ITU and ISO to control the Internet????

[Frank O'Connor]

At 10:35 AM +1000 15/6/97, Tom Worthington wrote:
>At 06:47 PM 13/06/97 +1000, Frank O'Connor wrote:
>
>>...These are the clowns who proposed ... a competing network standard
>>(OSI) ... which became a joke in many circles...
>
>It seemed like a good idea at the time.
>
>>...they have decided to make a play for the Internet.
>
>I don't think this is such a bad idea. The problem with OSI was that the
>standards makers tried to invent the technology at the committee table,
>rather than turning something which was already working into a standard.
>There are numerous examples of ITU and ISO standards which have been very
>useful.

And they were living in the pockets of the big IT firms ... who all wanted
to push their competing standards. Seems to me a lot of stuff was included
in OSI because the big boys might have taken their ball and gone home if it
hadn't been ... and those inclusions were more often than not
counterproductive.

>>If so, ISOC and other bodies should resist this with all their might...
>
>The problem is that ISOC might turn into a dull bureaucratic body like ITU
>and ISO as a result. It might be better to have ISOC do the new interesting
>developments and have ITU and ISO then "standardize" them.

The trouble with that is that ITU and the ISO seem to pander to interests
other than the networked community, take a literal age to reach an
agreement invariably based on the lowest common denominator, are (in more
ways than one) in the pockets of the telecommunications giants (who aren't
real keen on TCP/IP .. and a more devoted to hard switched rather than
packet switched methodologies) and we will probably end up making way bad
compromises to simply get the bug bears the ISO and ITU are pushing hard
(eg. ATM) ... when in fact the idea solutions may be way different to that.

>We might start by getting Australia's standards process into the 20th
>century. Standards Australia are still in a state of denial, pretending that
>the Internet doesn't exist (or is some way is a product of OSI) and that
>standards are things on bits of paper which they can sell. We need to
>encourage Standards Australia to participate in the new standards
>development and distribution process.

Mmmm ... Standards Australia fail to realise the VERY small niche they have
in the great scheme of things.

My problem with the ITU and OSI remains however. They were responsible for
the failed proprietary competitor to TCP/IP, they still live in a number of
very deep pockets that have little history of supporting open standards,
user based networking, and packet switching ... and I fear that they are
going to make a play for the Internet.

			Regards,

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