[e2e] TCP in outer space

[David P. Reed]

At 09:31 PM 4/12/01 -0700, Cannara wrote:
>Indications of parochialism were clear years ago, when Xerox had a wordwide,
>functioning, XNS network, followed by 3Com's worldwide XNS-like network,
>paralleled by the Marine Corps worldwide Banyan Vines network, various Netware
>networks, etc., etc.  These were indeed largely datagram networks.

You forgot Bitnet and UUCP... and of course WWMCCS and the wonderful 
roaming capabilities that work so well in interconnecting cell phones with 
the POTS network.

And I suppose they all interoperated, so we could have a WWW?

I know the Vines and Netware architectures in detail, and they did not have 
any particularly good congestion control at all (who needs it when you are 
primarily focused on fast LANs).

You want to balkanize, why not just connect every system to every other one 
with a dedicated line, and use private protocols.  Who cares about 
innovation or interoperation, just as long as the links are fully occupied 
by bits?

The point that of the goals of the Internet, interoperation is number one, 
and heterogeneity is number two, seems to be beyond some people's 
comprehension.

>- David

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