Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!CHEETAH.NYSER.NET!mrose
From: mrose@CHEETAH.NYSER.NET (Marshall Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: A proposal on a new newsgroup "comp.protocols.migrate.to.iso"
Message-ID: <29465.644647817@cheetah.nyser.net>
Date: 6 Jun 90 04:50:17 GMT
References: <4414@infmx.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: tcp-ip@nic.ddn.mil
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 44

I think you've missed April Fools' Day by about 2 months and 4 days!
But, if you were serious, then you are probably 9 years, 9 months, and
26 days premature in sending your message.

The Internet suite of protocols is only now coming into its own.  This
"old" technology is quite vibrant and has a lot of life flowing into it.
It is also the only thing that works today across multiple vendor lines.
Further, when meaningful comparisons can be made, it also seems to be
best technology around, as evidenced by its wide deployment and ever-maturing
market.

If Korea and Japan really have thrown out TCP/IP (which I don't believe
for a second), then they've made a strategic error.  Certainly in
Europe, the bastion of OSI, they've determined that if you want to
actually do networking, as opposed to talk about networking, then you do
it with TCP/IP.  I know of several places in Europe where the phrase
"IP router" is utterred with reverence and occasionally awe!

Although I'm hopeful that someday OSI might produce competitive
technologies, I'm not going to hold my breath.  It is not enough to do
something different, you must do it better, a lot better.  Although
service for service, the OSI effort is more ambitious than the Internet
approach, the OSI pseudo-products on the market are, by and large, much
less functional and robust than their Internet competitors.  It is not
enough to have a standard for multi-media message handling (X.400), you
must implement it fully and ubiqiutously in order to displace a
omnipresent memo-based system (RFC822).  And yet, when I survey the
X.400 offerings on the market, I still find many lacking features found
in many of today's RFC822 implementations, and at prices that are truly
astounding.  The same is true, sadly, for FTAM, and VT.  (And this
really isn't the fault of the vendors!  OSI technology is extraordinarly
expensive to produce in terms of time and people.)  I have high hopes
for OSI Directory Services (X.500), since there really isn't a
competitor in the Internet suite; but, I fear that political problems
will make a global Directory improbable.

If you are interested in transition technology, there have been papers
and books printed on this subject for nearly a decade (you might start
with Green's paper on "Protocol Conversion" in IEEE Trans. on Comm.,
March, 1986).  There are also some things specific to Internet->OSI
transition, for example one popular book on OSI devotes about 90 pages
to the topic.

/mtr