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Vint Cerf on Why TCP/IP Was So Long in Coming

Posted by Zonk on from the we-built-this-city-on-ip-and-stone dept.

whitehartstag writes "TCP/IP is 25 years old this year. Vint Cerf says there was a long development cycle for both TCP/IP and for X.25, and we'd have been using TCP/IP much sooner if TCP/IP had been more marketable. 'Over the years, we can come up with many examples both of where the best technology did (or did not) win and of how marketing has defined a service. For example, many of the "best" features of frame relay, such as the ability to use Switched Virtual Circuits (SVC) in addition to Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVC) were never widely marketed because the pricing was too complex. Rather, the PVC was a simple replacement for a leased line at a fraction of the cost with better performance.'"

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Seems normal. by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Pricing complexities are why multicast is taking so long to reach the home, even though it has been enabled clear across the entire backbone up to the local ISP level for over a decade. The virtual circuits costing issue is presumably part of why MPLS is also somewhat of a rarity. Of course, this does raise some questions, one of which is why - when the early Internet and IPSS were Government-funded, mostly Government-run, intended to be fault-tolerent and suitable for military use - cost was a factor at all. Big business did not enter the X.25 or TCP/IP markets until very late in the game, and most initially used gateways off their own internal network protocol. The Internet's native protocols should have had no impact at that time.

    So why is it normal for the immaterial to matter more than the significant? It is normal, but it is also irrational and nonsensical.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  2. TCP/IP still needs a rewrite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Unfortunately, for all of us, IPv6 is heading our way like some rusty old stream train. Its rickety and badly designed, but massive, and will squash anything in the way.

    IPv4 at least was designed well, and has lasted a long time. However, IPv6 has no firewall/NAT support (if you are in a company, you have to have a firewall, else you run afoul of a lot of corporate regs like SOX, HIPAA, and if doing credit cards, PCI). You can't tunnel or VPN (if you do, you pretty much do IPv4 routing as a kludge.) Finally, it doesn't support a person having their own permanent IP range. You are forced to use a subset of the range of whomever you are connecting to, and if you change ISPs or peers, you have to completely re-IP your servers.

    Of course, the opportunity was missed to have crypto at the IP level, rather than have it bolted/kludged on (like IPSec.)