[ih] Why did TCP win? [Re: Internet-history Digest, Vol 63, Issue 3

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/3/2025 12:11 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> It is not coincidence that the original proposal for the Web [1] and 
> my paper "Is OSI too late?" [2] were written in offices about 30 
> metres apart in the same year. 

1989 was an excellent time for papers like yours.  The war was, in fact, 
already over.  But the management mindshare for OSI was extremely 
sticky.  They'd had what?  15 years of intense marketing?

I think it was 1990, with a panel about networking at some conference.  
Heidi Heiden gets up and gives a clear-eyed acknowledgement that OSI had 
been constantly promising it would be ready for production 
environment,.. in two years.

But, he insisted, progress really had been made and OSI was finally 
going to be usable in a production context.  He estimated that we should 
plan on deploying it in 1992.

I commented out loud that that was 2 years.

This is my story.  There were many stories like this.  But this one was 
mine.  (Well, I have many similar stories, as do many of you.  But this 
one was mine.)

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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