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From: schoff@uu.psi.com (Martin Schoffstall)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Will there be a Great Unified Net?
Message-ID: <1990May26.190406.7788@uu.psi.com>
Date: 26 May 90 19:04:06 GMT
References: <1024@mpirbn.UUCP> <2112@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1990May22.203851.6074@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Reply-To: schoff@uu.psi.com (Martin Schoffstall)
Organization: Performance Systems International, Inc.
Lines: 33


Donald,

While I agree with much of what your saying on a philosphical level
	1) tcp/ip has delivered
	2) The Domain notation is prevalent and growing
	3) encourage your organization to participate in the Internet
	etc...
	[ I've already posted 

I need to argue with you on some fine points:

>Internet is that networking specialists all over the world are under
>pressure to deliver effective interoperable systems *NOW*, and the
>TCP/IP suite of protocols used by the Internet is the only proven
>technology that can do the job.  OSI/X.400/X.500 is simply not ready
>for worldwide production use yet.  In country after country during the

The International Standards Organization (ISO) clearly has a string
of failures in FTAM, VT, TP0, etc...  However, there is an element of
the tcp/ip community that thinks that X.400 and X.500 are worthy
enough to exist as applications in the tcp/ip world.  As I've already
mentioned PSI and others have succesfully been using it over tcp/ip
on a large scale.  Certain places (like Columbia University) use X.500
as the basis for distributing their phonebook data on a timely basis
(weekly I believe), to faculty/student/staff who participate in the
Columbia wide network.

It is possible that we will hide much of the ugliness of the X.400
notation but use the protocol mechanisms to deliver multimedia mail,
again, layered on tcp/ip.

Marty