2 Jun
2007
2 Jun
'07
12:52 p.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Richard wrote:
I think I'd agree there - after all (at least in the UK) lots of home micros
"Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at
gmail.com> writes:
Although chronologically they're pretty close, I'd say it was the opening of
the internet to general public access circa 1989/90 that pushed such adoption
(the final battle in the protocol wars). At that point TCP/IP became mandatory
to connect to the "information highway" (remember that quaint phrase?), any
system that didn't provide TCP/IP wasn't going to receive much attention, and
all those competing/proprietary protocols (DECNET,SNA,OSI,etc.) became
superfluous (specialised capabilities notwithstanding). TCP/IP took a while to trickle down from
Workstations to Micros.
Agreed. I think it was the web browser that pushed the
adoption and
integration of TCP/IP. from 1980 onwards had the ability to network with each
other, so users were
reasonably familiar with what a network was (even if they
didn't connect their
machine *to* one; it was still a system selling point). It was only when
public Internet access took off (early on for academia, probably not until the
mid-90's for "home" use) that TCP/IP became the accepted norm.
On the web front, all the web browser ever did was encourage the use of the
wrong tool for the job ;-)