johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> OSI networking (which was the foundation for Phase V) solved loads of
> problems that the IP world has hardly noticed yet (and at least one
> which will be all too familiar with folks around the world). Like the
> VMS world vs the PC world, VMS and OSI benefit from an "architecture",
> rather than from an anarchic growth over decades.


One need not forget that OSI had been seen as the future of enterprise
networking, able to link machines from different vendors together, and
more importantly, there was demand from government and industry to
implement such a thing. Digital was a world leader in that regards.

What happened was that Digital was blindsighted by TCPIP which speeded
way ahead and everyone jumping onto the TCPIP bandwagon, while Digital
remain sort of blind to the fact that TCPIP had just made OSI irrelevant.

However, at the time DEC decided to go OSI, it was the right decision
because at that time, TCPIP had not yet become a enterprise networking
porotocol, it was still used by research/universities.

Also remember that at that time, the Internet was still a "non profit
cooperative" for non-commercial use and there were no telecom commercial
offerings for TCPIP based networks. X.25 and dedicated lines were what
was available commercially back then.