Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!richard From: richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) Newsgroups: uk.misc,eunet.followup,comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Internet routing Europe - USA -} Europe... Message-ID: <3384@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 7 Sep 90 13:23:29 GMT References: <1990Aug30.091435.1982@ircam.ircam.fr> <6190@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <4847@tardis.cs.ed.ac.uk> Reply-To: richard@aiai.UUCP (Richard Tobin) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 33 In article <4847@tardis.cs.ed.ac.uk> anarchy@tardis.cs.ed.ac.uk (Alan Cox) writes: >Firstly remember that when Janet was first setup properly they were dealing >with a wacky array of bizzare processors, and also that then tcp/ip was abit >fof an experiment. Perhaps. But it was an experiment that succeeded, unlike Janet. >Also they have a reasonable argument at the moment about relative >efficiency of coloured book and tcp/ip. In terms of bits per second, Janet (and ISO) might win over TCP. But in terms of who's been able to use interactive ftp, I think it's clear which has been more efficient over the last ten years. The supporters of this "efficiency" view have wasted hundreds of hours of my time. I have been told that at least some of the Janet implementers were unable to believe that interactive ftp was useful. Their view was that ftp was the canonical non-interactive task. Anyone accustomed to use of the Internet will realise how misguided this is, and how seriously it has limited software-sharing in the UK. Incidentally, as far as I can tell it's only the lack of a list-directory primitive that makes it impossible to implement interactive ftp using NIFTP. And I believe the York code added such a thing for the "hhtree" command. So it could even have been done without TCP. It might even have been possible to provide a reasonable NIFTP-FTP gateway to the US... -- Richard -- Richard Tobin, JANET: R.Tobin@uk.ac.ed AI Applications Institute, ARPA: R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Edinburgh University. UUCP: ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin