[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[Craig Partridge]

> 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.

Hi Eric:

Understood re: administrative and I don't have anything to add there
(ex-NIC folks on this list will).

Regarding OSI and the DNS.  I don't know about NIC administrative procedures.
But regarding other aspects of the DNS, you should understand that the DNS
was used as a weapon against "the coming of OSI".

So far as I can tell, the design of the DNS had zero relation to OSI/X.500
naming.  It probably had some influence from Grapevine (as I recall, PVM
says he didn't use Grapevine as an input, but reading the namedroppers
list is it pretty clear [at least to me] that others commenting on his work
were influenced by Grapevine -- things such as the initial two-level DNS
naming system which reads just like Grapevine's two-level system).

Then in January 1986, when the central question of finalizing DNS TLDs
was decided, it was explicitly decided to structure .US to make it
completely useless for X.500 migration.  I was at the meeting and
remember thinking that the decision had elements that might make Jon
Postel (who made the decision) into a technological King Cnut, but
subsequent events made it an effective way to thwart OSI.  (Brief
sketch: the TLD meeting was more than finalizing Internet TLDs, it
determined the naming schemes for UUNET and CSNET and BITNET [all of
whom were at the meeting].  So it created a common email addressing
system that spanned the 4 biggest email networks.  The biggest app
was email and by keeping the naming schemes very distinct, it meant
that transitioning to OSI required a painful, organization wide, change
in email addresses.  In contrast, when NSFNET came along and UUNET,
CSNET and BITNET collapsed into the Internet, the email transition was
largely seamless for users and created a single network that was too big
to imagine transitioning).

Thanks!

Craig