Xref: utzoo soc.culture.british:11678 comp.protocols.tcp-ip:16556 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!kth.se!sunic!mcsun!ukc!axion!uzi-9mm.fulcrum.bt.co.uk!igb From: igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: IP in the UK (was Re: Fingering the English) Message-ID: <7C!+${-@uzi-9mm.fulcrum.bt.co.uk> Date: 17 Jun 91 07:32:13 GMT References: <7957@ecs.soton.ac.uk> <5280@syma.sussex.ac.uk> Sender: news@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (News with an UZI) Organization: BT Fulcrum, Birmingham Lines: 33 In article pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: > On 5 Jun 91 13:39:32 GMT, grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham S Thomas) said: > > grahamt> When the Coloured Book software suite was conceived, it was > grahamt> (according to my best information - correct me if I'm wrong) by > grahamt> no means clear that TCP/IP would become as dominant as it has > grahamt> today. > > On this I would disagree. At the time the CB were done, the *only* large > scale network, especially in the academic sector, was the ARPAnet. There > were *no* ISO style networks in widespread use, in the academic sector. But were there TCP networks either? My understanding is that at the time the CBen were being written, the majority of the ARPAnet was running NCP. TCP was certainly not the proven technology that it is now. Remember that TCP was first seriously available in 4.2bsd. I don't have an easy feel for when ``most'' Universities would have had something running 4.2bsd, but I feel certain that the number of Computer Centres who would have traded their big iron for a 780 running 4.2bsd was vanishingly small. That may be right or wrong, but it is a fact. Additionally the PTTs, especially BT, were installing shed-loads of 8 bit X25. IP over X25 was inefficient to put it mildly and without a massive Military-Industrial complex (TM) there was no way that a datagram infrastructure was going to be installed. (**) (*) Did you know the post office still has a class A IP number from the early days of EPSS? (**) Unless you had voted SERC out and taken the MOD instead. Remember who funded most of US Computer Science through that period? ian