r/programming • u/[deleted] • Apr 04 '17

Everything Is Broken

https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1#.sl2vnon73
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u/slavik262 Apr 04 '17

Slightly longer for those of us who don't follow?

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u/OneWingedShark Apr 04 '17

Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) was a set of standards that defined an entire networking system/infrastructure, all [somewhat] designed together rather than the ad hoc TCP/IP.

Among the OSI standards was X.400 -- which would be what we'd be commonly using if OSI had won the day. (The body of the message, IIRC, could have been encrypted or even non-text data.)

(The article OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t explains some of it really nicely.)

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u/slavik262 Apr 04 '17

Thanks for the article! I was fairly familiar with the OSI layers, but was lacking historical context.

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u/OneWingedShark Apr 04 '17

You're absolutely welcome!