[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 70, Issue 5

[Craig Partridge]

> On 1/5/2013 8:30 PM,Louis Mamakos wrote:
> > There were some supercomputer/HPC networks running around at the time, USAN
>  ("University Satellite Network" or something) was one I remember, and there 
> was a DoE network, I think, that was DECnet based.  And the DECnet based NASA
>  SPAN network, though Milo was at work with the IP-based NSN, too.
> A DoE lab (I forget whether it was LBNL or LLNL) came up with their own 
> solution to the imaginary
> problem "TCP/IP is too slow for supercomputer data transfe"  with their 
> MFENET
> (pronounced "muff-ee-net") protocol suite   I was a member of an 
> Internet-centric design review team,
> and we gleefully tore apart their protocol suite. Shortly afterwards, 
> DoE cancelled the MFENET
> project and wiped up the blood from the floor. It was fun...

Kahin and Abbate (in their 1995 book on Standards Policy) date this
review to 1989.  And it points up an important issue -- the Internet
matured very fast in the late 1980s as its growth led to "educating
experiences".  In the first half of the 1980s, the NRC could release
a report that plausibly claimed no big difference between TCP/IP and OSI.
By 1989, that claim was clearly false (and false for most protocol suites
when compared with TCP/IP).

Thanks!

Craig