[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[John Day]

At 17:36 -0500 2011/02/18, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>John,
>
>Now I have to ask you what YOU've been smoking.
>
>John Day wrote:
>>As far as working goes, in 1992 cisco's largest customer by far was 
>>a deployed CLNP network.
>
>Who, if anybody, was using CLNP for anything in 1992? By then the 
>Internet had gone commercial, with about 20,000 or so nets and about 
>a million hosts linked by IP.

See Tony's response.

>
>>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.
>
>I don't believe CYCLADES ever grew beyond 20 hosts.  As to network 
>research in the US, BBN was DARPA's biggest contractor (still is, I 
>think), and at least when I was there most of that money was going 
>into .... network research.  And then there was an awful lot of 
>money going to a lot of universities, and a lot of corporate 
>research going on.

This is interesting and I hadn't thought about it until it was 
pointed out to me.  But it was the case.  BBN was DARPA's biggest 
contractor for building and operating the net.  How many days a week 
could BBN take the net to run experiments on say routing or 
congestion control etc.  Very quickly, the ARPANET was an operational 
network to support others research.

I remember people telling me that the CYCLADES on the other hand was 
constantly being commandeered by the INRIA guys to run experiments 
and couldn't really be used the way we used the ARPANET.  They were 
doing a lot of research on networks, we had to catch as catch can 
other stuff and what BBN could accomplish when they were doing IMPsys 
loads on Monday nights.  And much of the early work on congestion 
control and related performance issues did come from those 
researchers, LeLann, Gelenbe, etc.

>
>>>>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.
>
>Huh?  IEEE has been pretty effective as a standards body in a number 
>of areas - 802, laboratory interconnection, Firewire, POSIX, as well 
>as some of its more traditional electrical machinery, power, 
>telegraph, and radio .  As a standards body, its activities date 
>back to the 1880s (AIEE which later merged with IRE to become IEEE).

I was agreeing with you that there was no point to IEEE sending their 
stuff to ISO.  I never saw the point in it.

>--
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>In<fnord>  practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra