[ih] DNS History

[Dave Crocker]

On 3/8/2010 7:09 PM, John Day wrote:
> Ah, yes, Dave attending one design session would certainly be
> definitive. Whereas, I was probably in only 50-100+ X.500 related
> meetings from before it was even a Work Item or it was known as X.500
> and was the designated arbiter by SC21 on some of their more
> controversial issues. But then what would I know?

That's probably the disconnect.

The meetings I went to were before that.  They well might have been IFIP WG 6.5 
meetings, feeding into the start of the ISO/CCITT effort, since for example I 
didn't go to Geneva.  This was the same model as had been done for what became 
x.400 (but was initially known as X.MHS during the first round of specification.)


>>>> attributes would be needed to distinguish the target user. Since if
>>>> flowed from X.400, the concept of a simple, global, unique email
>>>> address was already a lost cause. (Your global address was
>>>
>>> Actually it didn't flow from X.400, it was just the same people. The
>>> plan to a directory was in place from early on.
>>
>> It came directly from needing to find email addresses. It was not an
>> accident that it was the same people. They knew that X.400 addresses
>> were unwieldy and they knew that the global scale of an email service
>> required some way of finding addresses.\
>
> As I said, actually it didn't. That was later as the scope expanded.

Which is quite strange, since it was the only focus on the initial discussions.


>> (Odd historical note, given your citing him: John White wrote an early
>> Arpanet NCP implementation for an IBM 360, at UC Santa Barbara. I've
>> heard rumors that it was the first NCP that was operational.)
>
> Jack White was at SRI in the early days and was responsible for much of
> the NSW.

John was first at UCSB.  He moved to SRI later.   While he was there, around 
1980, he supervised a CMU summer student who created the RPC scheme that you love.

This was during the IFIP WG 6.5 discussions that were starting up the X.400 effort.


> Really. I don't remember seeing your name on any of the delegate lists
> representing the US. Once again, I think you only perceived them to the
> be the formative discussions. Discussions had been going on for some time.

Yes they had.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net