Xref: utzoo soc.culture.british:11681 comp.protocols.tcp-ip:16558 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!aplcomm!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!exspes From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: IP in the UK (was Re: Fingering the English) Message-ID: <1991Jun17.115011.17634@gdr.bath.ac.uk> Date: 17 Jun 91 11:50:11 GMT References: Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath Lines: 32 In article pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: >Also, the DARPA was funding a lot of efforts to produce networking >ARPAnet software for a large variety of machines, software that was, >thanks to US govmt. practice, freely available. But not always outside the States -- owing to various 'technology transfer' regulations, including CoCom. And, the fairly arbitrary nature of CoCom means that outside the US, you've got to be a bit leery of using things which were funded by the US military, since even if they are available today, they may not be tomorrow. >The JNT chose unproven, incomplete technology for which there was no >ready made software, against proven, well established technology for >which there was a large and growing mass of ready made software. Except, this 'large mass' of software has some serious deficiencies (as compared with notional IP specs -- particularly, in terms of subnet masking. It also contains many well-known security holes, which may not have been so important when only real ARPA-approved sites were netted, but becomes more so as the net becomes more open. (Anyone using any of the 'r' commands, or NFS write-mode mounts, is more or less asking to be hit, among other things.) Also, the underlying structure of addresses makes address management a royal pain. And, in some places (e.g. here) we do not have available, for cultural reasons, the large mass of student employees which a typical US University used to handle all this drudgery. (Mind you, the ISO NSAP addresses seem to have gone overboard in the other direction. -- Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!ukc!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132