

Hardly!!  The IAB decision was based on the belief that OSI was
inevitable.  We consoled ourselves with the ideas that (1) TP4/CLNP had
it close enough to right for the essential architectural assumptions to
survive, and (2) in a few ways OSI actually represented a better
(later) engineering compromise than what we had (e.g., ES/IS combined
ICMP with ARP, which seemed smart.)

  *> there been a real, public process considering alternatives, it is not clear
  *> that CLNP should have lost.  The preemptive nature of the IAB decision 
  *> overwhelmed that technical discussion with an IETF identity crisis.)
  *> 

Well, frankly I like the actual outcome much better, having the locus
of technical development in the IETF rather than in ANSI or other
government-centered standards bodies.  Of course, CLNP would have
avoided IPv6, but we probably would have gone through a CLNP2
transition long before this.

Bob


  *> d/
  *> 
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  *> Dave Crocker <mailto:dave at tribalwise.com>
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