[ih] OSI and alternate realiv

[Bob Purvy]

Even when they actually *had* the future up and running, they spurned it:

Minitel. It caught on, the French loved it, and the PTT still failed to
capitalize on it.

With friends like PTTs, OSI didn't need any enemies.

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 10:25 AM John Day via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Yes, the PTTs had no idea what was coming.  As late as the late 1980s, I
> had people telling me that the amount of data traffic would never exceed
> the amount voice traffic. (!!) You could only wonder what they were
> smoking!  ;-)
>
> Also, recent delving into the old papers makes it clear the degree to
> which the PTTs thwarted the development of comparable networks in Europe,
> e.g., EIN and EURONET.
>
> > On Mar 15, 2024, at 11:45, Daniele Bovio via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > David,
> > One of the major problems at the time was that the PTTs planned to charge
> > the X.25 traffic by volume, and this would have slowed down the
> development
> > of applications enormously, as nobody could have afforded to send images,
> > sound and videos over the network at an affordable price.
> > The other issue was that X.25 was limited to E1/DS1 (2Mb), and that was a
> > severe limitation.
> > Of course prices would have decreased for packet switched networks as
> well
> > after the monopolies fell for good at the end of the 90, and probably
> some
> > other X. would have been invented to overcome the E1 limitation of X.25,
> but
> > I believe it would have been an uphill road all the way.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Daniele
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Internet-history [mailto:internet-history-bounces at elists.isoc.org]
> On
> > Behalf Of David Sitman via Internet-history
> > Sent: Friday, March 15, 2024 12:19 PM
> > To: internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> > Subject: [ih] OSI and alternate reality
> >
> > In my talk at the EARN 40th Anniversary Conference in Athens in April I
> > would like to speculate a bit about what the world would be like today if
> > OSI had won the "Protocol Wars".
> > In 1986, it was a foregone conclusion that EARN would migrate to OSI in
> the
> > near future. However, when I began my international activity in 1991, OSI
> > was discussed as a promise that had gone largely unfulfilled and EARN
> > members were actively supporting TCP/IP networks. It seemed obvious why
> > TCP/IP had prevailed.
> > Would we have seen the same rapid and universal adoption of computer
> > networking with OSI? Could the Web have flourished? Would address space
> and
> > security issues be alleviated? Would "OSI on Everything" have become a
> meme?
> > I would be very grateful for any thoughts about this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > David Sitman
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