[ih] One man's view of Internet history

[Scott Brim]

On Sun, Aug 04, 2002 02:37:30PM -0700, Bob Braden allegedly wrote:
> 
>   *> 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.)

The technical discussion in the IETF was already overwhelmed.  The ROAD
group reached weak consensus that CLNP was the right thing to do (and I
believe this encouraged the IAB), but after that the actual decision in
the IETF was 90% based on how well the different approaches were spun.

> 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

Me too, and exactly.

...Scott