[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[Eric Gade]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:41 AM, Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com>wrote:

> 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.


We sort of got into this last week, but didn't push it too far. OSI is
unique from an international standards perspective because the was
prescriptive. As far as I know, it was an unprecedented move for ISO (and
maybe national standards orgs?) because they typically standardized existing
practices. OSI was, to my knowledge, mandated in some way where it was
creating practices rather than standardizing existing ones.

--
Eric
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20110218/d3bf944f/attachment.htm>