Xref: utzoo soc.culture.british:11753 comp.protocols.tcp-ip:16620 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: IP in the UK (was Re: Fingering the English) Message-ID: Date: 19 Jun 91 18:26:29 GMT References: <1991Jun17.115011.17634@gdr.bath.ac.uk> <11134@castle.ed.ac.uk> Sender: aro@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 77 In-reply-to: adam@castle.ed.ac.uk's message of 18 Jun 91 08:40:31 GMT On 18 Jun 91 08:40:31 GMT, adam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Adam Hamilton) said: adam> In article pcg@aber.ac.uk adam> (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: adam> The choice made by the JNT was NOT between OSI-on-paper and a adam> basically-working-TCP-IP. It was between TCP-IP-on-paper and a adam> basically-working-X25, the only standardised available protocol of adam> the time. No, it was between working ARPAnet with many services and dozens of nodes and X.25 yet to be used massively and little more than remote login. The choice between Internet and ISO/OSI is the one they are facing now, or rather, the choice has already been made by somebody else, and the JNT are trying to ride the wave. adam> The decision to target on OSI when available is hardly one to be adam> criticised; after all, the Internet has stated it will convert adam> eventually. Milnet, maybe will (in due time :->). NFSnet, quite improbably. The Internet, surely not. As to 'OSI when available' I would never bet the farm on a set of standards yet to be approved, sight unseen. Apparently I am in good company. adam> the Arpanet was NOT running well-proven software at the time, it adam> did NOT have a dozen years of experience and it did NOT have a adam> "working viable...system of specifications and implementations". Tell that to the guys that were running the ARPAnet at the time... :-) Maybe I suffer from hallucinations, as somebody else has pointed out before. I have obviously delusionary memories of using the ARPAnet in the late seventies/early eighties with remote login, mail, file transfer between dozens of otherwise incompatible mainframes. I cannot remember any similarly complete ready made alternative from the X.25/ISO/OSI camp. Still I must admit that the only way I had to get onto ARPAnet from Italy was to use TYMnet, which was X.25 based. But X.25 based networks did not offer much more than remote login, and painfully as to that. adam> The key point he misses is that what makes sense is to run the adam> same protocols locally as you will have to connect to if you want adam> to go further afield. In Europe at that time that meant X25. Mention *any* other largish X.25 based research network in Europe at the time. Or even now. Or maybe this was another JNT miscalculation. They may well have believed that there would be a lot of traffic with other European countries and with Australia and New Zealand, rather than with the USA. Wishful thinking, if so. A dozen years ago I was using TYMnet to connect to the ARPAnet, not to CYGALE or EIN. For good reasons... adam> Next message, he will start to tell us again about how the JNT adam> chose big-endian domain ordering when little-endian had already adam> been chosen for TCP/IP (and for viewers who have missed this adam> endless discussion - they didn't. They simply failed to change adam> their minds some months later when the opposite decision was made adam> over the pond). This is not what I wrote. I remember (and will eventually find the article I saved) one of the guys who did attend the meetings reported that JNT had chosen a completely different addressing format with big endian domains, and then they changed their minds and decided to use the USA adopted syntax but with their own original big endian domain ordering. Hearsay, admittedly. Will try to retrieve that posting. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@aber.ac.uk