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

[Bob Purvy]

I tried to capture all this from the ground perspective of people who
didn't know how it would all turn out, in *This New Internet Thing
<https://www.amazon.com/This-New-Internet-Thing-Silicon-ebook/dp/B0D1PTWNX4/ref=sr_1_1>*.
Some of you helped with the research for that book, in various ways.

One of the things that was true even at the time was that the Internet
folks were having fun building stuff, and you really were part of a
community. It was welcoming and it drew you in.

Interesting that it was 1989 when 3Com sent me to Paris to help with our
contract for X.400 with Telesystemes Resaux. I believe that was to use
TCP/IP as the transport since you couldn't count on an OSI implementation.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 1:44 PM Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> I would argue that 1989 was ahead of the curve (and we should give due
> credit to Brian and Tim -- they were 6 years ahead of Bill Gates!).
> Indeed, if memory serves, Vint used to say the 1989 Interop showfloor in
> the San Jose TechMart (first Interop with a serious show floor, after two
> proto-Interops in Monterey and before Interop moved to the SJ Convention
> Center) was when he had his epiphany that TCP/IP was pulling ahead.
>
> By 1990, Heiden should have known better :-)
>
> Craig
>
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > 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
> > bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> > mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
> >
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> >
>
>
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