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

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com>

    > My recollection of the process of networking standards .. 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 ... 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?

Economics.

The added value of any/all additional features in the 'next generation'
networking stuff was less than the cost to convert to it -> nobody converted.

'Network effects' (the size of the installed base _you could communicate
with_, which is, after all the whole point of a _communication_ protocol)
exacerbated both the diminuation of the benefit, and the cost of the
conversion. (Why convert to something if... you can can only talk to very few
people using it?)


    > From: Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org>

    > - the new hires in IT, coming out of universities all over the world,
    > knew all about TCP when they started work

This factor is often overlooked, but it's significant. It drove the spread of
Unix, and it's driving Linux now.

    > Our "Interchange" technology turned out to be quite useful, but more as
    > a migration tool, allowing the various IT components to be moved into
    > the TCP world in a well-orchestrated fashion. The business functions
    > could continue to function even as the components got moved from one
    > technology to another. In some small way, this probably helped the TCP
    > conversion also.

Ditto for the 'multi-protocol router/backbone' concept at the networking layer.

	Noel