[ih] Installed base momentum (was Re: Design choices in SMTP)

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

On 10/02/2023 17:56, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> ATM was a bad idea the day it was proposed.  It was unbelievable how many people were taken in by it.

ATM saw glory in PPPoA in ADSL - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-to-Point_Protocol_over_ATM

As for why TCP/IP won over OSI, my take is that at the time OSI stacks 
really worked for large mainframe computers. The advent of PCs & desktop 
machines that could run early TCP/IP stacks killed the OSI stack. Credit 
goes in particular to:
- KA9Q - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q (incidentally why is Phil 
Karn not in the Internet Hall of Fame?)
- Microsoft implementing TCP/IP in Win95
- Novell NetWare TCP/IP support in the early 90s & its NE2000 card (& 
compatibles)

Mainframes lost the game and along did OSI.
Best,

Olivier