The Internet had not reached my part of the UK in the 1970s. >From my perspective 'The Internet Architecture' is primarily what emerged and what succeeded. And in particular what differentiated the Internet from competing schemes. I have however heard Vint (amongst others) state on at least two occasions was that the one design principle that was constant was the insistence that a network of networks was not merely a network and that IP be the only inter-domain routing protocol. There were plenty of networks offering file transport. And there were plenty offering some form of email. The features that differentiated the Internet over other packet switched networks were: * Independent administration - no flag days, no central control * Open Standards (not controlled by one manufacturer) * Single address space / Single name space * Large address space (> 16 bits) * DNS * Store and forward email (* copied by others) I do not believe that the concept of end to end pure IPv4 was either a differentiator or a factor in the success of the Internet. What was a distinguishing factor was having a large enough address space that initially every host and later as IPv4 exhaustion took place every server could have a unique IPv4 address in a single address space. What worries me about certain assertions being made with respect to IPv6 transition is that some people seem to have made IP-purity an absolute requirement while ignoring the principle of independent administration. As for FTP, I think we have a really different idea of what is meant by 'non-specialist'. My meaning would be a secretary/typist. My criteria for usability come from having worked in the video game industry. A video game is a program which people will pay to interact with. On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 4:42 AM, John C Klensin <klensin@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > --On Tuesday, August 31, 2010 17:36 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker > <hallam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Surprising as it may seem, I was aware of the prior existence >> of FTP and Telnet. > > I actually assumed that. Where I think there was a disconnect > is in your understanding of how they were used and by whom. See > below. > > >> The point I was trying to get to was email was the only >> application that was useful to people beyond the type of >> people who were building the Internet. Hence for the purposes >> of the original discussion, the fact that SMTP was the only >> protocol that is not end to end pure IPv4 indicates that it is >> a paradigm to follow rather than a mere anomaly. > > But the "useful to people beyond the type of people who were > building..." conclusion is just not true. > > * Telnet (and my old friend SUPDUP) were used extensively by > non-specialists for remote online access to computing resources. > > * FTP was used by a number of communities to access online > repositories of data and documents, not just programs. > > * I spent much of the 70s and 80s in design and management roles > in a sequence of projects and consulting activities involving > computer applications for (in different projects) social and > behavioral scientists of various types, architects and urban > planners, nutritionists and food chemists, folks doing strategic > management and planning for various resources, etc. -- none of > those people being what I assume you mean by "the type of people > who were building the Internet". Many of those projects were > using the Internet, some for remote access, some for data > repositories, some for distributed computing activities that > quietly built and ran their own protocols to meet the needs of > their applications. They made extensive use of email too --in > some cases, taking the advantage of the one feature that makes > email almost unique among application-level Internet protocols, > the ability to relay and queue through multiple systems and > multiple transport protocols. > > The thing that made email special --especially subsequent to RFC > 974-- was a clean, end-user-transparent, model for routing email > traffic into and out of systems and networks that were not using > TCP/IP or connected to the Internet at the IP layer. That > architectural property of email was extremely important in > enabling message communications among a diverse collection of > networks and network-like arrangements (e.g., systems that > received email, printed it, and got the paper into envelopes for > delivery came into being in both commercial and some > academic/research settings). The same queue-and-relay > architecture was of immense help in dealing with getting > messages (at least) through to systems that, while directly > connected to the Internet and running TCP/IP to endpoints, were > behind relatively unstable or intermittent links. But those > features were a piece of email architecture that functioned to > work around systems that were not end-to-end and permanently > connected to the Internet, not design features of the Internet > architecture as your notes seem to suggest. > > john > > > > > > -- Website: http://hallambaker.com/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf