7 Feb
2019
7 Feb
'19
12:40 a.m.
Seems like a case of winners write the history books. There were
corporate and public access networks long before TCP was set in stone
as a dominant protocol. Most F500 were interchanging on SNA into the
1990s. And access networks like Tymnet, etc to talk to others.
TCP, coupled with the rise of UNIX and the free wheel sharing of BSD
code, are what made the people to talk to.
On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 4:19 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
From: Kevin Bowling
I think TCP was a success because of BSD/UNIX
rather than its own
merits.
Nope. The principle reason for TCP/IP's success was that it got there first,
and established a user community first. That advantage then fed back, to
increase the lead.
Communication protocols aren't like editors/OS's/yadda-yadda. E.g. I use
Epsilon - but the fact that few others do isn't a problem/issue for me. On the
other hand, if I designed, implemented and personally adopted the world's best
communication protocol... so what? There'd be nobody to talk to.
That's just _one_ of the ways that communication systems are fundamentally
different from other information systems.
Noel