Aucbvax.6260
fa.works
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works
Mon Feb 22 20:03:33 1982
Re:   UNIX & Workstations & Networking ...
>From lwa.mit-csr@BRL Mon Feb 22 09:09:36 1982
With respect to uniform network protocol standards:

HEAR! HEAR!

Our experience here at MIT has been that interconnecting network
HARDWARE is (relatively) easy.  We have two different ringnets, an
experimental (ie 3 Mbaud) Ethernet, Chaosnet, and of course Arpanet,
and it is possible to forward packets among all of them.  Unfortunately,
there are almost as many network protocols as networks, and it appears
that protocol translation is a very difficult problem.

Protocol standardization within an organization is, of course, as much
a political and administrative problem as a technical one.  Each of
the available network protocols has its own technical advantages and
disadvantages.  Also, writing network software seems to require a great
deal of time and manpower, so I don't expect the situation to improve
very quickly.
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