[ih] One instance where multicast lost (was Re: Wide Area Multicast deployment [was IPv8...])

[Dave Crocker]

On 4/21/2026 2:48 PM, Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history wrote:
> The installed base effectively guarantees sometimes that you'll lose 
> functionality you might otherwise get, just because of features of the 
> way the installed base actually works.


In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the commercial Internet started to 
bloom, vendors of proprietary network services were under increasing 
pressure to support TCP/IP-based networking. However commodity products, 
like this open, established Internetworking architecture, have smaller 
profit margins than proprietary products do.

So we started to see products advertised as "based on TCP/IP". This 
invariably meant that while those protocols were supported, the actual 
product would not inter-operate with others.  These were seeking to 
maintain the higher margins, including locking customers in to the product.

While at DEC, my task was to facilitate corporate adoption of TCP/IP, 
except that this ran counter to strongly-established DEC culture, which 
had been so successful with proprietary DECNet.

Some groups, however, were earnest in their desire to make the adoption 
work, but did not yet have a feel for how to move from the established 
culture to a legitimate open systems approach.  In broad terms, I 
preached winning by excellence, rather than lock-in, and getting 
customers by selling individual products rather than requiring the 
customer to buy into All-DEC, as had been the established approach.

In terms of actual engineering, I tried to find a way to distinguish 
serious adoption of Internet tech, versus only the appearance of it. 
Ultimately, I I latched onto the phrase:

    More is Better; Different is Worse.  And Different means
    non-interoperability.

Requiring change to the infrastructure is a version of Different.  
Requiring adoption of an overlay is a version of More.


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

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