[ih] A revolution in Internet point-of-view - Was Re: Internet analyses (Was Re: IPv8...)

[Dave Crocker]

On 4/29/2026 5:04 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> Choosing TCP.

What were the viable alternatives then? I don't recall hearing of any 
until later, with the problematic OSI TP* suite of choices.

If you are saying the 'direction' was from the government, rather than 
from government-funded researchers working based on their own 
assessments of needs and opportunities, please explain.

And then there is the considerable body of documents showing a 
multi-group participation in the effort as it developed, as has been 
common in the Internet's history.



>   Choosing SNMP over HEMS.

I'm my usual version of fuzzy about the details, but it appears I was 
the Network Management AD at the time, for whatever that might be 
worth.  The only 'directed' choice I recall was to use ASN.1, much to 
the IETF-constitueny's chagrine.  But that was due to the persistent and 
vigorous politics coming from the OSI side.

My vague sense of the competition -- besides the solid 
politicking-over-implementing that characterized the CMIP folk -- was 
that HEMS was cleaner but lacked experience, whereas SNMP was an 
increment over the deployed SGMP. Worse, Alas, HEMS also did not develop 
enough traction to counter  advocacy by the other two communities.

There is quite a bit of history of choosing experience over elegance, 
especially given the benefits (and in spite of the detriments) of 
installed base.

By the time of this particular competition, participation in the IETF 
was wide open and the participation in the IETF was extensive and 
vigorous.  So the model of rough consensus even benefit from pretty good 
market sampling.



>   Choosing IPng over IPv7,

Prior to Kobe, my own sense was that CLNP was going to win.  Kobe killed 
that.

As for Tuba vs. SIPP, we are back to theory vs. practice. Deering's 
proposal was quite an elegant increment over IPv4.  And, again, I saw no 
indication that this was anything other than community rough consensus.  
And again, if you have information to the contrary, please elucidate.



>   I am probably wrong but was the choice of domain-names broadly decided.

Again, as opposed to what, that would scale?


>   There was a real fascination at the time with ‘host-names’, even though it has been known since the early 80s that ‘host-hames’ are irrelevant to creating end-to-end connections.

You mean, except for the User Experience benefits, compared with using 
numeric addresses?

And, again, when, how, and who generated the 'direction' that forced 
this choice?

And by the mid-1980s, there was a highly diverse and independent 
community of participants making DNS work and scale.  Craig has nice 
comments about getting other networking groups to come on board using it.


*Note: *For many of the Internet's technical and operational work, it 
has certainly been common for someone to hold an authority role that 
aided in breaking logjams. Their success resolving something has relied 
on community respect, rather than positional authority. I seem to recall 
Jake Feinler taking credit/blame for resolving the question of an 
initial set of what we now call 'generic' domain names, after the 
community stalled. I've no doubt there are cases where the deciding 
person was at DARPA and hence held extra sway, of course.  But I think 
that has never been a dominant tone to any of the Internet's technical 
work.

d/

-- 

Dave Crocker

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