rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (06/05/89)
This issue has (naturally) arisen in the ANSC X3H3.6 group working on formal standardization of the X protocol, since OSI is the only protocol suite a formal standard can reference. There is a draft of one approach, which is being circulated within that committee. If there are a few genuine OSI experts out there who also understand X (as opposed to people who have simply been tasked to "make it work"), they can contact me and I can see about releasing a copy from the committee for review.
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (06/06/89)
| From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU | | This issue has (naturally) arisen in the ANSC X3H3.6 group working on | formal standardization of the X protocol, since OSI is the only protocol | suite a formal standard can reference. I hate to ask, but ... Is it really true that ``OSI is the only protocol suite a formal standard can reference''?? Have the standards bodies really institutionalized OSI bigotry? (I don't know if I really want to hear the answer to this one ...) Casey
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (06/06/89)
In article <26446@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> casey@lll-crg.llnl.gov.UUCP (Casey Leedom) writes: > I hate to ask, but ... Is it really true that ``OSI is the only >protocol suite a formal standard can reference''?? Have the standards >bodies really institutionalized OSI bigotry? (I don't know if I really >want to hear the answer to this one ...) The transitive closure of all standards used to implement an ANSI standard protocol must be ANSI standards. If an ANSI standard is dependent upon some other standards, they must also be ANSI standards. A protocol must be completely defined within ANSI. The only ANSI standard networking protocols are the OSI protocols. This interrelationship exists in other areas. You can't have an ANSI standard for an X or GKS language binding for a non-ANSI-standard language. That's why there's currently no ANSI binding of GKS in the C language (there's probably a draft waiting patiently for the C standard to be ratified). All is not lost, though. If a protocol is reasonably independent of the underlying protocols, then it is easy for other standards organizations to define things in terms of the ANSI protocol. So, ANSI X would presumably be defined in two parts: the first part would define the logical X protocol, and the second part would define its implementation using OSI protocols. DOD can then specify the TCP replacement for the second part. ANSI can't require a TCP/IP implementation (because TCP/IP doesn't exist as far as ANSI is concerned), but DOD can. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar