Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!clyde!cbatt!ucbvax!SRI-NIC.ARPA!STJOHNS From: STJOHNS@SRI-NIC.ARPA Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: GOSIP Message-ID: <[SRI-NIC.ARPA]10-Mar-87.06:00:24.STJOHNS> Date: Tue, 10-Mar-87 09:00:00 EST Article-I.D.: <[SRI-NIC.ARPA]10-Mar-87.06:00:24.STJOHNS> Posted: Tue Mar 10 09:00:00 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Mar-87 04:37:47 EST References: <8703091845.AA14228@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 132 Approved: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa The following is sent on behalf of Mike Corrigan: _____________________________________________________________ A few comments: 1. GOSIP is the Government OSI Protocol Specification. It was prepared by a working group of the Government OSI Users Group, chaired by NBS, which was formed in reaction to what was a pending Office of Management and Budget announcement mandating use of OSI, without benefit of a specification. I don't know the exact status of the OMB announcemnet, but I believe it is still pending. 2. GOSIP is supposed to have been made available for FTPing from the NIC, but I'm not sure it is really there. I will find out and let you know. 3. A specification such as GOSIP consists of two key parts: what it is you hope to buy and when you have to buy it, or, the body of the spec and the applicability statement. If these don't match as well as they might, you get some very peculiar discussions. I think Mike P's discussion makes it clear that the GOSIP spec pulls no punches with respect to what ypu can currently acquire in OSI, and if the applicability statement were not part of the document, it would meet truth in labelling, full disclosure and informed consent concerns a lot better than we have ever managed in the ARPA/DOD protocol standards arena (for example, did anyone ask themselves about guidance or capabilities in the areas of performance, testing, and user interfaces for TCP/IP/SMTP/FTP/TELNET when reading Mike P's comments?). If we had waited for adequacy in these areas in DOD, we would still be waiting. 4. The group responsible for resolving the mismatch between the applicability statement and the spec body in DOD is the protocol standards steering group (actually, it is more complicated than that, but the PSSG invited all the complications to participate with them). At its recent meeting, the issues Mike P. raised were brought to the table by his sponsor, as well as a number of others, and I believe they will be adequately addressed in the DOD comments on the spec, and for the most part will be incorporated in the final spec. I believe that the result will be to place the applicability statement somewhere between the Mike P. reading and the Marshall Rose reading. After the GOSIP is published, there will still need to be guidance prepared by the different agencies for its use in each agency, since different agencies have different plans and concerns. 5. At this point, I believe additional comments would be most useful if they adopted the Marshall Rose interpretation, that is, "If you want to do interoperable OSI, this is how to do it." An additional issue is how OSI should be used by the protocol research community. For really far out research, clearly OSI (or current ARPA/DOD) are minimally relevant. But there is a lot of research in the nearer term which could result in changes to currently planned and operational protocols. Assuming that one believes that the operational protocols for lots of folks are going to be OSI, then the question is how might improvements best be researched. One approach would be to adopt OSI as the research base. This has a lot of apparent advantages: direct applicability and shared terminology for two. A possible difficulty is that the OSI protocols might be a bit "rich" to use when investigating particular points, and a "leaner" protocol suite might be easier to use as the research suite. This approach, however, would have the disadvantage of needing a translation step. (Incidentally, I thought Mike P's protocol to car analogy was less than apt. I would go with OSI is to DOD as Lincoln Town Car is to MGB.) Mike C.