[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[Richard Bennett]

In what sense was OSI top-down? The OSI process was every bit as much a 
bottoms-up, participant-driven process as IEEE 802 is today. If there 
ever was a top-down standards process in the networking world directed 
by two or three lords of the purse, it certainly wasn't OSI.

On 2/17/2011 4:16 PM, Eric Gade wrote:
>
> This also may just be a matter of dissonant worldviews. Where in OSI 
> you see a series of discrete, technically explicit standards, I see an 
> (overly?) ambitious, top-down standards project for computer 
> networking that was unprecedented by international standards work at 
> the time. It reflects a profounding optimistic perspective that relies 
> on a consistently global view concerning the application of these 
> technologies. Those involved in this overal project were obviously 
> going to bring this optimism and global perspective to whatever 
> related projects that they were involved with. IFIP people were 
> involved with DNS and the work of IFIP was the closest related to the 
> same issues that DNS addressed.
>