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Re: large messages

1991-08-17 06:56:52

In summary, Internet was developed/maintained by some wonderful people for
some wonderful purposes such as "for research only".  

No.  The internet was developed and maintained for Internet capable
hosts.  If your host is not internet capable (i.e., doesn't conform to
the standards) the things don't work.  Life's hard, and that's just
the way it is.

Now, it is time to 
popularize the Internet concept and Internet spirit to somwehere like the 
Hollywood Boulevard!  Without those low end users' support, we will never 
be able to make the current network bigger!   Almost 100% of the Americans
can access the telephone networks; but only about 1% of the Americans 
(estimated 2 million users or so) can access the Internet infrastructure.
If we can increase it to 5% percent within the next 3 or 5 years, then, 
we will discuss different topics here other than the minimum msg size issue.

Well, since you bring up telephone networks..

I can't cobble together my version of a "telephone", hook it up and
complain to my local RBOC when it doesn't work?  I guess I could
complain, but if the equipment is not type accepted, they are within
their rights to disconnect service to protect the rest of the
telephone network.  Recall that with your local RBOC, the line of
demarkation is the "Network Interface"; you are expected to provide
working and conforming end-user equipment.

Tell me, how should the Internet be different?  Do we have an
obligation to accomdate and random thing that pops up, to the
disadvantage of all of the conforming hosts and networks out there?
Do we abandon trying to develop standards, and expectations that
people should actually USE them?

This is a silly as trying to convice someone that they should be able
to direct dial the world from their home-built telephone, except it
only have the number 1-5 on it because all the people they've called
so far have telephone numbers with only those digits in them.

If people want reliable, functioning Internet service, they should be
expected to invest in products that work.  It's that simple.  It's not
like it was 10 years ago when we all had to write our own TCP
implementation to get our hosts on the network.

Louis A. Mamakos
University of Maryland, College Park

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