[Info-vax] Rethinking DECNET ?

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Thursday, 4 September 2014 20:03:54 UTC+1, Bob Koehler  wrote:
> In article <lu9kdk$lo8$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
> 
> > 
> 
> > That is true. In fact, I don't think any other company even did 
> 
> > implement an OSI compliant network stack at all. Which is a good sign it 
> 
> > was not going to be the future of networking...
> 
> 
> 
>    HP and Sun both shipped ISO/OSI network products.  Or would have if
> 
>    anybody ordered a copy.

OSI products were also shipped by a number of industrial automation
vendors, and their equivalents from the design end of things. I'm
slightly puzzled by the claim that DEC were first to ship a full OSI
stack. I'd probably be happier with "first to ship a fully integrated
OSI stack", but long before that happened there was VOTS, OSAK,
DEC/MAP and DEC/OSAP, and FTAM, and the X.whatever email stuff, and
probably more.

I've just got my 7 Layer Model souvenir from AUTOFACT 85 (as in 1985)
off the shelf; it's a 7 layer Towers of Hanoi thing.

Back then, AUTOFACT was *the* major US-centric exhibition for
automated factories. Anybody who wanted to be a player HAD to be
there, or people would talk.

The big names behing the demand for OSI were there too. Companies like
Boeing and GM. You want to tell them they're wrong, fine, off you go.
It might have worked OK for the IBM rep, but other prospective suppliers
had to toe the line.


Other exhibitors named on the OSI souvenir (not a complete list):
Allen Bradley
ASEA
AT+T
DEC
Gould
Honeywell
HP
IBM
Intel
Intergraph
Motorola
Northern Telecom
Siemens
Sun

I did a similar event in the UK a year or two later with most of the
same vendors present, for the same reasons.

It made a great deal of sense back then. Industrial automation was
a mess of incompatible protocols frequently running over incompatible
hardware. Much the same applied to application integration at the design
end (including basic stuff such as in-house or inter-company email, never
mind complicated stuff like actual file transfer).

In parallel with this, or perhaps a little behind, were the
Government OSI Profile initiatives in various countries (FIPS 146-1 was
1990).

The theory was that if you couldn't play OSI, you wouldn't be able to
sell to the likes of Boeing, GM, or GOSIP-committed government.

What happened?

I think the executive summary is that some years later. Microsoft
happened, they claimed GOSIP/POSIX compliance witn NT's alleged POSIX 
subsystem (or claimed grandfather rights for Win32 or otherwise got
themselves into the bidding process) and the rest is history (even
if Exchange did use X.400 for quite a while).

By 1995 the IETF (ie TCP etc) standards were acceptable as part of
GOSIP. Interestingly email using X.400/X.500 rather than POP/SMTP
lived on for some time in places where trustworthiness actually
mattered, e.g. when there's a war to fight (Defence Messaging System).

Water under the bridge. But let's not forget that it was the
*customers* like Boeing and GM, as much as the vendors like DEC, that
were initially driving this.