on 5/30/2003 1:36 AM Dave Crocker wrote:
HTTP can reasonably be considered a replacement for Anonymous FTP,
during an academic discussion. The massive difference in the service
experience makes this a less-than-practical comparison, when discussion
an email transition. So does the massive difference in scaling issues
for the 1989 timeframe, versus now.
The POP->IMAP example is excellent, since it really demonstrates my
point. IMAP is rather popular in some local area network environments.
However it's long history has failed utterly to seriously displace POP
on a global scale.
I would not disagree with your assessments other than to say that the
comparisons aren't exactly applicable.
Specifically, you don't have to upgrade every client in the world for the
transition to work. As a matter of deployment, you only have to upgrade
the MTAs. The submission service can still be SMTP or whatever you want;
as long as the server which first puts the message into the ng stream is
ng-compliant *AND* that server is capable of providing the identity
information, then the first-hop(s) don't really have to be ng-compliant
for the scheme to work.
Asking for examples of upgrades involving hundreds of millions of clients
isn't really an applicable exercise. The examples I gave are useful to the
extent that they demonstrate a willingness to move critical technology in
varying scales.
Seriously folks, if discussion about changes is going to be productive,
it needs to pay much more realistic attention to history and pragmatics
of ISP operations and average-user preferences.
Let's not overdo it either.
--
Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/