Re: [TUHS] OSI stack (Was: Posters)

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Warner Losh

    > a bunch of OSI/ISO network stack posters (thank goodness that didn't
    > become standard, woof!)

Why? The details have faded from my memory, but the lower 2 layers of the
stack (CLNP and TP4) I don't recall as being too bad. (The real block to
adoption was that people didn't want to get snarled up in the ISO standards
process.)

It at least managed (IIRC) to separate the concepts of, and naming for, 'node'
and 'network interface' (which is more than IPv6 managed, apparently on the
grounds that 'IPv4 did it that way', despite lengthy pleading that in light of
increased understanding since IPv4 was done, they were separate concepts and
deserved separate namespaces). Yes, the allocation of the names used by the
path selection (I use that term because to too many people, 'routing' means
'packet forwarding') was a total dog's breakast (allocation by naming
authority - the very definition of 'brain-damaged') but TCP/IP's was not any
better, really.

Yes, the whole session/presentation/application thing was ponderous and probably
over-complicated, but that could have been ditched and simpler things run
directly on TP4.

{And apologies for the non-Unix content, but at least it's about computers,
unlike all the postings about Jimmy Page's guitar; typical of the really poor
S/N on this list.)

    Noel