[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[John Klensin]

On 2/17/11, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:
> John,
>
> All you say here about what happened in the 80s is true.  The
> formation of JTC1 etc. But that was quite late to the game.

Absolutely.   JTC1 didn't come together until nearly the end of the
decade although the work started much earlier.  If I recall, it was
the brainchild of Joe DeBlasi (IBM's corporate head of standards,
later ACM Exec Dir).   I chaired ACM's (late and mostly unlamented)
Standards Committee from about 1986 and so got to watch that part of
the process from ANSI/ISSB among other places.    But I was less
concerned about the specific standardization events -- many of which
were fairly peripheral to the OSI developments and Internet/OSI
interactions -- than the degree to which they indicated that the
environment was fermenting, making some adventures by standards
development bodies possible that would not have been possible before
and might not even be possible some years later (with the emphasis on
"might" -- some of what is now going on in ITU-T may not be that much
different).

> The idea of standardizing to a point in the future was set prior by
> set the first meeting of SC16 in March 1978 and the Joint Development
> with CCITT by 1979/80 was quite early.  (The biggest mistake in the
> whole effort).  At that time, the idea was that things were changing
> so fast that one had to shoot for a point in the future.

Carl Cargill has made the claim on several occasions that he invented
anticipatory standardization.  I've had no reason to disbelieve him
even though we disagreed (at least at the time and for some years
thereafter) as to whether it was a great idea or a disaster waiting to
happen).   If this is important, someone might check with him on both
dates and how things unfolded at levels considerably above any one
CCITT / ITU-T SC or ISO WG or EG.

> The world views between the computer companies and the European PTTs
> were so different and the PTTs saw so much at stake, there was no way
> anything good could have come from it.

Yes.  But I think actually an almost-separate problem at the standards
policy level, even though I've assumed it played out most dramatically
at the SG / WG one.

> It might have been better had the cooperation with CCITT not
> happened. But with no deregulation even considered in 1979, the
> European computer manufactures didn't have much choice.

Part of what also drove those collaborations (both TC97-CCITT and the
later formation of JTC1) was a realization by both companies and
governments/ PTTs that they were spending a lot of resources sending
people (often the same people) to parallel meetings, often to advocate
particular results in one and to provide a defensive/blocking force in
the other.   Joint development agreements and consolidation were
supposed to fix that.   With a quarter-century of hindsight, it didn't
work very well and still doesn't.

> To some degree this may well have been a strategy to get out ahead of
> IBM and the PTTs. Given their dominance in the markets, had they not
> attempted something like that and gone with standardizing current
> practice it would have been SNA over X.25, instead of TP4 over CLNP.

Yes.  But also more complicated.  If this is important, someone should
try to find Joe and read him out -- that perspective would be, IMO,
very useful.

     john