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OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

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Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#11

Post by mjn »

hga wrote: post #7

Not too impressed with this account, which I will admit starting to skim around halfway. E.g.: I'm not sure the author realizes TCP is a virtual circuit protocol (then again I'm sure OSI had one or more much heavier weight ones). The real fatal flaw of OSI, before even getting to the point of finding out if their protocols worked---many of them did get far enough in standardization process---was their going to ISO in…

> spending around $2,000 ($1,000 in 1988 dollars) to buy a shelf of the standards documents

The ISLISP standardization group did an interesting workaround for this: http://www.islisp.info/history.html

An ISO committee to standardize the language was constituted but stalled on doing any real work drafting a standard. While they waited around, the community drew up a draft standard, which was published as a public recommendation to the ISO committee, with the draft put into the public domain. The committee then voted to adopt the community's draft as the standard unchanged. So now an official ISO document is available for the usual fee, but you can get a predecessor document that looks surprisingly similar, for free as a PDF.

Of course, this requires everyone on the committee agreeing to not really take the ISO process seriously. You might wonder why one would bother with it at all then, and in this case it seems to have been to reassure clients that ISLISP is stable by getting it an ISO standard.

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#12

Post by blue1 »

npsimons wrote: post #3

As usual, /usr/games/fortune provides some insightful commentary: "On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works be…

Doesn't this description of the OSI way look similar to how the W3C works?

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#13

Post by alan »

hga wrote: post #7

Not too impressed with this account, which I will admit starting to skim around halfway. E.g.: I'm not sure the author realizes TCP is a virtual circuit protocol (then again I'm sure OSI had one or more much heavier weight ones). The real fatal flaw of OSI, before even getting to the point of finding out if their protocols worked---many of them did get far enough in standardization process---was their going to ISO in…

> I'm not sure the author realizes TCP is a virtual circuit protocol (then again I'm sure OSI had one or more much heavier weight ones).

You've missed that they're referring to level 2 and 3 virtual circuits, IE "data is always delivered along the same network path, i.e. through the same nodes" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_circuits#Layer_2.2F3_v... )

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#14

Post by ChuckMcM »

I think one of the subtleties that is overlooked is that by being the "future" of networking, OSI drew in all the "big guns" who worked hard to control it to their advantage. Whether it was the folks at IBM who were pushing Token Ring/SNA, or Netware, or anything really. Since it was the standard to be, influencing it was the high priority.

That allowed the IETF to continue in relative calm and without serious interference during the 80's. That all changed in the 90's when people started figuring out they were betting on the wrong horse.

In 1993 at the 27th IETF [1] I put forth the proposal that this code we had all been using (RPC/XDR) that was described in various informational RFCs (RFC1057/RFC1014) which everyone treated like a 'standard' actually be blessed as a standard. Pretty much the consensus was that it was a fine idea except that forces at that point that were rather anti "Sun" went out of their way to kill it. It was sad to watch, and folks who had been going to IETF meetings for a decade or more were appalled but damned if it had become impossible for the IETF to bless something as a standard any more. That really soured me on 'standards' for a long time.

[1] Pg: 533 Advances in ONC http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/27.pdf

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#15

Post by angersock »

blue1 wrote: post #12
npsimons wrote: post #3

As usual, /usr/games/fortune provides some insightful commentary: "On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works be…

Doesn't this description of the OSI way look similar to how the W3C works?

sssssh youll give away the joke

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#16

Post by 9h1d9j809s »

blue1 wrote: post #12
npsimons wrote: post #3

As usual, /usr/games/fortune provides some insightful commentary: "On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works be…

Doesn't this description of the OSI way look similar to how the W3C works?

Not anymore. It used to work like that, which is why things like XHTML 2.0 never got traction.

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#17

Post by hga »

mjn wrote: post #11
hga wrote: post #7

Not too impressed with this account, which I will admit starting to skim around halfway. E.g.: I'm not sure the author realizes TCP is a virtual circuit protocol (then again I'm sure OSI had one or more much heavier weight ones). The real fatal flaw of OSI, before even getting to the point of finding out if their protocols worked---many of them did get far enough in standardization process---was their going to ISO in…

> spending around $2,000 ($1,000 in 1988 dollars) to buy a shelf of the standards documents The ISLISP standardization group did an interesting workaround for this: http://www.islisp.info/history.html An ISO committee to standardize the language was constituted but stalled on doing any real work drafting a standard. While they waited around, the community drew up a draft standard, which was published as a public reco…

Reminds me of how I always used drafts of the ANSI SCSI standard, or vendor documents.

"in this case it seems to have been to reassure clients that ISLISP is stable by getting it an ISO standard"

Which is a nice hat trick if nobody uses the actual standards document ... although I suppose Franz and perhaps a few others did buy a copy....

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#18

Post by rmrfrmrf »

bandy wrote: post #2

…but we're going to keep asking questions about the 7 layer model in interviews as if it were useful in the real world because that's what we learned about in school.

Obviously the best job candidates are the ones that scoff at the prospect of learning something more than is absolutely necessary.

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#19

Post by mcguire »

hga wrote: post #7

Not too impressed with this account, which I will admit starting to skim around halfway. E.g.: I'm not sure the author realizes TCP is a virtual circuit protocol (then again I'm sure OSI had one or more much heavier weight ones). The real fatal flaw of OSI, before even getting to the point of finding out if their protocols worked---many of them did get far enough in standardization process---was their going to ISO in…

I was hoping someone (else) would mention Padlipsky.

In my dissertation, Elements of Networking Style is the reference for the OSI section (which was needed because everybody is still using the damn terminology).

Re: OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t

#20

Post by jamessb »

npsimons wrote: post #3

As usual, /usr/games/fortune provides some insightful commentary: "On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people. There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright, non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works be…

Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, surely?

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