[ih] The Internet Plan; was: Ken Olsen's impact on the Internet

[Richard Bennett]

Right, there's always a lot of motivation for standards, especially in 
networking where interoperability is job 1.

My recollection of the process of networking standards back in the late 
70s and early 80s was that TCP/IP was meant to be discarded in favor of 
a more mature approach after some experience was gained with 
internetworking. Hence, shortcuts were taken with respect to things like 
the IPv4 address and the reliance on the WKS convention that everyone 
knew were sub-optimal at the time. But somehow this TCP/IP successor 
standard that incorporated the acquired wisdom was never developed.

Why is that?

RB

On 2/14/2011 11:23 AM, Peter Schow wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 01:31:23PM -0500, John Day wrote:
>
>> In general, companies detest standards and see them as a necessary evil.
> Unisys viewed the OSI standards as an opportunity for system
> interoperability, among its five core (there were others) hardware/OS
> platforms obtained via their "power of 2" merger between Burroughs
> and Sperry.  Most of these systems could not talk to each other.
>
> If OSI ever had a high point in the USA, it was probably coming off
> a 1988 industry conference in Baltimore where MAP/TOP, among other things,
> were featured prominently.  I wasn't there but I joined Unisys shortly
> thereafter and OSI momentum was through the roof, internally.   Every
> network engineer or manager could be seen with FTAM and MHS documents on
> their desk.  Less than a year later, the TCP/IP reality check sunk
> in and the OSI energy was gone.  Luckily, like Vint mentions for DEC,
> TCP/IP development was already happening in parallel by lab-like
> organizations within the company, fueled somewhat by contracts with
> the US government.
>
> If not for standards such as TCP/IP and OSI, Unisys would have been
> left to invent their own glue.  So in this case, the standards were welcome.
> In this sense, I guess TCP/IP has simplified the merger&  acqusition
> process for systems and network companies, making it a lot easier when
> combining/merging product lines.
>

-- 
Richard Bennett