Open Systems Interconnection - Criticism

Criticism

The OSI protocol suite that was specified as part of the project was considered by many, such as computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum, to be too complicated and inefficient, and to a large extent unimplementable. Taking the "forklift upgrade" approach to networking, it specified eliminating all existing protocols and replacing them with new ones at all layers of the stack. This made implementation difficult, and was resisted by many vendors and users with significant investments in other network technologies. In addition, the protocols included so many optional features that many vendors' implementations were not interoperable.

Although the OSI model is often still referenced, the Internet's TCP/IP protocol suite is used in lieu of the OSI protocols. TCP/IP's pragmatic approach to computer networking and two independent implementations of simplified protocols made it a practical standard. Some protocols and specifications in the OSI stack remain in use in legacy systems.

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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:

    A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.”
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    To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
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    It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.
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