[ih] Fwd: Gateway Issue: Certification (was Re: booting linux on a 4004)

Thu Oct 3 14:26:52 PDT 2024

Forgot reply-all

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Gateway Issue: Certification (was Re: booting linux on a 4004)
> Date: October 3, 2024 at 17:23:56 EDT
> To: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> 
> Figures.  ;-)
> 
> Name doesn’t ring a bell.  You sure it wasn’t Dave Rayner, but I could be wrong on that too.
> 
> With the governments in Europe funding things all sorts of stuff happened that probably shouldn’t have.
> 
> That stuff was under the committee I chaired in the US and we pretty much ignored it. Do you remember COS? What a waste of time that was.
> 
> The group in AZ was a piece of work:  The committee responsible for a something would approve updates, but they wouldn’t adopt them and then refuse to certify implementations that did it right. Or one company implemented a support tool that used part of a protocol but they wouldn’t certify it because it didn’t use the whole protocol, even though it never needed it or used.  As I said, it was totally stupid.
> 
> As you seem to allude, they were more infatuated with themselves than what made sense.
> 
> There were some major advances in OSI, but the PTTs made pretty sure they were unusable or sufficiently obscure that no one knew.
> TP4 for example was a major advance over TCP.  (But then when they decided to cooperate with CCITT in 82, I knew the jig was up.)
> 
> John
> 
>> On Oct 3, 2024, at 16:52, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> 
>> In Europe it was a whole industry in itself. Just two examples(Google finds many):
>> 
>> https://shop.elsevier.com/books/osi-conformance-testing-methodology-and-ttcn/baumgarten/978-0-444-89712-1
>> 
>> https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/BFb0026973
>> 
>> Derek Rayner at NPL was the high priest; the OSI promoters in Brussels were worshippers.
>> 
>> Regards
>>  Brian
>> On 04-Oct-24 09:30, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
>>> Ahh, yes, one of Chris Vissers students.  Vissers developed a Temporal Ordering approach to Formal Description. It was interesting in that it said a minimal amount about the implementation (leaving greater leeway to the implementor, which seemed important then) but I never found anyone who could design in it.  From the URL, this appears to come from Gregor Bochmann’s course who worked on a formal description for CCITT.  I forget now what it was but SDL had some feature that they insisted on that made the description ambiguous. Typical ITU.
>>> As I said, there was a lot of push by the traditionalists for it, but certainly there was nothing in ISO to actually do it. I don’t know if Europe did but as I said the only group in the US was the DoD group in AZ and they were very plodding.
>>> Take care,
>>> John
>>>> On Oct 3, 2024, at 16:15, Scott O. Bradner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> relevant to the question of OSI testing
>>>> 
>>>> An Overview of OSI Conformance Testing
>>>> https://www.site.uottawa.ca/~bochmann/CSI5174/CourseNotes/Literature/Tretmans%20-%20Overview%20of%20OSI%20conformance%20testing%20-%20iso9646.pdf
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Oct 3, 2024, at 4:06 PM, John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> No, never has on anything I know of.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The only certification done on OSI was done by the DoD at some place in Arizona and it was a complete fiasco.
>>>>> 
>>>>> John
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Oct 3, 2024, at 15:43, Vint Cerf <vint at google.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ISO?
>>>>>> v
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 3:42 PM John Day via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Just out of curiosity, what other standards organizations do compliance testing?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> John
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Oct 3, 2024, at 13:54, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On 10/3/2024 10:43 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>>>>> It's curious to me that such mechanisms have not been created for the Internet Industry.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Informal interoperability testing, versus formal compliance testing, was and remains a key distinction between the Internet's culture and the cultures of various other standards organization. Compliance testing is typically expensive and incomplete.  (As a tool for initial code debugging, tests like that can be efficient; as a guarantee of field interoperability, not so much.)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> There was a wonderful panel that Vint was on, circa 1990, along with a number of other folk, including a vigorous OSI proponent from Boeing.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Vint made his comments about experiences with the Internet's technology and specifically noted the reliance on interoperability testing rather than (bench) compliance testing.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Other panelists made various comments and then the Boeing person made theirs, vigorously asserting that it is not possible to get widespread interoperability without formal compliance testing.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> It was fun to watch Vint slowly lean slightly forward and then slowly turn his head toward the Boeing person.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> d/
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> -- 
>>>>>>>> Dave Crocker
>>>>>>>> Brandenburg InternetWorking
>>>>>>>> bbiw.net <http://bbiw.net/>
>>>>>>>> mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> -- 
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>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -- 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
>>>>>> Vint Cerf
>>>>>> Google, LLC
>>>>>> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
>>>>>> Reston, VA 20190
>>>>>> +1 (571) 213 1346
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> until further notice
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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