[554] in linux-net channel archive
(no subject)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mgr)
Wed Jun 21 20:35:53 1995
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 11:35:44 0100
From: mgr <m.g.robinson@man1205.wins.icl.co.uk>
To: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
> Rumour goes that OSI is/was slightly more popular in Europe than in
> the US.
I get that impression too.
> Actually, my understanding is that TCP/IP growth rate is significantly > higher than OSI in Europe, and is becoming more so.
I suspect it is partially due to the fewer problems that users seem to encounter
when setting it up.
It seems that the primary users of OSI are commercial organisations
which have grown up (like me) in the mainframe/large systems arena.
Large systems vendors have made massive investments into conforming
to OSI profiles (such as UK GOSIP) as demanded by their major customers.
However, as the trend towards client-server, and *down-sizing* gathered pace, the
growth in commercial popularity of UN*X operating systems has brought with it an
emphasis on IP networking.
It seems that the the OSI *biased* systems are being rapidly overcome by the
smaller but more numerous opposition and are being forced to re-conform.
But, OSI has a lot of clout, and it's not going to lie down, and (IMHO)
integration is a great aid to migration and development.
> There is a fairly complete OSI development kit called ISODE and an X.400
> mailer called PP. You will find Linux ports of these on sunsite.unc.edu.
Alan, thanks for the pointer - looks interesting.
Would recommend taking a look at ftp.isode.com
- Mark
