torben@FORALIE.ICS.HAWAII.EDU (Torben Nielsen) (06/10/90)
From Kwang Sung's diatribe.... > Recently, I've proposed a new newsgroup "comp.protocols.migrate.to.iso". >I've received so many responses. Among those, I've selected some best ones, >after I've thrown out some bad ones. Wouldn't do to let us read all of that garbage. ``No" votes truly are no good; they should be discarded so we can have a fair poll here..... Actually, I'm delighted you threw the following quote in there. Apparently from someone inside DEC: >>The major reason for a slower than expected transition to OSI is the installed >>base. TCP/IP is only a small part of the installed base with 1500 networks. >>PC Lans total over 1 million networks, IBM SNA networks control hundreds of >>thousands of terminals, DECnet has over 700,00 nodes (hosts and servers) and >>DEC has sold 3,000,000 ethernet ports to 61k customers. Can you say ``apples"? Now try ``oranges" and maybe ``pineapples".... Is this the official DEC line explaining why the transition is going so slowly? Torben
dennis@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Dennis Ferguson) (06/11/90)
Torben Nielsen writes: >From Kwang Sung's diatribe.... ... >Actually, I'm delighted you threw the following quote in there. Apparently >from someone inside DEC: > >>The major reason for a slower than expected transition to OSI is the installed >>base. TCP/IP is only a small part of the installed base with 1500 networks. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >>PC Lans total over 1 million networks, IBM SNA networks control hundreds of >>thousands of terminals, DECnet has over 700,00 nodes (hosts and servers) and >>DEC has sold 3,000,000 ethernet ports to 61k customers. I quite enjoyed that note as well, not so much because I have particularly strong feelings on the subject, but rather because if you rearrange the paragraphs you get a little of the schizophrenia I often hear from vendors and others with greater interest in the topic. For example, compare the above to the following, which appeared about 15 sentences later. > The major reason why TCP/IP is so prevalent in computer networks today is > not because it is technically superior than anything that was put out before. > But because it was given away as standard equipment on millions of > workstations. It was part of the BSD UNIX that was sold on SUN boxes. > If not for this fact alone, there probably would not be ANY country wide > interoperable protocol. Or how about this > The argument that OSI is technically inferior to TCP is a myth. TCP and TP4 > are practically the same (so much the same that people don't see a benifit > of using TP4 over TCP.) and this > TCP/IP will not support the upcomming applications such as multimedia as > well as OSI will. TCP/IP is connectionless, OSI is connection oriented. > Multimedia needs multiple synchronized data circuits. Datagrams can't be lost > or take variously different routes (TCP/IP). I think what is really needed is an ISO committee to standardize criticisms of DoD IP for the advancement of OSI networking. This way people could just cite ISO 8992 instead of having to spend time rewriting all the same old stuff, could be sure they were all saying the same bad things about TCP/IP, and wouldn't get contradictory criticisms mixed up in the same eight paragraphs. Perfect. Dennis Ferguson