nyt about nsfnet, where several paths got interconnected. true. yet, for my taste this article has too many questionable sentences in it. but who knows, maybe dates are just due to typos and everyone has his own personal history to write anyhow ...

da wird's wieder g'schichtn regnen 1.1.1983. NCP to TCP/IP, mission completed.

guess it's time to open the archive a little bit as it reminded me of an old discussion; and as the net means dublication i do it here and there. vint cerf was back then at mci and with bob kahn and hubert zimmerman guests in my mailbox. in case you ask, yes i was/am proud about.

the question was why the core of the arpanet community didn't join the discussion on osi and tried to influence it from their part?

The simple answer is that the DARPA effort had been under way since 1973. By the time the first papers on OSI architecture emerged, 1978, we were 5 years into the development and testing of TCP/IP and it was time to implement and deploy. As the DARPA program manager for the effort, I was not willing to spend another 5 years in negotiations on a new suite of protocols when we had something that looked pretty solid. We spent 1978 through 1982 implementing TCP/IP for a score of operating systems and deployed the system on January 1, 1983. As it was, it had taken 10 years of work to get from the concept to the reality of deployment and that was largely only to the computer science research community and selected military installations.

Over the next decade, there was a long-standing debate between the OSI community and the Internet group. As the world wide web emerged to public view in the early 1990s, it became clearer that the Internet had reached a stable and commercial state - in fact, by 1995, both the ARPANET and the NSFNET had been retired and except for special purpose networks, the academic community was relying on commercial Internet service.

If I had to summarize, I would say several things:

1. The TCP/IP work benefited from work done by Louis Pouzin, Gerard LeLann and Hubert Zimmermann in the INRIA research labs led by Pouzin.
2. The International Network Working Group that became IFIP 6.1 allowed substantial international exposure to the Internet design and protocols
3. The OSI effort came too late into the DARPA sponsored program to become integrated into it. This was a personal decision on my part to get wider, real-world experience with the TCP/IP protocols as a more realistic way of evolving the internet rather than spending an uncertain amount of time having further design discussions that were less informed by real experience. | vint cerf, july 2005

i had the feeling. siemens eds gave some people a hard time back then. i may understand kirstein's retention somehow better.

The German approach to the new data communication network, based on the Siemens EDS switch and their concept of ‘transparency’ is entirely opposed to the approach taken by the U.K. Post Office. Although we may not expect to change the views of the Germans and those who have adopted their approach, I believe that we should state our views strongly and clearly in the hope of persuading others not to adopt the German approach. World agreement on the German network would put back the realisation of a useful data network by 20 years. | davies, geneva ccitt notes

considering the political role of germany in ecc, osi .. one day i will start to count years caused.

its also said:

Germany does not intend to have pcm links on any significant basis for fifteen years, but clearly wish somehow or other to adapt EDS for carrying customer originated synchronous data. | davies report

pcm: puls code modulation eds: the electronic data switching system