30 Oct
2019
30 Oct
'19
10:17 a.m.
On Oct 30, 2019, at 11:20 AM, allison via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
Note that there's closed, open, and standard. Closed as in "one company, others
can't do this", open as in "defined by a company but anyone can implement
this" (DECnet is an example) and standard (TCP/IP, OSI, Ethernet -- things agreed to
by groups of separate and possibly competing organizations).
About PTT/Telcos, two historic tidbits. In the 1980s DEC paid a contractor to string up
private fiber between DEC buildings in New England, for use by its internal DECnet network
(originally "the Engineering net"). It also built a number of satellite ground
stations, for example in Littleton and Nashua. Unfortunately, I wasn't alert enough
to ask if I could have one of those dishes when they were dismantled.
In some countries, at least in the early 1980s (Sweden?) the law said that private
organizations could run communication wires on a floor of a building, but to wire from one
floor to another was the monopoly of the government PTT. So DEC Ethernet bridges had PTT
approval stickers on them from those countries, indicating those PTTs would be willing to
build you a bridged Ethernet from floor 1 to floor 2.
But it's not germane. We're not talking
about corporate proprietary
stuff, or we shouldn't be.
We should as they were existent and ideas grew from them and for periods
even depended on them. As a result a more open set of specifications
emerged. That was a contrast to the Telcos(PTT) and private companies. To think, it all grew from people on hills with flags,
mirrors, or
fires trying to send messages faster and further than physical means
like runners and horses.
Allison
One might dust off Samuel Morse's comment: "What hath God wrought".
paul