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From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.lan
Subject: Re: IP variants
Message-ID: <397@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Oct-84 14:35:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.397
Posted: Fri Oct  5 14:35:55 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 05:31:51 EDT
References: 
Reply-To: mark@cbpavo.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 23

My understanding of the situation (containing mostly information from
the DARPA side of the fence) is that the ISO IP (I sure hope they
change the acronym, we're already getting confused) was not intended
to be compatible with the DARPA IP.  Much of the functionality was copied
in an attempt to get DOD to conform to the upcoming ISO standard.
However, this is largely a political game, and the last I heard there
was no real intent on the part of DARPA to switch over to the ISO
protocols.  It is possible this will change when ISO finally gets
its protocols documented.

My own personal opinion is that ISO will be out too late.  The virtual
terminal protocol (the rest of us call this remote login) won't even
be in draft form until 1986, and you can't have a usable network without
remote login.  (I don't consider UUCP exactly a usable network either.)
It could easily be 1988 or later by the time the VT protocol is approved
and vendor implementations start to appear.  By that time, TCP/IP will
have gathered so much momentum it will be impossible to stop it.  And
network compatibility being what it is, there will be too many existing
TCP/IP networks out there to attempt to convert them or gateway between
them with any high level of functionality.  I suspect that ISO will catch
on primarily outside the USA, and within the USA will only catch on to
the extent that X.25 has (although it will have a fight to convert the
X.25 networks over, so it may not do even that well.)