9 Jan
2008
9 Jan
'08
1:16 a.m.
Richard wrote:
They also had some weird ideas about DEC vs. IBM networking described
in that argument, as if neither company supported TCP/IP until their
proprietary networks (DECnet and SNA) were forced to relinquish ground
to open protocols.
There's a lot of room for shades of gray in there (what does 'forced' mean,
and
how far, and when) but I'd say there is a good deal of validity to that
argument. In the 80's DEC and IBM were pretty big on pushing their own
'networking solutions' and did their best to avoid open protocols, at least
above the link level. TCP/IP didn't have the degree of prominence in the
networking world in those days as it does today.
There was also resistance to open protocols at the customer level if those
customers were already ensconced in the proprietary networks. A lot of people
were looking only at their immediate needs rather than seeing the future of an
'interconnected world'.
(As I've said before on the list) there was at least one third-party producing
a TCP/IP stack for VMS before DEC got around to it. To my recollection, IBM was
even later in taking up TCP/IP, although one might have to distinguish between
mainframe and PC stuff.
Put another way, DEC and IBM didn't support TCP/IP until they 'had to' (as in
market forces).