Van Jacobson Denies Averting Internet Meltdown in 1980s (2012)

Re:Van Jacobson Denies Averting Internet Meltdown in 1980s (... by Taniwha on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:13PM (#16936840)

I think there's another piece of context about TCP/IP vs. everything else (SNA, BNA, DECNet, X25, ISO/whatever etc):

TCP/IP was based on datagrams at the bottom levels, and expected them to be dropped if something went wrong, everyone had a phone system mind set - world-wide PTT charged for phone calls, the mindset was that they'd charge for reliable data connections (by the minute or the byte) and the protocols essentially mirrored that - you talked to a supplier who did all the low level stuff for you, and essentially made a call to a remote machine - under IP you sent datagrams and most of them got there.

I think that TCP/IP 'won' (and it wasn't obviously going to win at the time) because:

1) the connection to the wider internet was very simple, and essentially stateless

2) it let people innovate everywhere else up the stack

3) no company (or country) owned it

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Re:Van Jacobson Denies Averting Internet Meltdown in 1980s (... by Animats on Thursday April 26, 2018 @10:37PM (#16938060)

Basic truth: the only reason pure datagram networks work is because long-haul fiber optic backbone bandwidth became so cheap. If long-haul bandwidth cost even 0.01% of what it cost in the 1980s, we'd be doing this very differently. We still can't deal with congestion in the backbone.

I didn't see that coming, and I thought things were going to have to be far more efficient.

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