dennis@etinc.UUCP (Dennis E. Baasch 271-4525, 516) (06/15/90)
This isn't in response to any particular message, but all of the banter about OSI and the INTERNET (philosophically speaking) has really been getting on my nerves. I usually tend to stay out of nonsensical arguments, but in this case I feed compelled to express my views. It seems totally amazing to me that so many very well educated folks can have such a limited understanding about what's going on in this country ( the United States, that is). Whether its arrogance or ignorance isn't yet clear, but with all of the propaganda floating around (these lists not withstanding), I suppose it isn't too surprising. Perhaps the truth isn't as clear when you don't have many FACTS to work with. It seems that anyone with even limited networking experience could easily come to the conclusion that there is no single solution that will unite the world. The diversity of applications is much too great, and the investment in applications much to great to expect any real migration to any networking concept very much different to what currently exists. The proponants of OSI are kidding themselves if they think that their concept is leading them to some sort of utopia; there's a price to pay for generality and a world screaming for more throughput and functionality is not likely to sacrifice speed and comfort for 4-wheel drive. There's exactly two reasons for the existence (and success) of the INTERNET: The AT&T breakup and the fact that it is virtually the only supported nationwide network. The AT&T breakup: The reasoning behind this may not be obvious to the average reader, but the AT&T breakup may be the single most significant event in modern networking history. In a negative sort of way, that is. In virtually every modern country in the world all networking is based on a centralize packet-switching backbone run by the equivalent of what used to be AT&T. The breakup makes such a network ILLEGAL in the US, at least if implemented by the phone companies, and has also left the individual phone companies so talentless that data networking is practically out of their realm of understanding. This fact has also left this country so far behind in X.25 technology that few even think about it and almost no-one understands it. I read a message in which someone referred to X.25 as "ancient technology", which is quite ironic since in reality it hasn't yet arrived in the US. This from the people who have proposed PPP, a protocol with half of the functionality of X.25, none of the networking capabilities and twice the overhead. The fact is that X.25 is so vastly superior to anything thats been proposed in the last 10 years that there's very little reason to come up with something else. Its generic transport with a single basic concept: logical multiplexing is faster and more efficent than physical interface management; something that will hold true until busses are faster than CPUs. The only thing "ancient" about X.25 is the public switches, most of which are still based on 6809s. But new technology products with X.25 at T1 speeds are creeping into the marketplace, and when they do, the Europeons will be laughing out loud. While the INTERNET isn't really the only national network, its the only one thats run for fundamentally unselfish reasons. For E-MAIL and shuffling around public domain code, its just fine. But if someone came into your board room and proposed this ratsnest with all of the patchwork protocols, overburdened routers and (how many hops?) with no link-level error correction, what would you think? I don't have a conclusion to all of this, only a collection of fears. I'm not sure that I'm even trying to make a point, but if I am, it might be something like this: The Europeans may be trying to build a tall building with short cranes (OSI over X.25), but in the US we're trying to build an equally ugly edifice on sand (IP over ?). Neither will stand a hurricane, but at least the Europeans have a basement. Dennis Emerging Technologies etinc!dennis@uu.psi.com