BIEGLMAR@MAX.CC.UREGINA.CA (Mark Biegler) (01/23/91)
I am looking for information regarding the OSI market, in terms of predictions about the future, and how long it will take to become widespread. I am preparing an executive level presentation regarding OSI in the computer industry for the upper echelons of my company. I have obtained *some* information from industry papers, as well as the Gartner Group, however, I was wondering if any firms or universities have done additional research into the direction of OSI. I am especially interested in cost analysis and advantages/disadvantages of implementing OSI products, if such information exists. I will be willing to sign non-disclosure agreements with any companies that would be willing to provide me with information. All information will be kept internal to my corporation, and will be acknowledged appropriately. Thank you. Mark Biegler Bieglmar@Max.cc.uregina.ca Programmer/Analyst Professional Services (306) 781-5466 Westbridge Computer Corporation 1801 Hamilton Street Regina, Saskatchewan Canada Acknowledge-To: <BIEGLMAR@UREGINA1>
hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (01/24/91)
We'll ignore the technical merits of ISO, because in the end it is marketing forces that seem to determine success and failure of standards more than their merit. The overhead of ISO is probably twice that of TCP/IP for many purposes, but if vendors are willing to put enough resources into making ISO fly, this probably will not be critical for most users. It looks like systems vendors are tending to move towards ISO for networking, but are hedging their bets with TCP/IP. TCP/IP has a big head start, is still more widely available, and has public domain software. I think it's going to be aheard for the forseeable future in universities and among hackers. I think the first real splash for ISO is going to be general availability of DECnet phase V. However from what I can tell of it, it's sort of a cross between traditional DECnet and ISO, and some services (particularly virtual terminal) may not interoperate with non-DEC ISO stacks. (Can anyone confirm or deny that?) I suspect within a few years the way it's going to end up is that vendors who now have proprietary protocols are going to tend to replace them by ISO, but will also have TCP/IP software available, and vendors that currently use TCP/IP will probably continue to use mostly that, but will also have ISO available (but usually at a significantly higher cost). My intuition is that there's more networking going on using proprietary protocols now than TCP/IP, so if that all migrates to ISO, ISO will end up ahead, particularly in shops that get their networking from their system vendors rather than having active networking staffs of their own. Of course major routers and other networking equipment will support both TCP/IP and ISO. The research community will probably continue to use TCP/IP, for several reasons: - the process of defining and modifying the protocol is easier for researchers to deal with. Protocol documents are easy to get, and there are reasonably low-overhead ways to put out new protocols and extensions, particularly for experimental purposes. In general TCP/IP is user-driven and ISO is vendor-driven, not because the ISO folks are in any sense closed, but because of the economics of participating in the standards community. The TCP/IP process is intentionally designed to allow participation via computer mail and other low-cost methods. - implementations are widely available and generally inexpensive. It seems that most ISO implementations, except those that come bundled with systems are still expensive. - the protocols are enough simpler that it's easier to do experimental work with it. I've wondered if ISO is going to be a replay of PL/I or Ada, which are situations where a large company or the government tried to impose standards, but generally failed. However in all fairness I think there's wide enough support among vendors for ISO that it will become widespread. The timing is hard to guess. The past 5 years have all been the year when ISO was finally going to take off. I still think DECnet is going to catalyze it. Unfortunately DECnet phase V has been delayed incredibly, but it looks like it will finally be out in 1991. One thing that might change my view is if the system vendors that now offer TCP/IP decide to offer ISO at the same cost (including bundling it free with systems that have TCP/IP bundled free). Perhaps Berkeley 4.4 will catalyze this the same way 4.2 catalyzed widespread availability of TCP/IP.