Actually, as I fuzzily recall in the 1986 - 1992-ish period, MCImail had a large presence for business messaging and CompuServe had a lion's share of consumer messaging. Before the flames go on, realize that (1) my memory is fuzzy and (2) the market was seriously fractured. The large enterprise market was doing the Notes thing; the small enterprise market was doing the cc:mail, netware, etc. thing, and interoperability was something that people gave lip service to. What a difference five years made! By 1996, pretty much everyone interoperated with Internet Mail. On 11/26/06 10:35 PM, "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > --On Friday, 24 November, 2006 10:30 -0500 Eric Burger > <eburger@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Or, the reality that with (at the time) a single dominant >> network provider made the inter-networking point moot. > > Eric, you are being a little cryptic, perhaps unintentionally. > What do you mean about a single dominant provider and at what > time? > > I would add an observation to Dave's about possibly different > sets of needs by reminding everyone that considerable IM > functionality (other than presence) isn't new. We had > SEND/SOML/SAML from the beginning of SMTP, even though they had, > IMO, a very short practical lifespan and, even then, were used > only in limited communities. We also we had a couple of flavors > of the "talk" protocol which were certainly heavily used in some > places. "Talk" involved a conversational session while SEND et > al was closer to what we would call a short message service > today. Off the Internet and in the land of BITNET/EARN/etc., > there was also an end to end short message protocol and > mechanism that was extensively used. > > None of these supported a presence mechanism in the sense that > we understand it today. As a result, one had to bind a user > identity to a target host in much the way SMTP does, rather than > having someone attach to the network at any point and announce > presence and, implicitly, location. It is arguably those > presence and mobility mechanisms and not IM itself that is the > recent development. To the degree to which those mechanisms are > what caused IM to take off, perhaps that reinforces Dave's view > of different services serving different needs. > > john > >> On 11/22/06 11:13 AM, "Dave Crocker" <dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> Harald Alvestrand wrote: >>>>> There were no alternatives to SMTP on an IP network until >>>>> Instant Messaging came along. >>>> >>>> not since X.400 over X.25 died, no. I thought you were older >>>> than that.... >>> >>> And there were all of the individual providers that Michael >>> cited, such as MCI Mail. >>> >>> >>>>>> but can be seen in IM, and may likely show up in other >>>>>> forms of communication. Much of this is simply the nature >>>>>> of software. >>>>> >>>>> It has nothing to do with software and everything to do >>>>> with architecture. IM networks have less problems because >>>>> all the participants share a relationship with the IM >>>>> service providers. >>> >>> It *is* interesting that the diversity of disconnected email >>> services was viewed >>> as a basic problem to solve, whereas most of the Internet >>> user community does not seem to feel the same pressure to >>> unify IM. >>> >>> Hmmm. Maybe IM satisfies a different set of needs than does >>> email. So we had better be a bit cautious about trying to >>> generalize implications between them. >>> >>> >>> d/ >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ietf mailing list >> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > > > > > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf