[ih] Ken Olsen's impact on the Internet

[Richard Bennett]

The general understanding among computer companies in the mid-80s was 
that TCP/IP was a fine proof-of-concept, but the real network was going 
to be OSI. This wasn't any sort of conspiracy as much as it was a 
recognition that large scale networks needed a different kind of system 
for addressing and routing than the one that IPv4 provided, and that TCP 
would have problems on fatter pipes.

The OSI development process was ultimately unsuccessful for a number of 
reasons (too many cooks, counter-lobbying by IBM, the clambering of the 
European PTTs for connection-oriented systems, the lack of any real 
champions, etc.) so the networking industry was left to do the best they 
could with TCP and IP.

So here we are at the end of the road for the IPv4  addressing and 
routing system and nobody loves IPv6 but a handful of bald and bearded 
IETFers who never tire of telling the youngsters to shut up because they 
weren't there at the creation.

RB

On 2/7/2011 9:42 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>
>
> On 2/7/2011 8:01 PM, Guy Almes wrote:
>> Another, more mixed, is DEC's lukewarm support for the IP-based 
>> Internet,
>> preferring the proprietary DECnet product line. While, technically, 
>> the DECnet
>> work deserves much praise, the business dynamics of pushing DECnet in 
>> preference
>> to the Internet are illustrative of blindspots that led to Digital's 
>> demise.
>
>
> DEC was not lukewarm.  It was actively hostile.  It pressed for OSI 
> because it thought it could control the outcome.
>
> By the time DEC finally realized that TCP/IP was going to win, DEC was 
> very far behind the curve and never really caught up.  (The Field 
> Service guys were closest to the customer and saw the writing on the 
> wall the earliest, so they provided funding for an Internet tech 
> transfer lab that I started, but there was an entire corporate culture 
> devoted to stovepipe solutions for customer capture with private 
> solutions.)  Upper management wanted the change to IP, but there were 
> about 110,000 other employees and middle-managers that had trouble 
> buying in.
>
> But yeah, PDP-10/Tenex for the Arpanet and later the PDP-11/Vax/Unix 
> were hugely popular for hosts.
>
> For Unix, you had to get the hardware from DEC and the software 
> license from Bell Labs.  In order the help the hardware sales, DEC had 
> a special group up in New Hampshire doing Unix device drivers.  At 
> every Usenix meeting (attendance in those early days number of around 
> 40-100) the team leader, Armando Stettner, would give a status report 
> on the device driver work.
>
> At the first larger meeting (300 people in Santa Monica) he got up as 
> usual, but started by saying that he was tired of having people say 
> they wanted to get both the hardware and the Unix software from one 
> place, and when was DEC going to offer a Unix license?
>
> So, he said, he could finally announce that DEC was indeed going to 
> offer a Unix license.
>
> He then bent down and held up a New Hampshire-style green automobile 
> license plate that said UNIX, with Live Free or Die at the bottom.  He 
> had one for every attendee.
>
> I treasure mine...
>
> d/
>
>

-- 
Richard Bennett