[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[John Day]

At 15:09 -0500 2011/02/18, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>John Day wrote:
>>
>>You are kidding!  CLNP was part of the plan all the time from day 
>>one.  It was the fight over CO/CL that put off starting.  Luckily 
>>there isn't much to it.  It also required getting the IONL in place 
>>so that the place of internetworking vs X.25 as SNAC was clear.
>>
>>The only reason the US was participating at all was to have a 
>>connectionless network layer.  Good grief, what have you been 
>>smoking?
>
>As I recall it, from the grousing of our (BBN) folks who were off to 
>the meetings:
>
>1. Mike Corrigan at GSA was pushing very, very hard for the US 
>Government, including DoD, to go all OSI (I never quite understood 
>why).
>
>2. Nobody thought it would work, but those of us in the DoD world 
>had to live with the "dual stack" model (which never really deployed 
>as far as I can tell).
>
>3. Folks were off to meet about CLNP as a defensive strategy - just 
>in case the &*&!s (chose your pejorative) really pushed OSI through.

As far as working goes, in 1992 cisco's largest customer by far was a 
deployed CLNP network.

>
>>I thought say that.  First of all no one really cared about 
>>anything but TP4 the other were just the PTTs attempt to discourage 
>>the use of a Transport Layer. But if you must know:
>Does not compute..... Who needs TP4 over a connectionless network 
>layer?  And if only the US folks cared about CLNP....  Am I missing 
>something, or wasn't the idea TP0 (or null) over X.25 vs. TP4 over 
>CLNP?

In the US, the only thing anyone cared about was TP4 over CLNP.  TP0 
over X.25 was known to not be reliable.  There were European PTTs who 
said that was what they wanted, but no one else did.

As I have said, the Classes of transport was the PTTs response to not 
being able to stop it.

>
>>>>
>>>>No there is no ISO number stamped on TCP.  That decision was 
>>>>worked out in an open process in IFIP WG6.1 prior to start of 
>>>>OSI, which chose a modified CYCLADES TS.
>>>Again, a political, top-down process - rather than one based on 
>>>moving something from experimental->recommended->mandatory status.
>>
>>How do you figure?  IFIP 6.1 was hardly a top down process.  And 
>>hardly political. It was primarily the research networking people. 
>>Do you make this stuff up?
>>
>>What part of operational since 1972 did you not understand?
>>
>>CYCLADES was an experimental network doing network research.  There 
>>was a lot of experimentation with it, it was recommended.  No 
>>standards are mandatory.  That is why ISO is a *voluntary* 
>>standards organization and why ITU issues Recommendations not 
>>standards.
>
>There's operational and there's operational.  ARPANET was carrying 
>military traffic, and being split to form the Defense Data Network, 
>while CYCLADES was being killed by the PTTs.

I don't know what this means.  Yes, CYCLADES was an embarrassment to 
the French PTT and they were eventually able to shut it down.  But it 
was a real network and some very good people working on it.  It is 
unfortunate that it was shut down because they were doing good work.

There was very little network research going on in the US.

>>>>
>>>>As long as we are on the topic, all of the IEEE 802 standards are 
>>>>also ISO standards.  Ethernet was in use for close to 10 years 
>>>>before it was an ISO standard.
>>>Because IEEE is the protocol standards agent for ANSI which is the 
>>>US representative to ISO (if I have the terminology correct). 
>>>IEEE 802 is a pretty good example of starting with competing 
>>>products, and then creating a standard that forces every vendor to 
>>>modify their stuff just ever so slightly.
>>
>>Sometimes.  Yes, you are correct.  Although I have no idea why IEEE 
>>bothers.  Ethernet is an ISO standard.  What you describe is very 
>>much the case in IEEE today.  It was less so at the beginning but 
>>even there one had competing products:  Ethernet, token bus, token 
>>ring.  It was what a lot of people wanted but it was the processs 
>>produced.
>
>I'm not sure why IEEE bothers either, but they seem to be doing 
>something right with the 802 line of standards.

Over a decade ago, I told them not to bother. IEEE has international 
recognition.  There is no point to it.