> You know sometimes the bottom of answers are so deep. It is hard to
>actually get to the bottom. Reading books from different authors I
>often notice contradicting stories. This gets to be quite confusing.
>
>Howard wrote:
>>>I wouldn't say US government requirements drove IS-IS. In fact,
>>>I'd argue to the contrary.
>
> I am currently reading Sam Halabi's Second Edition BGP book. He
>notes that "IS-IS was initially, often chosen over OSPF, because the
>U.S. Government required support of ISO CLNP by networks in order
>for the networks to be awarded federal contracts."
>
> Howard wouldn't you consider a requrement for this IGP in order to
>be awarded a Government contract, to be a driving factor?
If there was, in fact, such a requirement. At best, there might have
been a preference. My perspective at the time: I was the first
technical staffer at the Corporation for Open Systems, the
not-for-profit organization to promote OSI/ISDN and to do product
testing. I was there from 1986 to 1992, during which period the GOSIP
specification(s) were issued. Andrew Partan, who later selected and
implemented Integrated ISIS for Alternet, was our first network
maanger.
GOSIPv1 definitely did not contain ISIS. I'd have to look up whether
it was included in V2, but my general recollection was that GOSIP
aimed primarily at hosts, and, at best, hosts were required to run
ES-IS, not IS-IS.
We didn't have any capability for formal routing testing, although we
were working on it.
How important were the government contracts? In 1986, IBM was one of
the leaders in OSI code, but would not release its OSI software in
the US, preferring SNA. (TCP/IP, at this point, wasn't even a gleam
in IBM's eyes). In 1988, when the first GOSIP spec was issued, IBM
then decided to offer its OSI software in the US. I don't think that
was a coincidence.
>
>
>
> Sam Halabi then goes on to note that "folklore suggests the driving
>factor was that IS-IS implementations were much more stable than
>OSPF implementations."
I'd say it was more than folklore in the UUnet decision. Andrew
Partan, who makes the world's best chocolate brownies as well as
designing excellent networks, has told me that stability was his
first decision factor and the availability of native OSI routing the
second.
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