[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[Eric Gade]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Craig Partridge <craig at aland.bbn.com>wrote:

>
> The NIC did things that ARIN such do now.
>
This is closer to what I meant. I used administrative in a broad sense --
referring to the registration of names and addresses, things of that sort. I
have documents from the late 80s that discuss Mexican and Japanese
university/national public network representatives emailing and in some
cases visiting the NIC, not only to see how the DDN worked but to observe
the day to day operations of the NIC.

It seems to me that some of the NIC's most important functions (my personal
interests are with the DNS) were designed with the idea in mind that OSI
would replace them *or* incorporate them into a higher-level, more global
structure. If that is the case -- and I think I have pretty good evidence
when it comes to the DNS side of things -- then whether or not the NIC
served as a model for similar organizations around the world is important.
It means that, at least in part, they would have reflected some of the
teleology of OSI.

In a more general sense, I bring this up because we could have a more
nuanced historical discussion on the list. Don't get me wrong -- X25 v
TCP/IP is definitely interesting, and discussions of the "failure" of OSI
are both useful and seem to still ignite a decent emotional response. I
think it could be more constructive, however, to consider the truism of "the
coming of OSI" in the 80s and the effects that had on the system we have
today. To deny that it had no influence on both technical and structural
aspects of the ARPAnet and its children might be a little short-sighted,
though I'm not suggesting that anyone has been doing that. After sifting
through a lot of material, I'm ready to argue that this OSI truism had a
fairly important influence on the DNS. I'm equally prepared to be verbally
blindfolded, given a camel light, and put before the firing squad of
criticism.
-- 
Eric
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