[e2e] Protocols breaking the end-to-end argument

[John Day]

>
>
>The reference to the "ISO protocol wars" is completely mystifying, as the
>architecture of the ISO stack (at least, the CLNP/TP4 flavour, which was the
>subset which gave TCP/IP the best 'run for their money') is basically
>identical to that of TCP/IP (modulo disagreements on certain arcane points,
>such as exactly what kind of abstract entities the names at the various levels
>refer to - a subject wholly unrelated to the end-end debate).

Cmon Noel, you know better than that.  That was never what the 
protocol wars were about.

It was not a war between CLNP/TP4 and TCP/IP, but a war between 
(CLNP/TP4; TCP/IP) and X.25.  The argument at the time by the PTTs 
was that a Transport Protocol was unnecessary.  Our argument, of 
course, was that it was absolutely necessary.  This was the big 
argument from about 1976 to 1985.  This is primarily what the 
end-to-end paper discusses and tries to create a "higher moral 
ground" by creating a more general (and hence more fundamental) 
principle to base the debate on.

It was only later that the unwashed in the IETF turned it into a CLNP 
vs IP war.

Take care,
John