Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: A proposal on a new newsgroup "comp.protocols.migrate.to.iso"
Message-ID: <406@minya.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jun 90 02:33:57 GMT
References: <7335.644955331@nma.com> <9006092257.AA05578@psi.com>
Lines: 37

In article <9006092257.AA05578@psi.com>, schoff@PSI.COM ("Martin Lee Schoffstall") writes:
> Stef,
> 
>  Although Marshall Rose (Hi Marshall) seems to be saying that he does not
>  want to discuss this topic, I would like to suggest that broadened
>  discussion of ISO Transition issues is a good idea.  
> 
> There are many of us who are only interested in talking about coexistence
> since we are now so old (like being in our 30's) that we won't live
> long enough to see a transition.

Hey, you think you're an old timer?  I recall 'way back around '70 when
I first got mixed up with computers, and one of the common predictions
then was that modems would soon be outdated, to replaced by much better 
digital comm lines.  So now I find myself debugging SLIP packages on
various new modems (both of which will, of course, soon be obsolete :-).

Sure, in 5 years or so, lots of vendors will have lots of OSI products.
But what makes you think TCP/IP will be dead (or even dying) in 2010?
Chances are, it'll be installed on many more systems than now, and we'll
all be trying to retrofit the 1995 upgrades to alleviate the problems
caused by the 32-bit IP address in a world with 7 trillion IP hosts.

A couple years back, there was a cute NPR story about the non-celebration
of the 100th anniversary of the USA officially adopting the Metric system
as the legal standard.  If history is any guide, in 2090, we'll likely 
be in a similar situation with computer networks -- the rest of the Solar 
System will be OSI, the US government will have long since decreed it 
standard, but the USA will be overwhelmingly TCP/IP.

(BTW, has anyone else noticed that NASA runs on EST/EDT, not UT? ;-)

-- 
Uucp: ...!{harvard.edu,ima.com,eddie.mit.edu}!minya!jc (John Chambers)
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Cute-Saying: It's never to late to have a happy childhood.