From Newsgroup: alt.folklore.computers

On 2026-01-04 16:53, Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-04, Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:

On 2026-01-01 21:25, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

The Arpanet started switching over from the old NCP protocol it had
been using to this new TCP/IP thing on 1st January 1983
<https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/arpanet-standardized-tcp-ip-on-this-day-in-1983-43-year-old-standard-set-the-foundations-for-todays-internet>.
The transition took six months to complete.

The article says:

In contrast, the open, scalable, and hardware-agnostic TCP/IP
managed to get a clear run at widespread adoption, and succeeded.
One could say it won - not by being the best protocol designed to
connect everything - but by being the only one.

Why was nobody interested in offering a suitably scalable rival to
TCP/IP? Perhaps because in those days companies wanted to monetize
everything. I’m sure there were alternative protocols available -- for >>> a price. TCP/IP was the only one whose creators were offering it for
free -- no NDAs, no patent licensing, nothing.

DECnet anyone?

The case against DECnet was partly the concern that it was designed by
one of the companies competing in the space, even though the DECnet
specs were fully open and anyone could do their own implementation.

Second point was that the address space of DECnet was too small.
Basically just a 16-bit address, compared to the 32 bits in IPv4.

There are some really cool and nice things in DECnet, but there are also
some ugly bits in there. Especially some of the application level
protocols...

The address space concern was addressed in DECnet Phase V - which
IIRC was structured with a foundational packet format that matched
low-level ISO protocols. The larger address space also made it possible
to tunnel it across the Internet.

Unfortunately, the structural changes were so large that you could not
mix it with the earlier generations in the same network, so the adoption
rate was rather low. Sort of like the IPv4 to IPv6 transition.

Well, that isn't exactly true. DECnet phase IV nodes and DECnet phase V
nodes can talk fine with each other.

However, phase V was/is a headache in general, not to mention that it
was way later than TCP/IP v4, so it wasn't even an option at the time.

Johnny

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2