[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[Craig Partridge]

> 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.

If you read the original OS layering paper by Hubert Zimmerman it is
clearly a top-down management work plan.  Useful to compare it with
the ARPANET layering paper of a few years later.  The difference is Zim's
"here's how we'll break up the problem of developing standards" vs.
"here's why creating TELNET led us to a layered architecture".

Thanks!

Craig

> 
> 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.
> >
********************
Craig Partridge
Chief Scientist, BBN Technologies
E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
Phone: +1 517 324 3425