NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/protocol/iso/1066

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-29 | 2.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!spdcc!Cthulhu!ralph
From: [e-mail] (Ralph Mackiewicz)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: OSI Failure?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Aug 92 13:52:25 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Industrial Computing Society
Lines: 37

In response to Ran ([e-mail]):

I stand by what I said.  The companies I was referring to that used MMS
because they were looking for vendor independent solutions were not
vendors.  They were users and we have many customers who are not General
Motors.  I agree that GM is the reason that many vendors of MMS implement
it.  And, because that is the only reason, they will never be successful
selling the technology.  What I wrote is true.  Our sales of MMS are
increasing not because our customers want to promote OSI because it would
be the politically correct thing to do.  They are buying it because it
DOES solve problems for them that other networking technologies (like
TCP/IP) don't solve.  The reason that other networking technologies don't
solve these problems is because they are focused on networking issues
that do not relate to the functions provided by MMS.

let me point out that I will be the last person to suggest that if you
need a network for sharing files, E-Mail, or terminal connectivity that
you should only use an OSI based network.  Most of the arguments I have
seen in this dicussion group against OSI are based upon the premise that
anyone who is in support of OSI is also in support of OSI over any other
technology regardless of the specific functions that are expected of the
network.  WRONG!  The simple truth is:  MMS is currently the only non-
proprietary device to computer networking protocol that has been implmented
in any commercially available products.  It is in use today.  It works.
And it uses OSI technology.  This last fact doesn't make MMS useless. It
just makes it harder to sell because uninformed people will assume that
just because TCP/IP, Novell, Banyan, etc. do a better job at file transfer,
E-Mail, etc. than OSI, then TCP/IP must also do a better job for reading
and writing variables in a controller, uploading and downloading programs
in a controller and reporting device faults....and this is not true.
If anyone other than my company would commit to supporting MMS over TCP/IP
using RFC 1006, only then would TCP/IP become a viable alternative to OSI
for performing these device communications functions in a non-proprietary
manner.

Ralph Mackiewicz, SISCO Inc.
[e-mail] or [e-mail]