[ih] pretty good video on internet history

[Jack Haverty]

Perhaps that paper on doi.org explains why OSI was abandoned in favor of 
TCP.  It's possibly an important part of the History of the Internet.   
Somehow I just can't swallow the need to spend $28 to find out, the 
price to read the article, but just for 48 hours. Rather expensive 
"collimator" of history.    Hmmm, perhaps it's on Amazon.

Jack

On 11/3/22 12:45, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Everybody has their own version of history, I guess, and I agree that
> the video is a view through a very specific collimator. I enjoyed it,
> though.
>
>> The video mentions that OSI "never happened" at CERN
>
> Actually we got as close as anybody, because we did deploy DECnet
> Phase V. But additionally to what the video said, the *reason*
> TimBL could invent the web was because we more or less abandoned
> OSI (except for DECnet) during 1989 and started supporting
> TCP/IP.
>
> https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552(89)90040-8
>
> Regards
>    Brian
>
> On 04-Nov-22 07:19, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Just looked at the video - yes, it's pretty good.   A few observations
>> though...
>>
>> - Through the 70s, I worked with or for JCR Licklider.  I never heard
>> anyone call him "JCR Lick".  To VIP visitors at the MIT lab, he was
>> "Professor Licklider".  To everyone who knew him, he was just "Lick".
>> Maybe it was different elsewhere, but never "JCR Lick", at least at MIT
>>
>> - My general impression is that the video is a reasonably accurate
>> account of what happened, or at least some parts of that history. But
>> it's not very good at explaining "How" the Internet happened, or why
>> TCP/IP became the basis for today's Internet after a historic battle of
>> technologies and organizations.  E.g., it mentions OSI when discussing
>> the Web, but neglects to mention any of the other networking
>> developments going on through the 80s - SNA, DecNet, Appletalk, Netware,
>> Vines, X.25/X.75 "internets", and especially XNS, which IMHO was closest
>> in vision to the TCP/IP world.  I expected the "How" of today's Internet
>> to include an explanation of what caused all of those other
>> actitivities, including OSI, to just disappear almost overnight, leaving
>> TCP/IP as the only survivor. The video mentions that OSI "never
>> happened" at CERN, but the same is true of the military environment
>> where it all started - the US military networks were also supposed to
>> migrate to OSI, and in fact the various networks (ARPANET, MILNET, ...)
>> replaced the "1822" interface with standard X.25, as a first step on the
>> migration to OSI.  That was the Plan.  But, like at CERN, that migration
>> also never happened -- Why not...?
>>
>> - There's just a slight reference to the military origins of the
>> Internet, and no explanation of what those early Internet projects were
>> trying to accomplish -- i.e., what was the Internet trying to do 40-50
>> years ago?  E.g., the Packet Radio technology, demos, and deployments
>> aren't mentioned at all.  SATNET was mentioned, but the video ignored
>> the context of its history and plans, such as the deployment to the Navy
>> on an aircraft carrier.  IMHO, the Internet technology was driven by
>> military command-and-control scenarios, and was purposely made "open"
>> for others to use if they chose to do so. The Internet technology was,
>> again IMHO, just adopted by the academic and then commercial world
>> because it was the only one that they could actually use for what they
>> wanted to do, and the needs of the non-military world were close enough
>> to those of the military that TCP/IP fit nicely.
>>
>> - After years of indoctrination by Lick I was thoroughly converted to
>> his view of the "Galactic Network", in which computers and
>> communications synergized to help humans do whatever humans do. His
>> "Galactic Network" vision is very close to what I see today as I type,
>> looking at the screen in front of me, which I think of as "The
>> Internet".  So I disagree with the statement in the video that the Web
>> is not a fundamental part of the Internet, but rather lives "on top of"
>> the Internet.  Packet voice was another important type of network
>> traffic in the 80s, not mentioned at all in the video. Using Web
>> technology for conveying images, and Internet voice technology for
>> conversations, a military operation in the 80s could be envisioned, and
>> today's use of teleconferencing, telemedicine, and such could adopt the
>> same technology for everything people do today.  But the video
>> categorizes technologies such as the Web, or Zoom, Skype, et al, as not
>> being components of "The Internet" any more.   They are now "apps" that
>> exist "on top of" the Internet. How did that happen...?
>>
>> Jack Haverty
>> MIT (1966-1977), BBN (1977-1990)