[ih] Impact of history on today's technology [was: why did CC happen at all?]

[Dave Crocker]

On 9/4/2014 12:41 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> What, in general, is the impact of historical technological
> issues on current protocols and practices?


As many times as I've re-read your query, I can't quite get enough of a
sense of what it means, in terms of actual substance.

The example of token ring vs. ethernet helps, but not quite enough, for
me at least. (1/4 of the real estate on the original Irvine ring was the
token recover mechanism, which used a contention system, thereby
suggesting that a contention model would be cheaper and smaller, if you
didn't need the guarantees of the token discipline.)

Perhaps you have in mind something like the technological issue of
typewriter keys getting stuck against each other if the typist went to
fast, thereby motivating the qwerty layout?

Or the politics of trying to get along with the OSI folk, thereby
sticking is with continuing painful use of ASN.1?

d/
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net