[ih] NIC, InterNIC, and Modelling Administration

[mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman)]

John,

Now I have to ask you what YOU've been smoking.

John Day wrote:
> As far as working goes, in 1992 cisco's largest customer by far was a 
> deployed CLNP network.

Who, if anybody, was using CLNP for anything in 1992? By then the 
Internet had gone commercial, with about 20,000 or so nets and about a 
million hosts linked by IP.

> I don't know what this means.  Yes, CYCLADES was an embarrassment to 
> the French PTT and they were eventually able to shut it down.  But it 
> was a real network and some very good people working on it.  It is 
> unfortunate that it was shut down because they were doing good work.
>
> There was very little network research going on in the US.

I don't believe CYCLADES ever grew beyond 20 hosts.  As to network 
research in the US, BBN was DARPA's biggest contractor (still is, I 
think), and at least when I was there most of that money was going into 
.... network research.  And then there was an awful lot of money going 
to a lot of universities, and a lot of corporate research going on.

>>> Sometimes.  Yes, you are correct.  Although I have no idea why IEEE 
>>> bothers.  Ethernet is an ISO standard.  What you describe is very 
>>> much the case in IEEE today.  It was less so at the beginning but 
>>> even there one had competing products:  Ethernet, token bus, token 
>>> ring.  It was what a lot of people wanted but it was the processs 
>>> produced.
>>
>> I'm not sure why IEEE bothers either, but they seem to be doing 
>> something right with the 802 line of standards.
>
> Over a decade ago, I told them not to bother. IEEE has international 
> recognition.  There is no point to it.

Huh?  IEEE has been pretty effective as a standards body in a number of 
areas - 802, laboratory interconnection, Firewire, POSIX, as well as 
some of its more traditional electrical machinery, power, telegraph, and 
radio .  As a standards body, its activities date back to the 1880s 
(AIEE which later merged with IRE to become IEEE).

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In<fnord>  practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra